Books

I\’d forgotten this story.

Has died.

If you\’ve not read any of his stuff, leave aside the sci-fi and try out "Tales From The White Hart". A lovely collection of tall tales and shaggy dog stories.

Q Does everyone have a novel in them?

ALK: They have all kinds of things in them – liver, spleen, perhaps recklessly inserted lightbulbs. Whether you want any of those things to be removed and then sold to strangers is the question.

AL Kennedy.

Some book or other:

….why the sub-prime markets are effecting more than just people looking at foreclosures…

No, it\’s affecting, you sub-literate fool.

Please, fuck off.

I\’m reading some light hearted frippery at the moment, a variation on the historical detective idea: this is a Friar in 1390s (roughly) London. John of Gaunt as Regent times.

There\’s something that doesn\’t quite ring true to me. It\’s the rate of executions.

London at the time was some 100,000 people or so. While there\’s no actual tabulation the impression you get is that executions were common: you\’re certainly left with the idea that there were more than one or two a day in the place.

Which really doesn\’t sound quite right to me. Yes, I know it was a more bloodthirsty time but hundreds of executions a year amongst 100,000 people? The only time I\’ve ever looked up the execution figures was for 1811 (I think it was that year) when I was trying to check a comment that there were more executed for sodomy in that year than murder (true, as it happens, seems that Lincoln Assizes had a very homophobic indeed year). But around then, with the much larger population, there were 30 or 40 hangings a year nationwide.

I can\’t actually find anything on the likely numbers of executions at that earlier time. Does anyone, in fact, know? What would have been a likely annual number (leaving widescale rebellions etc aside) for London in 1380 – 1400? Roughly?

Tim Harford\’s new book is out next week and I\’m reading my copy (there are perks to being an econ blogger).

The Undercover Economist, his first book, sold 600,000 copies worldwide, 160,000 of them in Britain. Books based on economics are not supposed to sell that well, let alone be prominently displayed on the bestseller racks by WH Smith. Were it not for Freakonomics, by the American economists Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, which has sold an extraordinary 3m copies, Harford’s achievement would be even more outstanding.

His second book, The Logic of Life, is published next week by Little, Brown. Harford is one of life’s nice guys, so it is a bit of a shock to open the new book and go straight into oral sex, apparently the rational choice of American teenagers worried about Aids or abortion. But like its predecessor it is never short of interest.

The essential point is that people are indeed rational (with the sub-point that the more expert at something we are, the more rational we become. This has very interesting implications: as food shopping, for example, tends to be done by those who do it a lot then food labelling doesn\’t have to be all that simple and obvious. However, as buying a house is something that most of us do a few times at most in a lifetime then the possibility that we\’ll do something irrational is much greater.)

However, the introduction talks about living in Hackney. A not very good area of Hackney, too. And this from a man who has sold 600,000 books and cashed the royalty cheques on that number.

So humans may indeed be rational most of the time but perhaps Tim Harford isn\’t?

🙂

More on the book once the embargo is lifted.

The Times.

A very, very, sad list.

They have room for Hanif Kureishi, but not for Alan Coren, Tom Stoppard nor Terry Pratchett.

Don\’t bother with it.

I think I might be able to explain a little of this:

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Australian bookstores have been denied access to sell the book, not because of any government ban, but because the US distributor has decided that it will not sell the book outside the US or Canada. The distributor, Ingram International, will fulfill existing orders, but will not accept any more orders.

This is a very curious story. What is not said but is left implied is that the most controversial aspect of the Tom Cruise story is his adherence to the Church of Scientology. It seems that the Church came to some sort of legal arrangement with the distributor.

It\’s entirely possible that other of the explanations offered (like the differences in libel laws) are true. But what I suspect has happened here is a result of the way in which publication rights are handled.

For an English language book (other languages work in the same way, but with different regional distinctions. Thus a French book might distinguish between Quebec and Metropolitan France, a German one between Germany and Austria) the world is divided into various territories. What actually gets distinguished varies according to the popularity of the title: Harry Potter books will make finer grained territorial distinctions than will, say, Crap Towns in England.

But the publisher buys the rights to publish a title in a certain territory. The US say. Or Canada (usually separated because of the spelling differences in the language). Or the UK: sometimes Australia and New Zealand are lumped together, sometimes separated. Now, if you own the rights in one territory and no one else has bothered to buy the rights in those others, then Ingram (and Amazon etc) will happily ship copies of your version to those other territories.

But if someone has indeed bought, say, the Australian rights to that book then Ingram should not ship US copies to Australia (whether this is a Gentleman\’s Agreement or actually a legal requirement of copyright I\’m not sure. But it certainly happens with US and UK versions of books. Or rather it can, if the relevant publisher makes the purchase of those territory specific rights known to the distributor).

So if you were the Church of Scientology and you didn\’t want people in Austalia to read the book, the easiest way would be to go to the US publisher and negotiate to purchase the Australian subsidiary rights. Given that it\’s unlikely to be a great best-seller, a few thousand dollars would do the trick.

