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Index: Noted elsewhere

· Following the media on a ‘walk of shame’.

Sunday, 22 May 2011

In France parading suspects in public is banned. In Britain, once a defendant is charged, until a trial is concluded only court proceedings may be reported. The aim is to avoid prejudicing jurors. Justice in these countries tends to be a sober affair, insulated as far as possible from external tumult. In America it is more theatrical, with lawyers fighting their case over the airwaves and cameras filming battles in the courtroom.

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, The press | | Comments (0)

· In Zimbabwe, bishops duel in the cathedral. Plus, the government is a cargo cult.

Friday, 20 May 2011

The ruling party hardliners who coordinated the latest crackdowns, like Air Marshal Perence Shiri (“The Butcher of Matabeleland”), are also guilty of carrying out Mugabe’s massacres against minority amaNdebele people in the 1980s. They rightly fear prosecution as war criminals.

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, Politics & Culture | | Comments (0)

· The Classics, please, straight up and hold the art.

Thursday, 19 May 2011

“The time appears to have gone by,” reported an Oxford classicist in 1861, “when men of great original gifts could find satisfaction in reproducing the thoughts and words of others, and the work, if done at all, must now be done by writers of inferior pretension.”

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, Poetry & Fiction | | Comments (0)

· Breaking the regional accreditation monopolies.

Tuesday, 17 May 2011

These disparate elements are beginning to form an entire ecosystem for teaching and crediting human knowledge and skill, one that exists entirely outside the traditional colleges and universities that use their present monopoly on the credentialing franchise to extract increasingly large sums of money from students.

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, Psychology, Philosophy & Education | | Comments (0)

· Claude Shannon, reading the messages hot off the wire.

Friday, 13 May 2011

All messages, he demonstrated, could be broken down into bits, or binary digits. His theory explained how much information each character in a message conveyed and showed how to make the characters easier to send or to interpret.

Also filed in Books & Publishing, Chronicle & Notices, Science, Medicine & Technology | | Comments (0)

· Francis Fukuyama, who rode collapse to the top, now has a view of American decline.

Thursday, 12 May 2011

Fukuyama missed some things, of course. He did not see that capitalism would be a considerably more robust component of the post-cold war world than either liberalism or democracy. He was optimistic that US power could accelerate some of the positive trends he described, a view he repented a year into the Iraq war. One now reads in his writing signs of his own country in decline.

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, Politics & Culture | | Comments (0)

· Greece and its pleasant-tasting poison pill.

Tuesday, 10 May 2011

Greece was diagnosed as critically insolvent a year ago. It was placed in the eurozone’s intensive care ward, treated with an infusion of €110bn and put on a crash diet to thin its bloated state sector. But 12 months on, the patient is getting sicker.

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, Economics and Finance | | Comments (0)

· Academics could have it worse. They could be journalists.

Tuesday, 10 May 2011

Nicholas Lemann, the distinguished dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, pointed out that in the realm he left to join the academy — the world of metropolitan news media — many newsrooms have lost half their staffs in the last few years. When universities reached that point, he would admit that they faced a real crisis.

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, Psychology, Philosophy & Education | | Comments (0)

· Portugal: Living high on the hog in a Ponzi paradise.

Monday, 9 May 2011

Portugal is borrowing money with which to pay off creditors. Not to worry, once it gets past this troublesome liquidity crisis, it will be able to borrow in international markets to repay the loans it is receiving from the IMF and its European partners, loans being used to repay other loans, with money it borrows from private-sector investors. If you don’t get it, you get it.

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, Economics and Finance | | Comments (0)

· How Anthony Horowitz survived Jeffrey Archer.

Saturday, 7 May 2011

He’s already admitted that writing was his second choice of career after politics and it occurs to me that he views it in some ways as a business. “What a vulgar suggestion!” he exclaims and there is a sort of a smile on his lips that balances the anger in his eyes, but actually it’s a close-run thing

Also filed in Books & Publishing, Chronicle & Notices | | Comments (0)

· What’s at the end of the night stair, pray tell?

Friday, 6 May 2011

Human beings work with what they have and the extraordinary thing about successive civilisations is that they are working to the same ends, often in poetic ways and increasingly in scientific ways, but do we think that our current ways are the final definition of four and a half billion years of struggle?

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, Theology | | Comments (0)

· In Libya, the US military asks itself some questions.

Thursday, 5 May 2011

A hesitant president, a skeptical SecDef and a cautious Air Force chief of staff made a curious trio of warmongers in the days leading up to the United Nations Security Council resolution that authorized “all necessary measures” to protect civilians in Libya, paving the way for a coalition force to start airstrikes March 19.

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, Politics & Culture | | Comments (0)

· Britain’s AV vote: bending the rules to give first place to the second-best.

Tuesday, 3 May 2011

AV would be proportional in name only: it tends to hurt the Tories badly when they are down and to help Labour when it is up, and it always boosts the Liberal Democrats, Britain’s third party.

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, Politics & Culture | | Comments (0)

· In the Congo, classical music with a catastrophic backdrop.

Sunday, 1 May 2011

Before coming across the Kimbaungist Symphony Orchestra in 2008, Bleasdale had spent nearly a decade documenting the rapes, murders and dislocation that have gone on virtually unchecked across Congo’s countryside. His work from Congo has been published in many newspapers and magazines, as well as two books.

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, Film, Television, Video & Theatre | | Comments (0)

· If there were an election, crown would trounce president.

Saturday, 30 April 2011

Five years ago 19 per cent wanted neither Charles nor William to become king: they wanted the monarchy scrapped. That number has declined by one third.

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, Politics & Culture | | Comments (0)
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