normblog

Democracy not as bad as all that

In this article Samuel Brittan urges us to pay attention to the first part of Winston Churchill's well-known judgement about democracy - namely, 'that [it] is a very bad system, but all the others are worse'. This being his purpose, he ought not to overstate the problems with democracy, such as they are. But he does.

For example, he starts by pointing out that democratic decision procedures can produce paradoxical results. Yes, they can. In an electorate consisting of you, me and Grace Poole, if I prefer cricket to football and football to golf, you prefer football to golf and golf to cricket, and Grace Poole prefers golf to cricket and cricket to football, then if we vote between football and golf, so as to eliminate one, golf will lose; and if we then vote between cricket and football, football will lose - so leaving cricket the winner. But if we had voted first between cricket and golf, cricket would have been eliminated in the first round.

Brittan says, misleadingly, that there's no way round the paradox, citing the authority of Kenneth Arrow. But what Arrow showed - all he showed - is that, on reasonable assumptions about the characteristics that you want a democratic decision procedure to have, there is no decision procedure which won't sometimes produce paradoxical results - given some particular distribution of preferences across an electorate. In the matter of cricket, football and golf, there are many preference rankings you, me and Grace Poole could have that would produce quite logical and uncomplicated results.

It doesn't help if you exaggerate the problem.

Later in the same piece, Brittan says 'democracy is not itself a sufficient protection for human freedom'. Indeed not. But this is only news to someone who starts by thinking that democracy is the sole political value.

Farcical finale

It wasn't only the end of the final game that was a farce. A tournament that takes nearly 50 days to get two finalists up against one another, but can't be so arranged as to ensure that they get a full complement of 50 overs each per innings when they meet - now, that's a farce.

In preparation for an event that may possibly happen

Sign beneath a bell in a public lavatory at a tourist site in Florence:

Sonare solo in caso di necessità.

Underneath it, this English translation:

Please ring just in case of emergency.

Which isn't quite the same thing, is it? Though 'just' can often be substituted for 'only', the substitution doesn't work for 'only in case'.

A man or just a fool?

Dorothy Rowe sets out the difference between a masculine way of thinking and a feminine way of thinking. It's standard stuff - as follows:

What I call a masculine way of thinking is not confined to men and does not apply to all men. It is a way of perceiving the world in terms of the essentials and stripping away the decorative and the dross... The feminine way of thinking, which again does not apply to all women, is made up of myriad observations, thoughts and feelings, with constant interruptions and changes in what is being attended to, often with details to the fore and the wider picture ignored.

Then she says this:

Many men who think in a masculine way make one major error. This is that, when engaged in interpreting a situation in which people are involved, they disregard how these people interpret their situation. Men who make this mistake fail to understand that what determines our behaviour isn't what happens to us but how we each interpret what happens to us, and that no two people ever see anything exactly the same way.

Not understanding that the interpretation of what happens to them affects people's behaviour would be, for example, not knowing that it'll make a difference whether someone treats a minor slight as of no importance at all or, instead, makes it the basis of a long-term grudge - whether they treat it as merely thoughtless or as intentional, etc. Such a lack of understanding, I'd say, isn't so much a masculine way of thinking as it is the way of thinking of a fool.

The normblog profile 188: Dina Rabinovitch

Dina Rabinovitch was born in 1962 in Charleston, South Carolina, where she learned to stand up on the beach, before being moved to Toronto at the age of nine-and-a-half months. She has never been back to Charleston but works as a journalist in London. Her first book is called Take Off Your Party Dress. Dina blogs at Take Off Your Running Shoes.

Why do you blog? > £30,000 for cancer research in three months - blogging has proved an effective way to raise money.

What has been your best blogging experience? > Watching reader numbers swell. It's a high.

What has been your worst blogging experience? > When reader numbers drop - instant despair.

What would be your main blogging advice to a novice blogger? > Do it daily, or disintegrate.

What are your favourite blogs? > I only read normblog. (Sorry, but it's true.)

Who are your intellectual heroes? > Uh, Norm?

