From my Saturday Review column: Is there honour among thieves? Professor Peter Leeson believes that there is. I should be more precise. Professor Leeson believes that he is able to demonstrate that there was. When he was 8 years old, Leeson’s parents bought him a “silver” skull ring with “ruby” eyes from the pirate-themed gift shop at Disney World. Ever since, he has been obsessed with the so-called golden age of piracy, the early years of the 18th century in which Blackbeard and “Calico” Jack sailed the high seas. Piracy has not been Leeson’s only obsession. The other has been economics. When he was 17 years old he had supply and demand curves tattooed on his right bicep. I promise you. Anyway, now the professor has brought his two enthusiams together in a wonderful (and wonderfully titled) new book. The Invisible Hook is his study of the hidden economics of piracy. The starting point for the book is a puzzling observation. The pirates of the golden age may now be considered romantic figures, but they were, of course, murderous criminals. Leeson doesn’t spare us the gory details, with accounts of the horrible tortures that they inflicted on many of the merchant sailors they captured. And yet, they worked together with each other in apparent harmony. How does one account for this? The Invisible Hook outlines the strikingly democratic constitutions adopted, usually in written form, by pirate crews. Their captain was chosen by a vote and could be, and often was, deposed if he made poor decisions in battle. There was also a separation of powers. The quartermaster allocated provisions and enforced discipline. The distribution of the spoils was pretty even, with the officers being rewarded for their extra work but not being allowed to exploit their position. The constitution of the ship of the famous pirate Bartholomew Roberts starts by asserting that “Every Man has a Vote in the Affairs of Moment” and “has equal Title to the fresh provisions, or strong Liquors at any times”. It then lays out the rules for distributing the prize — two shares each for the captain and quartermaster, one and a half for senior officers, one and a quarter for other officers and one share for everyone else. It would not be a good idea to attempt fraud or robbery of your colleagues. One of the milder punishments was “slitting the Ears and Nose of him that was Guilty” before setting him on shore in a place where he “was sure to encounter Hardships”. Leeson explains the economics behind this arrangement. An ordinary merchant ship belonged to an owner who wasn’t present on the voyage. The owner had to ensure that he was not being defrauded by lazy sailors. The captain was given a share of the spoils and autocratic power. The incentives on pirate ships were different. Those who stood to gain were on board. They often joined up to avoid the harsh discipline and exploitation of ordinary merchant ships. And a written constitution provided the necessary protection of their interests. The brutality of pirates to their prey can, Leeson suggests, also be understood using economics. Pirates, using the Jolly Roger as their brand logo, established a reputation for torturing and killing anyone who resisted them. Since resistance by merchants usually failed (they had fewer people and slower boats) the violence was a strong disincentive to any attempt to fight off the pirates. The policy of brutality thus reduced the cost to pirates of capturing ships. It encouraged a large proportion of merchant seamen to surrender. Beyond providing a diverting history of pirates, Leeson is making a political point. There is, he is keen to establish, a difference between government and governance. Among the most lawless people, there are still laws. An-arrgh-chy, his name for the pirate code, is not the same as chaos. Aside from piracy and economics, Leeson brings one other obsession into The Invisible Hook — his love for his girlfriend, Ania Bulska. He used the dedication to say: “Ania, I love you; will you marry me?” His publishers then helped him to keep the whole thing secret from Bulska, carefully circulating the book in proof without the dedication or the preface that mentions it. Finally, they shipped a single copy to Leeson for him to put his plan into action. He had the book hidden in a chest and presented to Ania over dinner. When she said yes, he took a ring out of a secret compartment. It was risky. Said Leeson: “One of my friends told me it was a horrible idea. He said, ‘What if she says no? You’ll be a jackass’.”
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 On the eve of the Iranian elections, an eerie silence fell on the country's 41 million mobile phones. SMS messages were banned.
Three weeks later, service was restored. It's been running since the beginning of the month. But Iran’s phones are still oddly silent. The excellent Tehran Bureau site explains: Mousavi supporters took a page out of Gene Sharp’s “From Dictatorship to Democracy,” which lists “non-consumption of boycotted goods” as a method of civil protest. Mousavi supporters are communicating their dissent with an embargo on communications, and Iran’s largest mobile operator, Mobile Communications Company of Iran (MCI), a subsidiary of the state telecom monopoly (TCI) is the boycott’s target.
Someone came up with the idea while listening to a BBC Persia report on the substantial losses MCI was incurring during the official black-out. Within days, a chain email calling for boycott spread through social networking sites, along with the war-cry: “I refuse to generate revenues for a government than monitors my conversations and messages.” Amazingly, there are already signs that it's working: TCI shares on the Tehran Stock Exchange fell to an all-time low yesterday with a 6 percent drop over a two-week period, according to HAMNA, Iran’s mobile communication news agency.
Iran Cell, the country’s largest private operator, has also sustained losses. A senior executive of this company, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Tehran Bureau that Iran Cell was losing “close to $250,000 a day” because of the drop in SMS volume. Watch this space...
Thought free market economics were complex? You thought wrong. It's all veeeery simple, explains Jon Stewart. You take your economic pyramid, then you add your invisible, government-funded scaffolding of the free market... Watch from around the 01:25 mark...
