Without the state

links for 2007-10-16

• Designing for Civil Society: Reaching out to bloggers - acceptably
  (tags: blogging blogs PR marketing conversation)

links for 2007-10-14

• Firedoglake weblog » Won’t Back Down - Naomi Wolf
  I wish people would stop breaking into tears when they talk to me these days.
  (tags: politics harassment no2id USA repression Iraq blackwater)

links for 2007-10-13

• Dynamist.com: Virginia Postrel on disputes over house paint colors
  Most paint regulations, however, are private, enforced through contractual arrangements like the ones governing Kessler’s Sarasota neighborhood.
  (tags: homeownersassociations HOA neighbourhoods control privatopia)
• Dynamist Blog: The Great Divide
  (tags: planning economics houseprices landprices housingmarket)
• TOWN PLANNING versus the plans of the people
  confused and contradictory, but despite that probably an accurate summary of the unintended consequences of planning. Question is whether those consequences outweigh benefits and what the consequences would be of doing away with all planning.
  (tags: planning liberty development urbanisation)
• Ann Coulter: Christians are Perfected Jews
  that is what Christians consider themselves: perfected Jews. We believe the Old Testament. As you know from the Old Testament, God was constantly getting fed up with humans for not being able to, you know, live up to all the laws. What Christians believe
  (tags: politics racism religion usa odious stupid)

Calif. cities consider smoking ban for apartments

There's an old song called 'Don't smoke in bed' but two California cities seem prepared to take that one step further.

Lawmakers in two California cities are discussing unprecedented legislation this month that would widen a growing voluntary movement by landlords and resident associations to ban smoking inside apartments and condos.

Next Tuesday, the City Council of Belmont is scheduled to cast a final vote on an ordinance that would ban smoking in apartments and condos. The measure, which won initial approval last week, could trigger fines and evictions if neighbors complain and smokers don't heed repeated warnings.

In Calabasas on Wednesday, the City Council discussed a proposal that would expand its anti-smoking law to bar lighting up inside existing apartments and most new condos. The council agreed to request changes to the measure that would exempt all condos and set aside a certain percentage of apartments for smokers, says city spokesman Michael Hafken. It is slated to consider the revised proposal next month.

It appears that one of these cities has now confirmed its ban:

Though Belmont and some other California cities already restrict smoking in multi-unit common areas, Belmont is the first city to extend secondhand smoke regulation to the inside of individual apartment units.

Smoking will still be allowed in single-family homes and their yards, and units and yards in apartment buildings, condominiums and townhouses that do not share any common floors or ceilings with other units.

The ban for multi-unit apartment buildings will not take effect for an additional 14 months after the ordinance is passed, so that one-year lease agreements will be unaffected.

Smoking will be permitted only in designated outdoor areas of  multi-unit housing.

Additionally, smoking will not be allowed in indoor and outdoor workplaces, or in parks, stadiums, sports fields, trails and outdoor shopping areas.

Smoking on city streets and sidewalks will be permitted under the ordinance, except in the location of city-sponsored events or in close proximity to prohibited areas.

City officials have said that enforcement of the smoking ban will  be complaint-driven.

[via Privatopia Papers, an excellent blog documenting the excesses of homeowner and condo associations in the US - but also local governments as these items demonstrate.]

A refugee from Western Europe

In an article in the International Herald Tribune, Sam Harris and Salman Rushdie describe teh plight of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, after the Dutch Government reneged on a promise to protect her.

As you read this, Ayaan Hirsi Ali sits in a safe house with armed men guarding her door. She is one of the most poised, intelligent and compassionate advocates of freedom of speech and conscience alive today, and for this she is despised in Muslim communities throughout the world.

The details of her story have been widely reported, but bear repeating, as they illustrate how poorly equipped we are to deal with the threat of Muslim extremism in the West.

...

It is important to realize that Hirsi Ali may be the first refugee from Western Europe since the Holocaust. As such, she is a unique and indispensable witness to both the strength and weakness of the West: to the splendor of open society, and to the boundless energy of its antagonists. She knows the challenges we face in our struggle to contain the misogyny and religious fanaticism of the Muslim world, and she lives with the consequences of our failure each day. There is no one in a better position to remind us that tolerance of intolerance is cowardice.

Having recapitulated the Enlightenment for herself in a few short years, Hirsi Ali has surveyed every inch of the path leading out of the moral and intellectual wasteland that is traditional Islam. She has written two luminous books describing her journey, the most recent of which, "Infidel," has been an international bestseller for months. It is difficult to exaggerate her courage. As Christopher Caldwell wrote in The New York Times, "Voltaire did not risk, with his every utterance, making a billion enemies who recognized his face and could, via the Internet, share information instantaneously with people who aspired to assassinate him."

...

There is not a person alive more deserving of the freedoms of speech and conscience we take for granted in the West, nor is there anyone making a more courageous effort to defend them.

Why can't events be more like Facebook?

