The Filter^

Sven: Time to GO

Brief recap: England football manager/playboy Sven (pictured) is "exposed" by the News of the World having suggested that he *might* quit if he wins the World Cup. Other revelations follow, in which Sven "reveals" that Rio Ferdinand is lazy, Wayne Rooney had a rough upbringing, and Michael Owen only went to Newcastle for the £££. So far, so uncontroversial.

He went on to suggest that *if* the Arab consortium he was lounging with were to buy Aston Villa (a club he suggested), then he'd be willing to take over as manager, and would be able to sign David Beckham. Both  issues are clear breaches of FIFA rules, but since the conversation was hypothetical, Sven won't be charged.

This isn't the first time Sven's hypotheticals have caused a problem. Back when Wayne Rooney was still an Everton player, David Moyes (our manager) said the following:

We’ve been disappointed by one or two comments, especially one that the England manager made when he said ‘If I was a club manager I’d pick up the phone and call his agent. First of all, I would expect the manager of England to know it is illegal to do that, because the player is under contract. Secondly, it’s the last thing we’d want.”

“I don’t think if he were manager of Everton he’d want to be sitting in this position and hearing an international manager saying that about one of his players.”

via Kenny Fogarty

I think hypotheticals matter - especially if the person exposed believes that the scenario may well occur. It reveals what Sven's all about, and is valid information.

I'm not a big fan of Sven, and the FA made a blunder by giving him such a lucrative contract. This affair provides an excuse to break it, and they should.

Time to be Nice

Like the formula for beer goggles that Anthony posted a while ago, I wonder if one could calculate a similar formula for rudeness; whether - if you like - it could be proven that the more money and power one obtains, the ruder one becomes.

Last night I was finding my seat at a concert to discover that someone was sitting in it - a critic with a broadsheet daily newspaper who I will not name. I said, 'I think you are sitting in my seat', to which she replied, 'no I'm not, this is my seat'. 'G13 is my seat, here, as it says on my ticket' I offered. Her reply, 'but I'm a critic', was ringing in my ears all night. How can anyone who is trusted with the responsibility of providing an opinion on the world premiere of a significant new work compose such an ignorant, irrelevant and rude comment?

After a few minutes of protestation during which she blamed everyone in the building for the fact that she had parked herself in the wrong seat without ever looking me in the eye, this delightful character moved to the seat which had been assigned to her. I'm not sure I'll bother reading her review.

Is it me, or are there too many important people with this attitude? When will the nice guys get a break? And is it just in the arts that people behave like this? Please - put me straight!

Bono is Saying the Right Things

from The Telegraph:

And simple it is: buy Red and you get a product just as good as the competition and at the same time help buy anti-retroviral drugs for people in Africa.

But the real surprise is that Bono turns out to be a card-carrying capitalist. He wants companies selling Red products to make a profit by helping the poor - doing well by doing good.

"Many of the world's greatest minds are in commerce," he says. And if there
is something in it for them, he thinks, companies will spend far more money promoting Red than Bono could ever hope to mobilise through charity.

No ethics and good economics is better than good ethics and bad economics. But it's great to see attempts to be good at both.

Fancy Some Human Action?

 

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An open letter to Lowri Turner

Dear Lowri,

Oh how we used to love you on DIY SOS, how you used to help us decide between our black and cream sofas on Housecall, and how you aided us through the myriad of complexities involved in matching the right kitten-heel to handbag on Looking Good. These were surely the only issues which mattered to us then, but now my dear you have set us all straight with your right thinking and good common sense. If you could now advise us on getting our Labrador into a decent school, we’d be astonishingly grateful.


Yours with due respect,

The Gays.
xxx

def: Institutions

we may define an institution
as collective action in control,
liberation
and expansion of
individual action.

Commons, John R., "Institutional Economics" American Economic Review, vol. 21 (1931), pp.648-657.

Information Calamity

I recently received an email from the Vice President for Information Technology, here at GMU:

The university server containing the information relating to Mason’s ID cards was illegally entered by computer hackers.  The server contained the names, photos, social security numbers and G numbers of all members of the Mason community who have identification cards...

With the possibility of identity theft, we've all been advised to place fraud alerts on credit files. On hearing the news I was miffed by the unapologetic tone of the announcement: when a central data server stores your personal information, without you having ability to realistically opt out, you've suurendered a very important right to privacy. If that authority then suffers a break-in, I expect an apology.

The hacking has made the wider news, and Jamie Lewis worries that such centralized identity stores are prime targets for thieves, and that the British govenment should take note. The Ideal Government Project have also jumped on board.

Writing this post prompted me to check the  No2ID petition, which has received a belated response from 10 Downing Street.

This was written in January 2006

Loyd Grossman meets Tom Bloxham

Oh, the crumbs of culture can be very meagre indeed in the English provinces.  Slicing for Liverpool a thin, crusty shard of insight from his generous loaf of celebrity came Loyd Grossman, wafting into Screen Two of FACT like the shogun of culture he is, come to save us all from our ignorance of the wealth around us, come to ‘celebrate’ Liverpool’s architecture alongside a man who has done so much to save that architecture.  Loyd comes to Liverpool a lot, he no longer impresses me.  For me, Tom Bloxham was the draw here.  Expensive suits and inexplicably white-blond hair belie someone with rather more ingenuity than the average businessman.  Someone with taste; a patron of quality architecture, no less.  His property company, Urban Splash, is almost a household name, at least in North West England.  Liverpool, of all places, was the city that became the beachhead for the steady invasion of ‘Manhattan’ loft-living, now to be found from Newcastle to Clarkenwell.  Concert Square started it all.  The impact of this trend on British culture has been negligible, but in architectural terms there is indeed much to celebrate.  Continental café bars may soon descend into the violence-and-vomit hell of drinking barns, but a well converted building remains true to its design.  You could term it industrial gentrification, I guess, as opposed to the residential kind where the brave middle class take what were beautiful houses in beautifully planned inner districts, lick them with paint and, waddayouknow, create beautiful houses again.  From the very start of Urban Splash, Tom Bloxham saw amongst the genuinely gritty filth of the city some amazing buildings that demanded new life.  Now much imitated by brainless corporations but never, as far as I’ve witnessed, bettered, Tom Bloxham and Urban Splash have a special place in my tiny pantheon of heroes.  I know it’s small in there Tom, but go on, make your self comfy.  Ask Jonathan Meades for a cheesy ball.      

Dogmatism and Reason: Ex Ante or Ex Poste?

It's common for free-marketeers to be branded as "dogmatic" - and I can understand why. But confidence and dogmatism aren't the same thing. Speaking only for myself, I try to subject my opinions to logical reasoning and empirical validation, and consider my current beliefs (I'm an Austrian economist, and a Manchester/classical liberal) to be the outcome of consideration and contemplation. I know this, because my beliefs change over time - and have changed radically.

I know that many of my opponants are less willing to think boldly, and outright refuse to consider alternative viewpoints. Not because the other theories consistently fail, but purely because of a dogmatic tie to a crucial component of their existing belief structure.

Consider this excerpt from Dan Klein's "The People's Romance":

"In the course of his remarks, Solow said that he did not find school choice appealing. During the question-and-answer period, I [Klein] asked him why he did not find school vouchers appealing. He replied: 'It isn't for any economic reason; all the economic reasons favor school vouchers. It is because what made me an American is the United States Army and the public school system."

All i'm saying is that there should be a distinction between dogmatism that results from reason, and dogmatism that prevents reason.