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Well, on launch day 1969 it was steak and eggs, according to a brilliant selection of photos on Boston.com. Many thanks to Marbury for spotting this.
The excellent John Rentoul, in a post wittily entitled Predantry, takes issue with me over minicabs. He says:
 [Danny] doesn't like the new(ish) badges on London minicabs that say "Pre-booked only".
This is to distinguish them from black cabs that can be hailed on the street (if you look as if you might be going in the direction they want to go).
Of course, it's tautological. Booking is something you do in advance.
But what better way of expressing the simple idea is there?
If it said "Booked only", people would scratch their heads and wonder what on earth it meant.
I fear I really must insist.
It is abundantly clear what booked means. You do not book a black cab, you hail it (although maybe John pre-hails his, I don't know).
In fact, it is pre-booked that is confusing.
In its absurdity, it hints that there is a difference between calling a minicab to come immediately (booking it) and calling it to come later (pre-booking it). And that is not a distinction that those signs mean to make at all.
No, as I say, I really must insist. The signs (and all other incorrect uses of pre) have to go.
Rat-a-tat-tat... ping!
Can you believe it? At the New York Police department, forms are still being filled out on typewriters. This cutting-edge city – arguably the world’s most cutting-edge city - spent $432,900 on maintenance for these old-school machines last year.
Inspired by a mention of this on the Freakonomics blog, here’s a brief list of 10 places (or areas) where old technologies have been rescued from the dustbin of history.  Cassette tapes in prisons
Typewriters in the New York Police Department
Betamax in filmmakers’ editing suites
 Pagers in hospitals (and by drug dealers... see: The Wire)
The spirit of carbon copying in the abbreviation ‘CC’ in emails
Telegrams across America
 Vinyl records and the youth of today
Skateboards and the Hampshire police
Leeches and modern medicine
 8-track and Cheap Trick’s latest album
(and one more for luck... microfilm in libraries)
My valued colleague Oliver Kamm makes an interesting assertion on his blog:
I see no merit in austerity for its own sake, but nor are acquisitiveness and consumption ("getting and spending", in Wordsworth's matchless phrase) valuable ends.
This is a fashionable view of the sort to which he is prone (as Oliver says: "The Guardian is a great newspaper, whose values I share"). But the more I consider it, the more I think it isn't correct.
Human beings consume in order to live. If they did not consume, they would die. And crucially, if a human being did not consume, they would not be able to breed either.
So I think we can agree that consumption (and therefore acquisitiveness) is valuable.
Now - his Pedant column notwithstanding - I cannot believe that Oliver merely wishes to argue that survival and breeding are ends and consumption simply the means to it.
I think - I hope I do not misrepresent him - he wishes to suggest that survival and breeding are not enough, that life only has value if it achieves some greater good. (He will have to fill us in on what that good is, being as he reads the Guardian and all).
But I think this has it the wrong way round.
We do not survive and breed in order to do good. We do what we do, including doing good, in order to survive and breed.
I think consumption is as close to being a valuable end as the English language can stretch to.
Tim Montgomerie provides a very useful summary of possible Tory moves on tax. But he accompanies it with this repetition of his position:
I stand by my view that there should be no tax rises until possibilities for savings in the massively-expanded Labour state have been exhausted.
So I suppose I need to repeat my response.
It won't work like that. Sensible cuts, based on reform rather than just squeezing everything, take time. You need to bring down the debt fast. So if you need tax rises at all, you need them first.
It will be years and years before you have identified, let alone exhausted, all the possibilities for saving.
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 Phil Collins wrote a densly argued, rather impressive piece in The Times yesterday, a broadside against Tory policy on marriage.
We concur on the biggest point Phil makes. The marriage tax break won't work. But our reasoning is rather different.
Let me go through the argument.
Phil makes this assertion based on Cabinet Office research:
Once you control the data for income, wealth and education, the marriage effect is very small.
Without (for the purposes of this post) challenging this assertion, it reads oddly. Naturally if you control for income and wealth you will greatly reduce the marriage effect. One of the key advantages of a stable household with two parents is to increase household income and wealth.
This, as Judith Rich Harris argues, provides children with a more stable environment in which to acquire better peer group influences.
But if the advantage of a two parent household is, at least in large measure, financial, then surely the correct policy is the exact opposite of that proposed by Iain Duncan Smith? Surely the correct policy is to compensate single parents and heads of broken homes so as to make good part of their financial disadvantage?
Not really.
There are two problems with what might be termed the anti-IDS policy.
The first is that it encourages people to engage in single parenthood and broken homes thus costing ever greater sums to compensate them. The second is that the sums will never be large enough to compensate them properly and put them on the same footing as stable two parent households.
So what is the alternative?
There is more than one. The first is simply to leave the problem alone. There is much to be said for this from a Tory point of view. You simply allow family form to float freely.
The other alternative is to encourage people to get married.
I was very careful with this sentence. I do not mean by this that you pay married people extra money while they stay together. I mean that you encourage people to get married.
Phil is dismissive of the impact of marriage on cohabitees:
This bunch of flaky no-hopers all of a sudden commits for life because of the power of the vows and the promise of a few quid? Oh, come on.
