Author: Michael W Jackson

Max Weber’s travels in the United States.

Lawrence Scaff, Max Weber in America. Princeton University Press, 2011
http://www.amazon.com/Max-Weber-America-Lawrence-Scaff/dp/0691147795/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334464504&sr=8-1
Max Weber and his wife Marianne spent four months travelling in the United States in 1904.
The visited New York City, Boston, Niagara Falls, Buffalo, Chicago, Evanston, St. Louis, Muskogee, Fort Gibson, New Orleans, Tuskegee, Knoxville, Asheville, Greensboro, Mount Airy, Richmond, Washington D. C., Philadelphia, Baltimore, Providence, and more.
They went to libraries, high schools, universities, factories, alms houses, work houses, settlements, German communities, stock exchanges, land auctions, abattoirs, stockyards, union meetings, committee meetings, receptions, breakfasts, chambers of commerce, and so on, and on. Both Max and Marianne gave talks and lectures and listened to many more. He solicited contributions for a German sociology journal.
When a scheduling conflict gave him the choice of attending a Presidential reception and meeting Teddy Roosevelt or going to the Indian Territory to meet red Indians and see the remains of the frontier, it was an easy choice. Off he went to Muskogee.
The presidential election campaign was on during his visit and he read much about TR. He may have seen TR in Germany, which Roosevelt visited more than once. TR spoke a passable German. When applying the concept of charisma to politics, TR was an example Weber used.
Max took a particular interest in race relations and formed a lifelong friendship with W. E. B. du Bois. That is why he made a point touring the South.
The book is heavy going. The tour is only about a quarter of the book. The remainder includes the background of the conference in St. Louis that was the initiating factor in making the trip. German influence on American intellectual life at the time. The impact of the trip on Weber’s ideas, and the translation and publication of Weber’s works into English.

The reign of SBS-speak must end!

SBS movies bring the world’s cinema to our televisions screens. It has been a godsend since it started and it still is a small miracle every night and day. Films that would never be shown on commercial free-to air channels, and probably not on pay movie channels either. The pay television movie channels also have a commercial imperative to satisfy their audiences. Moreover, there is a perception of audience resistance to subtitles on television screens. I have been told this many times, though no one has ever offered any evidence to support it. Nonetheless, it is a plausible contention. And it brings me to the point of this post. (At last.)
SBS logo.jpg
Many, most, perhaps all, the films SBS screens terminate with an attribution of the subtitles to SBS.* Ergo I conclude SBS is responsible for these subtitles. I have no criticism of these labours, but I do have a wish. I wish the subtitlers would forego, cease and desist, and stop forever their efforts to render the subtitles into the Australian argot. No doubt this is done in the belief, mistaken, that it makes the movies more accessible to audiences. In fact, it is more often jarring to find a Chinese character sounding like Mick Dundee in the subtitles.
Moreover, this reduction of the foreign to the familiar defeats part of the purpose of world movies, which is to increase the audience’s knowledge of differences in the world. I am sure that I am not alone in wishing to know the idioms, analogies, metaphors that Finns, Thais, Bulgarians, and Turks use rather than have them all use Strine-speak à la SBS in the subtitles. We go around the world with SBS Television and everywhere we go the people sound like the local leagues club. What a dreary old world it is!
By the way I have posted this comment on SBS feedback sites more than once to no avail.
*I do not know for a fact if every film terminates with this claim, since I do not watch them all, but only some. Hence the guarded generalization above.

Melvyn Bragg on the King James Bible

Melvyn Bragg is a higher being. He is erudite, cogent, neutral, and direct. He is an expositor with few equals. I am addicted to ‘In Our Time,’ his weekly podcast from BBC4. It is a feast for the mind each week. He handles the panel discussion with three specialists with a deceptive ease, striving always to get them to drop the academic caution, the polyglot speak, qualifications that swamp the main point, and communicate to the educated listener who would like to be informed.
Some of these qualities can be seen in the ABC-Television interview he did recently in Sydney in the link below.
Compare him to the aggressive, simple-minded journalist who interviews him. Her goal is to trip him up into yet another slang-off at the Murdoch press, as if the ABC was ever short of them. When that fails she loses interest until another slang off at religion from the ever full arsenal of clichés that pass for journalism. Spirituality is evidently unknown there.
Along the way, by implication, he gives her a lesson in interviewing, help the subject say what he has to say. Point not taken, I should imagine.
As a result only about half the interview concerns the subject that brought Bragg to the interview. Thus do ABC journalist grind their own axes on the public dole.
www.abc.net.au
Lord Melvyn Bragg of Wigton is a prolific author of fiction and non-fiction. We first encountered him with his masterly “The Adventure of English.” There is a book, but it is boring compared to the film, so find the DVD. We loved the recitations.
Bragg adventure,jpg
Dress sense was not his strong point in this film.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Adventure-English-Remarkable-Language-REGION/dp/B004X2PEKW/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1332465289&sr=1-1

Policies come and go, but people stay the same.

“Edge of Darkness” 1985.
As Karl Marx said, the first time is tragedy and the second time is farce. This review concerns the first time “Edge of Darkness” was produced.
Edge.jpg
Changing policy is easy, changing people is impossible. This is the link to my IMDB review.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090424/reviews-43
One of the central political points of the story is that policies come and go, but people stay. When one policy is set in motion, it rolls on, even if back at headquarters the policy has changed. Darius Jedburgh explains the changes of policies in Washington to Ron Craven, with a shrug. The policy changed but the people who worked for the previous policy went on. Policies can be turned on and off, in this case, by executive orders, but people cannot. When Jedburgh set up GAIA he recruited believers who would do some serious work, and when Washington policy changed, they just kept going as best they could. There is an important message here that few people in the policy business ever get. Once something is started, it may take on a life of it own. The lesson to draw then is to be careful about what is started, a lesson few learn.

A meditation of democracy’s strengthens and weaknesses

What is the difference between the voice of the mob and the voice of the people?
Seven days in May.jpg
The core of the film is a compelling dialog about democracy. The general just might be right. The beleaguered president still has one thing the general does not have, an electoral mandate. When he explains what that means, it is worth listening.
My IMDB review
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058576/reviews-61
Recommended for adults.