The Brunch Table

An article on digital library projects in the latest New Yorker has a helpful explanation of the orphan works problem:

A conservative reckoning of the number of books ever published is thirty-two million; Google believes that there could be as many as a hundred million. It is estimated that between five and ten per cent of known books are currently in print, and twenty per cent—those produced between the beginning of print, in the fifteenth century, and 1923—are out of copyright. The rest, perhaps seventy-five per cent of all books ever printed, are “orphans,” possibly still covered by copyright protections but out of print and pretty much out of mind.

Finding a legal resolution to the orphan issue is even more urgent in new media, where there are only decades, rather than centuries, to intervene before a work decays past any hope of restoration. An experimental program to grant individual licenses for the use of orphan works was launched last year in Canada, and may provide an example of how this can be made a standard feature of copyright law worldwide.

Nobody around these parts could tell me why the U.S. and Canada share the same country code. I mean, today, the actual phone systems certainly aren’t integrated–foreign companies are locked out of Canada, while there are no such restrictions in the U.S.; long-distance and cellphone billing work pretty differently too. So why do we both have that +1? Because of these guys:

The one on the left is Alexander Graham Bell, and on the right is his dad Melville. The Bell family emigrated from Scotland to Canada, and Melville stayed behind when A.G. moved to the U.S. When AT&T was founded, Melville ran its Canadian branch, Bell Canada, which remained part of AT&T until its antitrust breakup in 1956.

The New York Times put out a list of the 30 all-time richest Americans, with capsule biographies and inflation-adjusted fortune stats. Their cute Flash presentation was giving me a headache, though, so I copied out the info by hand:

1. John Rockefeller – $192 billion – oil
2. Cornelius Vanderbilt – $143 billion – steamboats -> railroads
3. John Astor – $116 billion – fur -> real estate
4. Stephen Girard – $83 billion – smuggling -> banking
5. Bill Gates – $82 billion – software
6. Andrew Carnegie – $74 billion – steel
7. A. T. Stewart – $70 billion – retail
8. Frederick Weyerhauser – $68 billion – lumber
9. Jay Gould – $67 billion – stocks
10. Stephen van Rensselaer – $64 billion – real estate
11. Marshall Field – $61 billion – retail -> real estate
12. Henry Ford – $54 billion – cars
13. Sam Walton – $53 billion – retail -> outsourcing
14. Andrew Mellon – $48 billion – banking -> aluminum, oil
15. Richard Mellon – $48 billion – banking -> aluminum, oil
16. Warren Buffett – $46 billion – stocks
17. James Fair – $45 billion – mining -> real estate
18. William Weightman – $44 billion – pharmaceuticals
19. Moses Taylor – $44 billion – banking
20. Russell Sage – $43 billion – organized crime -> stocks
21. John Blair – $43 billion – mining -> railroads
22. Edward Harriman – $39 billion – stocks -> railroads
23. Henry Rogers – $39 billion – oil
24. J. P. Morgan – $38 billion – banking -> politics
25. Oliver Payne – $37 billion – oil
26. Henry Frick – $36 billion – steel
27. George Pullman – $34 billion – traincars
28. Collis Huntington – $33 billion – retail -> railroads
29. Peter Widener – $32 billion – railroads
30. James Flood – $31 billion – mining

By the way, Huntington, WV is named for Collis Huntington. And Oliver Hazard Payne easily takes the prize for best name.

I think this interview with military historian Chalmers Johnson is exceptional. He basically argues that, at the end of World War II, the U.S. and the Soviet Union were left in superior but “unstable” positions relative to the traditional imperial powers of Europe and Asia. We both then proceeded to squander this temporary advantage through a series of unwise foreign and domestic policy decisions that, collectively, produced the resource-sapping Cold War:

“It’s not at all clear that we’ve won the Cold War. Probably, we and the U.S.S.R. lost it, but they lost it first and harder because they were always poorer than we were.”