I don't share this. I believe that the impact of vows is very strong indeed, particularly when accompanied by a strong pro-commitment social norm.
But as for the cash, that is a different point.
Why would you pay someone, or give them a tax advantage, to stay together?
The whole point of the public policy marriage argument is to advance the idea that the very act of marriage encourages people to stay together. You would only pay people after marriage if you think that being married doesn't work to make relationships more stable and long lasting. You would need an after-marriage payment to do the job of sustaining relationships that marriage doesn't do. But if marriage doesn't do it, what are we bothering with this public policy area in the first place? And, of course, the after-marriage payment goes round in circles. You are paying somebody to do something that works partly because it conveys a financial advantage on the household.
In conclusion, I think there is a policy case (not a political one, the politics of this are hopeless) for a one-off payment to encourage marriage. This may work at the margin to tip some extra people into making a worthwhile commitment.
The case for a continuous payment is hard to make.
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I have just stumbled across a fantastic blog that has totally and inexplicably passed me by till now. It’s called How Books Got Their Titles and it does exactly what it says on the tin (or should that be spine?) In it, Gary Dexter, who writes the Title Deed column in the Sunday Telegraph, delves into the stories behind the titles of classic books - often as weird and wonderful as the narratives themselves. Here are ten of his most brilliant insights: Thomas Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again Thomas Wolfe’s first novel Look Homeward, Angel cast a critical eye on the small town of his birth, where it was subsequently greeted with outrage. Wolfe
later recounted the experience over dinner to a friend, the Communist
activist Ella Winter, who exclaimed, ‘But don’t you know you can’t go
home again?’ Wolfe replied: ‘Can I have that? I mean for a
title...I’m writing a piece...and I’d like to call it that. It says
exactly what I mean.’  E.M Forster’s A Passage to India
Takes its title from the poem of the same name by Walt Whitman: Reckoning ahead, O soul, when thou, the time achiev’d
(The seas all cross’d, weather’d the capes, the voyage done,)
Surrounded, copest, frontest God, yieldest, the aim attain’d,
As, fill’d with friendship, love complete, the Elder Brother found,
The Younger melts in fondness in his arms. PG Wodehouse's Love Among the Chickens Wodehouse had a life-long friend called William Townend who, one day, told him about another acquiantance... "A prep-school master" writes Dexter, "blessed with the unlikely and rather Wodehousian name of Carrington Craxton, [who] had embarked on a disastrous chicken-farming venture in Devonshire"  Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in a Time of Cholera
Got its title through an opportunity for pun that does not exist in English. Cólera, in Spanish, means both ‘cholera’ and ‘anger’.
William Shakespeare’s Othello
Shakespear's Moor has a possible precursor in French medieval romance:
Sir Othuel, a Moorish companion of Roland, of noble birth, who had
converted to Christianity. "Shakespeare could easily", Dexter writes,
"have Italianized Othuel by adding a final ‘o’, thus giving the name a
Venetian ring."
 Winston Churchill's While England Slept In 1938, Churchill's American publishers, Putnam’s, cabled him to ask for an alternative title for a volume of his collected speeches. The cable operator garbled Churchill's suggestion, The Years of the Locust, so that it arrived with Putnams as The Years of the Lotus. "Putnam’s were puzzled", writes Dexter. "They knew that the lotus was a plant famous for its soporific properties, and, in an attempt to give a sense of this, settled on While England Slept." Joseph Heller's Something Happened Heller himself explained: "Something Happened turned up in the fall of ’63 when I was walking with George Mandel past Korvettes or Brentano’s [in Manhattan] and a kid came running past and yelled over his shoulder to another, “Hey, come on, something’s happened” — some sort of traffic accident I guess it must have been."  Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace
Six years before the novel's publicated, Tolstoy had visited the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in exile. Proudhon showed him a copy of his own book, just finished, on international armed conflict. What was it called? War and Peace. "Tolstoy", writes Dexter, "seems to have decided to appropriate his title as an act of deliberate homage." W Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence
Owes the brilliance of its name to The Times! After the publication of his previous novel, Of Human Bondage, a Times reviewer wrote of its main character:
“Like so many young men he was so busy yearning for the moon that he never saw the sixpence at his feet.”  Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf:
Hitler's first choice for his autobiography was A Four and a Half Years’ Battle Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice: A Reckoning with the Destroyers of the Nazi Party Movement.
For reasons unknown, his publisher, Max Amann, decided that a snappier title might be better advised
... Got any others?
The Letters from a Tory blog has teased out the implications of my column on Sarah palin for UK politics.
 This morning I was taken to the station by a minicab and, for the first time, noticed that little London Transport sign about the vehicle being a private hire car.
Of course I had seen the sign many times, but not paid attention to the words.
The sign says "Pre-Booked Only".
I am surprised such a cab came. After all, I had merely booked it. It should have come only to those who had rung even earlier and pre-booked it.
For some reason, in the last few years you are now asked to pre-order things, pre-book things and even to consume pre-prepared products. It is, as I have had cause to comment before, pre-preposterous.
I realise this is only a small thing. But surely Boris Johnson of all people would be able to see my point and do something about it.
