Sky Writing

It's a warm, sunny afternoon, the sky is a brilliant blue, and some tosser in a Piper Cherokee is scrawling a URL across the southern sky. By the time he gets to the ".au", which comes out as ".ou", the whole thing is illegible, so what's the bloody point?

Advertising - you'd notice it more if it weren't there.

The Yartz Are Dead ...

I've spent far too much time over the past few days thinking about the state of the yartz, and especially this concluding remark from Charles Murray in his recent interview with Steve Sailer:

Q. You found that per capita levels of accomplishment tended to decline from 1850 to 1950. Would you care to speculate on post-1950 trends?

A. I think that the number of novels, songs, and paintings done since 1950 that anyone will still care about 200 years from now is somewhere in the vicinity of zero. Not exactly zero, but close. I find a good way to make this point is to ask anyone who disagrees with me to name a work that will survive -- and then ask, "Seriously?" Very few works indeed can defend themselves against the "Seriously?" question.

This fatuous exchange produced the same sort of nagging irritation that you might feel if you'd run out of Rectinol after the local chemist has closed. Although I was initially disinclined to take up Sailer's "Seriously? Challenge", I find my thoughts continually returning to it.

If nothing else, Murray's pronouncement is a lazy one; especially for someone who was prepared to take the trouble to write a book which attempts, using statistical methods, to identify the greatest thinkers of history. If Murray's method - of surveying "top scholars" in various fields and statistically analysing their references to various artists to see who scores the most mentions - is valid for identifying past greats in various fields, then it is equally applicable to identifying present greats, whose works stand a good chance of surviving until the year 2203. It's simply a matter of identifying and polling the experts, and running their input through the same statistical grinder.

I'm just as lazy as Murray; although I've described how he might go about identifying works that people might still care about in 2203, with the same so-called objectivity as he has produced his objective league ranking of history's greats in Human Accomplishment, don't expect me to do it. It might be an interesting task, but if you published a book about it, you'd probably get the same enthusiastic "so what?" that the Publisher's Weekly reviewer gave Murray's magnum opus.

So let's look at this another way; seriously, but with nowhere near as much earnestness as Steve Sailer's correspondents have brought to the task Most of the contenders that have been identified so far (with the possible exception of JRR Tolkien's pastiche of the Rhinegold Saga) are all very worthy and that's a problem. Ideas of literary and artistic worthiness are apt to change over time so it's a poor basis for predicting the future.

The question we should ask is not which modern works have enough merit to attract attention in 2203, but which modern works will people find interesting in 2203. By today's standards these migh have all the artistic merit of the poetry of William Topaz McGonagall, whose work remains in print a century after his death. I think it's safe to predict that they'll still be around, in some published format, in 2103 and that people will still care about them in the same perverse way that McGonagall lovers do today.

While a salutory example, McGonagall is a poor precedent for judging modern works. There are a few modern poets who might be considered likely to supplant him as the worst poet in the English language but if we confine our search to cultural freaks, we aren't going to identify too many works which have what it takes to be of interest in 2203. A more realistic approach is to look at the past works we currently value and identify the factors which have fostered their cultural survival. Modern works with similar traits can reasonably be expected to be around, and cared about, in 200 years.

There are, in my view, six Ps of cultural survival; patronage, popularity, productivity, provocation, protection and plagiarism. A writer, musician or artist who is well patronised, popular, prolifically provocative is more likely to produce works that will be discussed two centuries after their creation, than an obscure dabbler with no gumption. Especially if their works enjoy good institutional protection or they are extensively plagiarised.

Plagiarism can benefit an art-work's long term survival as an object of interest in two distinct ways. Firstly, blatant copying of the ideas of others is a useful aide in producing a large corpus of works and the works produced are likely to attract scholarly interest, commentary and controversy; firstly in tracking down the original works referenced and secondly in long running disputes over the chicken/egg Bacon/Shakespeare issues that inevitably arise. A plagiarised work benefits from attracting scholarly interest, either as the original source of the plagiarism, or as a lesser imitation of it.

Tolkien's Lord of the Rings will derive both benefits. Future scholars of the Nordic sagas will find it of interest as an adaptation and retelling of the Rhinegold Saga, with a few nods in the general direction of other famous sagas along the way. Scholars in the area of twentieth century literature will look to it as one of the prototypes for the whole appalling Fantasy genre. If, sometime in the next few years, Tolkien and his imitators get their much needed Cervantes, their cultural survival is assured. There's a large number of very popular novels there which have very good chances of being cared about, at least in academia or its future equivalent.

The role of patronage in fostering works for future generations to revere as great classics is very clear in the case of renaissance artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo Buonorotti and Gian Lorenzo Bernini. None of these artists would be known today if they had not had wealthy patrons. Michaelangelo's case, in particular, is also illustrative of the importance of institutional protection. If his David had been in the Vatican, rather than Florence, he'd would be lucky to have a willy these days. There are rumours going back for over a decade of a store of marble todgers, somewhere in a Vatican basement, which were hacked off various sculpures by prelates who deemed them unseemly. Similarly, had any of Pope Julius II's successors ever decided that the Sistine Chapel ceiling would look better with a nice coat of pink distemper, it's unlikely that it would be the tourist attraction it is today.

