From the Economist reviewing Mutti’s memoire, Freedom.

Fortunately, Mrs Merkel was assiduous about keeping a diary. Unfortunately, it listed her appointments, not her reflections.

Nice post by John Naughton (whose blog drove my interest in tech — for good and bad). (FORTRAN was my first introduction to computing.)

Tomas Kurtz, a great computer scientist and mathematician has died at the age of 96. Together with a Dartmouth colleague, John Kemeny. He created BASIC, the first human-friendly programming language, and the first general-purpose time-sharing system. He and Kemeny had an idea that was then (1963) pretty radical: “The target (in computing) was research, whereas here at Dartmouth we had the crazy idea that our undergraduate students who are not going to be technically employed later on should learn how to use the computer. Completely nutty idea.” But to make that idea work, they had to design a programming language that was much less austere and arcane than FORTRAN and ALGOL.So they created BASIC (Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code).

The Culture #66: How poets teach poetry

“Gentlemen… are we next to invite an elephant to be professor of zoology?” The question of the Harvard linguist Roman Jakobson, blown like a poison dart at a proposal to appoint Vladimir Nabokov as a professor of literature, is one of the great put-downs of modern academia. But though Jakobson won the battle, he lost the war. In the last half-century, herds of novelists and poets have been welcomed into literature departments, as creative writing began its worldwide rise to academic respectability.

Of course, many would now suggest we invite the expert students into the common room too.

Claud Cockburn, the original guerrilla journalist – New Statesman

Journalism without idealism is little more than the daily vomit of convenient facts in the service of power and money. It’s a dreary and pitiful occupation, and that’s how much of the public regards it. At the other end of the trade, however, idealistic journalism or “guerrilla journalism” can easily curdle into self-pleasuring smugness – the romanticism of the floppy-haired lone hero, one foot forever hovering by a nearby barricade. Who was it that said more journalists had been ruined by self-importance than by alcohol?

Andrew Marr reviewing Believe Nothing Until It Is Officially Denied by Patrick Cockburn (Claud’s son)

Here’s where we are – by Henry Farrell

There is a great deal of ruin in a country, and a great deal of capacity to make disaster look like someone else’s fault, as we should know well from recent experience.

A Nobel for the big big questions – by Noah Smith

On top of that, I also have some additional criticisms of the Econ Nobel.The science prizes rely very heavily on external validity to determine who gets the prize — your theory or your invention has to work, basically. If it doesn’t, you can be the biggest genius in the world, but you’ll never get a Nobel. The physicist Ed Witten won a Fields Medal, which is even harder to get than a Nobel, for the math he invented for string theory. But he’ll almost certainly never get a Physics Nobel, because string theory can’t be empirically tested.

The Econ Nobel is different. Traditionally, it’s given to economists whose ideas are most influential within the economics profession. If a whole bunch of other economists do research that follows up on your research, or which uses theoretical or empirical techniques you pioneered, you get an Econ Nobel. Your theory doesn’t have to be validated, your specific empirical findings can already have been overturned by the time the prize is awarded, but if you were influential, you get the prize.

Which takes you back to Keynes: it’s all about thinking about what other people are thinking which in turn…

Cross with what I took at humbug, I fired off a response to the Guardian. They ran with it.

The argument is made by some that MPs working in second jobs is a good thing because such professional expertise enriches parliament (Geoffrey Cox missed winter fuel votes while working abroad in second job, 11 October). There is a simple solution. When I was a clinical professor at a UK university, I was allowed to engage in private practice on the condition that I donated all such earnings to my principal employer (the university). I suggest Geoffrey Cox does likewise.

The State we are in

James Butler · ‘This much evidence, still no charges’: On the Grenfell inquiry

James Butler on the Grenfell inquiry in the London Review of Books.

The fire​ at Grenfell tower on 14 June 2017 killed 72 people, 18 of them children. Most died from asphyxiation after inhaling toxic smoke from the cladding on the block, which acted like a coat of petrol on the walls. Some died leaping from the building. Families died together, huddled under beds, having been told to stay where they were. Disabled residents died waiting for a rescue that never came. Every death was avoidable. Every death was the result of choices – acts of negligence, carelessness, contempt, incompetence and deliberate deceit – made by individuals, corporations and elected officials. The residents had the right to expect their landlord, in this case a subsidiary of local government, to ensure their homes were safe. They had the right to expect their government to enforce safety rules and to identify and combat fraud and malpractice by suppliers and fitters. Instead, those in power at every level abdicated their responsibilities.

Resilience (past tense)

All in the last couple of weeks: I read that it is quite possible that one or more universities may go bankrupt, and students may have to transfer to another city (think of the practicalities of that); I learn that a large 300,000 patient GP service went bankrupt with only a day’s notice given to any of its patients, nor a clear plan for what was going to happen to them; and I experienced my own corporate Edinburgh dental practice closing with ten days notice (only in many cases, I was one of them, the email didn’t get sent out). The suggested alternative practice is not even in Edinburgh.

All of these things were, I think, unimaginable a generation ago. Finance, and in particular, short term finance, destroys all before it.

We may have passed peak obesity

John Burn-Murdoch in the FT.

We have known for several years from clinical trials that Ozempic, Wegovy and the new generation of diabetes and weight loss drugs produce large and sustained reductions in body weight. Now with mass public usage taking off — one in eight US adults have used the drugs, with 6 per cent current users — the results may be showing up at the population level.

While we can’t be certain that the new generation of drugs are behind this reversal, it is highly likely. For one, the decline is steepest among college graduates, the group most likely to be using them.

There has been a tendency in some quarters to view taking drugs to lose weight as cheating, not virtuous, not the way it’s meant to be done. But here’s the thing: it works. And I suspect that when we look back at charts of obesity rates in generations to come, there will be inflection points in the 2020s to prove it.

Time will tell.