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If you could halt the ticking of your genetic clock, learn how to screen yourself from the ravages of sunlight, tobacco smoke and oxygen or get your hands on the elixir of youth, then would you really want to use the power? That was Dr Mark Porter's question this morning and I know my answer. Yes and no. If I could keep a strong and healthy body while my mind grew wiser, I’d like to carry on a little longer. Maybe, say, 200 years. But no longer. And even then, I’d need a specific mission to merit hanging on that long. Times writers give their answers below. Let us know what you think too.  Oliver Kamm:
The question was answered by Bernard Williams in a paper with the self-explanatory title "Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality". From the nature of human happiness and desire, which involve change and striving, immortality would be intolerable. Consider the 342-year-old Elina Makropulos in Janacek's opera, who takes no joy in life because all is the same. Matthew Parris: Yes, yes, yes. I want to live forever. I want to live here, continuing the life I lead. I love it. I want to know what's going to happen - to stay part of it all. I'm not afraid of death. I'm not afraid of the end of the summer holidays. But the prospect end of the summer vexes me mightily; and the prospect of the end of my fantastic, lucky life, vexes me mightily too. Libby Purves: I think these live-forever types are a load of snivelling, selfish, cowardy custards. 90 is well more then enough ration. Get out of the way! And I refer you to Ben Jonson: 'It is not growing like a tree/In bulk, doth make man better be/A lily of a day/Is fairer far in May/Although it fade and die that night/It was the very child and flower of light'. Unlike the dismal old self-preservers hoping to gobble up Easter Island and bore us all for centuries. Chris Ayres: I would sign up for immortality only if they could ensure the sun won't implode in five billion years time (as it is scheduled to do), thus setting continents on fire, boiling the oceans, and generally ruining my retirement. Without a planet to live on, immortality could have some serious disadvantages: like floating around in Deep Space for eternity, looking for a bit of moonrock to land on. And they don't have broadband on moonrock, or so I've heard. That's not to say there wouldn't be some upsides to drinking from the spring of eternal life. I might finally get all the way through Brad Pitt's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, for example.
 You might be interested to know that Amazon seems to be close to settling a UK release date for the Kindle - their paperback sized device for reading ebooks.
According to this latest story: Unlike the US Kindle, which solely uses Sprint’s data network for its mobile connectivity, the UK version is tipped to include WiFi support as well as 3G. The identity of the carrier involved is unknown, but likely candidates include T-Mobile and O2, both of whom have well-established WiFi networks which their own subscribers have access to. Amazon are believed to be working to arrange the launch of the UK Kindle before Christmas 2009, and to have already secured agreements with publishers of books and be mid-negotiation with those of magazines and newspapers.
(Hat tip to Stephen Pollard)
 Online Editor Tom Whitwell writes:
Two years ago, Times Online was one of the first newspaper websites in Britain to allow readers to leave comments at the bottom of almost every article we publish*. The experiment was a dramatic success. We receive around 4,000 comments each day. Every comment is read by a human being before it is published. That's a significant investment, but we've found that our readers' comments really enhance our journalism. Today, Times Online is launching a dramatically upgraded comments system. You'll see a few immediate changes, with more to come over the next few months. Before leaving a comment, you now have to go through a short and hopefully painless registration procedure. You'll be sent an email to verify your address. This will enable us to highlight and reward our best commenters, and weed out our least constructive. The 300 character limit which we reluctantly introduced a year ago has been lifted. You now have 2,000 characters (around 250 words) to express yourself, although we still welcome brevity. We hope that the moderation process will become quicker and more accurate than ever. In the past we've been overwhelmed at times, causing a lot of frustration. Times Online's blogs, like Comment Central, use a different publishing system, so comments here will be unchanged. Over the next few months we'll be joining the systems together. Hopefully, you'll find the new system easy to use. If you have any problems or ideas, email me at commentshelp@timesonline.co.uk or leave comments below using the old fashioned blog system. * There are a few exceptions: We don't think it's appropriate to allow comments on obituaries, and it's legally hazardous to allow them on some court reporting.
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 Given its seemingly unpromising subject, there’s an unexpectedly fascinating post from Andrew Sparrow on the Politics Blog.
It’s about the Tories’ decision to hold an open primary to select their candidate in Totnes, sending ballot paper out to all of the 69,000 voters in the constituency: This means everyone, including Labour supporters and activists, will be actively encouraged to take part in selecting the Tory candidate from a shortlist drawn up by the local association. Primaries like this should offer the parties that use them two huge advantages. Firstly, before the general election the Tory candidate will have been tested in a contest with a wide, representative electorate. Even if only 5% of the electorate take part in the Conservative exercise, that's still more than 3,000 people.Secondly, when the election does come, the Tory candidate is bound to gain some advantage from the fact that 69,000 people were consulted about his or her selection. Now I’d expect this to be good news for women – and therefore for Cameron’s policy of selecting more women.
Continue reading "Women, Totnes & open primaries" »
 9.09.09 is a big day for Beatles fans.
It's the day on which Apple and EMI re-release the entire Beatles catalogue - all the original UK albums plus the two volumes of Past Masters - in a digitally remastered version.
And on the same day, the Rockband computer game is launched. This is a Guitar Hero style game based on Beatles songs.
