The Filter^

Gilead

"These people who can see right through you never quite do you justice, because they never give you credit for the effort you're making to be better than you actually are, which is difficult and well meant and deserving of some little notice."

The Cathedral and the Bazaar

I've previously argued that academia is a Creative Commons, and you can also see posts on enforcement costs and free journals. There's really a triangulation of themes:

1. Economic Exchange: Decentralized, emergent systems to facilitate exchange are better than centrally planned ones. Both for positive reasons regarding the efficient transfer of knowledge, and normative reasons for the preservation of freedom via voluntary compliance: ie. capitalism beats socialism
2. Open Source software, is also more efficient than "planned" order and the Creative Commons is a people led movement against protectionism. Copyright law should permit freedom and enable creativity
3. The market for economics ideas (principly exchanged through journals), and the market for computer code are similarly bound by intellectual property law. For example citation norms (open source code), freedom to produce derivitave works (permission to make further modifications), and commonality (work is bound by the same legal structure).

Whilst my previous comments on academia focus on this third stand, the implications are huge. In a book called 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar', available via amazon.com or online, via Erik Raymond we see a classic text on economic order, demonstrating why evolutionary(/Austrian) economics is set to dominate.

Linux overturned much of what I thought I knew.  I had been preaching the Unix gospel of small tools, rapid prototyping and evolutionary programming for years.  But I also believed there was a certain critical complexity above which a more centralized, a priori approach was required.  I believed that the most important software (operating systems and really large tools like the Emacs programming editor) needed to be built like cathedrals, carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation, with no beta to be released before its time.

Linus Torvalds's style of development—release early and often, delegate everything you can, be open to the point of promiscuity—came as a surprise.  No quiet, reverent cathedral-building here—rather, the Linux community seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches (aptly symbolized by the Linux archive sites, who'd take submissions from anyone) out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly emerge only by a succession of miracles.

The fact that this bazaar style seemed to work, and work well, came as a distinct shock.  As I learned my way around, I worked hard not just at individual projects, but also at trying to understand why the Linux world not only didn't fly apart in confusion but seemed to go from strength to strength at a speed barely imaginable to cathedral-builders.

The times they are a-changing...

The Beautiful Game? by David Conn

During this summer one of the greatest disgraces in modern football slowly, yet inevitably, carried Wayne Rooney away from immortality toward almost certain ruin. The conduct and criminality of his agents surprised no-one, but what really angered me was the journalists who accomplished Stretford's scheme. Unless you take the time and trouble to sift through the numerous reports and opinions across the broad spectrum of independent Everton fanzines you'd think he was sold for £30m.
He wasn't.

During these events there was just one journalist who was noticeably pointing out the actions of Rooney's agent, advisors and "friends"/colleagues. The same man who 15 years on still thinks it relevant to talk about Hillsborough, and writes about the modern game with reason not opinion.

David Conn is a cool guy, and I've exchange emails with him about the Rooney saga. He's written countless articles on the little clubs that the London press couldn't give a shit about, and at last his book is available. Called The Beautiful Game? any footie fan needs a copy. Evertonian Mickey blue Eyes reviews it here. Burn the Sun.

"Jesus will save you!"

From Reuters:

A man leaped into a lion's den at the Taipei Zoo on Wednesday to try to convert the king of beasts to Christianity, but was bitten in the leg for his efforts.

"Jesus will save you!" the 46-year-old man shouted at two African lions lounging under a tree a few meters away.

The incident reminds me of a passage from Coupland's Hey Nostradamus:

I remember once at dinner when I was a kid, I sarcastically asked Reg what we'd do it we learned to speak with dolphins. Would we try to convert them? Oddly, he missed my intent. "Dolphins? Dolphins with the whole English language at their command?"

"Sure, Dad. Why not?"

"What a good question."

I was so surprised that he'd taken me seriously, that I became serious in turn. I added, "And we wouldn't even need translators. We could speak with them just as we're speaking with each other here."

Reg pulled himself back in to his seat, a posture he usually reserved for deciding which form of punishment we deserved. He said, "In the end, no, there would be no point converting dolphins, because they never left God's hand. If anything, we might be asking them what it's like to never have left, to still be back in the Garden."

Joseph Shipley 1960

But a time I spent wandering in bloomy night; Yon tower, tinkling chimewise, loftily opportune. Out, up, and together came sudden to Sunday rite, The one solemnly off to correct plenilune.

What is the constraint on this poem? What dictates it's composition?

Answer: here

Jon Snow

Treat: The Guardian is printing extracts from the autobiography of broadcaster Jon Snow. It's called "Shooting History". From Part One:

I won election to the executive of the students' union as first-year representative. Politically, Liverpool was a sea of red, well beyond the wilting rouge of old Labour. There were anarchists, Trotskyites, Maoists and assorted communists.

The university was awash with issues that fought daily pitched battles with the sheer fun of simply being there. Where else in a year could you see the Who, the Animals, Georgie Fame, George Harrison, the Supremes and the Stones live in concert? The raves were all staged in the capacious Mountford Hall. And there, amid the detritus of the Who's guitars, smashed the night before, we would gather in political solidarity and protest over a gamut of disparate causes......

