I’m assuming everybody is already familiar with Google’s plans to scan all the books in the libraries of Stanford, Harvard and the University of Michigan and make the contents of all those books searchable. Not a problem for books in the public domain or whose publishers have given permission for them to be searchable, but publishers aren’t too happy about the fact that Google plans to scan every book and make them all searchable via Google Print. Now Google is planning to hold off on scanning copyrighted works for which they haven’t already received permission until November to give publishers a chance to opt out (ð: eWeek).

The Association of American Publishers and its extremely annoying chair, Patsy Schroeder, are moaning about this opt-out policy:

“The great concern of not just publishers but the entire intellectual property community is Google’s turning copyright law on its head,” [Schroeder] said. “All the burden is now on the rights holder.”

Okay, she might have a point except for one important thing: if Google turns up a search term in a copyrighted work they haven’t received permission to reproduce, you only get a couple of sentences of context around that search term. Even in books for which they have received permission, you only get a couple of pages (sounds complicated, but these screenshots pretty much tell the whole story). And, having tried it for quite a while today in a couple of different books, I can definitely say that trying to read even just ten pages on each side of a search term in a book for which permission had been given is not only extremely laborious, but probably impossible.

In any case, a couple of sentences from a 300-page book is pretty tiny, certainly no more than is regularly excerpted in book reviews, scholarly papers, etc. and nobody ever raises a fuss about those usages. Of course, that’s exactly Google’s defense: that what they’re doing is covered by fair use. Patsy disagrees. Which pretty quickly boils down to a legal argument, which I don’t particularly care about (and which isn’t clear-cut one way or the other).

The more important issue is this: even if what Google’s doing is technically illegal, why in the world would any publisher object? Google Print not only makes the books you already own easier to use, but provides great advertising for new books. As is my wont, let’s see an example of the latter first: today I plugged my father’s name into Google Print and was surprised to see that he’s mentioned in a couple of books. It turns out that the only interest I would have in those particular books is pure morbid fascination with people who take words like “process” way too seriously, but, if I’d been more seriously interested in any of the books that popped up, there are links to buy from several different vendors right there. In other words, this is a great way to find new books on topics of interest and, therefore, is great directed advertising for book publishers. Put a Nokia 770 in my hands, the entire Stanford library on Google Print and the desire to learn about some new topic in my head (it happens every once in a while), I’ll be buying books left and right (or, rather, I would be, if publishers could get their goddamned act together and back some universal electronic publishing standards [ð: TeleRead]).

As for the second point, between my brother, my father, and myself, we probably own every book Mark Twain’s ever wrote. My father also owns Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, which quotes Twain as having written:

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

It’s a great quote, but, despite knowing Twain wrote it and owning probably every Twain book ever, it would take forever to track down just exactly where he wrote it. However, judicious use of Google Print demonstrates that this quote comes from Life on the Mississippi and, furthermore, that it concludes a very amusing little paragraph. Now that’s what I call making my books more useful! Point is, publishers should be thanking Google for both the directed advertising of their books and for making those same books better (and, therefore, more desirable) at no cost. Instead, there are rumblings of lawsuits.

Note that Amazon‘s (selective) full-text search of the books they sell is the only comparable (though less ambitious) service already available. Of course, it should come as no surprise that Google and Amazon are at the front of this curve, since they’re about the only companies out there with both the vision to dream up something like this and (more importantly) the resources to implement it (though a nod of the head is due to the resourcefulness of both Project Gutenberg and Wikimedia).

Speaking of cool Amazon stuff, they’ve now got a feature in their maps section that allows you to see street-level photographs of locations on the map. It’s only available in 24 US cities (so far, anyway), but basically what they did is drive down a whole bunch of streets in a lot of big cities with digital cameras rolling and hooked into a GPS receiver, so you can not only see where the bar I went to last night is on the map, but what it looks like (not much). Of course, Google Maps are easier to search, but the street-level view is a hell of an idea and a nice complement to Google’s aerial photos.

