I drink, therefore I can12th May 2009
I can personally attest to the effects of alcohol that Philip Hunter (May) describes. I have written scores, maybe hundreds, of technical reports and proposals, as well as book reviews for my website, while sitting in my favourite pubs. I do my best work there. I have found that creative augmentation begins after I finish my first pint and ends as I finish my third. For this reason, I nurse the third for an hour. Whether this is a genetic issue or not, I believe it is a proper subject for scientific investigation. (Written while sober).
Fred Tims
Via the Prospect blog
A dressing down30th April 2009
In her review of my book, The Thoughtful Dresser (May), Antonia Quirke makes the following errors of fact:
1. I did not turn a blog into a book. The book was in fact commissioned several months earlier.
2. I was not shortlisted for the Booker twice, but once.
3. I did not decide to start a blog after a meeting with a designer.
4. Catherine Hill was not a survivor of Belsen, but of Auschwitz.
5. Her shop was in Toronto not Vancouver.
6. On the day of 9/11 I did not "log on" to see what people were wearing to be murdered in. Seven years later I did some research into how fashion in America had been affected.
7. I did not buy a bag at a Vogue sample sale that was ruined in the rain.
8. I did not expand my blog into a book.
9. I did not post a photograph of a hotel I stayed at in Fowey on my website. I didn't stay in a hotel.
I am grateful to the editors for modifying the website edition. Meanwhile readers may wish to form their own judgments about Antonia Quirke's critical skills.
Linda Grant
London N8
Doom-laden Caldwell12th May 2009
I agree with much of Christopher Caldwell's argument (May) about immigration into Europe. But something about it does not ring true. There is a doom-laden tone that jars, especially when he claims that Europe is terminally sick and will be replaced by a culture that is more vigorous namely Islam. Yet there are many signs of this not being the case—strengthening European resistance to American plans for Turkey to join the EU, for example.
Barry Larking
Via the Prospect blog
Email tax 15th May 2009
Edward Gottesman's plan to tax email (May) fails to take into account how spam works. The vast majority is fraudulent not just in the services it advertises, but also in the technical mechanisms used to send it. Gottesman suggests using the sender's email address to identify who should pay for sending the message, but in most spam this address is either invalid or belongs to an innocent third party.
The real fix for spam is to go after the criminals that send it. Sadly, when Britain's high-tech crime unit was swallowed up by the new serious and organised crime agency in 2006, it seems that our police lost interest in tackling spam.
Tony Finch
Postmaster, University of Cambridge Computing Service
Email tax 24th May 2009
Gottesman's article proposing a tax on email (May) indicates not only an ignorance of how email works, but also a profound misunderstanding of the internet.
The internet is a hydra, of which the protocol that defines email is an entirely replaceable head. Just as when the first music download sites like Napster were shut down and people started getting their music from "torrent" sites (and now the free and legal Spotify), if email were to become expensive, free alternatives would spring up within a week. In fact, Facebook's message service is already halfway towards being a viable replacement.
An email tax would be a wasted effort. Spammers would avoid the tax, and consumers would avoid email.
Patrick Gleeson
London SW1
Why we need music12th May 2009
In his review of Denis Dutton's "The Art Instinct," Nigel Warburton (April) does not appear to address a key question: what evolutionary advantage did music provide the emerging human species? Indeed he focuses on painting as though painting was the only art form discussed by Dutton.
To those who practise music the answer to this question seems self-evident. Music is a remarkable aid to memory. Ask any group of people how many poems they remember and then ask them how many songs. The only words many of us can speak in a foreign language are lines in songs—such as the words to Frère Jacques. Opera singers can remember whole librettos, often without even knowing the language they have been written in. Trying to achieve this without singing would be an impossible task.
Music as an aide memoire is hugely valuable to our species, which is uniquely able to use speech to pass on information to other members of the group, or even from generation to generation. Other species have to depend on information carried within their genetic code, or what they can learn "on the job."
We are now so used to the idea that libraries store our social and cultural knowledge that we think of music as a charming and entertaining "gift" with no real survival value. But for many millennia, extended songs, in which words were set to music, were a critical tool of human survival and adaptation. (And of course for many pre-literate tribes they still are.) Only when books became cheap and readily accessible did music change from being a powerful adjunct to the priesthood into a form of entertainment—and an artistic artifact—in its own right.
These thoughts may be no more than speculations–but they would not be difficult to test. We need only to find some pre-literate tribe which does not embody its knowledge in song to refute the whole notion. The discovery of someone who could learn a operatic libretto more easily as poetry than as music would also debunk the hypothesis. Neither experimental outcome seem likely.
Owen McShane
Kaiwaka, New Zealand
Damaging inequality17th May 2009
I was disappointed at the generally dismissive tone of Julian Le Grand's review of The Spirit Level (May). The article fails to acknowledge the groundbreaking nature of the book's research, which goes a long way to explain why, despite impressive increases in Britain's economic wealth, social problems have either not improved or in many cases have got worse.
