American imperialism? Or should that read ‘nationalism’?

Extraordinary piece in Prospect by Anatol Lieven. His general argument is that Jacksonian nationalism is transforming America from a conservative power to a revolutionary one — and that this spells trouble for everyone. Quote:

“A great many Americans are not only intensely nationalistic, but also bellicose in their response to any perceived attack on their country: “Don’t Tread on Me!” as the rattlesnake on the American revolutionary flag declared. Coupled with an intense national solipsism and ignorance of the outside world, this has allowed an unwise extension of the “war on terror” from its original – and legitimate – targets in al Qaeda and the Taleban to embrace the Ba’athist regime in Iraq, and possibly other regimes in the future. This nationalism has also been turned against a range of proposals that have been portrayed as hurting the US or infringing its national sovereignty, from the international criminal court to proposed restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions.

Most Americans genuinely believe all this to be a matter of self-defence – of their economy, their “way of life,” their freedoms or the nation itself. The US under George W Bush is indeed driving towards empire, but the domestic political fuel being fed into the imperial engine is that of a wounded and vengeful nationalism. After 9/11, this sentiment is entirely sincere as far as most Americans are concerned and all the more dangerous for that; there is probably no more dangerous element in the nationalist mix than a righteous sense of victimhood. This is a sentiment which has in the past helped wreck Germany, Serbia and numerous other countries, and is now in the process of gravely harming Israel…”

It’s a terrific essay, full of intriguing shafts. This, for example:

“The US is in part simply an old European state which avoided the catastrophes that nationalism brought upon Europe in the 20th century. Its nationalism thus retains an intensity which Europeans have had kicked out of them by history. 72 per cent of Americans say they are “very proud” of their nationality, compared to 49 per cent of Britons, 39 per cent of Italians and just 20 per cent of the Dutch.

But the dangers of unreflective nationalist sentiments remain all too obvious. Nationalism thrives on irrational hatreds, and the portrayal of other nations or ethno-religious groups as irredeemably wicked and hostile. Yesterday this was true of the attitudes of many American nationalists to the Soviet Union. Today it risks becoming the case with regard to the Arab and Muslim worlds, or to any country which defies American wishes. The run-up to the war in Iraq saw an astonishing explosion of chauvinism directed against France and Germany. ”

(Other) famous iPod owners

Er, what was on Ulysses S. Grant’s iPod? See here for the answer. And thanks to Dave Hill for providing it.

Gadget Wars — update

I am now the proud possessor of what my kids regard as a really ‘cool’ gadget — an iPod Mini, which arrived courtesy of my friend Hap and his lovely daughter Ellie, who personally escorted it across the Atlantic yesterday. It holds 4 GB of stuff, and slips neatly into my shirt pocket. But of course the main reason I have it is because last Sunday Quentin had the temerity to come to lunch clutching his new phone, which he then proceeded to flaunt by (a) taking a photo of me and emailing it on the spot, and (b) later, recording a nice sound clip thanking us for lunch and emailing me that also. A chap has to respond to this kind of provocation.

WiMax — long distance WiFi

The Economist has discovered 802.16 networking, aka WiMax. Quote:

“If you find it difficult to get excited by the details of a new wireless-data protocol, you are not alone. So what explains the current buzz in the telecoms and computer industries surrounding WiMax, a high-speed, long-range wireless standard? This week investors pumped $20m into Aperto Networks of Milpitas, California, one of several firms planning to launch WiMax products this year. Heavyweights such as Intel, Nokia and AT&T are lining up behind the standard. Sean Maloney, the head of Intel’s telecoms division, says it will put ‘the next 5 billion users’ on the internet. But whereas WiMax has promise, says John Yunker, an analyst at Pyramid Research, it is currently surrounded by much confusion and ‘a ton of hype’.

Indeed, all this is strongly reminiscent of the fuss over Wi-Fi, a popular technology that uses a small base-station plugged into a high-speed (broadband) connection to link laptops within 50 metres or so to the internet. Wi-Fi is undoubtedly useful — in 9% of American households, for example — but it is used mainly to provide wireless internet coverage inside homes, offices and schools. Few people seem to be prepared to pay for fee-based Wi-Fi access in ‘hotspots’ in airports and railway stations, and schemes to cover whole cities with Wi-Fi and make expensive third-generation (3G) mobile-phone networks redundant have got nowhere. But whereas Wi-Fi provides coverage within a small hotspot, WiMax, which has a maximum range of 30 miles, could provide blanket coverage. It could, as a result, prove to be a far more useful, and disruptive, technology…”

Hmmm…. I like disruptive technologies and Maloney’s ‘next 5 billion’ concept. But where exactly are these folks going to find the cash to pay for the requisite 802.16-enabled laptops, I wonder?

