Month: December 2006

A creepy Japanese promo video for instantly aging wine by electrolysis. I have no idea if it works, but I’m fascinated by the Foleyish interaction between the creepy old guy and his student.

(Hat tip: Defense Tech.)

[Clive]

The blogger series continues. Here’s the choice of Britain’s Tim Worstall, ardent free marketeer, libertarian, and all-round mischief-maker. He’s opted for Milton and Rose Friedman’s "Free to Choose".

The book grew out of the TV series of the late 70s. Both hit me just as I was starting to learn a little economics for the first time. I had been reading J.K. Galbraith, and loved him for both his prose and his ideas, most especially the thoughts on private affluence and public squalor. After reading the Friedmans I still loved J.K. for his prose style, much less so for his ideas.

"Free to Choose" shocked me out of my (entirely natural, it happens to us all) teenage socialism and made me the bleeding-heart classical liberal I am today. I don’t care about the intentions of the people suggesting public policy, only about the outcomes.  Minimum wages hurt the working poor. Drug prohibition will only work (and possibly not even then) at the cost of liberty. Banning sweatshops will mean no jobs, not better ones for the poor.

I re-read "FtC" this year after the sad news of Milton Friedman’s death. It’s still just as stunning in its implications as it was when first published. The world works better when politicians and planners bugger off and let people get on with things themselves. If "A Monetary History of the United States" is beyond you (as it is me) then this is the best introduction to Friedman’s ideas.

New York City, New York, 10.20 am.

[Clive]

You may need cheering up after reading this review of a new study of racial divisions in Chicago. If so, Joel Stein’s extremely droll column about "the war on Hanukkah" should do the trick.

[Clive]

As my friends know, I never miss a chance to plug the music of Caetano Veloso, Brazil’s Renaissance Man. Imprisoned by the  military regime in the Sixties, he now enjoys god-like status. (His old friend, Gilberto Gil isn’t doing too badly either; he’s the Minister of Culture.) If I could keep only disc from my entire CD collection, it would have to be the tribute to the movies of Fellini. No sign of it on YouTube, alas, but I did just find an ingenious home-made clip which splices the hypnotic bossa nova cover of "Billie Jean" over stage footage of Michael Jackson. A weird yet strangely effective concept. (Why is Veloso so drawn to Jacko? Perhaps because they both have racially ambiguous personas.)

I don’t much like the latest release, called simply "C√™" –   it’s too close to rock for my taste –  but at least Veloso hasn’t lost his ability to spring surprises.

Reader JT with too much time on his hands uses college football to handicap the 2008 Presidential race:

John Kerry = Alabama, for some reason still thinks he should be considered anelite organization but each season becomes more and more embarrassing.

Barack Obama = Notre Dame, highly touted going into the season and will swayvoters based on name and mystique, but really no one knows if the praise is worthy and ends up unable to beat a quality opponent.

Mitt Romney = BYU, for obvious reasons.

Hillary Clinton = USC, one hell of organization, should contend for the title but could easily get derailed by a dispassionate offense and poor defense. Arouses mixture of loathing and envy from other teams’ supporters.

John McCain = Miami, has everything needed to be the one left standing but its been a while since the magical run and the pent up anger and cockiness can be the programme’s downfall.

Wes Clark = Penn State, just being good at defense doesn’t get you much.

John Edwards = Florida, quality, tier-one candidate but is he really good enough to deserve to play for the title?

Vilsack, Richardson, Giuliani = Rutgers, Louisville etc – lightly regarded going into the season, fan favorites by the end: good stories but not going to the big game.

There is no Ohio State this year.

[Alex]

Clive raises some excellent and important questions. There’s no doubt that the Bush administrations’ diplomatic style has been extraordinarily counter-productive. But, on these matters I find that I  have more sympathy for the British/European perspective when I’m in the United States and for the US view when I’m in the UK or Europe. (Maybe I just like arguing against the grain…)

Visiting the UK for the first time in a year I’m struck by the amount of fatuous, knee-jerk prejudice from people intelligent enough to know better. That obviously doesn’t include radio presenters or the Independent. The cliche of Americans as a bunch of overweight, blundering, gun-toting red-necked rubes seems to have run amok, sweeping everything else aside. People who tend to dismiss crude stereotypes in most circumstances are only to happy to wallow in them when such prejudice is applied to the United States.

Doubtless some of this will pass with George W Bush. But much of it will linger, especially since America’s welath and power is likely to endure for some time. Just as well, frankly, given the utter lack of seriousness displayed in many european capitals and from much of the British intelligentsia.

Tony Blair’s comments in Dubai this week are worth mentioning:

There is a monumental struggle going on worldwide between those who believe in democracy and modernisation, and forces of reaction and extremism. It is the 21st century challenge. Yet a great part of our own opinion either thinks there is no common theme to it all; or if there is, is inclined to believe that it is our – that is America and its allies – fault that this is so.

In any other situation in which terrorists with almost incredible wickedness butcher completely innocent people, provoke sectarian conflict, spread chaos and despair, in almost any other situation we would say well our response should be to stand up and fight back. In Iraq, in Afghanistan, but seeping across the board, voices instead say: we shouldn’t be involved: better leave well alone; it is none of our business.

