John Battelle’s at Davos, but has mixed feelings…

Is that nearly every session I attended where I got that unmistakable “Shit I have to post on this” feeling was, unfortunately, off the record. Last night Larry and Sergey sat down with Charlie Rose for an intimate chat at a private event. Off the record. Before that I spoke to a room full of Media Governors – the folks who run just about every major media company in the world. Off the record. Before that, a gathering of influential editors and journalists from all over the globe. Again, off the record….

Just another instance of the nauseating smugness that afflicts journalists who are allowed in to the Swiss gabfest.

Thanks to Bill Thompson for the link. The headline, btw, is Battelle’s. I think he means “The trouble with Davos…”.

Later: Just remembered that I’ve been to Davos once — not to the gabfest but in the summer (June 1978, when I was walking in the Alps). I thought it a pretty nondescript place (see webcam image) compared with some of the other towns and villages in the locality. I bought a pen-knife (Swiss Army, naturally) and a walking stick in a nice little shop. I still have both.

Still later… How come, then, that the ‘off the record’ session with Larry and Sergey was fully reported in today’s Guardian?

I was generously treated to lunch today in Roast, a celebrated trough in Southwark. When I arrived at our table I was handed a leaflet which read:

ORGANIC ORKNEY HEATHER FED LAMB

As part of our commitment to using the best produce that Britain has to offer, we are promoting the use of rare breeds and organic produce.

Today we have a Shetland breed lamb from the Orkney islands. The lamb was born in April on the Brown’s farm near Holm, overlooking Scapa Flow. They (sic) were killed last Thursday. They fed naturally, at their own pace on heather and grass.

Today we will roast the lamb and it will be served with Ramsey of Carluke award winning Haggis and Clapshot.

Having pondered this for a time, I decided to have beef. It’s always best, I find, to eat animals to whom one hasn’t been, as it were, introduced. I noted that neither of my companions chose lamb either.

Aside: If, like me, you were wondering what clapshot is, Google reveals that it’s a traditional Orkney recipe of potatoes and swede which is usually served with haggis.

This is nice — a page maintained by the ACM which lists the code needed to print “Hello World” (the classic first output of the neophyte programmer) in 193 programming languages. I particularly like how Java does it:

class HelloWorld {
public static void main (String args[]) {
for (;;) {
System.out.print(“Hello World “);
}
}
}

Don’t you just love “public static void main”? Reminds one of George W. Bush.

Perl is fairly terse:

print “Hello, World!\n” while (1);

but not as elegant as Python:

print “Hello world!”

Thanks to Scott Rosenberg, who set me Googling for this, and whose lovely book I am currently devouring.

More… James Miller kindly points out that good ol’ BASIC is just as elegant:

PRINT “Hello world!”

Anthony Lane didn’t like it. Poor chap. I enjoyed it greatly, and laughed a lot during it. Lane’s review is good in parts, though. For example:

We begin with Miss Potter pitching Peter Rabbit to publishers, one of whom remarks, out of her hearing, “That book won’t sell ten copies.” (This is known as the ironical-historical mode, inviting the audience to smirk at the blindness of the past.) Nevertheless, the company, Frederick Warne, agrees to publish, if only to give Norman Warne (Ewan McGregor), the baby of the family, something to do with his time. Why, one must ask, did McGregor take this part? I can only imagine that he received the script one morning, after a late night, saw the words “Beatrix Potter,” assumed that he was being offered the role of his namesake, Mr. McGregor, fancied himself in a long white beard running past cabbages with a rake, mouthing Scotch oaths at departing vermin, called his agent to accept, and went back to bed. Not until later did he realize that he would be required to utter the line, “We shall give them a bunny book to conjure with.”