I don't really use Facebook, not enough people I know are on it and I have no particular reason to try and cultivate new contacts. However David Wilcox has some interesting comparisons between the conventional organisation of meetings and how Facebook works on his blog Designing for Civil Society.

Unfortunately the evening event followed the standard pattern I've found too often with think tanks and large charities. Generous drinks on arrival, but no hosting ... so if you don't know anyone you immediately feel not part of the network. Clearly there are amazingly interesting people here, but you aren't one of them, and you probably won't meet them unless you are brash in self-introduction. Then... the meeting has a top table. On a platform. You are with the foot-soldiers in the well of the hall, waiting your turn, theatre-style, to put you hand up. There may be free wifi (as last night) ... but that usually connects you to people outside the hall, not inside. The panel then each do five or ten minute pieces ... some well-prepared, others (by admission) off the cuff.

I'm sure I have written and linked umpteen times to the problems of meetings organised like this, and it is one of the themes I hammer at when I'm training, but this is a comparison I wouldn't have thought of and will almost certainly use in any future work.

Street Art

Today the main thoroughfare of Baie-Saint-Paul is closed to vehicular traffic. Thousands of visitors dine on outdoor sushi, sugar pie and onion soup served up in plastic cups. At least a hundred painters operate from homemade paintboxes, massive "tabourets," French easels and "Stanley Mobile Work Centers." Anything goes--oil, watercolour, acrylic. Amateurs rub shoulders with seasoned pros. As it is in life, some know what they're doing, others have lots to learn. Visitors watch the painters and wander in and out of the nearby commercial galleries.

From The Painter's Keys, a fascinating site from the artist Robert Genn. You can get his newsletter here.

Also posted here. I will from now on be blogging on art, photography etc at that location, where these issues will stand alongside my photographs and other art work. There will be occasional cross posts, especially where, like this one, there is an overlap with my other concerns - or simply because I feel like it.

Widgets

Just to let you know, I've added a widget that supposedly adds links to Amazon automatically from relevant text. I'm not convinced it is working properly, so if you see any gross errors let me know - and if it gets too annoying!

Disclosure: I'm an Amazon Associate, which so far hasn't brought me a penny! However clicking on the links to buy will bring me a small sum, that will I hope go some way towards my blogging subscription and ISP fees.

More on fairs and festivals

Some time ago, (2003 in fact!) I posted asking for information about the economic impact of markets fairs and festivals. Some time later, (2006) I made a separate post about so-called Anti-Social Behaviour, that touched in passing on a phenomenon known as Charivari. I was intrigued therefore to discover a research project at City University in London, that focussed on economic outcomes from such events, but in one of the academic papers linked also to some of those other ideas inherent in Charivari.

Throughout the academic literature, carnivals and festivals are associated – by historians and anthropologists alike – with altered social forms, excitement, even danger. Opinion is divided over whether the carnival is a locus for radical transgression, or simply an escape valve for revolutionary energy, which acts to reinforce the status quo (Cohen 1993; Waterman 1998; Webb 2005). Either way, attention is drawn to the tendency for popular festivals and carnivals, in many parts of the world, and in many historical periods, to be characterised by risqué reversals of hierarchy, ludic mimicry, flamboyant and celebratory cultural expression, and a sanctioned overstepping of conventional rules and norms of behaviour. Arguably, carnival is also associated with spontaneity, and with a sense of being carried away by the momentum of the event through improvised action and kinetic excitement. Although many carnival arts involve meticulous attention to form, structure, even ritual, there remains a strong feeling that participation is more than can be conveyed through an account of moves, music and costume. The element of risk, of unpredictability – not, in any sense, of anarchy, but of an altered understanding of authority, whether actual or imagined – is at the heart of the experience of carnival.

There are also links here with the idea of the feast of the  Lord of Misrule

This is misnamed a feast, being full of annoyance; since going out-of-doors is burdensome, and staying within doors is not undisturbed. For the common vagrants and the jugglers of the stage, dividing themselves into squads and hordes, hang about every house. The gates of public officials they besiege with especial persistence, actually shouting and clapping their hands until he that is beleaguered within, exhausted, throws out to them whatever money he has and even what is not his own. And these mendicants going from door to door follow one after another, and, until late in the evening, there is no relief from this nuisance. For crowd succeeds crowd, and shout, shout, and loss, loss.

This fear of the reversal of power, of disturbance of the common good runs deep. After all, we can't have public officials made fun of can we?

A Death in the Family

In his TV appearances, Christopher Hitchens is often pompous, wordy, indeed a windbag, but he is a much more complex character than his TV persona, as is amply demonstrated by this moving article from Vanity Fair

Having volunteered for Iraq, Mark Daily was killed in January by an I.E.D. Dismayed to learn that his pro-war articles helped persuade Daily to enlist, [Christopher Hitchens] measures his words against a family's grief and a young man's sacrifice.

[via Fatman on a Keyboard]