The one periodical I try to read every week is The Economist. Although I often disagree with its editorial line, it’s very well written, has terrific journalists and a very wide range of interests. It is also the best-subbed periodical I know — which is why it was so strange to come on a lexicographical error on page 84 of the issue of November 12th. (The first time I’ve detected one in years of reading.) Here’s the relevant extract from the online edition:

Trade associations representing publishers and authors are suing Google, claiming that the very act of scanning books without permission is an illegal reproduction. The case promises to keep the lawyers busy. Google seems to have begun back-pedalling, noting that the books it is currently scanning are ones that are out of copyright. It is even working on a model of pay-per-view charging, according to one publishing executive.

Nothing wrong there, you say, and you are right. But in the print edition “back-pedalling” is “back-peddling”. Only a small thing, I know, but we pedants notice these things. And even Homer nodded occasionally.

A learned article by Benjamin Barton in the Michigan Law Journal. Who says lawyers have no sense of humour? (One of my favourite legal scholars hails from Michigan btw; but that’s probably a coincidence.) Anyway, here’s the Abstract:

This Essay examines what the Harry Potter series (and particularly the most recent book, The Half-Blood Prince) tells us about government and bureaucracy. There are two short answers. The first is that Rowling presents a government (The Ministry of Magic) that is 100% bureaucracy. There is no discernable executive or legislative branch, and no elections. There is a modified judicial function, but it appears to be completely dominated by the bureaucracy, and certainly does not serve as an independent check on governmental excess.

Second, government is controlled by and for the benefit of the self-interested bureaucrat. The most cold-blooded public choice theorist could not present a bleaker portrait of a government captured by special interests and motivated solely by a desire to increase bureaucratic power and influence.

Consider this partial list of government activities: a) torturing children for lying; b) utilizing a prison designed and staffed specifically to suck all life and hope out of the inmates; c) placing citizens in that prison without a hearing; d) allows the death penalty without a trial; e) allowing the powerful, rich or famous to control policy and practice; f) selective prosecution (the powerful go unpunished and the unpopular face trumped-up charges); g) conducting criminal trials without independent defense counsel; h) using truth serum to force confessions; i) maintaining constant surveillance over all citizens; j) allowing no elections whatsoever and no democratic lawmaking process; k) controlling the press.

Yep. The entire shooting match on eight DVDs.

4,109 issues. Half a million pages. And only $70. I want it. Now. Transatlantic shipping is $65 though. Hmmm… who do I know in the US who’s contemplating a trip?

… is a wonderful thing. New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik has it in spades. I’ve just read two beautiful pieces by him in the same week. First his lovely preface to the new edition of Molly Hughes’s Victorian memoir, A London Child of the 1870s, and then a startlingly good New Yorker essay on C.S. Lewis.

… has died, at a great age. Somewhat anodyne obit in the Guardian. I expect the WSJ did him proud.

Later… They did. My friend Andrew, who subscribes to the WSJ, sent me links to four pieces — all about to disappear behind the Paywall, alas. But this one (from Fortune.com) is public.

Normal Lebrecht ponders what happens when you can have everything on your bookshelf (or on your hard drive):

The complete works of Ingmar Bergman and Francois Truffaut are about to go on sale and no self-respecting cineaste will walk by without feeling a tug at the purse strings. To have and to hold every film that guided your artistic and emotional maturation, through adolescence and beyond, is something many will find irresistible. Kurosawa, Hitchcock, Tarkovsky and the Ealing comedies are equally on offer. What was formerly part of a romanticised past, glimpsed infrequently on late-night TV, has become urgently present (perhaps the perfect present). The eternally elusive turns up in plastic boxes.

What this means, in cultural terms, is that film now takes its place beside literature, music and visual imagery as an art that can be owned and bookmarked. Where once you had to visit a cinema or spool through half a mile of clunky videotape in order to access a seminal scene in an essential movie, you now zone into it on DVD as quickly as finding a name in the index of an artist biography.