What are you reading at the moment? > The Lay of the Land by Richard Ford; Kafka was the Rage by Anatole Broyard; Scars of War, Wounds of Peace, the Israeli-Arab Tragedy by Shlomo Ben-Ami; Hello and Time Out magazines.

Who are your cultural heroes? > Raymond Chandler.

What is the best novel you've ever read? > Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.

What is your favourite movie? > Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch).

What is your favourite song? > 'Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered' as sung by Sinead O'Connor.

Can you name a major moral, political or intellectual issue on which you've ever changed your mind? > I no longer think special needs children do better in mainstream schools.

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat? > That there's no smoke without fire; as a journalist I know that to be false.

What is your favourite piece of political wisdom? > A line from Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing about never trusting anybody in politics: 'I don't care if he did your bris...'

If you could effect one major policy change in the governing of your country, what would it be? > Sorry I'm having two. One, I would abolish differing custody arrangements after divorce, so that all children have exactly the same arrangements (alternate weekends and one weekday night with their fathers). Two, I would pay nurses and teachers the salaries lawyers, footballers, etc get.

Do you think the world (human civilization) has already passed its best point, or is that yet to come? > Still to come.

What would be your most important piece of advice about life? > Live today.

Do you think you could ever be married to, or in a long-term relationship with, someone with radically different political views from your own? > No problem.

What do you consider the most important personal quality? > Honesty.

What personal fault do you most dislike? > Snoring and hypocrisy, not necessarily in that order.

Do you have any prejudices you're willing to acknowledge? > Bloggers who use pseudonyms; I understand it, but I just don't like it.

What commonly enjoyed activities do you regard as a waste of time? > Watching 24.

What, if anything, do you worry about? > Dying.

Where would you most like to live (other than where you do)? > By the sea.

What would your ideal holiday be? > Beach house, emptyish beach.

What do you like doing in your spare time? > Watching The West Wing.

What is your most treasured possession? > My engagement ring - diamonds in an antique setting.

What talent would you most like to have? > So many: turn cartwheels, play the cello, write dialogue like Aaron Sorkin.

If you could have one (more or less realistic) wish come true, what would you wish for? > I want my health back.

How, if at all, would you change your life were you suddenly to win or inherit an enormously large sum of money? > Buy a house by the sea.

If you could have any three guests, past or present, to dinner who would they be? > Cole Porter, Fred Astaire, Hillary Clinton.

[The normblog profile is a weekly Friday morning feature. A list of all the profiles to date, and the links to them, can be found here.]

A richer life

Here's a new concept, new to me at any rate:

I don't know whether the book is optimistic, but it's pretty obvious that the two characters are in love. What is in doubt is: so what? What do you do when that happens? It's like that French film, L'Appartement, the original, where, at the end, once the two characters have decided they're in love, they both walk their separate ways. They know that now, so what else is there?

What else? Maybe quite a lot. On the other hand... You arrive at the concert hall for a performance by one of the world's greatest. You know s/he is. What else is there? You turn around and go home. You're about to meet up with one of your best and oldest friends, whose company you cherish. Naah. Sack it. You're approaching the ocean at one of its most magnificent beaches. A mile from your destination, you stop the car. You're about to open the latest book of one of your favourite writers. You chuck it in the bin instead. What a rich life you could have.

Thursday to Friday

I'm otherwise occupied during the next nine days. Blogging at normblog will be intermittent - though not altogether out of the question.

Nobody expects him

South Africa seem to be struggling a bit in the semi-final of the cricket World Cup - as in 36 for 5 (now 47 for 5). Whoever is doing the updates here has a neat view of Glenn McGrath:

McGrath continues with his horribly probing line - it's the cricket equivalent of being interviewed by the Spanish Inquisition. With fewer pliers and roasting pokers, obviously.

Rewarding the habit

Smokers should be allowed to attend clinics in working hours to help them kick the habit, according to public health guidelines issued yesterday.

Hmmm... I wonder if this has been thought through fully. It could be repackaged as 'New incentives to smoke'.

581 c

That's the planet without without the Goldilocks problem ('too hot, too cold or just plain too big and gaseous').