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Memex 1.1 John Naughton's online diary Search Main menu Skip to primary content Skip to secondary content Home Essays, reviews and longer pieces Lectures, talks & interviews About me Post navigation ← Older posts Thursday 29 April, 2021 Posted on April 29, 2021 by jjn1 Light and shade and all that rot Quote of the Day ”The real villain of the 1970s oil crisis is the Harvard Business School. Almost every Arab sheik now in charge of his country’s oil policy was trained at Harvard.” Art Buchwald Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news Bob Dylan | Like A Rolling Stone | Live at Newport, 1965 Link Long Read of the Day NYT Obituary of Dan Kaminsky I mentioned Dan’s tragic early death the other day. This New York Times obit goes a long way to explaining why he is such a loss. Includes some lovely stories about him. This is worth your time, even if you’re not geeky, because it throws a light on the fragility of our networked world, and the need for integrity in those who understand it. In the court of King Boris, only one thing is certain: this will all end badly Lovely column by Rafael Behr. Instead of a cabinet, Britain has courtiers. In place of a prime minister, there is a potentate. The traditional structures still exist, but as tributes to an obsolescent way of governing. There are still secretaries of state. But their place in the formal, constitutional hierarchy has little bearing on real power, which swirls in an unstable vortex of advisers and officials vying for proximity to Boris Johnson’s throne. The product of this arrangement is the acrid stew of scandal leaking out of Downing Street – a mixture of financial irregularities, reckless statecraft and vendetta, some of it involving the prime minister’s fiancee, just to complete the impression of Byzantine intrigue. And there there’s Johnson’s character. The prime minister approaches truth the way a toddler handles broccoli. He understands the idea that it contains some goodness, but it will touch his lips only if a higher authority compels it there. Everyone who has worked with him in journalism and politics describes a pattern of selfishness and unreliability. He craves affection and demands loyalty, but lacks the qualities that would cultivate proper friendship. The public bonhomie hides a private streak of brooding paranoia. Being incapable of faithfulness, he presumes others are just as ready to betray him, which they duly do, provoked by his duplicity. Johnson is driven by a restless sense of his own entitlement to be at the apex of power and a conviction, supported by evidence gathered on his journey to the top, that rules are a trap to catch weaker men and honour is a plastic trophy that losers award themselves in consolation for unfulfilled ambition. Having such a personality at the heart of government makes a nonsense of unwritten protocol. Much of British politics proceeds by the observance of invisible rails guarding against the tyrannical caprices that formal constitutions explicitly prohibit. There is an accrued cultural expectation of democratic propriety, a self-policing code of conduct summarised by historian Peter Hennessy as the “good chap” theory of government. Footnote: Fintan O’Toole had a nice column (behind a paywall) in the Irish Times about Johnson’s ‘character’. This is how it begins: It’s not when Boris Johnson is lying that you have to worry. If he’s lying, that just means he’s still breathing. No, the real danger is the gibbering. It’s what he does when he can’t be bothered to think up a lie. Spot on. And many thanks to the generous reader who alerted me to that gem. This blog is also available as a daily email. If you think this might suit you better, why not subscribe ? One email a day, Monday through Friday, delivered to your inbox at 7am UK time. It’s free, and there’s a one-click unsubscribe if you decide that your inbox is full enough already! Posted in Online version Wednesday 28 April, 2021 Posted on April 28, 2021 by jjn1 Upcoming Quote of the Day ”If I read ‘upcoming’ in the Wall Street Journal again, I shall be downcoming and somebody will be outgoing.” Bernard Kilgore, Managing Editor of The Wall Street Journal from 1941 to 1965 and head of the Dow Jones company. ( BTW: Many thanks to the many readers who answered my question about who advised improving one’s writing by striking out every fine passage. It was Samuel Johnson. Kevin Cryan was first out of the traps, shortly after the email hit his inbox. “Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.” Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. Vol 2 It is so nice to have erudite readers. Felicity Allen reported that “at art school we were told that Picasso had said if you’ve painted a good bit, get rid of it.” Sheila Hayman suggested Elmore Leonard’s dictum as an alternative: ”My advice to writers: try to leave out all the parts readers skip.” Come to think of it, that might also be advice for bloggers. But then I would have to consult the ‘analytics’ to find out, and that would be cheating, not to mention unethical.) Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news Grateful Dead | Truckin’ Link Well, I’m a Deadhead. Long Read of the Day The Woman Who Shattered the Myth of the Free Market Nice essay by Zachary Carter on Joan Robinson, the under-estimated heroine of Keynesian economics, whose work on the routine imperfection of markets is finally coming back into view. What’s Behind the Apple-Facebook Feud? From this week on, if you’re an iPhone user and you’ve updated to the latest version of iOS then you’ll find that companies and advertisers must ask your explicit permission — in the form of yes-or-no messages that pop up on the screen — to track you from one app to another. Many companies that make apps — for example Facebook — believe (correctly) that large numbers of people (including this blogger) will say no. And that means that businesses which rely on showing people online ads will have less data to customise those ads based on what tracking you tells them about your activity and interests. What’s not to like? Facebook, in particular, is predictably enraged by this move by Apple, for the very good reason that it will have an deleterious impact on FB’s revenues. (Personally, I doubt that it will be that big, but you never know. And nor does Facebook at the moment.) Accordingly, Zuckerberg and his satraps have been waging a fierce publicity campaign against Apple. The complaints have focussed on two themes. The first is that Apple is abusing its monopolistic hold on the iPhone. The second is the claim that the new iPhone regime will have a terrible impact on small and medium-sized companies which allegedly rely on the precise targeting that Facebook provides for them. Cue violins. This is pure pass-the-sickbag stuff. To see Facebook shedding crocodile tears over the plight of small businesses stretches satire to its limits. And it reminds this blogger of good ol’ Sam Johnson’s observation that “the loudest yelps for liberty are heard from the drivers of slaves”. (He didn’t say ‘slaves’, but you get the gist.) If you’re interested in the details of this farce, then the New York Times has useful explanations , as does Vox . Think before you Link(In) Helen Warrell, writing (behind a paywall) in the FT on April 19 reported that MI5 caused a “frisson of social media excitement” (whatever that is) with its debut on Instagram, evidently hoping to attract recruits from ‘influencers’. This coincided with a warning from the spooks aimed at civil servants using LinkedIn. It seems that China has been using it to lure targets to meetings in person where they “may be subjected to bribery or blackmail” in order to obtain intelligence. Tut, tut. Not to be outdone, the excellent Chris Nuttall reports that Jeremy Fleming, the director of GCHQ, has been warning about the UK facing a “moment of reckoning” in the race to protect its...