Below the fold is Ivan Krsti’s explanation of a short squeeze, a maneuvre which allowed Porshe to filch around 6-12 billion from hedge funds that were shorting VW stock that Porshe was buying.
The global conservative movement is not a conspiracy, argues Mark Davis. Instead it is loose-knit and decentralised. "Ultimately what unites radical conservatives", he writes, "is the power of belief and the pursuit of common objectives, not the conspiratorial activities of shadowy organisations."
Davis is right about the loose-knit structure of the movement. But he overestimates the power of shared beliefs and objectives. In the latest issue of Policy magazine I argue that America’s conservative movement is becoming increasingly unstable. Libertarians and social conservatives are drifting in opposite directions.
The Policy article — Defusing the American Right — emerged from an online conversation I had with Andrew Norton in early 2008. It starts with a comment by Winton Bates:
Sinclair Davidson’s suggestion that the most formidable opponents of small government are conservatives rather than social democrats is interesting. I wonder whether this could lead to a realignment of Australian politics.
The discussion continues here, here.and here. And there’s also this post by Skepticlawyer.
Several high-profile, celebrity users of Twitter — the service which seems designed to do nothing except demonstrate that you are a Twitter user and therefore “the awesomest” — were compromised this week.
From Wired comes the story of how it happened.
For professionals, this part should ring very loud alarm bells:
Cracking the site was easy, because Twitter allowed an unlimited number of rapid-fire log-in attempts.
If software were an industry like most others, this would be pretty close to criminal negligence in my opinion. Limiting and throttling login attempts is a kindergarten-level security measure.
For shame.
A rather amusing ranking of jobs in the US. The rationale is explained, if you really want to know, with a mix of remuneration and working conditions.
To quantify the many facets of the 200 jobs included in our report, we determined and reviewed various critical aspects of all of the jobs, categorizing them into five “Core Criteria;” that is, the general categories that are inherent to every job: Environment, Income, Outlook, Stress and Physical Demands.
Top and bottom
1. Mathematician………………….200. Lumberjack
2. Actuary………………………….199. Dairy Farmer
3. Statistician……………………..198. Taxi Driver
4. Biologist ………………………..197. Seaman
5. Software Engineer……………..196. EMT
6. Computer Systems Analyst…..195. Garbage Collector
7. Historian………………………..194. Welder
8. Sociologist …………………….193. Roustabout
9. Industrial Designer…………….192. Ironworker
10. Accountant……………………191. Construction Worker
11. Economist……………………..190. Mail Carrier
12. Philosopher……………………189. Sheet Metal Worker
13. Physicist………………………188. Auto Mechanic
14. Parole Officer ………………..187. Butcher
15. Meteorologist…………………186. Nuclear Decontamination Tech
(Continued)
Keith Windschuttle has been hoaxed. In a post for Quadrant Online he writes: "An author calling herself ‘Sharon Gould’ has tricked Quadrant into publishing in its January-February edition an article about popular scares on biotechnology issues." As Crikey’s Margaret Simons puts it:
…in the tradition of Ern Malley– the famous literary hoax perpetrated by Quadrant’s first editor, James McAuley – the Sharon Gould persona is entirely fictitious and the article is studded with false science, logical leaps, outrageous claims and a mixture of genuine and bogus footnotes.
Windschuttle is busy digging himself a bigger hole. Rather than simply admit that he failed to fact-check the article properly and apologise to readers, he denies that the article was a hoax and remarks that "public apologies these days are largely worthless gestures" (although he does say he’s willing to apologise). Windschuttle insists that he’s the victim of "fraudulent journalism" rather than a hoax. But unlike fraudsters Jason Blair and Stephen Glass, Gould was obviously attempting to make a point about Quadrant and its editor.
Not everyone thinks that the hoax was well aimed. Andrew Norton, for example, is puzzled by Gould’s choice of issue — genetically modified crops. He’s puzzled because the issue doesn’t seem to fit with Quadrant’s worldview. He suggests that many of Quadrant’s conservative readers would be appalled at the idea of introducing human DNA into food crops. "For the hoax idea to work", he writes, "it needed to be a climate change denialist piece."
Meanwhile everyone is asking: Who is Sharon Gould? It seems likely that it’s someone with a particular interest in genetically modified crops. In November 2007 Sharon Gould surfaced briefly on the Age’s Your Say web site with a link to this article by Katherine Wilson. Wilson argues that the media have been captured by the GM lobby and that — despite concern by some scientists — activists struggle to get coverage of studies which show negative impacts of GM products. Interestingly, she links this to the debate over climate change:
Mine isn’t a balanced and disinterested account of this issue. But to the best of my knowledge, it’s a fair and truthful one. As Robert Manne wrote last year in The Monthly, one side has gained ‘an altogether undeserved importance.’ He was speaking about climate change skeptic (carbon lobby) scientists, not pro-GM scientists, but the GM debate is even more distorted.
Whoever wrote the Sharon Gould article probably assumes (as some Overland readers do) that Quadrant is just another arm of the vast corporate-funded octopus that controls the Institute of Public Affairs, the Centre for Independent Studies and — quite likely — the editorial line of the the Australian. As Norton writes, the hoaxer probably doesn’t "distinguish between conservative culture warriors like Windschuttle and free-marketeers who object to anti-scientific views on GM foods or government subsidies for the arts."