The institutions which protect art works in the modern world are of course, art galleries and insurance corporations. Any modern work which fetches a high enough price on the secondary art market, that is in auction rooms, will enjoy a high level of institutional protection (either because it's in an art gallery, or because it's in a private collection whose insurer insists on it). Not all of the works that are on display in current public art gallery modern art collections are going to be cared about by future generations, but that's where most of the candidates will be. Even if the end result is that in 2203 people only care enough about twentieth century art to say "What a load of rubbish!" before moving on to Landseer's Monarch of the Glen and other works which are sadly underrated today. On the other hand if the visual arts continue the alleged decline that set in somewhere around the turn of the century, I expect art lovers of 2203 to do a lot of grousing about how artists just don't put shit in a tin as well as they did in the twentieth century.

When we look for musical works which still be well regarded in 2203, we must resist the impulse to look to the high culture areas of opera and ballet music, orchestral music and chamber music. We're more likely to find long-term cultural survivors by looking for modern equivalents tp Danny Boy, Home Sweet Home, The Camptown Races and Way Down Upon the Swanee River than we are by looking for a modern rival to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Or we could look at who's been producing music to match that of Johann Strauss the Younger, Tielman Susato and Michael Praetorius.

So whatever happens to the works of Phillip Glass or Andrew Lloyd Webber - both contenders in the area of high-brow music (by 2203 I expect Webber to enjoy at least the same regard that we now have for Arthur Sullivan) - there are plenty of stars in the area of popular music who can expect to be well known, at least to future generations of children in primary schools or their future equivalents. They'll be able to get through the first verse of Mama Mia or Stayin' Alive with the same facility that I can get through the first verses of The Minstrel Boy and Home on the Range. There will be a disco section in whatever passes for a record store in 2203 and a lot of universities will have disco societies in the same way that modern universities have ballroom and renaissance dancing societies. And the Boston Pops, and similar orchestras, will be putting on concerts featuring arrangements of Smoke on the Water, Stairway to Heaven and Roll Over, Lay Down and Let Me In. As well as a lot of music from Cats, of course.

Will Murray's Human Accomplishment make the distance, as a great work of either sociology or cultural history? I don't think so. Seriously.

This isn't a cock-up. It's something else and I'm having a hard time putting a name to it (link via Cruel Site of the Day).

It's quite possible to be a thoroughly disreputable and objectionable painter, novelist, composer and produce great works of art. Wagner did it. T.S. Elliot was racist in a rather mean and nasty way. Burroughs had a lot of really rather psychopathic ideas - I knew him. A brilliant writer. But, you know, a moral degenerate in many ways.

J G Ballard, in an interview with Zulfikar Abbany.

Reading Matters

I'm concentrating on fiction this week, reading for relaxation rather than edification and self-improvement. I have a mixed bag of books from the local library, mostly selected on impulse.

One of these is James L Halperin's The Truth Machine. Published in 1996, it's a speculative novel (that's what the front cover says), dealing with the development of a perfect lie detector and its effects on American society and the American legal system.

Like a lot of good novelists (for example Gunter Grass), Halperin adopts a narrative persona, who reports events from their own perspective:

Since you plan to read these words, you'll want to know who wrote them. I am an Intel 22g CP (22 billion instructions per microsecond contextual processor) from the series of 2046, specifically designed for reportage. I've been programmed to write in journalistic style, so don't expect scintillating metaphors or artistic imagery.

I've only reached page 70 and I'm not sure if I'll get much further, but I'm already sure that Halperin's choice of a computer as his narrator was a wise one.

Update, 30 pages later: very wise.

Update, another 30 pages later: bugger this. I've got a copy of J G Ballard's Crash somewhere that I've been meaning to read for years. And who's the dork who wrote all these pencil notes in the margins of this turkey?

Amusing Reading Elsewhere

Maybe it's symptom of intellectual snobbery, but I'm often amused by people whose abilities fall short of their own estimation of themselves. One of my favourite psychological research papers purports to show that highly incompetent people tend to grossly overestimate their own abilities. This explains many things, not the least of them being widespread incompetence in workplaces. Job interviewers usually look for people who present themselves and their abilities confidently, and most of the standard how-to-get-a-job advice emphasises the need to do this. What they should be doing, if they want someone who actually knows their stuff, is taking on the interviewee who hedges, or even has the gaucherie to remark that the job sounds difficult.

I think this amusement is why I keep John Ray on the blogroll; he links to so many people who overestimate themselves. Today (Friday) he's linked to a couple of beauties.

Wendy McElroy at iFeminists has produced a wonderful piece of prose to match the background colour of her web-page:

The price tag for decades of gender warfare is usually expressed in general terms -- for example, through data-filled studies that reflect how "boys" are slighted in education. The ordeal of Michael Wright -- a student at Oklahoma University at Normal -- captures the human factor. And it leads me to a question: What does the devil look like?