Last night Apple invited a group of journalists to Abbey Road Studio 2, where the Beatles recorded almost all of their music and which remains almost unaltered since those days.
And there, I was able to hear some of the remastered songs and be one of the first to play the new game.
Each of the new albums is accompanied by what Apple calls a "mini-doc". This is a short film on the making of the album. We were shown those that accompany Beatles for Sale and the White Album.
On The Beatles site, you can watch the Revolver mini-doc and see the main reason why they are appealing. They feature amazing 3D versions of familiar Beatles pictures. So they are diverting.
They are not, however, really that informative.
There were nuggets. Paul McCartney asserts that the phrase "Eight Days a Week" was used by a cab driver taking him to John Lennon's house for a song writing session. He says that when he asked the driver whether he had been working hard, he replied: "Eight days a week, mate". On arrival McCartney leapt out of the car and told Lennon that he had the title of their next song. perhaps I should have heard that story before, but I hadn't.
Beyond that, though, the little films won't tell you much, but they are fun.
After the films came the main act - the remastered discs. We were treated to a range of songs - Can't Buy Me Love, Yesterday, In My Life, Come Together, Here Comes the Sun among them - played first from the current CD and then from the remastered version.
Apple seemed nervous that some wouldn't be able to tell the difference. So I was surprised by how much difference there was.
We were told that the process was a little like removing the lint and allowing the performances to shine more clearly. And that was a good description. The tracks are clearer and cleaner. In the case of Can't Buy Me Love, in particular, a very distracting fuzziness to the intro has disappeared.
The new versions are clearly superior. And the remastering was overdue
Is it a sufficient difference to make it worth replacing your old CDs? Well, I will. It isn't necessary, but if you listen to the Beatles a good deal, then it is worth it.
The remastered discs will also come, I understand, with irresistible packaging, booklets, and, of course, the mini-docs.
After the remaster, we were given a sneak peak of Rockband.
I have never played Guitar Hero. If you are in the same position, the basic idea is this. You get a fake guitar with coloured buttons on it and you have to strum with one hand while playing the coloured buttons with the other.
You are told which notes to play by a key that comes up on the screen. If you play the "notes" correctly you win points and the song plays correctly. If you fumble it, the instrument you are playing drops out of the soundtrack.
Rockband features 45 Beatles songs (and, I was told, the ability to download Abbey Road as well). You can buy a set of Beatles styled musical "instruments" (Lennon's Rickenbacker, McCartney's Hofner bass and so forth) to play the game with.
In the Beatles version there are mikes and the opportunity to sing along, winning points for vocal harmony.
The fabulous graphics feature Beatles animations at different stages in their careers. If you play, for instance, I Saw Her Standing There, you are standing in the Cavern. If it is I am the Walrus, older Beatles are featured, starting in the studio and moving on to a sort of dreamscape.
The graphics are reminiscent of those that accompany the recent Love. Giles Martin, who worked on Love with his father George, has been involved with this too and has added in bits of studio chat and audience response to add to the effect.
I was told by the game designers that the "Apple shareholders" (Paul, Ringo, Yoko and the Harrisons) had taken a surprising amount of interest in the product.
I am not a games player, I have to admit, but any Beatles fan would have to possess this. It really is quite extraordinary. And my children - already keen on the Beatles - will love it.
And so it was that I found myself in the Beatles studio in Abbey Road, playing the bass line on I Saw Her Standing There strumming a McCartney style bass while the rest of the Beatles played along.
They were pretty good, I have to say. I was rubbish. They should stick with Paul.
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The latest Politics Home poll shows that 2/3rd of the public think that defence should be protected from spending cuts: 
It also shows that voters are seeing the issue as an increasingly high priority: 
None of which is particularly surprising given recent news. In the last, sombre week, the percentage of people who ranked 'defence and the armed forces' amongst their top priorities has doubled to 32 per cent, moving it about education and health. But what the graph doesn't show is that - even with such a massive boost - defence still lags behind unemployment (48 per cent) and 'the state of the economy in general' (73 per cent) in voters' list of priorities. So that even if public pressure alone could force the parties into handing out get-out-of-jail free cards when it comes to cuts, defence remains very unlikely to escape.
Billie Jean, as everyone knows, was not Michael Jackson’s lover. She was just a girl who tried to pin responsibility for a young child of dubious paternity on the poor man. Well, he showed her. But, it turns out, Billie Jean might not have been his song either. Or, at least, not entirely. In Rolling Stone’s Michael Jackson issue, Daryl Hall (one half of American musical partnership Hall & Oates) describes a conversation with Jackson in the studio sessions to record ‘We Are the World’: On "We Are the World" we were all in the room together. He sort of clung to Diana Ross pretty much, but at one point I was off to the side and he came over to me and said, "I hope you don't mind, but I stole 'Billie Jean' from you," and I said, "It's all right, man, I just ripped the base line off, so can you!" The song they seem to have been talking about is I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do), from Hall and Oates’ album Private Eyes. One of their 11 number one hits, it was released in 1981, two years before Billie Jean. Was its bassline really filched for Billie Jean? Here’s the evidence:
(Thanks to The New Yorker for spotting this one)
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 Ever since reading The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker's fine book on human nature, I eagerly hoover up anything he writes.