This inspired me to go looking for other stuff on Johnson, which led me to a second, equally good article of his. Here, he elaborates on the same idea, arguing that we face a stark choice similar to that of the postwar British Empire. Heavily damaged by the Nazi invasion, Britain no longer had the resources to maintain military control over its colonies. It could either impose tyranny at home and extract the missing wealth from its own citizens–or it could voluntarily give up the empire, accept a reduction in its global influence, and use the dividends of peace to rebuild itself.

He quotes Hannah Arendt:

“On the whole [the British Empire] was a failure because of the dichotomy between the nation-state’s legal principles and the methods needed to oppress other people permanently. This failure was neither necessary nor due to ignorance or incompetence. British imperialists knew very well that ‘administrative massacres’ could keep India in bondage, but they also knew that public opinion at home would not stand for such measures. Imperialism could have been a success if the nation-state had been willing to pay the price, to commit suicide and transform itself into a tyranny. It is one of the glories of Europe, and especially of Great Britain, that she preferred to liquidate the empire.”

Here’s a wonderful clip from the BBC’s Mongrel Nation, a series of educational shorts in which Eddie Izzard illustrates an episode from British history by placing himself in some kind of embarassing public situation.

In this one, he explores the common ancestry of Germanic languages by first learning some phrases in Old English and then visiting the Netherlands to try them out on a Frisian Dutch person.

(direct link)

As we were walking home from brunch today, Justina noted that Bernal Heights was turning green again (now that the rainy season is starting). I wondered aloud whether there had been more trees on the hill in the past. Justina said, “If you look at 1946 in Google Earth, it looks like there were even less trees back then.” “Does Google Earth have pictures from 1900 for that area?”, I asked. Then I realized what I was saying.

My random curiosity of the day, caused by this weekend’s showing of Raiders of the Lost Ark in the park: were there ever actually any cool mechanical traps in ancient tombs? Seems I’m not the only one who’s ever wondered that. As usual, The Straight Dope is also on the case. In short, no mechanical traps have ever been discovered, unless you count the water trap in the Money Pit of Oak Island. It’s too bad—I’m sure that the Long Now guys would be all over that.

An online discussion on the topic of David Mitchell’s prodigious Cloud Atlas led me to this post about post-hurricane Florida, in which we get a preview of what southern states might be like in future energy shortage conditions:

An underground economy quickly developed with ice as the pinnacular commodity. “People are fighting over ice!” she yelled into the phone. “I mean fist fights — right in the parking lots!”

“What are they doing with the ice?” I asked.

“It’s hot!” she cried.

“But the power’s out, so it will just melt in a few hours — right? Seems like ice would be a luxury item compared to food and just regular old water.”

“You don’t understand: WE NEED THAT ICE!” She cried. “Some of Germaine’s friends brought us ice from Naples in the back of their car” — such a trans-state delivery, I should point out, requires a three hour drive — “and when they got to our parking lot, people were clamoring to buy the ice from them before they got it up the stairs. This morning, David went to the store and there were police guarding the ice. They have to keep the hordes away. They’re scalping it in some places — for twenty bucks a pound!”

The extent to which order was deteriorating was surprising:

“Yeah — there was a truck coming down to Palm Beach with those army meals and some water, and it was hijacked. Taken before it got here.” Thus had Frances created modern-day brigandry right in the middle of suburban Florida.

Still, the post ends on a positive note, with the sort of heartwarming tale of neighborly generosity that we heard so much after the recent New York outage.

It’s been linked elsewhere for other purposes, but I find this this 1978 New Yorker profile on Johnny Carson fascinating for reasons besides the subject material. The article is only as old as I am, but it sounds so…old.

It’s not just the odd unfamiliar word (I had to google minatory, “foreshadowing evil,” and causerie, “idle conversation”).

It’s not the somewhat short-sighted cultural commentary:

“This drives yet another nail into the coffin lid, already well hammered down, of Marshall McLuhan’s theory that TV has transformed the world into a global village. (Radio is, as it has long been, the only medium that gives us immediate access to what the rest of the planet is doing and thinking, simply because every country of any size operates a foreign-language service.)”

