Alex Massie

Alex Massie

Tuesday

Alex Massie

What price books?

Megan hails Amazon's e-reader, the Kindle* and makes a pretty persuasive case. But what happens when you lose or break your Kindle? Does that mean you've lost your library too? James Joyner is not quite so convinced and complains: And the fact that e-books are still priced at 50-80 percent the sticker price of the hardcover books strikes me as outrageous, given that the cost of materials, production, transport, and so forth have gone away and one doesn’t end up with a nice objet d’art for one’s shelves. Not so fast! Authors have to get paid too! Now if every book were sold electronically I doubt you would see much of a price drop for consumers - at least not in the case of still-in-print and copyright material.

Alex Massie

Like MTV but with music you enjoy

Speaking of country music, I'm going to guess that this is the sort of thing that's not news to anyone but me. But did you know that you can create your own music TV station? If you have a lastfm account*, just enter your user name here and, by the magic of youtube, you'll get a stream of music videos chosen to fit your lastfm preferences. That's too cool for me really. *Even if you don't, just enter a band name and you'll get all their youtube goodness delivered straight to your screen.

Friday

Alex Massie

Presidential Polling!

There's been an encouraging start to polling in our quest to determine the most over-rated and under-rated Presidents in American history. Turn-out is healthy. Many thanks to those of you who have already voted. However the work is not complete. Not by any means. So there's no need to be coy or bashful: it is a simple task, really, that will not detain you long. Simply let me know who you consider the three most over-rated and the three most under-rated US presidents. You can submit votes by emailing me here or in the comments section below. Voting closes on or around May 11th. Full details here.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Brown’s Britain: In Chains (but not in a kinky sense of course)

As best I can tell the newspapers have largely ignored the characteristically appalling Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill that's currently making its way through parliament. This BBC article is the only mainstream piece I - or rather Google News - can find that talks about its pornography clauses. Thanks god for Steven Poole then, who explains the terrible thinking (to dignify the coherence and intelligence of the government's position) behind the creation of yet more victimless "crimes" here: The British government, net exporter of liberty, is going to make it a criminal offence, punishable by a prison term of five years, to have in one’s possession an image or video of adults consensually engaging in a non-criminal act.

Alex Massie

Iraq and conservatism?

At Tapped Mori Dinaeur says no-one should be surprised by John McCain's lack of interest in policy detail. Well fine. The there's this, however: After Iraq and Katrina, I don't think the public needs to be convinced of the link between conservatism [and] the failure of government. Half of this, at least, is entirely wrong. The Iraq War has little or nothing to do with conservative, or governmental failure, rather it was the result, in more than just part, of an overweening, arrogant belief in the power of government to achieve anything it set its mind to.

Alex Massie

France and Collaboration

As an addition to this post on wartime France, Clive Davis directs one to this Max Hastings op-ed from a couple of years ago that makes similar points: Hearing a recent conversation about collaboration, I made myself unpopular by suggesting that, if Britain had succumbed to Nazi rule, our own people would have behaved pretty much as the French did. Anthony Eden is seldom quoted with respect these days. Yet the former foreign secretary made an impressive contribution to Marcel Ophüls' great film on wartime France, Le Chagrin et la Pitié. He said, in impeccable French: "It would be impertinent for any country that has never suffered occupation to pass judgment on one that did." Here was wisdom.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Not Microsoft’s Finest Hour

Do you use Microsoft Word? If so you'll probably remember the hideous "Clippy" who'd pop up to offer entirely unwanted, un-needed, chatty advice every time you tried to write anything . This hideous creation must have been planted in Redmond by Steve Jobs. Or something. Anyway, "Clippy" is, mercifully, no more. All praise to James Fallows, the man responsible (at least partly) for killing the wee bugger off.

Alex Massie

Malcolm Marshall Remembered

Since I'm too young to have seen Dennis Lillee in his absolute prime, Malcolm Marshall is the greatest fast bowler I've watched in my lifetime. He would have been 50 this month, but for the colon cancer that killed him. Pat Lynch remembers the great Barbadian here. One fine story that has just a hint of the Golden Age about it: What he said, he meant, as he did at Pontypridd when playing for Hampshire. With two days remaining, Glamorgan were 13 runs ahead in their second innings with seven wickets left. Just before the start of play in front of a full dressing room Marshall rang his Southampton golf club and booked a tee-time for 4pm that day. In the first session Marshall took six of the seven remaining wickets, leaving Hampshire 70 to win, which they accomplished before lunch. At 4.

Alex Massie

New Blog!

