My former ANU colleague and occasional co-author Bruce Chapman is well-known as the progenitor of the HECS scheme, and as a proponent of income-related loans more generally. He and I along with Arie Freiburg and David Tait worked on a proposal for income-related fines for criminal offences a while back.
Both schemes and others are discussed in Bruce’s new book, to be launched next week. It should be well worth reading.
Old: Sense and Sensibility. Probably my favourite among Jane Austen’s novels. By the way, has anyone else noticed that while Austen’s heroines are interestingly different, all her books seem to feature the same two male characters – the attractive, but dishonest younger man (Willoughby, Wickham, William Elliot, Frank Churchill) and the seemingly reserved, but really passionate (and usually older) man (Darcy, Brandon, Knightley, Wentworth). I wonder if this is just a handy plot device or whether it reflects some event in Austen’s life, of which we know little.
New Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. A great story, and also interesting for the link between Anansi, the West African trickster-spider and Brer Rabbit, which is obvious enough once pointed out (there’s even a tar baby story) but was still new to me.
I’m using my blog to beg for help on a minor point.
The Wikipedia article on pscyhological egoism, which draws on the e Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy includes
Finally, psychological egoism has also been accused of using [[circular logic]]: “If a person willingly performs an act, that means he derives personal enjoyment from it; therefore, people only perform acts that give them personal enjoyment”. In particular, seemingly altruistic acts must be performed because people derive enjoyment from them, and are therefore, in reality, egoistic.. This statement is circular because its conclusion is identical to its hypothesis (it assumes that people only perform acts that give them personal enjoyment, and concludes that people only perform acts that give them personal enjoyment).
I’ve added the claim, based on memory that “This objection was made by William Hazlitt in the 19th century, and has been restated many times since then”, but Google only produces reference to a previous occasion on which I made the same claim. Can anyone point to a good citation of Hazlitt on this, or to any other versions of this argument from the 19th and 20th centuries?
The Oz reports on the “infiltration” (or maybe “infiltrazione”) of Italian by English words.
Prime recent examples were flop instead of the Italian fiasco, and trend instead of tendenza.
Umm, does anyone notice un problema here?
Seriously, I’m all for linguistic diversity, but if these are, as claimed, the prime examples, it’s hard to see that there’s a big imbalance of trade here.
I finally got around to The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery, which I’ve had on my shelf for ages. I was happy to see I got a brief mention, pointing out the misleading way that model simulation results from MEGABARE on the cost of Kyoto were presented in public debate.
Overall, the book is impressive but depressing. It seems clear that lots of species are doomed to extinction even if we move rapidly to stabilise CO2 concentrations, something which the denialist lobby is doing its best to prevent.
An interesting (and alarming) sidelight was the observation that the destruction of the ozone layer would have gone much faster, potentially leading to catastrophic damage, if we’d used chemicals based on bromine rather than chlorine-based CFCs. It was only a matter of chance that the economics turned out better for chlorine. It’s worth recalling at this point that many of our leading climate change denialists (such as Pat Michaels, Sallie Baliunas, Fred Singer, John Brignell and Steve Milloy) were also ozone hole denialists and some still are.
A while back, I organised a seminar at Crooked Timber, on Chris Mooney’s The Republican War on Science. Now, thanks to Parlor Press and the tireless efforts of John Holbo, the seminar has appeared in book form, and the presentation is beautiful. I’m looking forward to getting a physical copy, and to the promised appearance of more in the series.
Pessimism seems to be a newly popular theme in American cultural discourse. Having written a bit about worst-case scenarios, I was interested to get a review copy of Karen Cerulo’s Never Saw It Coming: Cultural Challenges to Envisioning the Worst. Perhaps because I’m naturally optimistic by temperament, I’m finding Cerulo’s relentless pessimism a bit annoying, and, not coincidentally, finding a lot to disagree with in the book.
One point particularly struck me. Cerulo claims that “positive asymmetry” is demonstrated by the fact that, in theology and art, Heaven is given a detailed and appealing description, while hell is described only in vague and non-specific terms. She mentions, as an illustration of the latter point, an etching inspired by Dante’s Inferno.
My recollection of Dante is that the descriptions of Hell, and the various categories of sinners, were detailed and intricate, making the Inferno a fascinating book, while Purgatory was less distinctly graded and the Paradiso was unreadably dull. I haven’t read Paradise Lost or Paradise Regained, but I get the impression that the same is true. Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I thought this was one of the standard criticisms of religious art – Hell and the Devil are made much more interesting than Heaven and Hell.
Cerulo focuses mainly on paintings, and maybe she’s right on this score, but even here I’d hazard a guess that the work of Hieronymus Bosch is much more widely reproduced than any detailed representation of Heaven.
I missed the announcement of the Hugo awards a couple of weeks ago. But I see that the winner for best novel was, as I predicted, Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. Well deserved, though I personally preferred Charles Stross’ Accelerando.
I’ve just finished Stross’ latest, Glasshouse which is also dazzling, but more of a real novel than Accelerando and might well be a candidate next time.
I happened to notice that the iTunes music store was selling a new album by Paris Hilton, which had a two-star rating. This seemed like an interesting mean value, so I thought I’d see how it was derived, and took a look at some of the comments. The modal response was a one-star rating, often accompanied by a demand that iTunes introduce fractional, zero or negative stars to its system.
On the other hand, some listeners made a convincing case for five stars. For example, one headed Genius. pure and simple reads
By subverting modern pop music and turning every soul crushing cliche in modern music to tap-like ’11’ proportions, Paris has created 3:57 of towering avant garde… An almost coma-inducing tour de force, which ranks with Lou Reed’s ‘Meta Machine Music’ in the unlistenable stakes. Bravo, Maestro!
Even on the limited free sample available from iTunes, I think this rave review is warranted.
My draft review of Steven Poole’s Unspeak is over the fold. Comments much appreciated.
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John Quiggin 