In fact, one can only hope that someone out there is working on combining Google Maps’ search flexibility and aerial photographs, Amazon’s street-level pictures, JiWire’s hotspot finder and the Gmaps pedometer into one world-destroying über-map.

As someone whose basic ethical framework is predicated upon the effects that actions have upon those affected by them rather than dogmatic a priori principles (some, including my brother, call me a consequentialist), I have often thought that the best thing that could happen to utilitarianism is to be saved from utilitarians. Because, as I have noted before, the basic criterion for the success of a social system that it needs to provide the greatest benefits possible to the greatest numbers is virtually axiomatic to any political philosophy, and yet somehow this insight has been claimed (and, what is more, largely conceded) to a particular heavily socialist-oriented school. It is in my opinion a more remarkable reversal than the identification of “liberal” in America with quasi-socialism.

And if the valid elements of utilitarianism are to be preserved it is precisely a more liberal understanding of social ethics that is necessary. As any student of introductory economics will know, maximizing wealth does not necessarily (and in fact rarely) equalizes wealth among the various participants in commerce. Creating the greatest economic well-being will in other words probably not result in everyone being equally well-off. The analogy to social philosophy is crude but essentially valid. There too the utilitarians have deceived by dogmatic presuppositions into believing that the greatest total well-being must be defined by equality among the greatest possible numbers. A brief example to illustrate (which is economic in nature, but only because that is more easily quantifiable): a man taking this as his normative goal would probably then try to do an equal amount of good to as many people as possible. When it came time for him to draw up his will, he should logically divide up his money into the smallest equal fractions possible so as to distribute it among as many people as possible. Quite apart from the special claims upon him that those close to him are traditionally supposed to have, need it be said that the total benefit of his generosity would most likely be considerably less than had he chosen to give it only to a small group of friends and family. Because the penny or less that each of that large number will receive is unlikely to be of much value to any of them, and in fact for the small number that could reasonably expect more it will probably in fact have a negative effect, and seem insulting if not catastrophic. Whereas a considerable gift to those who are already close to him and presumably care and are cared for by him will be of considerably more value to them, and probably also of greater reciprocal value to him, who will enjoy their gratitude (leaving aside the question of whether he will even be alive at that point to notice). Of course some at this point might notice a strange parallel between this conclusion and the mechanism of genetic kin selection that I discussed earlier, and decide that it is then merely a rationalization of the operation of “the selfish gene,” but firstly it would probably be premature to make any grandiose claims about an area still so little-understood as the nexus between society and biology and secondly even if it were the case it would take austere conception of morals to imagine that they don’t or shouldn’t provide some gratification to our biological impulses.

Some of you may have scoffed when I suggested a while back that socialized medicine means your health decisions become public policy, but now we have further confirmation: the EU wants to outlaw dirndls in Bavarian beer gardens on the grounds that revealing so much cleavage is a serious skin cancer risk. Aside from the obvious blow this would deal to the masturbation fantasies of millions of men (and maybe a few women) and to the Oktoberfest revenue stream, I can’t help but think this is just another step on the road to mandatory one-piece grey jumpsuits for everybody.

In other news, if you haven’t already, you should definitely check out and start using:

• S5 — Short for Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System, S5 is an XHTML/CSS/JavaScript alternative to PowerPoint, which means you can view and display your presentation with any browser on any computer using any operating system. Admittedly, PowerPoint sucks, but if you must do a PowerPoint presentation, you should be a true geek and use S5.
• Gmaps Pedometer — If you haven’t already realized that Google Maps is ten times better than pretty much any other online map service out there, get with the program. And if you want to know how long your morning run really is or whether the Magnificent Mile is really a mile (it’s not), well, the Gmaps pedometer is like cartographic crack.

Also, it’s not really a web app like the above, but it’s cool that you can put ebooks on your iPod (if you have one). Of course, the iPod screen is still pretty damn small; has anybody out there found a workable solution for reading books off, say, Project Gutenberg? I read all of The Count of Monte Cristo with my laptop perched on my chest, but, in general, it’s too much of a hassle not to make it worthwhile just to buy the damn book from the bookstore.