Only one man on earth can speak those words with a straight face, and that is Hugh Hefner. Needless to say, McGregor takes emergency precautions, appearing throughout in a mustache the size of a yew hedge, and thus defying us to work out whether his face is straight or not…

Terrific London Review of Books piece by Perry Anderson…

Putin’s authority derives, in the first place, from the contrast with the ruler who made him. From a Western standpoint, Yeltsin’s regime was by no means a failure. By ramming through a more sweeping privatisation of industry than any carried out in Eastern Europe, and maintaining a façade of competitive elections, it laid the foundations of a Russian capitalism for the new century. However sodden or buffoonish Yeltsin’s personal conduct, these were solid achievements that secured him unstinting support from the United States, where Clinton, stewing in indignities of his own, was the appropriate leader for mentoring him. As Strobe Talbott characteristically put it, ‘Clinton and Yeltsin bonded. Big time.’ In the eyes of most Russians, on the other hand, Yeltsin’s administration set loose a wave of corruption and criminality; stumbled chaotically from one political crisis to another; presided over an unprecedented decline in living standards and collapse of life expectancy; humiliated the country by obeisance to foreign powers; destroyed the currency and ended in bankruptcy. By 1998, according to official statistics, GDP had fallen over a decade by some 45 per cent; the mortality rate had increased by 50 per cent; government revenues had nearly halved; the crime rate had doubled. It is no surprise that as this misrule drew to a close, Yeltsin’s support among the population was in single figures.

Against this background, any new administration would have been hard put not to do better. Putin, however, had the good luck to arrive in power just as oil prices took off. With export earnings from the energy sector suddenly soaring, economic recovery was rapid and continuous. Since 1999, GDP has grown by 6-7 per cent a year. The budget is now in surplus, with a stabilisation fund of some $80 billion set aside for any downturn in oil prices, and the rouble is convertible. Capitalisation of the stock market stands at 80 per cent of GDP. Foreign debt has been paid down. Reserves top $250 billion. In short, the country has been the largest single beneficiary of the world commodities boom of the early 21st century. For ordinary Russians, this has brought a tangible improvement in living standards. Though average real wages remain very low, less than $400 dollars a month, they have doubled under Putin (personal incomes are nearly two times higher because remuneration is often paid in non-wage form, to avoid some taxes). That increase is the most important basis of his support. To relative prosperity, Putin has added stability. Cabinet convulsions, confrontations with the legislature, lapses into presidential stupor, are things of the past. Administration may not be that much more efficient, but order – at least north of the Caucasus – has been restored. Last but not least, the country is no longer ‘under external management’, as the pointed local phrase puts it. The days when the IMF dictated budgets, and the Foreign Ministry acted as little more than an American consulate, are over. Gone are the campaign managers for re-election of the president, jetting in from California. Freed from foreign debt and diplomatic supervision, Russia is an independent state once again…

The Reformation was sparked by Martin Luther’s revolt against the corrupt sale of ‘indulgences’ by the Catholic church. (An indulgence was the remission by the pope of the punishment in purgatory that was due for sins even after absolution.) The basic idea was that affluent sinners could purchase remission from the church’s salesforce. (See illustration, which shows the business in action.) It was a great racket because, of course, the punters would never know whether the goods were valid or not.

Spool forward a few centuries and we have a new form of indulgence — carbon offsets. Basically, these allow affluent air-travellers to ease their consciences by making contributions to companies which claim to run projects for offsetting carbon dioxide emissions (like planting trees in tropical countries). Since the beneficial effect — if any (there is some controversy about that) — will materialise long after the offsetter has passed away, the offset business looks like a hustler’s dream. Now the Blair government is so concerned about the matter (possibly because Blair recently discovered the political necessity of offsetting his family’s holiday flights) that it proposes to establish a ‘Gold Standard’ for offset schemes.

Just think: if medieval popes had come up with the same wheeze they would have shot Luther’s fox and the Reformation might have fizzled out.

Later: This nonsense may be contagious. It’s being reported that one of Dave Cameron’s policy groups is talking about tradeable fat permits as a way of combatting obesity.