So I am grateful to Arts and Letters Daily for pointing me to a fascinating new piece by Pinker on an old theme of his - the way in which modernity has reduced violence:
now that social scientists have started to count bodies in different historical periods, they have discovered that the romantic theory gets it backward: Far from causing us to become more violent, something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler.
In fact, our ancestors were far more violent than we are today. Indeed, violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species' time on earth.
Pinker provides a number of reasons why this decline might have taken place, but I find the most convincing to be those that focus on the changing nature of reciprocity.
Humans co-operate with each other because they believe that if they do favours those favours will be reciprocated. In order to increase the chance that a person in receipt of a favour will be willing to return it, humans use a swift form of judgment. We co-operate with those who are most like us.
This explains why we try and fit in with groups, why we live in tribes and classes and professional institutions. Why we love our community, in other words.
But it also explains why we hate outsiders, those who aren't like us. We are in pure competition with them and wouldn't expect them to reciprocate if we did co-operate with them.
What does modern technology do? Let's take television.
We get to see other people's faces all the time. Strangers begin to seem more familiar, odd people less odd, outsiders more insidery. The more than we communicate with each other the more group violence is reduced.
Many people argue that television increases violence. There is every reason to believe that the opposite occurs.
 I read this comment by Graham Swann on the draw in the first Test and Ricky Ponting's complaint about England's tactics:
Ricky Ponting reckons we used some gamesmanship which he described as "pretty ordinary".
I think it was tough Test cricket and absolutely straight.
No amount of complaining from the Aussies will change my mind.
The fact is that confusion ruled in our dressing room in the closing stages. None of the players knew how much time or how many overs remained.
When it was eventually worked out, we needed to get the message to Jimmy and Monty straight away out in the middle. That's why our 12th man Bilal Shafayat went out with fresh gloves and a message.
But he spilt some orange juice on Jimmy's glove - so he had to go out again.
I might have known it. In the end they always get round to blaming the juice.
Britain is a country in a sorry state of decline. Our handling of the economic crisis, our industry, crime rate, immigration, fashion and tourism are testament to our nation’s decay. Even the successes of our football team are down to the miracle of Italian management. So said the Italian paper Il Giornale yesterday. Ok, so the paper is part of Silvio Berlusconi’s media empire. And so, a cynic might scoff, it's little more than a weak and transparent attempt to capitalise on Silvio Berlusconi’s hosting of the G8 summit. A desperate effort to blow those nasty allegations about his private life – the escort girls, the minors etc etc - out of the water with another (any other, quick, quick!) more salacious story. But there’s no smoke without fire, right? To what extent is Il Giornale capitalising on genuine public sentiment? Has Britain really sunk to a level so low that it compares unfavourably to the homeland of the mafia, a country whose prime minister is not only dogged by sex and corruption scandals but considers it good form to meet other heads of state dressed in a bandana? You tell us.
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- David Mark in Politico: Barabara Steisand talks environmental urgency
- Marc Ambinder in The Atlantic: Are Americans Becoming More Conservative?
- Mike Lux in The Huffington Post: The Future of Democrats in Texas
- Phil Hendren in Dizzy Thinks: The Gift Shop and BBC Newsnight
- Rose Wild in The Archive Blog: How Marie Antoinette and Robespierre went to the guillotine
 In the comments stream under my post on taxes, a commenter called Anti-Sleaze remarks:
Still haven't found the time to share your thoughts on Andy Coulson with us? Still as brave as ever, eh?
Overcoming my amusement at being accused of cowardice by someone who posts under a pseudonym, I feel that Mr Anti-Sleaze deserves a reply.
Andy Coulson resigned as Editor of the News of the World because a private investigator had worked with one of his journalists and had, illegally and very wrongly, hacked into the voicemail of a few people.
His resignation was necessary and, in my view, an end to the matter.
Everyone knew this when he was appointed by David Cameron.
The Guardian's story seemed at first very striking. It suggested that thousands of people had their voicemail hacked into. Had this been proven it might have altered the position.
But the paper has not proven its case. Indeed, it seems clear that only a handful of people had their voicemail hacked. It is correct to look carefully at the evidence, but I have yet to see a jot that changes this view.
Finally, a number of bloggers have finished their posts on this topic by saying that they do not know, or hardly know, Andy Coulson. I do know him. He was a colleague at News International and I have had many professional dealings with him in his new post.
I hold him in high regard and I like him. I suppose it is necessary to say that in the interests of full disclosure. But I don't think my view of him alters the evidence - or rather the lack of evidence - in this story.
Disappointed Mr Anti-Sleaze? I suspect so. That's why I wasn't going to post on it.
In his fascinating piece of work on the size of the elected political class, Michael Crick introduces us to the dreadful practice of tithing - making the donation to the party of a proportion of income a condition of selection as a party candidate.
Amazingly the BBC found people willing to defend this practice:
Sir Jeremy Beecham, who was chair of Labour's National Executive Committee when the rules were changed, confirmed it was not possible to be an elected representative for the party without giving it money.
He added: "It is expected of Labour public representatives that we should contribute to the party to which we belong and whom we seek to represent and to help secure the support that we need to do our job as Labour party - or it may be Lib Dem or Conservative - representatives."