Michael's ordeal started when he found another student's ID card at a copy centre. He looked up her details in an on-line student registry and telephoned, then e-mailed her, to let her know that he had the card and to arrange its return. When she didn't respond, he turned to card over to the authorities and thought no more of the matter.

Unfortunately, the card's owner was a little paranoid, and contacted the police, accusing Michael of stalking her. The police visited Michael to investigate the complaint:

two police officers appeared at Michael's house, apparently to investigate his stalking of a female OU student. Stalking is a serious crime which is defined as "the willful, malicious and repeated following and harassing of another person". It can place a young man on a registry of sex offenders that could haunt his future and limit his options in life. Indeed, Oklahoma is a state in which convicted sex offenders must register his/her address, which is made available to the public. No wonder Michael suffered "a great deal of nerve-wracking anxiety" before being exonerated.

Under those circumstances, I'd be worried too. But Michael's ordeal was mercifully short and ended well:

The incident is not a breakdown in "the system." According to Michael, the police exercised both common sense and common decency, with one detective eventually thanking him for "making the extra effort to protect the members of our community" by returning lost property.

From this distance, the whole incident looks like the sort of trivial misundertanding which, with a few days to recover from the nerve-wracking anxiety, you could turn into a good yarn, adding a lot of humorous embellishments over the years. To McElroy, it's evidence of something more insidious:

I was once asked to describe the devil. (I interpreted the question to be about the general nature of evil in man rather than about religion.)

I replied: If the devil is the living flesh of evil, then here is who I think he is. Far from appearing as a hideous demon, he is the average-looking person who walks into a room and shakes your hand with a smile. By the time he leaves, the standards of decency of everyone within that room have been lowered ever so slightly.

Perhaps he offers general statistics on divorce or child abuse to convince you to suspect your husband of infidelity or your neighbor of molestation. No evidence of specific wrongdoing is offered, of course. But since such "crimes" do occur, you are advised to be vigilantly on guard against them in your personal life. And, so, you begin to view your spouse and neighbors with a bit more suspicion, a little less trust, and with the tendency to interpret every action as possible evidence of wrongdoing. The very possibility of an offense is taken as evidence of its presence.

She continues in this vein for a few paragraphs, leading to this proclamation that the Antichrist is among us:

With no religious implication, I say: a devil is at large. He tells us that acts of kindness and common decency do not exist; the worst possible interpretation should be placed on acts that appear to embody those values. Individuals do not exist; only categories.

The other beauty is ChuDogg's refutation of the results of a study reported in the Washington Post which found that Fox News viewers were misinformed on the war in Iraq. The study found the following to be the three most common mistaken impressions about the war:

* U.S. forces found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
* There's clear evidence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein worked closely with the Sept. 11 terrorists.
* People in foreign countries generally either backed the U.S.-led war or were evenly split between supporting and opposing it.

ChuDogg takes the first apart with the help of David Kay's congressional testimony. Here's a section of Kay's testimony which is totally irrelevant to ChuDogg's case:

We have not yet found stocks of weapons, but we are not yet at the point where we can say definitively either that such weapon stocks do not exist or that they existed before the war and our only task is to find where they have gone. We are actively engaged in searching for such weapons based on information being supplied to us by Iraqis.

And here's a section which is:

A very large body of information has been developed through debriefings, site visits and exploitation of captured Iraqi documents that confirms that Iraq concealed equipment and materials from U.N. inspectors when they returned in 2002. One noteworthy example is a collection of reference strains that ought to have been declared to the U.N. Among them was a vial of live C. botulinum Okra B. from which a biological agent can be produced. This discovery – hidden in the home of a BW scientist – illustrates the point I made earlier about the difficulty of locating small stocks of material that can be used to covertly surge production of deadly weapons. The scientist who concealed the vials containing this agent has identified a large cache of agents that he was asked, but refused, to conceal. ISG is actively searching for this second cache.

There's a photo of the vials, which ought to convince any doubters that Iraq really did have at least one weapon of mass destruction and that it has been found. And here's some photographic evidence that ought to convince you that Italians eat shit.

On the second, ChuDogg cites utterly reliable reorts from National Review On-Line, NewsMax, Rush Limbaugh and The St Petersburgh Times. On the third, he is oddly silent.

(Updated to include the missing third survey result. Well spotted Jeremy.)

Isn't it rich?
Isn't it queer?

Via Tim Dunlop, news that Donald Luskin, a columnist at National Review on-line has
sooled his lawyers on the pseudonymous blogger Atrios. Brad de Long hoists Luskin here.

It seems prudent to mention that no aspersion on either Mr Luskin or his attorneys is intended in any part of this post. Particularly the title.

Whatever Happened to TFM?

Stewie got into home computers early; his first computer was a Commodore VIC-20 with an AWA television set for a monitor. He was one of the first people I knew to own a PC (a single floppy-disc drive IBM clone) and, as soon as modems hit the market, he was among the first to get one of those too. With it he was able to dial in to the various computer bulletin boards that were starting to appear and ... well he could connect to another computer over the phone line, and this was bound to be useful eventually.