Strangely enough, people used joke about Windschuttle hoaxing Quadrant. In 2000, Sydney bookseller Bob Gould wrote this about Windschuttle’s 1999 essay on John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath:
… my first instinct was that Keith was perpetrating on Quadrant the sort of brilliant spoof that the American physicist, Alan Sokal, played on the postmodernist magazine Social Text, and also not unlike the much earlier, extremely effective Angry Penguins deception here in Australia. Attractive though this notion of Keith in spoof mode is to me, I’ve had to reluctantly conclude that he is serious. Which is a great worry!
So who is Sharon Gould? I don’t know. Nexus 6 thinks it might be Katherine Wilson. Mark Bahnisch at Larvatus Prodeo is posting regular updates on the affair.
Update 1: Jason Soon also suspects Katherine Wilson (via Skepticlawyer).
Update 2: Katherine Wilson is the hoaxer. Here’s Margaret Simons in Crikey:
This morning I was released from my obligations of confidentiality. I can now report for the first time that the speculation has it right. Katherine Wilson is Sharon Gould.
Who figured it out first? In her blog Content Makers, Simons reports that "mainstream media journalists Bernard Lane and Justine Ferrari of The Australian made the connection as early as Tuesday afternoon – within hours of Crikey publishing the “Sharon Gould” material.
For the third year running, On Line Opinion and Club Troppo are collaborating to collect an anthology of Australian blog posts from the previous year. The first handful have now been published at OLO; by the end of the month the collection will grow to about forty articles. For an idea of what to expect, have a look at last year’s collection; for some background on the event, and a discussion of blogging in general, see the introductions from
2006 and 2007. (Continued)
IPART is the independent economic regulator for NSW. It oversees regulation and conducts pricing reviews in industries such as electricity, gas, water,taxis and public transport.
IPART recently completed a review of pricing for RailCorps rail pricing provided under the CityRail brand – essentially the rail network around Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong. In this post I consider whether IPART is the right place to decide these rail pricing outcomes and conclude that as currently set up it is not.
(Continued)
In affluent societies, consumption is about creating identity rather than meeting human needs, argues Clive Hamilton. And to reinforce the point, he invites us to "consider the semiotics of the potato today". According to Hamilton, today’s shoppers can choose from 15 varieties of organic potato with shapes and colours "carefully selected to appeal to different market segments." While it was once just a starchy staple, the food has now become a lifestyle accessory — a way of telling other people who you are.
One of Hamilton’s big themes is that "consumption no longer occurs in order to meet human needs; its purpose is now to manufacture identity" (p 95). Some critics think this claim is exaggerated. In an article for Overland, socialist writer Tom O’Lincoln scoffed: "as if people buy potatoes only to look cool" — a response Hamilton dismisses as hopelessly naive:
Unattuned to its subtle methods, O’Lincoln seems oblivious to the subversive effects of marketing. It is true that, not so many years ago, a potato was just a potato. But consider the semiotics of the potato today. Despite its ordinariness, consumers now demand much more than a mere vegetable. The varieties, shapes and colours are carefully selected to appeal to different market segments. Blemishes have been bred or selected out. Potatoes are promoted by supermarkets as part of the ‘fresh food’ that discerning and health-conscious consumers will want to buy. Vegetable sections have special lighting to highlight the ‘natural’ colour and palatability of potatoes. For many, the type of potatoes they buy is an expression of their lifestyle and the way they see themselves. So we can go to an organic vegetable shop and select from around fifteen varieties of potato knowing that whichever we choose we will be treating our bodies as temples. The marketing of the vegetable has been designed to elevate it above that of the modest tuber O’Lincoln still sees. Buying potatoes will not make you cool, but it can make you a lot of other things. And potatoes are the most mundane of fresh foodstuffs. If we turn our minds to the fruit and vegetables surrounding the potato, the semiotics become even more complex.
Paul Krugman points to a discussion on the prospects of the kind of financial meltdown (pdf) we’ve just had at Jackson Hole in which, most of the economists were in fawning agreement with Saint Alan Greenspan. As Krugman says “Larry Summers, Im sorry to say, comes off particularly badly.”
In another episode at Harvard, Larry Summers, musings on the inadequacies of women were both stupid and arrogant. I have nothing against the kind of issues he raised being raised, but it turned out (at least from the little reading I did at the time he did his thing) that his comments were in addition to being highly inflammatory, pretty half baked. Anyway he paid dearly for his faux pas and left his post.
Anyway, Krugman’s comment reminded me to tell Troppodillians that I was listening to this interview with Summers (mp3) and was simply amazed by one cute little feature of his speaking style. On several occasions the interviewer tries to interrupt him to inject some new question into the conversation or steer him away from some topic when she’s had enough. Now journalists interrupting can be rude and annoying. But this one isn’t particularly bad. And interrupting is a very normal and legitimate way of signalling various things in ‘real time’ between two people in a discussion. Providing it’s not too constant it is not particularly rude and it’s efficient and helpful in steering the communication. Further, in an interview the conversation has elements of a ‘performance’ where there are time limits to get through the material that the interviewer seeks to, so additional licence should be given. Of course if the interruptions are repeated, stupid, rude or whatever, the interviewee has every right to complain and ask to be allowed to finish his answer.
Anyway in the face of probably about four or five such interruptions from a reasonably competent and pleasant interviewer, Summers just kept talking, simply refusing to respond to a word she said until his majesty had got off his chest whatever it was that was on it. Comes of an an aggressive, arrogant prat. Pity. It will make him much worse at his new job than he’d otherwise be.
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