Lib Dem MP Simon Hughes insisted: "It seems to me entirely reasonable that if you expect to be a public representative of the party you then are asked for a contribution."
Simon Hughes's comments are particularly extraordinary. Aren't elected politicians supposed to represent their community, not their party?
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 Following the News of the World's story about Tory tax policy, a number of bloggers have posted about the need for the Conservatives to cut spending first before they decide to delay tax cuts.
On Conservative Home, for instance, Tim writes:
Tax rises should only be put on the table once all possibilities for getting spending under control have been exhausted.
Now, as it happens, I agree with Tim's view that health should not be exempt from savings, although the electoral politics of that are very difficult indeed. But I cannot agree that tax rises should only happen once spending control has been completed.
It won't work like that.
The Conservatives need to try to reform public services so that essential service provision is damaged as little as possible. To do this will require time. In each area, there will be a period of determination of policy, a period where laws are passed (where needed) and a period where the new provisions are implemented.
The costs of redundancy payments, selling off buildings, paying off equipment leases, making transition payments, and so forth will all have to be met.
While all this is going on the majority of public spending cuts will come out of controlling cash by squeezing current services.
So to limit this sort of squeeze to tolerable levels there may be a need to fill some of the deficit gap in the short term with increased taxes. When the medium term policies finally kick-in it will then be possible to bring the taxes down again.
Deciding upon all the efficiencies and state shrinking first before increasing taxes sounds like a good idea, establishes a good principle (everything should be done to limit tax rises) but isn't practical.
Television coverage of Supreme Court confirmation hearings can make difficult viewing, especially from across the Atlantic. And with the latest indications of a relatively clear path to Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation - polls giving her a comfortable approval rating in the polls and a top rating from the influential American Bar Association already under her belt - suspense might be in short supply this afternoon. But with some of the most contentious issues in American law – abortion, gun rights, even affirmative action – guaranteed come to the fore, high drama there will be. So it will be worth steeling yourself to persevere through the less animated periods. And, luckily, American attorney, Harvard lecturer and Supreme Court blogger Thomas Goldstein believes he has just the thing. Put you hands together for... the Sotomayor Drinking Game. Its rules are simple. Whenever a senator utters one of the following names or phrases, competitors take a gulp of their poison of choice. But a final word of warning: the hearing is predicted to last most of the week... Frank Ricci—The lead white plaintiff in the famous New Haven, Connecticut, firefighters case. The Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote recently reversed a decision by a panel of the 2nd Circuit (that included Judge Sotomayor), which had previously thrown out a suit challenging the city’s refusal to adhere to a promotional exam. Republicans assert that Judge Sotomayor’s vote indicates that she cannot eliminate her ideology and race-driven sympathy from her decisions—unlike, of course, the Supreme Court’s conservative white males. Empathy—The worst-chosen phrase of the Obama presidency (since discarded), suggesting that a judge should decide cases on the basis of how much she shares the same feelings and experiences, rather than, say, the law. Pearl-Def (PRLDEF)—The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. Depending on who is talking, either a well-established, mainstream civil-rights organization or an abortion-loving, death-penalty-opposing, terrorist front group. The latter characterization plays well with extreme conservatives, the former with a growing electoral group that is politically in play. Miguel Estrada—A conservative Washington lawyer nominated by President Bush to a federal appeals court but blocked by Democrats. He is offered as proof that Democrats discriminate against Hispanic nominees as much as Republicans. Strict Construction and Activism—Yin and yang; good and evil. Actually, totally empty labels for decisions that the speaker likes or hates. Of course, historically, pathbreaking decisions dear to the hearts of both the left and right have broadly read the Constitution to invalidate state and local laws. Bart Didden—A resident of Port Chester, New York, whose property was condemned for a local redevelopment effort. Didden also alleged that the city had resorted to extortion over the use of the land. A 2nd Circuit panel that included Judge Sotomayor held that the city did not violate the Constitution’s “takings” clause under the Supreme Court’s controversial Kelo decision. Kelo has ironically spurred a renaissance in property rights. Belizean Grove—A group of professional women formed as a counterpoint to the all-male Bohemian Club, which hosts an annual retreat at its Bohemian Grove compound. Judge Sotomayor joined—she has since resigned—notwithstanding that, as a practical matter, it excluded men as members, and the judicial code of ethics prohibits membership in exclusionary groups. Umpire—The ideal, embodied in Chief Justice Roberts. Republican opponents believe Judge Sotomayor instead plays left field. Baseball—The American pastime, which Democrats contend Judge Sotomayor saved in ending a lockout of the players in 1995, though they will be quick to tell you that of course she actually did not allow her feelings for the game to influence her ruling and would just as easily have ruled for the owners if the law were on their side, all of which makes the story kind of pointless. Nancy Drew—An American heroine who always seemed to get herself into and out of troubles in stories that my 6-year-old daughter loves to read, as did Sonia Sotomayor, which means that my kid is going to sit on the Supreme Court some day. Document Dump—The materials recently received from the controversial/heroic PRLDEF (see above), which some Republicans will use to explain that they are voting against Sotomayor only because the process was too rushed. (Two shots if they mention their admiration for Estrada at the same time.) Privacy and Stare Decisis—Roe v. Wade. No sane nominee answers the one question people care the most about when it comes to the Supreme Court: Will you vote to uphold, overturn, narrow, or expand the constitutional right to an abortion? So the question gets asked in terms of the “right to privacy” and stare decisis, which is Latin for, “I will uphold any decision that I think is pretty much correct, but it would be inappropriate to say more.”