Le Grand attempts to dismiss the evidence by arguing that it may rest on cultural differences between Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian societies. But Wilkinson and Pickett's book draws from a much wider set of international comparisons than this implies.
Le Grand also attempts to reduce their broad-based argument on income inequality to one associated with "diminishing returns" arising from investment in health. He concludes that "some of the book's results may be the result of what is close to a statistical artefact." This seriously distorts the main thrust of Wilkinson and Pickett's argument, and ignores their comparisons with countries like Japan, which are not known for their redistributive policies but have maintained much lower disparities in income levels. (For instance, Japanese employers have been known to accept cuts in their pay levels to minimise job losses—an approach that might commend itself in our current situation).
And Wilkinson and Pickett do not argue that income inequality is the sole cause of social problems in Britain or elsewhere. Instead, they suggest that the relatively high levels of inequality in societies like Britain and America can explain their poor performance in addressing social problems. Le Grand's disparaging reference to "evidence drawn from a variety of places, including studies of primates in the wild," misrepresents the body of well-researched evidence on this topic, much of it drawn from "domesticated primates." I would refer him to longitudinal studies dating from 1967 of British civil servants cited in the book, which has, among other things, demonstrated adverse health outcomes and mortality inversely associated with the grade system—once all other factors have been screened out.
Anyone concerned about reducing the relatively high levels of social distress in societies like ours, which as a former adviser to the Blair government I presume includes Le Grand, should take Wilkinson and Pickett's book seriously. Ignoring increasing income inequality while trying to address social problems is an inherently self-defeating approach—as the current government has found to its cost.
David Noyce
Bristol
A convenient Conservative8th May 2009
In his fascinating account of Thatcherism (May) David Willetts refers back to the Conservative revival of the late 1940s and early 1950s. He does not, however, mention the role of Walter Monckton, who had not previously considered himself a Conservative but whom Churchill put in charge of the ministry of labour in 1951. Monckton, apparently, saw the ministry as the working man's voice in government. My source for Monckton's vision was an unhappy member of the department of employment's press office by the name of Bernard Ingham, who went on to serve Mrs Thatcher so faithfully as her press secretary. As a reporter for New Society magazine during the early 1970s, I was privileged to lunch with him regularly and—for me at least—profitably.
John Gretton
Lafage, France
I can personally attest to the effects of alcohol that Philip Hunter (May) describes. I have written scores, maybe hundreds, of technical reports and proposals, as well as book reviews for my website, while sitting in my favourite pubs. I do my best work there. I have found that creative augmentation begins after I finish my first pint and ends as I finish my third. For this reason, I nurse the third for an hour. Whether this is a genetic issue or not, I believe it is a proper subject for scientific investigation. (Written while sober).
Fred Tims
Via the Prospect blog
A dressing down30th April 2009
In her review of my book, The Thoughtful Dresser (May), Antonia Quirke makes the following errors of fact:
1. I did not turn a blog into a book. The book was in fact commissioned several months earlier.
2. I was not shortlisted for the Booker twice, but once.
3. I did not decide to start a blog after a meeting with a designer.
4. Catherine Hill was not a survivor of Belsen, but of Auschwitz.
5. Her shop was in Toronto not Vancouver.
6. On the day of 9/11 I did not "log on" to see what people were wearing to be murdered in. Seven years later I did some research into how fashion in America had been affected.
7. I did not buy a bag at a Vogue sample sale that was ruined in the rain.
8. I did not expand my blog into a book.
9. I did not post a photograph of a hotel I stayed at in Fowey on my website. I didn't stay in a hotel.
I am grateful to the editors for modifying the website edition. Meanwhile readers may wish to form their own judgments about Antonia Quirke's critical skills.
Linda Grant
London N8
Doom-laden Caldwell12th May 2009
I agree with much of Christopher Caldwell's argument (May) about immigration into Europe. But something about it does not ring true. There is a doom-laden tone that jars, especially when he claims that Europe is terminally sick and will be replaced by a culture that is more vigorous namely Islam. Yet there are many signs of this not being the case—strengthening European resistance to American plans for Turkey to join the EU, for example.
Barry Larking
Via the Prospect blog
Email tax 15th May 2009
Edward Gottesman's plan to tax email (May) fails to take into account how spam works. The vast majority is fraudulent not just in the services it advertises, but also in the technical mechanisms used to send it. Gottesman suggests using the sender's email address to identify who should pay for sending the message, but in most spam this address is either invalid or belongs to an innocent third party.
The real fix for spam is to go after the criminals that send it. Sadly, when Britain's high-tech crime unit was swallowed up by the new serious and organised crime agency in 2006, it seems that our police lost interest in tackling spam.
