What a silly Dzugashvili

The theme of next year's convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (yes, the acronym is what you think, but no, it is not pronounced that way) is "The Gender Question." This harks back to the legendary Eighteenth Congress of 1936 when they solved "The Woman Question" and made a great leap forward toward solving "The Nationalities Question." On each occasion, they received $64,000.

BT: WTF?

We apologise for the inconvenience .....

BT's promise that telephone and internet service would begin yesterday was of course not met.

Apparently similar issues have been faced by Cory Doctorow, Brian Turner, someone named Matt, and Bob Jones, along with, I am sure, countless others.

An explanation

As much as I would like to say that the reason there has not been any posting here is that I have been working so hard. While there has certainly been some work going on, this is not the reason. Rather it is that I am waiting for my friends at BT to bring the magic of telephone and internet to my gracious new home. This should be resolved within the next couple of days, and we should back with running commentary on the delights of the Balkans and the west Balkans very soon.

Livin' large with Eric

Eric is preparing to move into his small but stylish new flat tomorrow. Soon things will be finally out of suitcases, and sheets and towels will be purchased!

Oh yes, IFCCS

The site of the new Institute for Comparative Conflict Studies has now launched. I have worked with these fine people a little in some earlier programmes they did in the Balkans, and now they are setting out, ambitiously, with their own organisation. It's worth a look.

Prohujalo sa veprom

Wild boar is delicious. But it might be said that wild boar taken with automatic weapons is not really in the sporting spirit. Nor are many other elements of this story.

Golden bear and crno jagnje

Hurrah for ETF and my alma mater. It would be delightful to see more universities from all over the region doing this.

Ponovo su oduševljeni građani dočekali oduševljenog političara s oduševljenjem

Politika really needs to be congratulated for the rapidity with which it has settled right back into the role of a proper regime paper, not too loud and scandalous, but not too reliable either, at least as a source of factual information (by the same measure, of course, this makes it fantastic as a source of other types of information). The lead headline is increasingly a summary of what position good citizens are expected to advocate for the day, and occasionally one will run across gems like today's lead photo. It is captioned "applause for Milorad Dodik at the basketball game between Partizan and Barcelona in Belgrade." I see Dodik with his arm up and his pancetta out, but close as I look, I cannot see anybody applauding. Or is it visible only to the editors of Poltika, Tinkerbelle, and folks who really wish it?

Romantic story of the day

I went last night to a lecture, which was really pretty good. At the reception afterward, I met a young couple, both of whom are former students at my present institution. They said that they had met, and their understanding for one another deepened, when they were given the job of preparing a joint presentation on Stjepan Radić.

Glas gadosti

Since nobody reads Glas javnosti (what, no market for the respectable sister of Kurir?) I may as well point this out. Every few days they come out with a new installation of what the murderer and drug dealer Milorad Luković - Legija said. Or what their anonymous writers wish he said. In any case, the link invites online readers to buy a printed copy of the paper if they want to follow along.

No, I didn't think so either.

U kandžama druge zime or whatever

Although I am not an admirer of the prose of Marko Vidojković, this taste comes from a lack of delight with his aesthetic. I have not reached the conclusion that, apparently, much sillier people have, that his narratives and his commercial success are the result of a massive conspiracy to, erm, well, I can't be sure here, maybe to compel young people to enjoy novels that I enjoy much less than they do? To deflate the natural popularity of agitprop (never did an ersatz art form have a better name)? Better to let Ivan Čolović explain it, I'm sure.

Avoid cretinous people: Lessons of a life in decontextualised science

Say what, Dr Watson? The fellow who, together with Francis Crick, received a Nobel prize for writing up the research of Rosalind Franklin, wants to stay in the public eye until it notices him, then wants to run away. He has had several rounds of controversy over the years for such things as going around the world suggesting to people which pregnancies, in his opinion, ought to be terminated. This time he has really put his mitochondria in it too. Here is the passage behind the latest inflammation, from Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe's profile of Watson in last Sunday's Times:

He says that he is “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”, and I know that this “hot potato” is going to be difficult to address. His hope is that everyone is equal, but he counters that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”. He says that you should not discriminate on the basis of colour, because “there are many people of colour who are very talented, but don’t promote them when they haven’t succeeded at the lower level”. He writes that “there is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so”.