Besides computing, Stewie's other abiding interest in life was thrift. He had a keen eye for a bargain, especially any new science fiction novels that might turn up on his friends' bookshelves. But when his passion for computers collided with his passion for domestic and personal economy, strange things sometimes happened.

In the early nineteen-eighties, Stewie lifted a moistened finger into the air to test the winds of change and decided that it was about time that he learned to program in C. He was already a more or less incompetent programmer in Basic, thanks to his experience with the VIC-20 and the PCs he had owned since. To learn C, he needed a C compiler, a piece of software that was not available as either freeware or shareware. So he got together with a friend, and they split the cost of a commercially released compiler between them.

The arrangement was that Stewie would get the discs to install the compiler, editor and help files on his computer, then they would be handed over to his friend who would keep the installation discs and the manuals. For some reason, Stewie never reached the same proficiency in C programming that he had achieved in Basic. Over the years, I lost touch with Stewie and, not coincidentally I suspect, a lot of classic works of science fiction (like Charles Harness Paradox Men) that are very difficult to find, even second hand. The last I heard of him he'd developed an interest in economics, particularly economic modelling, no doubt because it gave him a ready outlet for his two abiding interests in life.

Although, back then, I was skeptical about Stewie's plan to learn C programming without the then customary assistance of a set of printed manuals, I realise now that he was merely 20 years ahead of his time. These days, thanks to the development of larger hard drives which make it feasible to store the instructions for using a program inside the grey box on your desk, rather than in a set of books which some bastard will always steal if you leave them lying on your desk at work, it's actually possible to do what Stewie wanted to do in the early 1980s. And thanks to the internet, if the help files on your hard drive turn out to be completely useless - the usual story when the world's least popular but most widely used operating system starts to behave like a six weeks old Buerre Bosc - you can get on the World Wide Web and find help on-line. Unless, of course, it's your Windows PPP client that's decided to chuck a wobbly. If that happens, you're on your own.

These days, the manual is dead. Its place has been taken by the inadequate help-files on your hard-drive and on-line resources like the Microsoft Knowledge Base or Annoyances.org. For those who still have an anachronistic preference for the printed page, there's the ever growing Computing section of your local bookshop, where all that reference material software companies used to provide in the same box as your set of grey 1.44 Mb installation discs can be bought as a "third party" publication. You might think that it's a bit of a stretch to call a company a "third party" publisher when it is a wholly owned subsidiary of a software distributor, it only publishes books about its parent company's software, the books are written by the same technical writers who wrote those help files that aren't helping you and they often reproduce the same unhelpful content. I do.

However irritating it is for us end users, this arrangement makes commercial sense. Microsoft's ubiquitous Office Suite includes a lot of features that most of us will never use, so why include a lot of manuals that we'll never read in the shrink-wrap package? Those of us who decide that it might be easier to create Word document templates and macros if we had a manual sitting beside the keyboard will eventually get off our arses and go down to McGill's and shell out eighty bucks or so for the Microsoft Press printed and bound copy of the help files. Assuming McGill's have it in stock, but if they don't they can usually order it in. It only takes a couple of days to be delivered and they'll phone you when it comes in.

It even makes a weird kind of technical sense; with Windows XP installed on my PC, I'm constantly getting friendly little messages at the bottom right hand side of the screen telling me that I can keep my system up-to-date with automatic updates. You can set it up so that it downloads and installs updates to the operating system on a regular schedule. I think you'd be a bloody fool to do that. I'm also wary of the other options, which notify you when automatic updates are installed. I don't like the idea much at all; it sounds convenient, but what you end up with is an operating system that is continually changing itself. Most of the changes, no doubt, are patches intended to keep the system performing to specification but in the process, the specification itself changes. This makes a printed manual for Windows XP pretty well useless.

Aside: I have tried the automatic updating feature; after the first use I promptly disabled it. The updates might have been installed successfully - certainly the process ran smoothly. But at no time was I told what the updates were or what they were for. I was given the option not to install them, but little information on which to base a decision. As I said, if you set your PC up to run automatic updates without supervision, you're a bloody fool. Especially when you consider Microsoft's outstanding track record on system security issues.

There are a few serious issue posed by the death of the manual, which go beyond the resentment you might feel at being mulcted of eighty dollars for a publication that used to come in the box with the program installation discs. The manual is a little like a contract between you and the software company. If the manual says that "keying Control+S" will save changes to a file, you have reasonable grounds for complaint if, instead, it deletes the entire contents of the file from your hard-drive. But when your manual exists only in digital form, you have no permanent record where you can check whether you are correct in expecting "Control+S" to save, rather than delete, your file. It's stuffed basically. These days, if anyone tells you to RTFM, it's reasonable to ask them "WFM?"

Treasures in Their Own Lunchtimes

I've had a little time to think over the National Trust's need to find 11 new living ornaments for our national mantelpiece. It's an obvious opportunity for bloggers to make nominations of their own, so without further ado, here's my list.