Tony Finch
Postmaster, University of Cambridge Computing Service
Email tax 24th May 2009
Gottesman's article proposing a tax on email (May) indicates not only an ignorance of how email works, but also a profound misunderstanding of the internet.
The internet is a hydra, of which the protocol that defines email is an entirely replaceable head. Just as when the first music download sites like Napster were shut down and people started getting their music from "torrent" sites (and now the free and legal Spotify), if email were to become expensive, free alternatives would spring up within a week. In fact, Facebook's message service is already halfway towards being a viable replacement.
An email tax would be a wasted effort. Spammers would avoid the tax, and consumers would avoid email.
Patrick Gleeson
London SW1
Why we need music12th May 2009
In his review of Denis Dutton's "The Art Instinct," Nigel Warburton (April) does not appear to address a key question: what evolutionary advantage did music provide the emerging human species? Indeed he focuses on painting as though painting was the only art form discussed by Dutton.
To those who practise music the answer to this question seems self-evident. Music is a remarkable aid to memory. Ask any group of people how many poems they remember and then ask them how many songs. The only words many of us can speak in a foreign language are lines in songs—such as the words to Frère Jacques. Opera singers can remember whole librettos, often without even knowing the language they have been written in. Trying to achieve this without singing would be an impossible task.
Music as an aide memoire is hugely valuable to our species, which is uniquely able to use speech to pass on information to other members of the group, or even from generation to generation. Other species have to depend on information carried within their genetic code, or what they can learn "on the job."
We are now so used to the idea that libraries store our social and cultural knowledge that we think of music as a charming and entertaining "gift" with no real survival value. But for many millennia, extended songs, in which words were set to music, were a critical tool of human survival and adaptation. (And of course for many pre-literate tribes they still are.) Only when books became cheap and readily accessible did music change from being a powerful adjunct to the priesthood into a form of entertainment—and an artistic artifact—in its own right.
These thoughts may be no more than speculations–but they would not be difficult to test. We need only to find some pre-literate tribe which does not embody its knowledge in song to refute the whole notion. The discovery of someone who could learn a operatic libretto more easily as poetry than as music would also debunk the hypothesis. Neither experimental outcome seem likely.
Owen McShane
Kaiwaka, New Zealand
Damaging inequality17th May 2009
I was disappointed at the generally dismissive tone of Julian Le Grand's review of The Spirit Level (May). The article fails to acknowledge the groundbreaking nature of the book's research, which goes a long way to explain why, despite impressive increases in Britain's economic wealth, social problems have either not improved or in many cases have got worse.
Le Grand attempts to dismiss the evidence by arguing that it may rest on cultural differences between Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian societies. But Wilkinson and Pickett's book draws from a much wider set of international comparisons than this implies.
Le Grand also attempts to reduce their broad-based argument on income inequality to one associated with "diminishing returns" arising from investment in health. He concludes that "some of the book's results may be the result of what is close to a statistical artefact." This seriously distorts the main thrust of Wilkinson and Pickett's argument, and ignores their comparisons with countries like Japan, which are not known for their redistributive policies but have maintained much lower disparities in income levels. (For instance, Japanese employers have been known to accept cuts in their pay levels to minimise job losses—an approach that might commend itself in our current situation).
And Wilkinson and Pickett do not argue that income inequality is the sole cause of social problems in Britain or elsewhere. Instead, they suggest that the relatively high levels of inequality in societies like Britain and America can explain their poor performance in addressing social problems. Le Grand's disparaging reference to "evidence drawn from a variety of places, including studies of primates in the wild," misrepresents the body of well-researched evidence on this topic, much of it drawn from "domesticated primates." I would refer him to longitudinal studies dating from 1967 of British civil servants cited in the book, which has, among other things, demonstrated adverse health outcomes and mortality inversely associated with the grade system—once all other factors have been screened out.
Anyone concerned about reducing the relatively high levels of social distress in societies like ours, which as a former adviser to the Blair government I presume includes Le Grand, should take Wilkinson and Pickett's book seriously. Ignoring increasing income inequality while trying to address social problems is an inherently self-defeating approach—as the current government has found to its cost.
David Noyce
Bristol
A convenient Conservative8th May 2009
In his fascinating account of Thatcherism (May) David Willetts refers back to the Conservative revival of the late 1940s and early 1950s. He does not, however, mention the role of Walter Monckton, who had not previously considered himself a Conservative but whom Churchill put in charge of the ministry of labour in 1951. Monckton, apparently, saw the ministry as the working man's voice in government. My source for Monckton's vision was an unhappy member of the department of employment's press office by the name of Bernard Ingham, who went on to serve Mrs Thatcher so faithfully as her press secretary. As a reporter for New Society magazine during the early 1970s, I was privileged to lunch with him regularly and—for me at least—profitably.
John Gretton
Lafage, France
