Immanuel Kant died 200 years ago today

The anniversary is marked by a rash of new biographies. According to the Guardian they show the great man in an unexpected light. “He has been famously portrayed as a bore, a man whose habits were so regular that housewives could set their watches by his legendary afternoon walk.

But according to three new biographies, the celebrated German philosopher … was not such a dry stick after all. Far from being a dour Prussian ascetic, the great metaphysician was a partygoer. He enjoyed drinking wine, playing billiards and wearing fine, colourful clothes.

He had a sense of humour, and there were women in his life, although he never married. On occasion, Kant drank so much red wine he was unable to find his way home, the books claim.”

Hmmm… I’m a bit disappointed by these revelations. I’ve always thought old Immanuel was impressively serious, as befits a proper philosopher. Just look at that portrait above. One of my favourite quotes is his observation that “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” Not sure I like the idea of K as a raver and a billiards fiend. Another illusion bites the dust. Sigh.

The ‘Intelligence’ paradox

In the Second World War, the phrase ‘Military Intelligence’ was famously ridiculed as an oxymoron. But we have our own contemporary paradox in this area. On the one hand, it’s clear that the ‘intelligence’ which was used to justify attacking Iraq was deeply inadequate or just plain wrong. Yet the same agencies which produced it are still producing the ‘intelligence’ which is leading the Western democracies — led by the US — to demolish civil liberties and lay the foundations for Orwellian states.

Microsoft admits ‘critical’ flaw. Well, well…

According to BBC Online, “Microsoft has warned that a “critical” flaw in the latest versions of its Windows operating system could allow hackers to access a person’s computer.

In its monthly security bulletin, the world’s largest software maker said Windows versions NT, 2000, XP and Server 2003 were affected.

Giving the problem its highest security rating of “critical”, Microsoft has called on users to download a software repairing patch free from its website.

This is said to cure the problem.” Ho, ho!

Now guess what? My colleague Dave Phillips tells me that this particular ‘critical’ vulnerability was first reported on July 25, 2003. So hapless Microsoft customers who rely on their software supplier to keep them up to date on vulnerabilities in its products went unaware and unprotected for six months. Imagine the fuss there would be if Ford knew of a critical flaw in the Focus and took six months to issue a recall notice.

On the same day…, I find a headline saying “Microsoft to protect Disney films”. The report goes on:”Movies like Monsters Inc could soon be downloadable. Disney has joined forces with Microsoft to start selling its movies over the net later this year.

The venerable animation studio has signed up to use Microsoft software to stop its films being pirated.

The deal reflects Microsoft desire to establish a foothold in the home entertainment market….”

No wonder satirists are having such a lean time. You couldn’t make this stuff up. Since I loathe Disney, I am of course delighted. Couldn’t happen to a nastier crowd.

Useless factoid

From an email: “The longest English word that can be typed using the top row of a typewriter (allowing multiple uses of letters) is ‘typewriter.’ ” This has the makings of an interesting parlour game. [Thanks to Brian for this.]

Understanding the Dean collapse

My friend Andrew Arends (who worked for the Clinton campaign in New Hampshire in 1992) writes:

“I think that Dean captured a large chunk of the popular appeal from last summer because he was the first leader to stand up and start to trash Bush. The Washington democrats have pussy-footed around with Bush – partly because of the viciousness of the White House response to anyone whose head is above the parapet but also because of the impact of 9/11 and the Iraq war and the potential (perceived) electoral consequences of opposing a president in a time of crisis.

But in the country there is a large constituency who really hate Bush. Dean tapped into their psyche and they responded favourably. Paul Krugman is the columnist who also has captured the emotional engagement of that large group of people in a similar way.

But then two things hit Dean. First, he needed to change the direction of his message and offer a positive, Presidential, message as we turned into the year and people began focussing on the elections themselves. This he did not do. He remained shrill and angry and in your face. An interaction with an Iowa Republican heckler a few weeks before the caucuses showed him up badly. Second, and here’s the paradox, his success in offering an image of a successful democratic candidate to the electorate by sticking it to the White House, helped to change an expectation that THIS election is winnable (and also needs to be won) but that he was not the guy who could win it. Others who are more electable like Kerry and Edwards, suddenly became the choices.”