The world of journalism is an obvious place to start. Paddy McGuiness seems an obvious candidate; no doubt he would welcome the chance to be a Living National Treasure in the same spirit that he welcomed his Order of Australia. However, perhaps out of personal favouritism, I'd rather see the honour go to Janet Albrechtsen whose sardonic wit, keen analytical intelligence and creative research make every Wednesday's Oz something to look forward to. With her legal background she'll fit in quite nicely with Willian Deane, Justice Marcus Einfeld and Justice Michael Kirby.

Elsewhere in the media world, Alan Jones and John Laws have both shown themselves to be broadcasters and commentators whose opinions are highly treasured, especially by businesses such as Telstra and the NRMA. Choosing between the two is a little difficult, so we might as well give them each a spot, and toss in David Marr to keep things lively.

Actor George Lazenby is long overdue for recognition for his outstanding work in films. After achieving international prominence in the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service, George continued to work in film and TV, particularly in Hong-Kong. Through his work in martial arts classics such as Tie jin gang da po zi yang guan (aka Man Called Stoner aka Hong Kong Hitman), Chi l'ha vista morire (aka Who Saw Her Die?) and Bruce Lee's Game of Death George forged valuable cultural ties with our neighbours to the North. Lazenby saw that the future was in Asia, for one Australian at least, long before Paul Keating became Prime Minister.

It seems inevitable that at least one of our eleven new Living National Treasures will be a serving or former politician. Among our Several distinguished candidates present themselves: former Minister for Communications Senator Richard Alston, Wilson Tuckey, Bill Heffernan, Senator Santoro, Bob Katter, Nick Bolkus, Mark Latham, Carmen Lawrence and, of course, Alan Cadman. My pick is former Minister for Defence Peter Reith, although I'm hard put to justify it except on the McGuiness principle.

The existing list features two academic historians; Professor Geoffrey Blainey and the pin-up boy of the black armband crowd, Professor Henry Reynolds. It seems only fair that the autodidactic Keith Windschuttle should be included; in the past twelve months he's done much to revive general interest in Australian history. As a National Treasure he's at least the equal of a Murwillumbah Rembrandt.

Finally, all four members of tribute band Bjorn Again. They're Australian, they sing Abba songs, [they make up the numbers] - what more needs to be said?

Update: after reading The Libertarian National Socialist Green Party by Roop Sandhu, at Troppo Armadillo, I'm tempted to bump Reithy in favour of Senator George Brandis, who seems to covet the Billy Wentworth mantle.

Good News for Philistines

Rob Schaap's excoriation of the state of the Yartz, and avante gardism, has brought quite a few of the blogosphere's philistines out of the closet. I don't think I entirely share Rob's view of the state of the Yartz, particularly music. There's nothing wrong with the music of Karl Heinz Stockhausen, for example, that a good melody line wouldn't fix.

John Quiggin has posted briefly, endorsing Rob's position. Through a comment at John's blog from Jack Strocchi, I found this Washington Times article in which Steve Sailer interviews Charles Murray, co-author of The Bell Curve:

It ignited controversy by arguing that IQ scores are one of the most overlooked tools for understanding how American society is structured.

You'd never know from this coy remark that Steve is actually a bit of a Murray fan (just as Jack Strocchi appears to be a bit of a Steve Sailer fan); however visit his website and it becomes clear where Steve stands on the relation between IQ and social status and that Steve is an energetic populariser of the "Science of IQ". He has little time for anyone who argues that IQ is mostly a load of bollocks, as this snide obituary for Stephen Jay Gould shows:

Gould's most famous and influential book was The Mismeasure of Man, which exemplified his trademark combination of antiquarianism and guilt by association in the service of character assassination. In it, he attempted to destroy the modern science of IQ by recounting the stumblings of 19th-century researchers working before the IQ test was even invented. Of course, that line of attack makes as much sense as trying to discredit modern astronomy by writing a book revealing that ancient astronomers thought the sun went around the Earth.

By the last decade of his life, Gould's moment had passed. His theories on human nature had proven sterile. Neo-Darwinism had triumphed. The bright young women on campus were flocking to evolutionary psychology, a field that the old leftist found deeply suspicious. Although Gould's slanders had slowed the scientific study of intelligence by helping starve it of funding, it continued to advance.

Murray has a new book out, Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. It sounds like the sort of book you might buy if someone gave you an Amazon gift certificate and Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin was out of stock. Murray's book is an attempt to rank the top 4,000 artists and scientists in human history. Steve seems to be fairly keen on the idea of top people; as well as being a working journalist, he's:

the founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute, which runs the invitation-only Human Biodiversity discussion group for top scientists and public intellectuals.

I don't know whether Murray is a member of the Human Biodiversity Institute but it's clear that Steve considers him a top public intellectual, so his line of questioning in the interview is far from aggressive. This works in his favour; his fawning approach allows Murray space to explain his work, and his approach to identifying the world's greatest artists and scientists in a little detail:

Murray meticulously measured how much attention the leading scholars in their fields pay to the top creators and discoverers. Reading "Human Accomplishment" is a little like browsing through the statistics-laden "Baseball Encyclopedia," except that instead of being about Ruth, Di Maggio, and Bonds, Murray's book is about Picasso, Darwin, and Edison.