Seeing something about that now-infamous phrase “activist judges” made me think about the general concept of loyalty and obedience. It seems to me that loyalty and obedience to a person or institution is a notion which leads to continual embarassment, simply because it is constantly superceded by the necessity of obedience to general principles, from which no one is exempt. Therefore loyalty to an individual or group is at best justified by its concurrence with just such a universal.

Allow me to say what I hope will be my final words on the whole Iraq debacle. Those who have been reading this site from its inception will know that my views on this subject have changed on more than one occaison, which I don’t hold to be anything to be ashamed about in regards to a subject so inherently volatile, since it seems to me that only someone totally intransigent would have remained completely unperturbed through the entire course of it. I have tried to reconcile my sympathy for the hypothesis that the world is almost always better off when the number of megalomaniacal dictators is reduced with my disapproval of the manifest incompetence which has poisoned the effectiveness of this whole adventure to a surprising extent. I suppose in the end I fall in with that whole group that I have often mocked in the past that is fairly supportive of the ostensible goal of ridding the world of said murderous regime while remaining extremely skeptical of the method by which it has actually been carried out.

Let me make the following analogy: suppose a man leaves his house and murders several neighbors one day. The government in response puts him under house arrest. Then a bit later on someone else alleges that he left his home and procured a number of pistols and other firearms. The police demand to enter his house and he refuses, then relents. They show up, don’t find anything, have some arguments with him about where they are and are not allowed to search, and then leave. Two weeks later they show up with a judges’ decree condemning him for uncooperativeness and cut his head off. If this is not the most lurching, inconsistent, arbitrary sort of justice imaginable, I would like to see what is, even if everybody, most especially the neighbors, would be better off if he were removed from their proximity. Of course the U.S. military is not exactly an accepted world governing body, but since it is essentially assuming the prerogative of enforcer of “international law” then it might at least act as a responsible government and propogate a coherent set of policies, infractions, consequences, etc. This is purely practical self-interest, since the single greatest consequence of this whole mess for the U.S. is that America is seen as the aggressor by the rest of the world. I can understand the point of view of those who hold, as the above example suggests, that the whole thing was actually a defense of international laws or principles or whatever, but that’s trying to have it both ways: the American government is exempt from being constrained in any way, but it can enforce “international regulations” whenever it chooses, no matter how inconsistently.

I think that the end of the Iraqi regime has been beneficial to Iraq, and the world, as a whole, especially when one considers that all the terrorism and violence since then has been largely, in my view, a continuation of that regime’s attempt to regain power by setting off a civil war, and that this would almost certainly have been the result no matter how or when the regime fell. However, ironically enough it seems to me that America has incurred the most needless damage in this whole thing, what with the military commitment and the cost and the overall degradation of its image abroad. As one of my friends said the other day: “Do you remember when Americans were popular in the world?” It is in the interest, as well as being the obligation, of any peaceful nation to remain at peace until threatened by an aggressor, and above all never to become the aggressor. I can understand that aggression can come in more subtle forms these days than tanks overriding a frontier, but if arms stockpiling is the new standard, than that must at least coalesce into a clear principle, and of course even then it must fall within the bounds of reason.

Saul Alinsky said that the price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative, but I don’t think that those who approve of the dictatorship coming down but still deplore the circumstances are liable for inconsistency or even obligated to propose an alternative means by which it could have been destroyed. After all, everyone wishes for things for which they are not willing to sacrifice everything, and I wouldn’t have spent the price of the last three years for the questionable benefits that Iraqis may have gained by it, just as the forty years of the Cold War were preferable to some sort of Ragnarok with the Soviet Union in the late ’40’s. These types of governments have a tendency to implode sooner or later, and since the U.S. is much more stable and powerful than any of them, time is always on its side. There is no reason to squander that advantage by bringing matters to a head and subjecting everything to the perfidies of fortune. Freedom is a cause worth fighting for, but likewise a people that desires freedom should fight for it themselves, because only they can ultimately adjudicate the best form of social organization for themselves. This was as true for Russia as it is for Iraq.