Here are elements of the Government of Iran openly supporting terrorism in Iraq to stop a fledgling democratic process, trying to turn out a democratically elected Government in Lebanon, flaunting the international community’s desire for peace in Palestine – at the same time as denying the Holocaust and trying to acquire a nuclear weapon capability: and yet a huge part of world opinion is frankly almost indifferent. It would be bizarre if it weren’t so deadly serious.

We have in my view to wake up. These forces of extremism – based on a warped and wrong-headed misinterpretation of Islam – aren’t fighting a conventional war, but they are fighting one against us, "us" being not just the West, still less simply America and its allies, but "us", as all those worldwide who believe in tolerance, respect for others and liberty.

Whatever his other faults, Blair’ gets this right.

Nontheless, my impression is that much of the anti-Americanism so prevalent in Britain today is predicated on the idea that Britain has, cravenly, subordinated its foreign policy to the United States. There’s something humiliating about that, perhaps and the sense that Britain is not an independent country seems to unite much of the left and the old Tory right against the upstart Americans.

Harold Macmillan’s quip that Britain would play Athens to America’s Rome was breezily complacent. But it also overlooked the fact that though Greeks would educate young Roman noblemen, they were also their slaves. That feeling of subordination to Washington  – the sense that Britain really is th e51st state – seems widespread in Britain. (It’s not utterly nonsensicl either: "few people in Britain really understands how much we are almost part of the inter-agency process" a British official in Washington told me earlier this month.)

Let me throw something out there too. How about this: anti-americanism will not abate in Britain or europe until US hegemony is seriously threatened? ie, China becomes a global, strategic competitor and threat to western interests. That’s something to look forward to then…

On China, too, incidentally, we’ll see what Britain says next time the EU proposes ending the embargo on the sale of arms to Iraq. There’s a good chance the Germans will propose this soon and their position would privately, I think be supported by London. In public, however, it’s more likely that Britain will take the American view that this would be a bad idea.

[Clive]

David Irving’s nemesis, Deborah Lipstadt posts some observations on the latest twist in his career. She’s opposed to Holocaust denial laws, but with caveats:

1. Remember that David Irving went to Austria despite the fact that there was a warrant out for his arrest.
2. He announced that he was going. Seems to me he was "taunting" the Austrians or "asking for it."
3. In Austria, as the previous post notes, Holocaust denial has a different resonance than it does in the USA or other countries which are not directly linked to the Holocaust.
4. In a place such as Austria it is a political act that could be said to have incendiary implications and be close to incitement.

Therefore:
1. While I am opposed to such laws
2. I can understand the Austrian perspective.
3. Imagine if Ahamdinejad had decided to hold his conference in Vienna to save having to pay for Duke, the ridiculous rabbis et. al to fly all the way to Iran. There would have been a world outcry of unbelievable proportions.

I paid a visit to the courtroom during the epic Lipstadt vs Irving case back in 2000. A shrewd self-publicist, Irving had gone some way to portraying himself in the media as the hapless victim. For an instant, as I sat in the gallery, I caught myself feeling sorry for him: there he was, one rumpled, middle-aged man with an untidy pile of books and papers, taking on a team of some of the best legal minds in town.  Then I remembered what he stood for. It was only a split-second lapse, but it reminded me how clever he was at playing his game.

[Nb.  In my original  post, the last two sentences disappeared due to a problem with the formatting. Apologies.]

[Daniel]

Be careful.

A dead tree does not bring life to a room; it merely reminds us of the horrors of deforestation.

Want more advice like that? Read Spiked.

One of the joys of the British web scene is Spiked Online. This web magazine provides a daily assault on fashionable theories and media obsessions.

The dead trees quote comes from their delightful satire of ethical advice columns.

On the other hand, my Times colleague Anna Shepard argues that you would be happier if you worried about the environment more.

[Clive]

The scholar Marcus Cunliffe had this story to tell about veteran humorist Art Buchwald:

In August 1957 he placed the following advertisement in the London Times personal column: "Would like to hear from people who dislike Americans and their reasons why. Please write Box R 543."

The next week brought him over a hundred replies. Most came from British citizens, although one annoyed American woman wrote: "Obviously you have some grudge against Americans… If you are one of these half-baked Englishmen, then your grudge is most probably that the Americans get along better with the English girls and you are left with the leftovers. So much for your stupid advert, you squirming little Englishman." …Other letters dwelt upon American insularity, naivete and chauvinism of the "how-much-is-that-in-real-money?" variety…

Summing up this range of responses, Buchwald concluded that:

"If Americans would stop spending money, talking loudly in public places, telling the British who won the war, adopt a pro-colonial policy, back future expeditions to Suez, stop taking oil out of the Middle East, stop chewing gum,… move their air bases out of England, settle the desegregation problem in the South, … put the American woman in her proper place, and not export Rock ‘n’ Roll, and speak correct English, the tension between the two countries might ease and the British and the Americans would like each other again."