It’s not even the pre-New-World-Order reference to how baseball fandom “annexed Japan.”

Now that I think about it, it’s really just that the author uses the word “digital” to mean “relating to the fingers.” It took me about thirty full seconds to parse that sentence. You try:

” I note the digital mannerisms (befitting one who began his career as a conjurer) that he uses to hold our attention during his patter. “

See?

This remarkable article from the Boston Globe points out an often-overlooked feature of the Electoral College. Sure, it’s commonly observed that the process weights elections in favor of small states, by adding two points to everybody’s population-based share. And it’s also commonly defended by that rationale, the same one we use in determining the makeup of the Senate.

But–I’ve never heard this before–there’s a much more sinister aspect to the creaky old thing. Electoral points (calling them “votes” is a bit anachronistic) are awarded based on the total number of potential voters, not the number of votes actually cast. This means, in practice, that the system is in fact weighted not as much in favor of small states, but in favor of populous states with large non-voting populations. In other words–the former Confederacy.

I’ve been thinking a lot about citizenship lately…you’ll notice that Bush, and Reaganists in general, don’t like to say that word too much. “Consumer” tends to be the word they choose instead. A while back, I read Philip Dray’s history of the Ku Klux Klan, At the Hands of Persons Unknown, and it had a lot of interesting asides about the persistent factions in American politics that have always opposed the concept of citizenship–taking the philosophical position that the rights of a citizen of the republic undermined the landlord’s power over those who lived on his property. (The Confederacy is the most famous of the anti-citizen movements, but the beliefs certainly aren’t confined to the South; the Bushes are thoroughbred New Englanders.) He keeps coming back to those opposing poles of citizen vs. landlord as the fundamental unresolved issue in American society…and, following from that, he says that “white” and “black” (or, more technically, “non-white”) are not ethnic categories, but the political states of “non-citizen” and “citizen” that correspond to ethnic categories (Bantu, German, Mexican, English, etc.).

So, in this vein, I found a little writeup the other day on Roman citizenship, which I’ll now share with y’all:

–……………………………………………………–

ROMAN COLONIZATION from www.ualberta.ca/~csmackay/CLASS_378/Citizenship.html

1. Conquered people designated as “free” (they could keep their own government) or “tributary” (government installed by Rome).

2. New tributary government turned into a “municipality.” Old local rulers were often granted Roman citizenship and given positions of authority, but under a Roman magistrate.

3. Once sufficiently urbanized, the municipality would be turned into a “colony.” Colonies had more autonomy–they could once again run their own governments–but they were required to let Roman citizens settle there (land grants were often offered as a reward to distinguished Roman soldiers). Colonies were also expected to adopt Roman culture and language.

4. Roman citizenship was bestowed by government grant. Military service was the most common way for colonial subjects to become citizens. Citizenship could be inherited and conferred by marriage; colonial soldiers would return home after their tour of duty with a Roman name and a certificate of citizenship, marry, and make more Romans. Near the end of the Empire, after generations of soldiers had created large citizen populations in the colonies, the Roman government found the rights and protections guaranteed to citizens a serious inconvenience to their rule. So they solved the problem by declaring every subject of the Empire a citizen–and abolishing the rights that came with citizenship.

So last night we went to celebrate somebody’s birthday at an Italian restaurant. They’ve got a special room that you can reserve for a party, informally known as “the Pope Room.” It’s a round room, with a round table that seats about twenty people. The walls are decorated with pictures of Popes throughout history, and the food is placed on a big lazy-susan in the middle. And in the center of that lazy-susan is a big Pope head. It turns as the lazy-susan turns–it’s really quite an impressive sight.

I wanted to know which Pope it was we were dining with–it was hard to divine his opinion of us all from the poker-faced stare. I asked a couple waiters, but none of ‘em knew. I dimly recalled that there was a “Nazi Pope”, and I hoped it wasn’t him.