( As a not very relevant example of foreign rights pricing, I was once offered the Russian language rights to Hitchhikers\’ Guide to the Galaxy for $500, no further royalty.)

Over at Slate we have this:

Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, traveled Europe as tutor to the Duke of Buccleugh. But despite his travels, Adam Smith never actually visited a pin factory. While sitting at home in Kirkcaldy and penning the most famous passage in economics, he was inspired by an entry in an encyclopedia. The passage is no less important for that.

Over at Lost Legacy we have this:

My question to the Undercover Economist is simple. ‘On what do you base your assertion that Adam Smith never visited a pin factory?’

You must have some evidence. It is important that you because it will have to be reconciled with the following extract of Adam Smith from Wealth Of Nations:

“I have seen a small manufactory of this kind [the famous pin factory of 18 labourers from Diderot’s Enclyclopaedia on the same page] where ten only were employed, and where some of them consequently performed two or three distinct operations.” (WN I.i.3: 15)

As Gavin asks, relying upon Rothbard there, were we?

Tsk, I mean, really, Tsk!

(:-))

A review of Blood River:

For the vast Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) – formerly named the Congo Free State, the Belgian Congo and Zaire – is not an undeveloped country, rather an undeveloping country. During the colonial period, an efficient national infrastructure was built (at horrific human cost – one government commission estimated that the population of the Congo Free State was "reduced by half" as a consequence of exploitation and diseases during those years). By 1960 – the year of independence from Belgium – the country boasted regular national rail and riverboat services, as well as 111,971km of well-maintained roads. Today less than 1,000km of roads remain.

Throughout history, regulation has tended to gain favor on the heels of free enterprise run amok.

Well, that\’s Naomi Klein\’s thesis fucked then, isn\’t it?

Was told that her concept for a book was \’too witty\’ for the average British female and being \’able to write\’ is a mass market liability

Buger, Bugger, Bugger.

Terry Pratchett has early onset Alzheimer\’s.

I know it\’s a very human thing to say "Is there anything I can do", but in this case I
would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry.

Via, this:

A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates (Paperback)

The book is a promising reference concept, but the execution is somewhat sloppy. Whatever algorithm they used was not fully tested. The bulk of each page seems random enough. However at the lower left and lower right of alternate pages, the number is found to increment directly.

There\’s a proposed new law in Germany which is really, well, rather remarkable actually:

Germany\’s parliament is to debate a new law that would effectively ban displays of public affection between under-18s.

The Bill was drawn up to protect children against sexual predators. However, critics fear that it will deprive teenagers of natural experiences and the fun of adolescent relationships.

For example, a 17-year-old boy caught "fondling" someone younger would be liable to prosecution, regardless of whether he has consent.

If the offence happened in a cinema, he would be deemed to have planned the assault by paying for a ticket.

Artists and writers could face up to three months in jail if they create "realistic descriptions of sex among young people".

So that\’s Laurie Lee ready to be jailed then (yes, I know he\’s dead).

You have to wonder whether people think through the implications of the laws they try and pass.

Via both Sullivan and Lost Legacy, this review in the NY Times of Greg Clark\’s " A Farewell to Alms".

Second, Darwinian evolution is usually seen as a process that works over very long periods of time, with consequences for humans that we can observe only by looking far into the past.

Well, yes, but Clark is careful not to insist that it is Darwinian evolution which is the mechanism by which the change came about.

One frustrating aspect of Clark’s argument is that while he insists on the “biological basis” of the mechanism by which the survival of the richest fostered new human attributes and insists on the Darwinian nature of this process, he repeatedly shies away from saying whether the changes he has in mind are actually genetic. “Just as people were shaping economies,” he writes in a typical formulation, “the economy of the preindustrial era was shaping people, at least culturally and perhaps also genetically” (emphasis added). Nor does he introduce any evidence, of the kind that normally lies at the core of such debates, that traits like the capacity for hard work are heritable in the sense in which biologists use the term.

Quite, so he\’s not in fact talking about Darwinian evolution then, so why blame him for not proving that it was caused by Darwinian evolution?

The issue here is not merely a matter of too often writing “perhaps” or “maybe.” If the traits to which Clark assigns primary importance in bringing about the Industrial Revolution are acquired traits, rather than inherited ones, there are many non-Darwinian mechanisms by which a society can impart them, ranging from schools and churches to legal institutions and informal social practices.

Indeed, and we\’ll come to that.

But if the traits on which his story hinges are genetic, his account of differential childbearing and survival is necessarily central.

Ah, and there is the central error in Friedman\’s argument. For Darwinian evolution is not in fact the only sort of evolution that has been posited, nor is it the only form of evolution which we can argue actually works.

Now, let me back up slightly here. I\’m not about to get all kooky on you and insist that because your father learnt to play the guitar then so can you already play the guitar via your genes. But there has been another form of evolution posited, Lamarckian. As it turns out, with the genetic attributes of humans and other animals it turns out to be wrong. But in Deirdrie McCloskey\’s review of the same book, the issue is indeed nailed as being entirely central to the thesis (and no, she doesn\’t agree with it):

…unless they fit his notion of the material if social inheritance of acquired characteristics (“and perhaps even the genes,” says he).