Tolerance is a very over-rated value, and the way in which it is bandied about in our society is very stupid. Make no mistake, one of the aphorisms I live by is J.M. Coetzee’s (fictionalized) declaration that “I have beliefs, but I don’t believe in them.” Which is to say, I believe that most of the beliefs I find most valid are simply those which have not thoroughly been discredited yet. But I can no more cease to hold them or act on them in the absence of a better alternative than can scientists in the possession of a deficient paradigm. What I can’t stand are those that rail, for example, of “activist judges” trying to imposing their values on the administration of justice, or how the religious should essentially refrain from imposing their views on others, which is to say acting on their beliefs, or even Edward Gibbon’s scornful remark of the Byzantine emperors that “it was held to be the duty of a prince, to impose on his subjects the dictates of his own conscience.” He is talking, of course, about the enforcement of religious orthodoxy, but somehow I don’t believe he would have such a baleful view of imposing the “dictates of [own’s] own conscience” if that concerns the equitable administration of justice or the fostering of peace and trade. In other words, it is the values themselves, not the commitment to them, that provokes animosity.

This value-neutrality is ultimately as paralyzing and impossible as the objectivity by which journalists try to scourge themselves (or don’t, but never honestly). But the irony, obviously, is that this is itself a value, and the resulting confusion creates such absurdities as the assassin of Gandhi, who believed that Muslims could not and should not be permitted to exist in a tolerant society. I don’t believe that anyone’s conscience is flexible enough to be truly tolerant of that which they believe to be wrong, nor do I believe that it would be very admirable even if they could. Is not lack of opposition to that which is wrong a form of complicity in wrong-doing? Yes, I think people of different religions should tolerate each other, and yes, I believe that scripture should be kept out of our judicial law, but that is because I don’t have any religious views myself. But I cannot go along with this duplicity of sanctioning people’s religious beliefs and then condemning them for acting upon them.

I understand the appeal and the theoretical value of this sort of attempt to transcend specific values and inculcate some sort of reciprocal universal tolerance, but to be honest I find the idea of some sort of value-neutral intellectual space to be chimerical and preposterous, and the fact that so many people seem to believe in it probably indicates how cocooned our intellectual life is. Do you think the raft of tolerance is big enough for the members of al-Qaida? Sadly, some do, but their version of tolerance is pretty much the appeasement of the strong by the feeble. I would say any issue on which mutual tolerance among the proponents of the various sides is regarded by someone as the most important thing is probably an issue on which that person simply does not care enough to have a positive or negative opinion, or one in which none of the pertinent opinions seem adequate or right. Religion is somewhere between the two for me, so I am all for tolerance in that area, but I would never accuse myself of some sort of universal and indiscriminate tolerance for all that is both right and wrong. You won’t see me calling terrorists victims of intolerance, let’s put it that way, in fact quite the opposite.

A week or so ago, Petya quoted the following definition of “heteronormativity” (March 29th entry):

Heteronormativity means, quite simply, that heterosexuality is the norm– in culture, in society, in politics. Heteronormativity points out the expectation of heterosexuality as it is written into our world. It does not, of course, mean that everyone is straight. More significantly, heteronormativity is not part of a conspiracy theory that would suggest that everyone must become straight or be made so. The importance of the concept is that it centers on the operation of the norm. Heteronormativity emphasizes the extent to which everyone, straight or queer, will be judged, measured, probed, and evaluated from the perspective of the heterosexual norm. It means that everyone and everything is judged from the perspective of straight. [Samuel A. Chambers: The Telepistemology of the Closet; or, The Queer Politics of Six Feet Under. The Journal of American Culture, Volume 26, Number 1, March 2003]

Around 5:00 AM on Sunday, I sent her a short response which she quoted and dissected (April 4th entry). In essence, I had two points, which may or may not be self-contradictory: (1) there’s no qualitative difference between “heteronormativity” and any other cultural norm; (2) “social norms” are basically a bullshit construct to begin with. Of course, given that I wrote the email very early on Sunday morning, I didn’t state either of these points particularly well (or, one might argue at least in the case of the second, at all).

