The Filter^

Let's Build a Strawman, we can make him tall, we can make him not so tall...

Bryan Caplan rants about Krugman today at Marginal Revolution. His thesis is that Krugman ("the world's most famous left-wing economist") believes in a lot of the free-market economics, unlike the last generation of lefties, such as Samuelson and Galbraith. And that Krugman's "rightness" is the manifestation of the good intellectual climate we now enjoy, since "libertarian rhetoric" is "the truth".

This, I'm afraid, is a case of reverse "strawman". Instead of "present[ing] only a portion of [his] opponent's arguments (often a weak one), refute it, and pretend that [he] have refuted all of their arguments", Caplan plays the trick of presenting a portion of Krugman's arguments, agrees with them, and pretends that he and Krugman's are on the same side, where the Truth lays!

Krugman is not a stupid economist, he knows his ECON 101, and therefore it is not a surprise to see him stating the points listed in Caplan's post. But the devil, of course, is in the detail - a more typical Krugmanian stance on Free Trade can be found here. Far from "without hemming or hawing".

And some people might even argue with Caplan about Krugman being "the world's most famous left-wing economist"...how about Stiglitz?

An Audience With The Filter^

The Filter^ is hosting a very special occasion.

When: from 8pm, Saturday 7th August 2004

Where: Hogshead Pub, North John St. Liverpool

Why: On 7th August 1754 Henry Fielding left London for the gentler climate of Lisbon. Help us commemorate the master of the traveling narrative.

Why?: To celebrate the life of Georg Stiernhielm, "Father of Swedish poetry"

Ya, ya live than ya die the end, ya

WHY???: Anthony and Faith's engagement, Faith's 30th birthday, and their impending departure for the harsher climes of Washington DC.

How: Turn up! We'd appreciate an RSVP for numbers, and here's the official invitation.
The buffet starts at 9pm. All welcome.

p.s thanks to The Daily Bleed for fattening my knowledge of August 7th

Free Porn - US & UK

A story from the FT:

Ofcom, the media and telecoms regulator, has imposed a £50,000 fine on Digital Television Production for broadcasting promotional material for its "ExplicitXXX" pornography channel on free-to-air television. The watchdog decided the excerpts and trailers for the subscription channel breached its programme codes.

Compare this to the US, where Janet Jackson showed her right breast during the Super Bowl half-time show:

Jan LaRue, chief counsel for the conservative Concerned Women for America group, called it a "pornographic show".

"We don't buy for a minute that this was not planned. Everybody knew what was going on here."

Don't forget to follow the link above of the BBC, where you can "see the moment in pictures"...

Life's a Beach

When breakfast sweats and the day is empty there’s just one option: to the beach. On Tuesday four of us graced the golden sands of Bournemouth, enjoying a typically English pursuit. Watched by blue-rinse sandwich munchers, Ben and I kicked an inflatable ball along the shore, whilst the girls snoozed in striped deckchairs. Nothing had changed from summers past.

Charles Leadbeater writes in this months ‘Prospect’ about the beach as a social convention, one which he describes as ”giant blank spaces, washed clean every day, on to which all sorts of hopes are projected”

He traces the history of the beach holiday, and it’s influence upon architecture and literature. Most interestingly, he highlights the governance structure of a space commerce dare not intrude upon.

“Beaches are ordered without being controlled. There is no one in charge. They rely on mass self-organisation… Beaches are a model of civic space: tolerant, playful, self-regulating.”

“Complexity theorists have a fancy name for this: they call it emergence, when an overall order emerges from a system with many players, in which no one person is in charge and everyone is adjusting to local conditions. Beaches are democratic and egalitarian in spirit.”

I agree. Whilst commercial centres erupt along the periphery, a beach is free from advertising and social competition is fairly redundant. Off shore yachts demonstrate status, but on the beach money loses value; people are literally stripped to their essentials. Some beaches may specialise as fashionable parades, but most are unrivalled as social levellers: class, sex and age intermingle. As Leadbeater says, ”Quite different people have always been able to get what they want from the same beach resorts: Queen Victoria and Karl Marx were both fond of the Isle of White”.

He concludes that

”..we like the kind of society we keep on beaches: civil, playful, active, open. The beach is the prime example of a successful collective self-organisation, without either the heavy hand of the state or the competition of the market. Our summer holidays are homage to the third way.”

The full article is here (subscription required).

The DIY Spirit

If blogging makes publishing electronically easy, the BookMachine will do the same for publishing on paper:

The BookMachine is an automated device that can produce a soft-cover, perfect bound, standard-format book on customer demand within three to five minutes. The information and material to produce the book is contained within the BookMachine (10'X3'X4') enclosure. The electronic information for printing frequently requested books can be cached in the BookMachine. The system also provides continual maintenance 7/24 and will have a central storage facility that will contain hundreds of thousands of book titles. Upon customer selection, the local BookMachine will request a specific title from the master database, which will then be transmitted back to the local machine for reproduction.