So I bided my time, googled, and found out that it wasn’t the Nazi Pope (that was Pius XII–and, strictly speaking, he was an Italian Fascist, not a Nazi). Our Pope-Room Pope was John XXIII. He started the Vatican II council in 1962, which officially acquitted Jews everywhere of the crime of deicide. He didn’t live to see the end of it, but when it was finally wrapped up in 1965, his successor, Paul VI, made history by taking off his crown–symbolically relinquishing his claim to be the temporal emperor of the world. No Pope has worn a crown since. So, a good guy, John XXIII, a pleasant dinner companion.

Then I read on a bit, and found out about the Sedevacantists (from the Latin for “Vacant Seat”)–former Catholics who reject Vatican II and the authority of all Popes after Pius XII. They’ve been accused of being antisemites and Nazi sympathizers, ideologically allied with Evangelical Protestantism. (That’s just one article I read–any Sedevacantists reading this, please correct me.)

And the kicker? Mel Gibson is one of these guys. (Here in Valencia, you can’t even get a ticket for his Passion–it’s been sold out for days.)

(from an New York Times interview with Mel’s dad, Hutton Gibson): On our first night together, he nursed a mug of sassafras tea while leading a four-hour tutorial on so-called sedevacantism, which holds that all the popes going back to John XXIII in the 1950’s have been illegitimate — ”anti-popes,” he called them. As Hutton explained it, the conservative cardinal Giuseppe Siri was probably passed over for pope in 1958 in favor of a more reform-minded candidate. Hutton said Cardinal Siri was duly elected, but was forced to step aside by conspirators inside and outside the church. These shadowy enemies might have threatened ”to atom-bomb the Vatican City,” he said. In another conversation, he told me that the Second Vatican Council was ”a Masonic plot backed by the Jews.”

P.S. Before the comments on this entry came in, I thought that this restaurant was independently owned–one of the only ones in Valencia, besides the 24-hour Saugus Diner (where James Dean allegedly had his last meal). It’s not. Finding out that our pre-fab exurb doesn’t even have a unique Pope Room is somehow more depressing than a morality play from the Dark Ages becoming America’s top-grossing movie of the week….

I just finished reading Not Out of Africa…you will notice that a hardcover copy sells for one shiny dollar on at half.com. Which is more than it’s worth (and I didn’t pay for my copy)…it’s a tame early-nineties forerunner of today’s spunky, chatty right-wing opinion book…on the back, it promises to be a ruthless critical ass-whooping of the Afrocentric history movement.

What this works out to, though, is the author spends most of her time saying nasty things about Egypt. Egypt! After a couple of chapters of this, you suddenly get this vaguely Biblical feeling. I mean, hating Egypt, really passionately not liking it, feels so…how do I put this…B.C. It sounds like it’s a Hittite talking or something.

The author’s main point, which she repeats quite a bit, is that Greece conquered Egypt back in the day, so ancient Egyptian culture must therefore not be any good. And that made me think…Rome conquered Greece, and ended up with Greek culture. So why shouldn’t Greece have conquered Egypt, and ended up with some Egyptian culture? And then the Greeks also conquered the Judeans, so maybe they ended up with some Judean culture too. (The Greek alphabet comes from the Judean, or Hebrew…aleph/alpha, bet/beta, gimel/gamma, dalet/delta…and the Hebrew comes from the Egyptian alphabet, the world’s first.)

But then–I’m totally stepping away from alphabets here–isn’t it odd that the historical Jesus came out of Judea, and the mythological Jesus came out of Egypt (the story of the god Horus is too close a match…virgin birth, murder, resurrection, triumph over evil, establish the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, althought not in that order). Both of Egypt and Judea were conquered by Greece, and Greece is where Christianity as we know it was born (it’s where the earliest complete Christian bibles come from).

I think that’s pretty interesting…and it would’ve never occurred to me if I hadn’t read part of this petty, borderline-racist little book.