The inheritance of acquired characteristics is, in evolutionary terms, referred to as Lamarckian: and as above, with reference to genes, it\’s wrong. However, with reference to culture it most certainly is not wrong.

No, I\’m not going to try and prove that culture is transmitted in a Lamarckian manner. Rather, I\’m going to prove that you and everyone else already believe it is.

For I think we all agree that the children of teenage mothers are more likely to themselves become teenage parents? That is the inheritance of an acquired characteristic. We note that children who grow up in a home without books do badly at school: and then go on to note that those who do badly at school tend to have few books at home to instruct their own children. We note that the middle classes tend to transmit their social success across the generations: it\’s most unfashionable these days to attribute that to genes, rather, to social networks, to the privilege that a secure upbringing and a decent education provide. We note that children whose parents have a university education are more likely to get a university education themselves. Anyone pondering the family networks that infest UK journalism, or the Law, will be observing exactly the same thing. No, we don\’t believe that the ability to write leader columns has been genetically transmitted from Lord Rees Mogg to Annunziata Rees Mogg (he at The Times, she at The Telegraph: and having once read one of hers where she refers to "sclerosis of the liver", if we did I\’d be expecting someone to be having a very serious and intimate chat with Lady Rees Mogg sometime soon) but we do indeed believe that a combination of education and the extended network of the family have contributed to the daughter following in the old man\’s footsteps.

Indeed, this is one of the arguments forcefully put forward againt the existence of private schools in the UK: that they permit the transmission of exactly this form of cultural inheritance and thus privileged positions.

So we believe this about our society now: that attitudes, mindsets, extended networks, are indeed transmitted across the generations, not via Darwinian evolution, but in a way that can best be described as Lamarckian. The inheritance by the next generation of characteristics acquired by the previous one.

So we all already actually agree that Clark\’s mechanism is indeed a possible one (I personally regard it, now that\’s he\’s written the book to explain it, as obvious, but as I didn\’t see it before I read the book perhaps not that obvious.): all he needs to really prove is that the people who were transmitting the petit- and not so petit- bourgeois cultural values were indeed outbreeding those who didn\’t and the basic argument seems secure. Those bourgeois cultural values were indeed spreading through society via an evolutionary mechanism, just that of Lamarck, not Darwin.

Now, whether that actually caused the Industrial Revolution is another matter, but the transmission mechanism is one that, as above, we all already think is true.

Update. One further thought. I\’m really not sure where that idea that Darwinian evolution is only evident in humans over very long periods of time comes from. We need to divide evolution into two different things. The first is the accumulation of random mutations which lead to diversity in the population (which in itself can be divided into two. Those that kill the fetus or child, which are most of them, and those that don\’t). This does indeed take a long time and it happens at a reasonably well known rate. So much so that we actually use the existence of such diversity to count backwards and tell us when populations split in the past. Now most such mutations (those that don\’t kill) make very little or no difference at all to reproductive success. Others do make a difference. But there\’s a third set and those are those that make no difference now, but might at some point in the future. Yes, the accumulation of these mutations does indeed take a long time.

Well, you might ask, how can something not make a difference to reproductive success now but do so in the future? This brings us to our second "thing" about evolution. It\’s the changing environment which determines which traits lead to that increased reproductive success. Sure, things like melanin enhancement in skin to deal with sunnier climes take a long time to become evident. But environments can change rather rapidly.

For example, what if there were some random mutation that conferred immunity (or an increased chance of survival) to smallpox? Or bubonic plague? I\’ve no idea whether there is or has been (that there are such mutations for better immune systems is obvious, but they proffer immediate increased success, except where they don\’t) but I wouldn\’t be at all surprised if there had been. And then in Justinian\’s time (around 500 AD, for smallpox) or the 1350s, for bubonic plague, possession or not of those genes becomes very evident in a very short period of time. Those with them are still alive, those without are not.

Yes, OK, it\’s a quibble, but it\’s a boring Monday afternoon here.

The paperback of Nick Cohen\’s book on the left is now out, with the postcript up at his site.

Cohen is something of a friend of this blog: I\’m absolutely certain that at some point in the not too far distant future we\’ll get him from being librul to classically liberal.

I\’m reading, inter alia, Things Unborn.

Highly recommended. Sort of a mix between alternative history, sci-fi and a damn good detective story.

Hmmm. That might not get the punters rolling in but still.

(And please note, no, no payment for this, not even a free copy, this is from me buying and reading.)

Well worth it.

One of the back bits is that the son of a character is a jazz musician. They\’re out in Bristol, on the Severn Estuary actually, looking at said father\’s grave (complicated, I know, read the book for the set up to this) and son says to father:

"But they\’re African Americans….(…) I want to make African British music.

As did, say, Portishead.