My super-talented wee sister is the latest to succumb to the blogging temptation. Hence the founding of Palette Knife, a daily does of painting, photography and Manchester United. Highly recommended, obviously. Don't just read, however:  buy Claudia's paintings!

Alex Massie

The I XI

So, this series has so far featured teams skippered by:  Armstrong, Benaud, Constantine, Dexter,  Edrich,  Fry, Gower and Hutton. Now it's Imran's turn to stroll onto the field. 1. Frank Iredale (AUS)2. KC Ibrahim (IND)3. Ijaz Ahmed (PAK)4. Inzamam-ul-Haq (PAK)5. Asif Iqbal (PAK)6. Imran Khan (PAK) (Capt)7. Imtiaz Ahmed (PAK) (Wkt)8. Ray Illingworth (ENG)9. David Ironside (SA) 10. Jack Iverson (AUS)11. Bert Ironmonger (AUS) Country representation in the series so far: England 35, Australia 19, West Indies 12, Pakistan 10, India 9, South Africa 8,  New Zealand 5, Zimbabwe 1. No New Zealanders or Sri Lankans or West Indians were available for selection while only two "I" South Africans have played test cricket.

Alex Massie

Department of Rendundancy

From the BBC: Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who is accused of keeping his daughter captive in a cellar for 24 years, refuses to answer further questions, police say. They said he had signed a statement admitting imprisoning and raping his daughter and fathering her seven children, but refuses to explain. Just what the hell is there to explain? His reasons?

Alex Massie

Happy Birthday Willie!

I'm indebted to Rod Dreher for the reminder that Willie Nelson celebrates his 75th birthday today. And there was me thinking he'd been around for longer than that. Here he is with that other great survivor Merle Haggard, singing the classic Pancho and Lefty: In 2003 Reason named Willie one of its 35 Heroes of Freedom.

Alex Massie

Booklist

Via Norm comes this entertaining, if fairly pointless, parlour game: pick a novelist to represent each letter of the alphabet and a book of theirs you've read (and enjoyed!).

Alex Massie

Major Carroll Advances

Heartening news from Ireland: when the government banned smoking in pubs in 2004, 27% of Irish folk smoked. Now 29% consume these little tubes of delight*. True, there's a long way to go yet but every journey begins with a single smoke... *Dennis Potter's description, if memory serves. [Hat-tip: Taking Liberties.

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Rating the Presidents

Shamelessly plundering the idea from Norm, it's time for an exciting new development here at Debatable Land HQ: Polling! Yes, indeed... And given that this is a Presidential election year in the United States, what better way to begin than by conducting a Presidential poll? We are familiar with polls in which historians rank US Presidents in order of greatness in which the same names - Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and so on - always finish at the top. So let's attempt something a little different. The Debatable Land polling organisation wants you to nominate your choices for the Most Over-Rated and Most Under-Rated Presidents in American history. The rules are simple: 1. You may nominate up to three Presidents in each category. 2.

Alex Massie

When Colour Is Worth 10,000 Words

Marty Peretz links to this Daily Mail account of an exhibition of photographs taken in wartime Paris which is, for obvious reasons, a matter of some debate in France. And yes, the photographs are shocking. Just not in the way in which either Peretz or the Mail seem to think they are. The Mail headline, subtle as ever, is "Oh what a lovely war! The dazzling photos of innocent Parisian fun that make the French so ashamed" while Marty titles his post, "What the Nazi Occupation of France was Really Like". Here, for instance, is a photograph of three mademoiselles relaxing in the Luxembourg, circa 1942. How, the Mail wants us to ask, can these young Frogs be so blithe and innocent and carefree while their country is occupied y Nazi Germany and most of europe is ablaze?

Alex Massie

The Starboard Enterprise

Understatement of the Day: Learning a valuable lesson from his predecessors, Friedman is an incrementalist. "I want to talk about what to do this year, not how to colonize the galaxy...There aren't that many people who are wiling to drop their lives and move to the ocean." The always-estimable Katherine Mangu-Ward has much more on what you need to know about Seasteading...

Alex Massie

Your Obesity Epidemic Explained

This paragraph tells you most of what you need to know: The Scottish Government wants all primary schools to offer two hours of physical activity for all children each week - but figures from 2005 show that 5% of primary schools were meeting the provision. I suppose the situation may be better in secondary schools but to the extent that childhood obesity is a problem, you're likely to have more success exercising the brutes than trying to monitor and control the sort of junk with which they stuff their faces. Plus, there are other benefits from sport too. But no, it's more sensible to sell off the playing fields...