To the surprise of absolutely nobody but Watson himself, the remarks resulted in charges of racism. Institutions in England, where he was on a speaking tour to promote his book Avoid Boring People: And Other Lessons from a Life in Science, have cancelled his appearances. Then he got booted from his job, and has now fled England with his vestigial tail between his legs.

So as my dear friend would say in response to this sort of situation (actually: almost any situation), WTF? These are ideas that have been abandoned by everyone except a few professional provocateurs. Even if they were viable ideas, the relationship between "intelligence" and almost anything else -- such as skill, judgment, charm, decency -- is sadly pretty much nonexistent. And to see an eminent scientist going around promoting them, apparently not having dedicated a second's thought to their sources or implications? Has the world turned into the sort of place where people put fruit on pizza?

There are a couple of things going on here. The first of them is the constipated belief that a willingness to put forward ill-informed, foolish, extreme or merely offensive hypotheses can somehow be confused with "openmindedness." This belief is certainly widely held, especially among people who have never been compelled to confront the consequences of what they say or submit it to review (or who, like Watson and perhaps Marlon Brando, have been exempt from review for years because of their celebrity). The second is an approach more confined to intellectuals working in narrow fields -- I would be happy to say that this is a syndrome only among physical and natural scientists but of course it is not -- in which the criteria of that field are taken as the only ones that matter, even with regard to topics that have nothing to do with the field. In my research area, maybe this is best represented by lawyers' views on history and morality (sorry lawyers, but think about it, you wouldn't want these things constructed according to legal principles either). And for Watson, of course, it is treating highly dubious and very much predetermined findings about "intelligence" as though they were falsifiable lab results.

To offer a concrete example: can we attribute Watson's casual and ignorant racism to his DNA? It would be hard to think of any way that this could be achieved. In Watson's own words, "I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said." Rather, it is a result of his warped values and intellectual laziness, encouraged by a scientific community that subjects some of its members to peer review while treating others as if they were peerless.

It is certainly true, for reasons having not only to do with genetics, that nobody can control how they are born. Those people who are very fortunate can influence, if not how they die, at least how they might be remembered when they do. This might be elementary, even if not to Watson.

Greatness

Prepare to have greatness thrust on you, by Kal and Rambo Amadeus:

East Ethnian greetings from Northwest London

Yes, your humble correspondent has not been with you for a while as he begins to get himself settled in [do they really call it The Big Smoke? Why, when smoking is forbidden in most places?]. I have still not found a home, but expect this issue to be resolved soon. Fortunately, the friend at whose place I am staying does not seem inclined to tell me to leave just yet. Work, however, has begun, and I have a lovely office with a panoramic view of the chemistry labs. There is a lot to do, but for the first time, all of it is in my field, so it is hard to be anything other than delighted. And although my experience of the city has been mostly confined to my office and the local pub, this in no way prevents me from making the following observations:

1. All those people who say the food is bad here are gravely mistaken. In particular, the Phoenicia Market on Kentish Town Road is about as close as we mortals come to paradise. There is also the place with the fine looking fishies, but it always seems to be closed.
2. This idea that Americans have that other countries have cheap and efficient rail service has been thoroughly debunked, at least if we take England and Serbia as our test cases.
3. Everybody has the most adorable accent.
4. I must acquire the middle class male uniform, which would seem to consist of a) striped suit, b) blue shirt, c) no tie, and d) one of those mobile phone contraptions that people strap to their heads.
5. The pub is the living room of the neighbourhood. This is a good thing.
   

I think that would be it. Exoticism is a fine cultural practice, and I hope that none of my UK-ish friends will be offended by it.