I should say that the above-quoted definition/exposition of heteronormativity is basically correct; in a society in which the majority of people are (or, according to Kinsey et. al., merely identify as) straight, it’s inevitable that, e.g., most people will, in the absence of additional information, assume people they’ve never met before are probably straight. This observation verges on the tautological. Of course, to extend the meeting-someone-new example, most people also assume that people they meet aren’t cannibals and watch a fair amount of television, so it’s not at all clear that there’s anything particularly special about heteronormativity as opposed to non-cannibal-normativity or telenormativity.

At this point, I realize that someone whose brain works differently than mine might think I’m trivializing the whole heteronormativity thing with my examples; after all, cannibals are a damned sight rarer than homosexuals and it’s probably not a good idea to worry to much about whatever psychic damage the non-cannibal norm is doing to them, and people who don’t watch television are unlikely to suffer anything worse than occasional social awkwardness when someone mistakenly assumes that any sentient American will identify and be amused by the phrase “I’m Rick James, bitch!” In contrast, it’s clear that people whose sexual proclivities/identities differ from the heterosexual norm (not just homosexuals) will, at the very least, have to deal with consistent low-grade and occasional acute psychological trauma, precisely because psychological health, self-perception and identity are so intimately related with sex and sexual preferences. In this context, however, please note my careful use of the word “qualitatively” in the opening paragraph. The hetero-norm is no different in kind from other cultural norms, but, because sexual identity tends to be so important to our lives, the deleterious effects of such a norm tend to be felt more intensely than those of many other norms and, hence the difference is quantitative rather than qualitative.

By now, I hope, it’s clear that the statement “[t]he problem with heteronormativity is that it is hardly ever recognized as a norm” is entirely wrong. There are dozens of norms that are hardly ever recognized as norms; I mentioned two above, but other examples include the “bathing regularly” norm, the “education is good” norm, the “democracy is good” norm (intimately tied in with the “voting is good” norm), the “wearing clothes is good” norm, etc. Of course, all of these norms have been pointed out and dissected at by various social critics, academics, etc., but, for practical purposes, they’re not “recognized as norms”. No, the problem (or, perhaps, importance) of heteronormativity derives not from its purported lack of recognition as a norm, but from the relatively greater importance people ascribe to their identity as sexual beings than to their identities as television viewers, bathers, students or voters.

In fact, the notion that “[t]he problem with heteronormativity is that it is hardly ever recognized as a norm” seems to be an expression (presumably unintentional) of the rather pernicious but increasingly popular assumption that norms qua norms are bad. Ironically, this is (or at least has the potential to be) itself a norm. Anyway, norms, in and of themselves, are value-neutral. Certainly anyone who finds him/herself on the wrong side of a norm isn’t going to think much of it, but this isn’t the whole story. For example, although there are people who legitimately suffer from the bathing-regularly-is-good norm (people allergic to soap, people without access to bathing facilities, etc.), I think even they would agree that, in general, it’s better if people aren’t going around smelling like mildew and passing along tinea to all their friends. Even more obvious examples of “good” norms are the one that says killing is bad or the one that tells a woman walking alone late at night in a bad part of town that young males in dark alleys should probably be avoided. The point is, norms in and of themselves aren’t necessarily bad; the ones that are are so because they do damage to those who violate the norm (and, one might reasonably argue, everybody else as well, but this is a bit to psychological for me to deal with right now) without having any (or at least not enough) countervailing benefits.

Looking at the clock, I realize that I really should be going to bed and I haven’t even gotten to my second point, the fact that the two points may well be contradictory, the possibility that I may not even believe some of what I’ve written above, and my issues with Petya’s implicit dismissal of me as someone who does “not want to be bothered with conversations about exclusion, oppression, and -isms of all sorts.” All those will have to be left for another day; in the meantime, I’m curious to hear if anybody thinks the above is at all coherent.