The best photographer on the Net…

…is (IMHO) Sam Javanrouh, who lives and works in Toronto and whose weblog is simply ravishing. No other word for it. Every day there is another beautiful image. And it has an RSS feed.

The Dean Bubble

That chewing sound you hear is of me eating my hat. Like many others, I completely misread the significance of Howard Dean’s Internet campaign. There’s been a lot of similarly rueful reflection around on the Net, and here and there some really thoughtful pieces — like this one from Clay Shirky.

“The easy thing to explain is why Dean lost”, writes Clay, “– the voters didn’t like him. The hard thing to explain is why we (and why Dean himself) thought he’d win, and easily at that. The bubble of belief, which collapsed so quickly and so completely, was inflated by tools that made formerly hard things easy, tricking us into thinking that getting votes had become easy as well — we were all in Deanspace for a while there.”

Then there’s this piece by David Weinberger (of Cluetrain Manifesto fame). “I think Clay overstates the role of the Internet in our self-delusion”, he writes. “One big reason I thought Dean was going to win quickly was that the polls said he had a huge lead. So, the question isn’t simply ‘Why did Deaniacs think Dean would win easily?’ but also ‘Why did the electorate favor him on clipboards but not in voting booths?’ The answers to that question are not pleasant for any Dean supporter to contemplate.

And it wasn’t just the polls that led us to believe he was a happenin’ guy. In August, crowds of unprecedented size — 5,000, 10,000 — showed up to hear Dean speak. I traveled on the press bus for one leg of the ‘Sleepless Summer’ tour and heard two well-known, hard-bitten journalists for major media outlets whispering to one another: ‘Have you ever seen anything like this?’ ‘No, and so early in the campaign!’ Those crowds weren’t an Internet phenomenon, but they had a lot to do with convincing me that Dean’s support was wider spread than it has so far turned out to be. (Sure, I was naive, but it wasn’t an Internet naivete.)

So, I find myself agreeing with Clay’s warnings about how a candidate’s Internet campaign can create an unfounded perception of electoral strength, yet also worried that readers will come away with an exaggerated view of the Internet’s role in that perception. It wasn’t just the Internet that led us into false optimism.”

Then there’s Thomas Schaller’s Salon piece on “Dean’s Dizzying Descent” which points out some serious errors made by both Dean and his erstwhile campaign manager, Joe Trippi. What’s nice about these pieces is that they are (i) written by people who were, like me, sympathetic to Dean and (ii) represent honest attempts to explain why their authors got it wrong. The best way to make progress is to learn from one’s mistakes. Wish the Blair government could do it.

Primitive urges

It was a wind-chilled sunny day — just the kind of day for lighting a fire…

… and baking scones!

.

Very nice they were, too.

Bird’s-eye view

Walking past the Natural History Museum yesterday on a glorious, sunny, brisk day, I dropped in on French aerial photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s amazing Earth from the Air exhibition. As usual, I wound up watching the humans.

.

Forgetting your own (domain) name

There but for the grace of God Department… “The Washington Post said yesterday that it had inadvertently allowed the registration for one of its Internet domain names – washpost.com – to expire. That lapse had the immediate effect of shutting down the e-mail system that reporters and other Post employees use to exchange messages with the world, something they were unable to do for much of the day.

In a message sent to newsroom employees over another computer server yesterday morning, Steve Coll, the managing editor of The Post, wrote that ‘Network Solutions, which manages Internet addresses, apparently notified The Post of the pending expiration via a drop-box that was not being monitored.’ Mr. Coll wrote that ‘all external e-mail has been disrupted and external senders are receiving delivery failure notices.’ In general, the cost of renewing an Internet domain name is under $100.

The Post said that it had been able to renew its registration for washpost.com by midmorning, before any outsider had a chance to lay claim to it. But the disruption to the newspaper’s newsgathering efforts was significant enough that Post editors were advising reporters to set up temporary e-mail accounts using Yahoo and Hotmail….” [New York Times story]