I left Liverpool with a heavy heart

And here for Part Two. I'm sure all fellow Liverpool graduates, political extremists and liberal media devotees will find it a must read.

Aside from being the best newscaster in the world, Jon Snow possesses a famous collection of ties, as highlighted in the portrait at the top of this post, by Mania Row. The ties come from Jane Keith Designs, and in The Scotsman Snow says:

"I was lucky enough to discover her and her ties at the Chelsea Craft show and have been a convert ever since.

"It would not be an exaggeration to describe her as a star in the tie firmament, because what she produces are so beautiful and strident.

"My particular favourite is one that is electric pinky purple and blue but I can’t get enough of them and shall probably buy some more.

Other devotees include Friends' Chandler Bing (aka Matthew Perry), David Dimbleby and Lenny Henry. Jon sports a wonderful tie here, and demonstrates a simultaneous passion for socks here. (Incidentally, this is my favourite tie.)

Economics: The Hedgehog or the Fox?

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing

I read Isaiah Berlin's classic in the bath last night, where he attempts to make sense of Leo Tolstoy.

there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel-a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance-and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle; these last lead lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes;

Dostoevsky is a hedgehog, Pushkin a fox, and Tolstoy a fox who thought he was a hedgehog.

In The New Evolutionary Microeconomics Jason Potts (from the University of Queensland) proposes a synthesis of heterodox economics, as a study of the connections within the economic system. He presents the continuous twice differential plane utlitised by mainstream economists as merely an extreme case (and mostly unapplicable), of a more general canvass.

Whilst neoclassical economics prides itself in being straightforward, conclusive and harmonious, various alternatives such as Austrian, post-Keynesian, evolutionary, Behavioural, Institutional et al have emerged as seemingly diverse nodes of attack. By illuminating their common threads, and retreating to a vantage to judge the soul, he demonstrates that connections really do matter.

You cannot see the picture, when you're standing inside the frame....

Dearstalker Waughs

I was reading the wonderful Arts & Letters Daily, and noticed an entertaining article from The Daily Telegraph about the Waugh dynasty.

I thought I'd add to it here.

Faith's younger cousin plays with a great-grandchild of Evelyn Waugh, and we recently heard the following anecdote:

When his mum went to pick him up from the Waugh "estate", she noticed how the once grand house had fallen into decline. Indeed the family lived in the only habitable wing, whilst the rest was in near ruin. The mother came out with a Dearstalker on, and mentioned that she was waiting for a delivery of pigs. Apparently, some Irish builders had promised to send round some swine. Only later on, did it occur to Faith's Aunt that the builders had actually insulted the Waugh's by saying they lived like pigs, and the batty lady had misheard, due to the nature of her headwear!

Four Biographies

I stumbled upon Vernon Smith's autobiographical notes on the official Nobel Prize site, which I highly recommend. It reminds me of my interest in intellectual biographies.

One can gain much understanding of a subject from biographies of its masters. For example, Ray Monk's Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius still provides new insights to the great man's philosophy after several re-reads. As Monk, in New British Philosophy, remarks:

...the way I got into biography was that I became convinced that almost all of the secondary literature on Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics misunderstood it. It misunderstood it in a particular kind of way...It seemed to me that what was being missed was what you might call the spirit in which Wittgenstein wrote...It seemed to me that one way of getting across the spirit in which Wittgenstein wrote would be to describe the life and the work alongside each other, so that one could read his work informed by some understanding of how he was writing and what attitudes were informing it.

Another fine example of the genre is Robert Skidelsky's three-volume biography of Keynes, of which I especially enjoyed the first book, Hope Betrayed 1883-1920. Skidelsky treats Keynes's personal life with extra care and honesty, due to what Woolf called "the widow and the friends":

Suppose, for example, that the man of genius was immoral, ill-tempered, and threw the boots at the maid's head. The widow would say, "Still I loved him - he was the father of my children; and the public, who love his books, must on no account be disillusioned. Cover up; omit!" The biographer obeys. And thus the majority of Victorian biographies are like the wax figures now preserved in Westminster Abbey...effigies which have only a smooth likeness to the body in the coffin.

And Cambridge at the turn of the 20th Century never fails to fascinate me.

Biographies, of course, do not have to be heroic or academic - Richard Feynman's Surely You're Joking, Mr.Feynman! - Adventures of a Curious Character is filled with inspiring and funny anecdotes.

The Reader site relaunch

News just in:

Where can you read about a boxing coach’s love of literature, alongside poetry by Mark Haddon, Seamus Heaney and Elizabeth Jennings? Where can you go to discuss your favourite book and also get advice on what to read next?

The Reader magazine is proud to announce the launch of its new website offering an online community dedicated to the enjoyment of reading.

The site allows you to search back issues of the magazine, gives up to the minute news on events in the book world, as well as plenty of recommendations, reviews, short fiction and interaction.

Log on from 1pm on Friday 7th May to explore for yourself.

The Reader magazine is relaunching its website tomorrow afternoon. I've seen a demo of it and it looks great - check it out here.