...

Q. Can you truly quantify objectively which artists and scientists were the most eminent?

A. Sure. It's one of the most well-developed quantitative measures in the social sciences. (The measurement of intelligence is one of its few competitors, incidentally.)

My indices have a statistical reliability that is phenomenal for the social sciences. There's also a very high "face validity" -- in other words, the rankings broadly correspond to common-sense expectations.

So there you go; thanks to Murray we now have an objective, statistically reliable catalogue of history's intellectual greats. Murray makes it clear at the outset that he didn't allow his own opinions to influence his analysis of the data:

Q. Who came out on top of big categories like Western Literature, Western Art, Western Philosophy, and Combined Sciences?

A. Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Aristotle, and Newton -- the people you'd expect.

In Western music, Mozart and Beethoven were in a dead heat, with Bach third. A rather vocal minority is upset about Bach not being on top. I'm not. I love Bach, but it's awfully hard to listen to Beethoven's later symphonies and string quartets and figure out how anybody could possibly be ranked above him.

However, let me stress: I'm not the one who made those decisions. And occasionally I had to grin and bear it when things didn't come out according to my druthers. Rousseau and Byron are way too high in Western literature for my taste, for example.

You have to admire Murray's intellectual integrity here; a lesser person might have been tempted to fudge the figures, on the basis that Rousseau and Byron receive a lot of attention from leading scholars because their work is great in being bad (like the poetry of William Topaz McGonagall, poet and tragedian of Dundee).

For some reason, I'm skeptical of the idea that by surveying lit crit, music crit and other fields of scholarship you can arrive at an objective list of the world's brightest and best. It reminds me too much of past attempts to assign IQs to historical figures; a topic Gould covers The Mismeasurement of Man. But it's probably better to reserve judgement until I've at least had the chance to flick through the book in a public library or remainder bin somewhere.

Shock and Awe in Early Australian History

"A party, consisting of two captains, two subalterns, and forty privates, with a proper number of non-commissioned officers, from the garrison, with three days provisions, &c. are to be ready to march tomorrow at day-light, in order to bring in six of those natives who reside near the head of Botany Bay; of if that be should be found to be impracticable, to put that number to death."

Just previous to this order being issued the author of this publication received a direction to attend the governor [Governor Phillip] at head quarters immediately. I went and his excellency informed me that he had pitched on me to execute the foregoing command. He added, that the two subalterns who were to be drawn from the marine corps, should be chosen by myself: that the serjeant, and the two convicts who were with M'Entire, should attend as guides: that we were to proceed to peninsula at the head of Botany Bay; and thence, or from any part of the north arm of the bay, we were, if practicable, to bring away two natives as prisoners: and to put to death ten: that we were to destroy all weapons of war, but nothing else: that no hut was to be burned: that all women and children were to remain uninjured, not being comprehended within the scope of the order ... That we were to cut off, and bring in the heads of the slain, for which purpose hatchets and bags would be furnished.

December 1790, His Excellency was now pleased to enter into the reasons which had induced him to adopt measures of such severity. He said that since our arrival in the country, no less than seventeen of our people had either been killed or wounded by the natives: - that he looked upon the tribe known by the name of Bid-ee-'gal, living on the aforementioned peninsula, and chiefly on the North Arm of Botany Bay, to be the principal aggressors - that against this tribe he was determined to strike a decisive blow, in order at once to convince them of our superiority, and to infuse an universal terror, which might operate to prevent further mischief.

... [he] said, if I could propose any alteration of the orders under which I was to act, he would patiently listen to me: encouraged by this condescension, I begged leave to offer for consideration, whether, instead of destroying ten persons, the capture of six would not better answer all the purposes for which the expedition was to be undertaken; as out of this number, a part might be set aside for retaliation; and the rest, at a proper time, liberated, after having seen the fate of their comrades, and being made sensible of the cause of their detention.

December, 1790. This scheme, his excellency was pleased instantly to adopt, adding, "if six cannot be taken, let this number be shot" ... [my emphasis]

Watkin Tench, Sydney's First Four Years cited in Frontier by Henry Reynolds (Allen & Unwin, Sydney 1996 p 33)

Update: Geoff Honnor's comment prompted me to haul my bum to the Library, to check out Tench's account for myself. The passage in bold is quoted by Reynolds, in Frontier. Reading Tench's account settled those niggling doubts I was starting to have about whether Reynolds represented this incident fairly. He did.

Update Too: Wendy James (also from Troppo Armadillo) has also commented with a link to this discussion of Phillip's "scandalous orders".

Coming Soon ...