Wouldn't it be strange if one day an average home will have more books than a bookshop?

Diamonds are Forever

A scientist ("boffin" in tabloid-speak) in Japan has created a microscopic diamond ring, from Japan Today:

The ring, with a 0.02 millimeter diameter, bears a five billionth of a carat diamond. It was created by Yasushi Kuroda, an employee of Hitachi Science Systems Ltd, to illustrate that the company's equipment can be used to make micro machines.

Would people be interested in paying a huge sum for a diamond that cannot be seen? Isn't diamond supposed to be a Giffen/Veblen good which exists because of its "showing-off" (or "bling") quality?

Speaking of diamonds, here's an elementary question in price theory: why are diamonds more expensive than water? To put it simply, the price of a good is related to its marginal utility, not its total utility. Coupling with the law of diminishing marginal utility, we can see for a consumer who has had a lot of water, his marginal utility obtained from the last unit of water consumed is far smaller than what he could obtain from a diamond - hence the price difference. The elegance of this theory is that it is equally applicable to a consumer that lives in a place where water is scarce - his lack of "exposure" to water means the law of diminishing marginal utility hasn't "kicked-in" to the same extend, and therefore the high price of water!

Check here for a more detailed explanation.

The Filter^ REVIEW

Three months after joining the community of weblogs, The Filter^ launched The Spring Anthology^ , a collection of our choice posts. THe idea was to provide a 'best of', so that new readers would have a suggested starting point to uncover our past. Amongst so much information, presentation is important.

Now, having hurtled past the six month mark, we're extremely proud to offer another original addition to our services. The Filter^ REVIEW is the natural consequence of the recent amount of reviews we've been interested in. Rather than store them externally, we've decided to create a sister site as an assembly of cultural essays. Every addition will be mentioned here, but we intend to nurture a seperate location, with a distinct ethos.

We are absolutely delighted to expand our list of contributors, providing a broad proficiency. Andrew Mellor marks his debut with "Laudanam and Boredom at the Royal Opera House", alongside Filter^ regular Anthony Evans' The Beautiful and Damned. We've also been joined by Matthew Whitfield, in an effort to promote architecture as an aesthetic pursuite alongside theatre and opera. In his first essay, he discusses The Beetham Tower, Liverpool.

Thanks for visiting the Filter^, and we hope you enjoy our expansion.

The Butler Report

It's a quiet night in front of the fire. This is home, in Birkenhead. A young couple have just finished their evening meal, and passively watch 'Channel 4 News', swigging beer...

It is the day of the Butler report, and Jon Snow is interviewing, among others, Andrew Gilligan

Her: Will you sex me up?

Him: Sure - lets remove your caveats

The Hutton report, more narrow in scope, has now been superseded. Download The Butler Report here.

With regard to digestion, I recommend 'My Way of Thinking'. The Guardian presents the key findings, and Bloomberg reports the view of Greg Dyke.

Speculative Demand in Everything

An interesting eBay (Spain) auction:

The Official Match Ball used on the game against Portugal, that left UK out of the Europe Cup, the same ball of the penalty, that David Beckham miss, will be auctioned on eBay. Pablo Carral, a fan, catched the ball and he took it out from the stadium.

Is the Official Europe Cup Match Ball, made in Thailand. It has the date of the game, the 24^th of June 2004, also the place of the celebration, da Luz of Lisbon stadium.

Don't loose this great and unique chance!!!
Place a bid now!!!

The buyer will pay the shipping cost.

See also the story at Reuters. As at 16:45 BST, the asking price is €10m.

A few points I find interesting:

1. The item is listed in Spanish, English, Dutch and Chinese (albeit badly translated Chinese!). Globalisation at its finest!
2. I am very surprised that the seller didn't list the ball at eBay.com;
3. It will surely be next to impossible to verify the authenticity of the ball, since there must have been over 10 different balls used during that match;
4. Is the "Beckham Ball" a Giffen Good?
5. Why is shipping not included???

Happy bidding.

Henry IV at the Everyman

I went to the opening night of Pirandello's 'Henry IV', at the Everyman.

Before going, all I knew was that it was a 'new version' by Sir Tom Stoppard. Which was all I needed to know.

Aware that some Filter^ readers are considering going: I urge you to. I've written a review, which you can read here, but it also explains the plot, so i'll post it on The Filter^ once the run is over.

After the performance the Director Michael Grandage was joined by most of the cast, and answered questions from the audience. Unfortunately I didn't get an exclusive - the only thing on my mind was "why don't you sell copies of the play". I'm sure it'd be profitable for theatres to do this, and now I have to trawl through Amazon.

For evidence as to the influence Sir Tom has had over me (alas, not literarily), click here

Quality theatre choosing Liverpool. Superb!