Catherine Cooke

The Guardian ran an appropriately generous obituary of my Open University colleague, Catherine Cooke, who was tragically killed in a road accident recently. Catherine was a remarkable person — larger than life in every sense of the term, with the grand manner and bearing of a dowager duchess and the relentlessness of a steam locomotive. I used to work with her occasionally at OU summer schools and remember thinking once that she was the nearest thing in real life to one of Bertie Wooster’s aunts. Our students really loved her — they responded to her directness and haughty indifference to the petty considerations of life. To them, she looked like a real academic, completely different from the colourless, earnest mediocrities (us) who surrounded her. Like me, she lived in Cambridge — but in her case right in the centre of the town. When I asked her once why she had chosen to live there she replied that she had chosen a house that was exactly midway between the two most important facilities in her life — the nearest university photocopier and the railway station! She was also a great scholar — in the words of Andrew Saint’s obit, her research “transformed understanding of the [Russian] constructivist movement not just in the English-speaking world but in Russia as well, and inspired the generation after perestroika with enthusiasm for its legacy”. It always seems trite to say “we shall miss her” when someone dies, but in Catherine’s case it’s the literal truth. Larger-than-life people leave bigger gaps in our lives. May she rest in peace.

Swiss Army goes digital

This is too good to be true, but I read it in The Register:

“It was bound to happen. Given that you can buy a Victorinox Swiss Army Knive with just about every gadget known to man, from horse-hoof awl to Hubble Space Telescope lens polisher, it’s no real surprise that the company – in association with flash memory outfit Swissbit – is now offering cutting tools plus USB flash memory stick. The gadget will be unleashed on an incredulous world at CeBIT next week.”

Thinks… Wonder when Quentin’s birthday is…”.

Microsoft and SCO: more

Some of my friends are sceptical about the charge that Microsoft is playing organ-grinder to SCO’s monkey. This is because they are innocent souls who like to give their fellow-men the benefit of the doubt. However, back in the real world, today’s NYT reports that:

“More evidence emerged yesterday about Microsoft’s role in encouraging the anti-Linux campaign being waged by the SCO Group, a small Utah company.

BayStar Capital, a private investment firm, said Microsoft suggested that it invest in SCO, which is engaged in a legal campaign against Linux, a rival to Microsoft’s Windows.

BayStar took Microsoft’s suggestion to heart and invested $50 million in SCO last October. But a spokesman for BayStar, Robert McGrath, said, “Microsoft didn’t put money in the transaction and Microsoft is not an investor in BayStar.” He added that Microsoft executives were not investors as individuals in the investment firm, which is based in San Francisco.

Mr. McGrath said the suggestion came from unidentified “senior Microsoft executives” but not Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairman, or Steven A. Ballmer, the chief executive.”

After the Bang

“Astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute today unveiled the deepest portrait of the visible universe ever achieved by humankind. Called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), the million-second-long exposure reveals the first galaxies to emerge from the so-called “dark ages,” the time shortly after the big bang when the first stars reheated the cold, dark universe. The new image should offer new insights into what types of objects reheated the universe long ago.

This historic new view is actually two separate images taken by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-object Spectrometer (NICMOS). Both images reveal galaxies that are too faint to be seen by ground-based telescopes, or even in Hubble’s previous faraway looks, called the Hubble Deep Fields (HDFs), taken in 1995 and 1998.” [ Source]

So where do those bootleg movies on file-sharing networks come from, exactly?

Er, mostly from people working in the movie industry. Here’s an interesting paper by two AT&T researchers which establishes that salutary fact. Quote:

“Our research attempts to determine the source of unauthorized copies by studying the availability and characteristics of recent popular movies in file sharing networks. We developed a data set of 312 popular movies and located one or more samples of 183 of these movies on file sharing networks, for a total of 285 movie samples. 77% of these samples appear to have been leaked by industry insiders. Most of our samples appeared on file sharing networks prior to their official consumer DVD release date. Indeed, of the movies that had been released on DVD as of the time of our study, only 5% first appeared after their DVD release date on a web site that indexes file sharing networks, indicating that consumer DVD copying currently represents a relatively minor factor compared with insider leaks.”

Thanks to Larry Lessig for the link.

Is the SEC looking at the Microsoft-SCO alliance?

Groklaw thinks it may be. Now that would be interesting…