(To a Movie Theatre Near You)

Alien Versus Predator Versus Freddie Versus Jason Versus The Terminator Versus Charlie's Angels Versus Uma Thurman in a Yellow Tracksuit Versus Rambo Versus The Last Action Hero Versus Kickboxer Versus American Ninja Versus The Cook From Under Seige Versus Batman and Robin Versus The Pink Panther Versus Kramer Versus Kramer Versus Godzilla Versus King Kong Versus Highlander Versus The Evil Dead Versus Hellraiser Versus Pollyanna Versus Bladerunner Versus Abbott and Costello Versus Frankenstein Versus The Wolf Man Versus Joe Versus The Volcano Versus Wutang Versus The Ninja Versus The Karate Kid Versus Earth Versus The Flying Saucers Versus People Versus Larry Flynt Versus Gladiator Versus Spartacus Versus Billy The Kid Versus Dracula Versus Marco Polo Junior Versus the Red Dragon Versus The Lion King Versus Pocahontas Versus Shirley Thompson Versus The Aliens Versus Mary Poppins.

I'm looking forward to it. Once it's out of the way, they mighty start producing films again, instead of sequels, remakes and "hommage" riddled pastiches.

Living National Treasures. Or Heirlooms. Or Something.

Geoff Honnor at Troppo Armadillo has noted that:

The National Trust is running low on Australian Living Treasures and would like public assistance in replacing the 11 Treasures who have gone to Immortality since the program was initiated in 1997.

The idea of nominating people as Living National Treasures is a typically great Aussie idea; copied from overseas, adapted for local conditions and stuffed up in the process. The Japanese have been selecting Living National Treasures since (at least) 1955. Several Japanese potters have been awarded the honour (a lot of those listed at the linked page are, sadly, ex-Living National Treasures like the 11 Australians the National Trust proposes to replace), also papermakers and workers in several other crafts.

I was naturally curious to see which Australian artisans, working in traditional arts and crafts had been selected by the National Trust as our Living National Treasures. I was expecting one or two bark painters, those two blokes I saw on the television two decades ago who restored a slab-sided mountain hut using traditional methods or possibly a country baker renowned for his traditional meat pies, pasties, snag-rolls and lamingtons. But, of course, it's nothing like that and it makes you wonder what qualifications are required to be honoured as an Australian Living National Treasure.

Obviously outstanding achievement in the yartz no doubt accounts for the prescence of John Bell, Arthur Boyd (due for replacement), Don Burrows, Ruth Cracknell (due for replacement), Judy Davis, Ernie Dingo, Slim Dusty (due for replacement), John Farnham, Peter Garrett, Rolf Harris, Barry Humphries, Elizabeth Jolley, Thomas Keneally, Michael Leunig, David Malouf, Dr Colleen McCullough, Gary McDonald, Graeme Murphy, Les Murray, Prof Peter Sculthorpe, Dame Joan Sutherland, Anthony Warlow, Morris West, David Williamson, Time Winton and Roger Woodward. And it's not too hard to fathom the reasons for including Sir Donald Bradman (due for replacement), Raelene Boyle, Bart Cummings, Betty Cuthbert, Herb Elliot, Dawn Fraser, Cathy Freeman, Shane Gould, Rod Laver, John Newcombe, Greg Norman, Kieran Perkins, Ken Rosewall and Gai Waterhouse.

A lot of the rest are a mystery, especially Senator Bob Brown, The Hon Don Dunstan (due for replacement), The Hon John Howard, The Hon Barry Jones, The Hon Paul Keating, Cheryl Kernot, The Hon Tom Uren and The Hon Gough Whitlam. That's a substantial job lot of politicians tossed in with our 100 Living National Treasures; obviously they had the numbers to make up the numbers.

Still, there's one name in the list I won't argue with; Margaret Fulton. She knows a thing or two about lamingtons.

Vale

CSL, the smelliest cat in Brunswick, died quietly in her sleep this afternoon a little short of 15 years old. Her spirit lingers on, somewhere, but a thorough mopping with Dettol will take care of that.

Parapraxis Watch

These archives are the richest source of documentation of settler attitudes towards indigenous people available in any Australian colony. Indeed, they constitute one of the best collections in the British Empire.

Keith Windschuttle, in that Quadrant Article, evidently having a little trouble with the literary present.

Bloggiversary

It's one year to the day since I started this blog. This is customarily a time to look back on what you've learnt since you started blogging and write a few tickets on yourself. Right now, I can't be bothered. It's not as if anyone needs reminding of exactly how brilliant I am, so writing a long, smug, self-congratulatory post about it would be a complete waste of time.

Update: thanks to everyone who's posted an encouraging (or at least non-disparaging) comment.

Bloody Arty-Farty Nonsense

With only 18 seats, the Liberal Party can hardly be said to have the numbers in Victoria's Legislative Assembly, however it's good to see that the Liberals' defeat in the last State election has left it with much of its Parliamentary talent and political acumen intact.

Opposition arts spokesman Andrew Olexander has shown the way forward for the Liberal Party on the arts front, with his call for the government to take responsibility for the program of the Melbourne International Arts Festival. The Age reports that Mr Olexander was not impressed by the Belgian theatre production I Am Blood, which features a lot of genuine nakedness and copious quantities of fake blood. Mr Olexander found the show demeaning to women. According to The Age:

The show, created by Jan Fabre, is based on the premise that modern society has not progressed since the Middle Ages when it comes to torture and the acceptance of women's menstruation.