Peggy Noonan has written a superb, honest, column on who Sarah Palin is and why it matters:
In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn't say what she read because she didn't read anything.
She was utterly unconcerned by all this and seemed in fact rather proud of it: It was evidence of her authenticity. She experienced criticism as both partisan and cruel because she could see no truth in any of it. She wasn't thoughtful enough to know she wasn't thoughtful enough.
Her presentation up to the end has been scattered, illogical, manipulative and self-referential to the point of self-reverence. "I'm not wired that way," "I'm not a quitter," "I'm standing up for our values." I'm, I'm, I'm.
Thanks to Marginal Revolution for spotting this. Ever seen a tombstone to rival it?
From my Saturday Review column: Here’s where old Bernie Ecclestone went wrong. He used the H word. He has now brought in a PR agency, and I am sure he is paying it well. But, really, I could have given him the advice free. Outlining Hitler’s good points is a poor idea corporate-communication- strategywise. There, I’ve saved him £300 an hour. I think Ecclestone would have been fine from a PR standpoint if he’d just stuck to dictators in general. You see, his view — that “strong leaders” (the euphemism generally employed to describe murderous tyrants) get things done — is actually quite a common one. He could have applied this (and did so) to Saddam Hussein without too much controversy. The idea that, for instance, getting rid of Saddam was bound to produce chaos is so standard as to be almost conventional wisdom. The strong-man theory of history, when it doesn’t get caught up on the barbed wire of the Nazis, generally has a good run. And the trick being pulled is to treat as exogenous things that should be regarded as endogenous. Economists use the term “exogenous factor” to refer to things outside the model that impact upon it. Endogenous factors are things inside the model that are part of its working. In building an explanation of the effectiveness of dictators it is necessary to dictinguish between these things, to differentiate between things that just happened to dictators and things that have to happen in order for them to be dictators at all. Now dictatorships usually end in disaster. The “strong leaders” become embroiled in wars, or are subject to international sanctions to curb their aggressive behaviour, or start killing ethnic groups in large numbers. A class of officials arises that starts stealing from the general population and autocracy becomes kleptocracy. The problem with the strong-man theory is not that it overlooks these problems or accords them too little weight. It is not simply that praising dictators is like saying, “Apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, did you enjoy the theatre?”, it is that it fails to recognise that they are bound up with whatever achievements there have been. Repression and aggressive wars, theft and killing, are endogenous to dictators — they are how they maintain power. That is how they appear strong in the first place.
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How do you measure the efficiency of a health care system? Conservatives For Patients’ Rights think they know the answer, writes Tom Whipple. Campaigning against “socialised medicine” in President Obama’s forthcoming healthcare bill, they cite access to drugs, testing restrictions and waiting times as key considerations. There is another cruder, but perhaps more quantifiable, measure: life expectancy. In terms of years gained for GDP spent, who in the OECD should Congress be looking to emulate? Well, South Korea. As a proportion of GDP (not, note, absolute spending) the USA spends two and a half times the amount of South Korea on healthcare, and achieves slightly worse life expectancy. In fact, as the below graph shows, there appears to be something very strange going on with US healthcare. Amongst the other OECD countries there is a loose, but clear, correlation between health spending and life expectancy. But the US cannot even be called an outlier to this distribution – it is on a different curve entirely. 
Could it be that socialized medicine might not be such an inefficient solution after all? Or is there another explanation?
 Levi Johnston - former fiancé of Bristol Palin and the father of her young child - has been offering up pearls of wisdom on Sarah Palin’s resignation as governor. Would he vote for her to be President?
"I think she's a great lady, but after seeing what she did now, you know, leaving Alaska, I would have to say, 'no.' Obviously she's stressed out as governor. I mean moving up to the vice president or president is huge. I just don't think anymore that she's cut out for the job." "She had talked about how nice it would be to take some of this money people had been offering us and you know just run with it, say 'forget everything else,'" he said. He said he thinks book deals were really what appealed to Palin."I think the big deal was the book. That was millions of dollars," said Johnston, who has had a strained relationship with the family but now says things have improved. And, no doubt, will come on in leaps and bounds after this helpful intervention.
From my Saturday Review column:  Last week I wrote about studies into the lifespan of rock stars. A reader has recommended to me a further piece of work on the health of musicians.
In a paper for the British Journal of Psychiatry, Geoffrey Wills has examined Forty Lives in the Bebop Business. He studied mental health in a group of eminent jazz musicians, seeking to discover if it is the case that such people suffer more mental health problems than you might expect in an ordinary group of the same size. Wills begins his paper with the words : “There is now a comprehensive literature that convincingly demonstrates a link between psychopathology and creativity in the arts.” His careful classification of the problems faced by various jazz icons adds weight to this literature. Creativity may be tied up with very dark emotions.
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