Yet another hastily drawn picture, which I’m only putting up because I think it is cute.

Nice public archive of Congressional Research Reports at OpenCRS

In The Sunday Times a short article on private schools in Africa.

Private schools for the poor have emerged in huge numbers in some of the most impoverished slums and villages in Africa. They cater for a majority of poor children and outperform government schools, for a fraction of the cost.

It is not surprising that a market for private schools has developed even for the poorest in Africa - what is worrying about the article is the way that they are being crowded out by inferior free education.

Jeff Jarvis points out an LBJ speech from 1967 which enthusiastically details the possiblities of a “great network for knowledge”.

The transcript in the Public Papers of the Presidents seems a bit confused - the structure doesn’t read very well, so I suspect that it is not a perfect transcript (James Killian is spelt “Killjan” in one part), but it is still worth browsing:

So I think we must consider new ways to build a great network for knowledge-not just a broadcast system, but one that employs every means of sending and of storing information that the individual can rise.
Think of the lives that this would change:
–the student in a small college could tap the resources of a great university….

Yes, the student in a small college tapping the resources of the greatest university in the hemisphere.
–the country doctor getting help from a distant laboratory or a teaching hospital;
–a scholar in Atlanta might draw instantly on a library in New York;
–a famous teacher could reach with ideas and inspirations into some far-off classroom, so that no child need be neglected. Eventually, I think this electronic knowledge bank could be as valuable as the Federal Reserve Bank.

I like the comparison between the internet and the Fed as an indespensible institution. Also notice LBJ’s emphasis on the internet as public good (clearly informed by his public good view of public broadcasting).

Great article from City Journal last year: The Myth of the Working Poor. Steven Malanga looks at the current crop of working poor genre and notes that the authors sometimes radically misinterpret their own research to paint a pessimistic picture of the United States.

The Barbara Ehrenreich book he reviews, Nickel and Dimed, is a showcase for some of the more distasteful attributes of these far-left “social critiques”. In a nice reversal of communists-under-the-bed-syndrome, Ehrenreich’s book demonstrates what happens when you look for exploitation everywhere:

Told to scrub floors on her hands and knees by the maid service, she cites a “housecleaning expert” who says that this technique is ineffective. Ehrenreich then theorizes that the real reason that the service wants its employees down on their hands and knees is that “this primal posture of submission” and “anal accessibility” seem to “gratify the consumers of maid services.”

She is shocked that Wal-Mart workers don’t rise up in unionised action, and a further author is similarily shocked when Mexican illegal immigrants are enraged at the wages and conditions they (voluntarily) travel to find in the United States. Ehrenreich can get particularily unpleasant - spending time mocking the visitors to Walmart for being obese, just like visitors to the zoo point and laugh at the fattest monkey.

This is what passes for popular social criticism on the left nowadays. Yet somehow the volume and popularity of these vacuous tomes is supposed to prove that the political left is somehow more literate and intelligent than the political right. If you don’t believe me - I recommend a glance through the (very commercially succesful) Margo Kingston’s Not Happy John, a criminally poorly written 400 pages of mixed metaphors and lamentable political satire (Part 4 is titled “Their Au$tralia”).

I’m not going to get started on “happiness research”.

Popular left-leaning social criticism is of a very low standard. (There are exceptions, of course) The absence of popular right-leaning social criticism is sometimes frustrating, but what would we prefer? Nothing, or tripe?

The latest IPA Review has come out today.

I have two pieces in it. One, “Myths of the Corporate Media”, looks at the facts behind criticisms that the corporate media lacks diversity, is low quality and is steadily and irreversably getting more monopolised and conglomerated. It is the companion piece to (again) Andrew McIntyre’s “The Culture Wars, yes… but who’s culure?” which is a defense of popular culture against elite, usually government funded, culture.

The other piece is the Freakonomics book review I mentioned a few weeks ago.

Anyway its a good issue - if I don’t say so myself.

My piece from the March edition of the IPA Review - Wake Up, They’re Misleading You: The Media’s Climate Change Propaganda, which I wrote with Andrew McIntyre - is available in PDF online now.

While there are a lot of words in the article, I think the most powerful part is the simple photograph of The Age’s “10 Reasons to Start Worrying Now”. I quote myself:

Instead of blindly obeying the directive to START WORRYING NOW, it is worth doing some research about whether Fyfe’s summary of the science is accurate. What emerges is a picture of cherry-picked facts which misrepresents the situation as scientists best know it, all in the name of environmental advocacy.

Yes, it sounds a bit shrill, but it is born out by the facts.

One of the major points in the Phillip Adams interview was the capacity of the internet to create extraordinarily specific niches and communities based around truly common interests.

On that note, via BoingBoing is the now essential BrickJournal, a quarterly, independent journal of the Lego community. And its available for free in PDF, doubling its value.