This sounds a little grisly (and definitely like the sort of show where you might expect to find content which, however inadvertently, is demeaning to women) but reading on, it sounds like a fine excuse for a group of Belgian actors to get their kit off and have fun in public:

The climax was a naked bacchanal in which all dancers were drenched with fluid from wine bottles before skidding and sliding across the stage.

I'm not sure if Arts Minister Mary Delahunty has seen the show, but she definitely wasn't impressed by Mr Olexander's call for the government to take more of a hand in planning future Arts Festivals:

"This is not North Korea," she said. "Melbourne is a sophisticated and tolerant community and such interference would pose a threat both to the artists and their audiences."

She warned it would result in an artistic program designed to suit the personal preferences and the political leanings of a particular minister.

So it looks like we may have to wait for the re-election of a Liberal Government before Melbourne is the sort of city where the Government takes a more positive role in the Arts and provides a firm guiding hand to keep the Arts community in line with general community standards. As it did back in the days when the only dirty books in Melbourne were read by Arthur Rylah.

Grumble

One of the things I've learnt over the past 364 days of blogging is that there are a lot of web-sites out there that do a good job of presenting the sort of information you need to make sense of the society you live in and the world around you. Then there are sites like The Australian Bureau of Statistics Website which just piss you off completely.

In their paper Australian Multiculturalism: Its Rise and Demise, Brian Galligan and Winsome Roberts assert that:

... in Australia, however, because migrants are for the most part geographically dispersed; they educate their children in English along with other Australian school children; and those children have a high propensity to marry out of their parents’ ethnic group. Australia does not have distinct cultural groups that endure in any significant way. Boxing up the cultural differences that first generation migrants bring and the declining remnants that endure to the second and third generations makes little conceptual sense.

It occurred to me that one way to check whether migrants are geographically dispersed would be to have a look at the 2001 Census data. Some of it is available for free here. And the data has been sort of mapped. That last link won't work in Netscape by the way; to view the page you need Adobe's SGV viewer which is only available for Internet Explorer.

So, having downloaded Adobe's SGV viewer, and started up Internet Explorer I got into the maps and started looking for data. Drill down a few levels, say to the Whittlesea South statistical division, and you can get into a "Community Snapshot" where, finally I learnt (by clicking on the Ancestry link) that in this statistical division:

In the 2001 Census, the three most common ancestries identified with were:

Italian: 18629 people (18.5%)
Australian: 18354 people (18.2%) and;
English: 13652 people (13.5%).

As a quick comparison, in Whittlesea North:

In the 2001 Census, the three most common ancestries identified with were:

Australian: 5028 people (38.6%)
English: 4024 people (30.9%) and;
Italian: 1578 people (12.1%).

I can't provide links to either of those maps by the way; the Adobe SGV viewer doesn't support normal browser navigation. To add to my current frustration, Internet Explorer just decided (despite all evidence to the contrary) that I'm not currently on-line. So I'm unable to provide any more examples right now.

That isn't what I want to do anyway. What I'd like to be able to do, without shelling out a shitload of readies that I don't have, is quickly get hold of the data you'd need to map the distribution of ethnic communities across metropolitan Melbourne. This would go a long way towards testing whether migrants are, in fact, geographically dispersed and their descendants more so. Walk down Sydney Road in Brunswick or Victoria Street in Richmond and you get the distinct impression that, while Australia might not have any migrant ghettos or enclaves, there are few places where they're a little more congregated than dispersed. If the ABS provided useable access to all that data they collected on us three years ago, I might be able to put that superficial perception to the test.

Spot the Petard

Between transcribing The Annotated Henry Reynolds and making a complete ass of myself at trivia quizzes (but that may just be the hangover talking), I haven't had much time to do much on the Gilligan and Roberts paper Australian Multiculturalism: Its Rise and Demise (link via Troppo Armadillo).

The paper is obviously part of a larger work, as indicated here:

Throughout this book we argue ... that Australian citizenship entails being a member of a particular political community that has a primary unanimity supported by a distinctive political culture. Being Australian involves sharing in both, albeit in limited ways by first generation migrants who retain strong identification with their original cultures and traditions. In the rest of this chapter we show how the policy of multiculturalism was extended beyond policies of humane settlement and modified integration to become a full-blown prescriptive account of Australian society that distorted the understanding of citizenship.

It's also very polemical in tone, which is why I was pleased to find the following paragraph. Can you spot the petard?

Multiculturalism was part descriptive and part prescriptive: it purported both to describe an actual state of affairs and to impose a preferred vision of what ought to be the case. That Australia should be a multicultural nation made up of distinct cultural groups, all of which are of equal value and should be equally valued, is a normative proposition. That Australia is this sort of nation is a factual proposition. Mixing up the normative and the factual is typical of ideologies, and invariably produces a confusing picture in which preferred normative vision colours factual appreciation.

By Request (Classic Links)

The Pygmy Shrew.

Just Not Cricket.