Proeski killed in car crash

Those of you who follow Balkan pop as avidly as Balkan politics (of which there was a lot at yesterday's meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg) will be saddened to hear that Tose Proeski -- sorry, no diacritics where I write -- was killed in an accident on the Zagreb-Belgrade highway. He was just 26 years old.

For what it's worth: One Balkan blog fewer

In response to a campaign by net users, news reports say that Google has closed down the blog run by the remarkably atypical Novosadjanin Goran Davidović (although if you ask me, it was right there three minutes ago when I checked). Fans of the jovial little fuhrer can still, if they do not find his blog, visit his personal site or read this little profile bz Milan Laketić in Politika. So no worries, there should always be plenty of Goxy to go around.

My own feelings on the campaign to take the guy off the net are a bit mixed. I don't care for Nazis even a little, and my position on censorship is that it should be reserved for that small category of things that can be proven to be dangerous. Legal standards are vague (for an interesting application to an obscenity case see the exchange between the minority and the majority of the US Supreme Court in Miller v California from 1973). On balance I would have to argue that the "redeeming social importance" of sites by Mr Davidović and people from groups like his is that they provide a source of information about these groups. Of course Google (which runs Blogger, where both this blog and Mr Davidović's blog are hosted) is not a government institution, and is legally free to publish or refuse to publish anything it chooses.

Horst veselje

The fascist threat to Novi Sad does not appear to have amounted to much this time around. Several hundred people attended an antifascist meeting, where they listened to speeches and went to place flowers on a monument to victims of fascism. Police had promised to prevent the announced march by the members of the neofascist "Nacionalni stroj," and then arrested about 30 of the tonsorially challenged fellows when they created a provocation by throwing things at their opponents and the police.

It might be interesting to note what the neofascists intended to do: since the antifascists were going to commemorate a monument, they planned to put flowers on a monument to the nineteenth century politician Jaša Tomić. Tomić was not such a major figure: aside from murdering a political opponent, he is known for trying to lead an independence movement against Austria-Hungary and for being a founder of the Radical party in Vojvodina. There is a monument to him because the Radicals control the municipal government. There is also a village named after him, which was flooded not so long ago.

The reason the Nacionalni stroj cares about Jaša Tomić one way or the other is because of an old screed he wrote which gives a sort of eclectic apologia for antisemitism, where he blames the problems of Serbia on old-style market economics, Benjamin Disraeli, and a bunch of other vaguer things. The tradition of domestic antisemitism in Serbia is pretty thin: aside from this text, there is basically a stringing together of bad translations of religious texts by Vasa Pelagić, and not much else until Nikolaj Velimirović wrote something up while hanging out for a few months in the SS barracks at Dachau waiting for his pal Ljotić to get him sprung.

It is a good thing that people managed a public demonstration against the resurgence of fascism. I have had a couple of minor encounters with the members of these neofascist groups with bombastic names, and the greatest threat probably does not come from these small packs of scared teenage boys, whatever they may symbolise. But then fascist movements have never come to power on their own, it has always happened through the indulgence of more "respectable" politicians who were cynical and clueless.

Follow your eels

Packing up. Spending time with the family. Leaving for London early morning. Next posts to come once I set up shop.

Seven years

Remember that seven years ago it seemed that the Milošević regime had ended with the participation of, among other things, a fellow with a bulldozer? You could be forgiven if you did not. The fellow with the bulldozer is selling it, for 90.000 Euros. And why not? People have sold the legacy of 5 October for less.

Irony, anyone? The person who was minister of information for Milošević in 1996 and 1997 is now the director of RTS, where the famous bulldozer was directed in its day. But you knew that.

Sveti Džimi ubija aždahu

If the Serbian government is really taking advice from this fellow, expect brinksmanship, extremism and provocation. If their goal is to vanquish dark heathens, as well as pagans, apostates and impostors, though, this should be their guy.