Conan O’Brien came to address the Philosophical Society at Trinity College, Dublin. The first ten minutes or so are unmissable IMHO. Thanks to Lorcan Dempsey for the (tweeted) link.

Lovely review in the New Yorker of by James Wood of Tom Wolfe’s new book.

Tom Wolfe writes Big and Tall Prose—big subjects, big people, and yards of flapping exaggeration. No one of average size emerges from his shop; in fact, no real human variety can be found in his fiction, because everyone has the same enormous excitability. So his new novel, “Back to Blood” (Little, Brown), is supposedly about Miami. But it is about Miami not as, say, “Dead Souls” is about Russia or “Seize the Day” is about New York but more as heavy metal is about noise: not a description of the property but a condition of its excess. If it is about Miami, then “The Bonfire of the Vanities” and “A Man in Full” were also about Miami, not about New York and Atlanta, respectively. The content and the style haven’t changed much since “The Bonfire of the Vanities” was published, in 1987: select your city; presume it to be a site of simmering racial and ethnic civil war, always a headline away from a riot; throw a sensational news story into the fire; and watch the various interest groups immolate themselves.

Woods really nails the excesses of Wolfe’s style. For example:

The real writer, it is understood, must leave the enervating study and the filtered formalisms of postmodern prose, go out and hit the sidewalks (where the exclamation marks cluster in giant, swaying crowds!), and register the teeming ideological and racial realities.

Worth reading in full.

From Paul Krugman’s blog.

Hmm. A late thought about the discussion on This Week. I suggested that it was the job of the news media to check on and report falsehoods from politicians. The response of the other panelists was that the media can’t do that if the opposing candidates didn’t make an issue of it — which as far as I can tell makes no sense at all.

But even granted that, the fact is that the Obama campaign is making an issue of Romney’s falsehoods, or at least trying to. Yet this is apparently considered unworthy of attention, because Obama didn’t make a forceful attack right there on the spot.

So let’s see if I have this straight: it’s not the job of the press to take on political falsehoods unless the other side makes a forceful case in 30 seconds or less. Glad to see that this has been clarified.

Hmmm x 2. I saw the discussion in question and was appalled by the attitude of the other participants. What underpins it is the fatal flaw in American journalism — the ‘balance as bias’ syndrome. Krugman made the point many years ago in a talk to students at Harvard, as this report recounts:

Krugman was a riot on Big Media’s docility. “If Bush said the earth is flat, of course Fox News would say ‘yes, the earth is flat, and anyone who says different is unpatriotic.’ And mainstream media would have stories with the headline: ‘Shape of Earth: Views Differ.’…and would at most report that some Democrats say that it’s round.” There’s “something deeply dysfunctional,” he observed, with established media facing “something we’ve not seen before, an epidemic of lying about policy.”

Jim Al-Khalili has an interesting piece in today’s Guardian arguing that the Nobel prizes need a shakeup.

Of course one can argue that scientific progress has been taking place for hundreds of years and it is just that we are so much better now at reporting it. This is true. But one thing has changed: research disciplines previously unconnected are now starting to overlap and merge, with physicists, chemists, biologists, engineers, medics, computer scientists and mathematicians pooling their expertise to attack common problems. One such exciting field that is coming of age is quantum biology – where quantum physicists like me work alongside molecular biologists to attempt to explain a number of baffling phenomena in living cells.

He’s right. The rise of data-intensive science means that the original idea behind the Nobel prizes is beginning to look inadequate.

From John Gurdon’s school report when he was 15 years old:

“I believe Gurdon has ideas about becoming a scientist; on his present showing this is quite ridiculous; if he can’t learn simple biological facts he would have no chance of doing the work of a specialist, and it would be a sheer waste of time, both on his part and of those who would have to teach him.”

Today, it was announced that Gurdon is to share this year’s Nobel Prize for Medicine with a Japanese researcher, Shinya Yamanaka, for their work on stem cells.

Very interesting analysis of the Digger’s recent moves by Anatole Kaletsky.

Outside shareholders of News Corp have long dreamt of the company ridding itself of scarcely profitable newspaper businesses to become a pure TV and movie business. This move was considered impossible under Murdoch, because of his sentimental attachment to print. But that was almost certainly a misunderstanding. Murdoch did not build the world’s greatest media empire through sentimentality. The reason why he loved papers, even when they suffered big losses, was because they gave him political power. For News Corp shareholders, in turn, Murdoch’s power brought business benefits.

Murdoch’s political influence allowed News Corp to overcome regulatory and political obstacles that defeated other media companies. The obvious case was News Corp’s recent attempt to take full control of BSkyB, the British satellite broadcaster, but there were many other cases. In fact, Murdoch’s ability to overcome obstacles – whether erected by politicians, regulators, unions or business rivals – that thwarted other moguls has been the key to his success.

Kaletsky argues that even when the newspapers lost money, they were still useful.

Throughout Murdoch’s career, his bold personality and vision have been usefully supplemented by the political influence derived from newspaper ownership. This ingredient in the Murdoch formula has now been transformed.

Once the phone-hacking scandal sabotaged the BSkyB bid, the business calculation behind newspaper ownership completely reversed. The papers were suddenly transformed from an asset into an albatross – and the arguments for keeping a print business within News Corp vanished. In July, Murdoch duly conceded this, announcing that all his publishing businesses would be split off into a separate company.

Smart piece. It’ll be interesting to see who lines up to buy the Times.