Monday 19 September 2016

Seen and heard: July 2016

The Strictly Prom – tremendous TV, with pro dancers from Strictly Come Dancing strutting their stuff to classical and light music numbers given the big BBC Symphony Orchestra treatment. Needs the visuals, however, to capture the excitement of the performance; not so good with sound only on the radio, except for the irrepressible 1920 and '30s numbers.

We're the Superhumans (Yes I can) – sensational promotional video for the Paralympics, showcasing ability rather than disability, including a death-defying wheelchair stunt at the end. Truly superhuman.

One Night in 2012 – fascinating documentary following the preparation for the single night smash hit opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games, which unexpectedly brought the nation together in a warm glow of positive feeling towards the Games and towards ourselves. Especially interesting to get an insight into the logistics of organising so many volunteer members of the public, called upon to play Brunels, nurses, nannies, teenagers, and so on. It wasn’t just chance and wishful thinking that made (nearly) everything go right on the night.

Frosta del sol – the summer “beach” or super-sandpit at our local garden centre, which turned out to be a great place to take the toddler members of our family for an entire afternoon’s peace and quiet (for us): buckets and spades and moulds and sieves and balls provided, along with two first rate playworkers, and even a carousel for variety. Best of all, the beach was located right next to the garden centre tea room, enabling us to keep an eye on the kids from our tea table. Very good value.

Powerplay – psychotherapy and spirituality day at Turvey Monastery. Enriching and inspirational as usual, my main take-away memory this time being the provokation to consider the possible positive connotations of the word “powerplay”, usually used in a negative sense, if you go deeper into the possible meanings of the component “play”.

Magic Carpet – stunning audio-visual interactive display in the Milton Keynes shopping mall, as part of the MK International Festival. The shifting and changing projected patterns on the floor fascinated our two-year-old grandson, although he was just as interested by the floor-mounted access hatches and a cabinet of fire extinguishers. We couldn’t let him hold one of the sound-producing eggs, unfortunately: too much risk of his dropping or throwing it.

The 80s with Domenic Sandbrook – a fun TV trip through the popular culture and politics of the decade, although Sandbrook’s right-wing orientation is more evident here than in his previous explorations. It’s all very well to minimise the role of Margaret Thatcher and observe how the changes of the 1980s were supported or even driven by ordinary people rather than politicians or cultural leaders, but that’s rather like saying that Nazi Germany would have happened without Hitler: probably true but not necessarily helpful to understanding unless you go a great deal deeper into the socio-politics than Sandbrook (who I imagine is not a Marxist historian) would be prepared to go.

Fauré Requiem, sung by The Sixteen, accompanied by the Academy of Ancient Music, which I played for my mother during her final hour on 30 July 2016. Thank you to the staff of Bletchley House Care Home for their support.

Sunday 18 September 2016

Seen and heard: August 2016

Gershwin Gala, The John Wilson Orchestra Prom – every John Wilson Orchestra concert is a treat, and this one, featuring the songs of George and Ira Gershwin, especially so: not only blisteringly wonderful performances of the film versions – now the definitive versions – of familiar songs but an introduction to many less famous numbers also, such as The Babbitt and The Bromide mercilessly making fun of the poverty of man-to-man conversation.

Woburn Safari Park – a return visit with both our grandchildren, highlights including rhinos sauntering by our car at near-touching distance, swan boats on the lake, and a zebra crossing :) (I must be the millionth person to make that joke, which come to think of it I first heard in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.)

Ana Moura – a wonderful fado singer, to whom we were referred by my wife’s elder son, to whom he in turn had been referred by Spotify.

Shardlight – sad, atmospheric, dystopian adventure game from Dave Gilbert and Wadjet Eye. The protagonist is an engineer in a post-apocalyptic society, in which an aristocratic elite (dressed in ancien regime frippery) hoard the vaccine for the deadly green lung disease while the majority of the population live in poverty, the dominant religion being the cult of the death-bringing Reaper, whose arrival is prefigured by the appearance of ravens. A good yarn, but the endings – there are three alternatives – are understandably unconvincing, especially the “best” one.

Wednesday 14 September 2016

Learning design and educational technology: what’s the relationship?

Many writings about learning design assume or argue that learning design has something to do with educational technology. In Conole et al. (2004), for example, learning design is what links educational technologies to learning theories: theory-enabled design points to which technology to use, and one can read back from an educational technology to the theory which informed its design.

It’s certainly the case that many people turn to learning design because of questions about how to use educational technology or laudable concerns not to use it badly. However, after 20 years of practice in producing online distance learning, I’ve come to the conclusion that the best summary of the relationship between learning design and educational technology is: None at all.

Learning design, if it's a kind of design, is about matching form and function, means and ends: in particular, it is about working out what learning activities will enable students or other learners to reach certain learning outcomes. So the typical output of a learning design process is a set of learning activities, on the principle that learners are only going to learn as a result of what they, as learners, do, not what you, as teachers, do. (See previous post.) But those learning activities could be implemented through many different technologies, and which one you choose will depend on what is available to you, is reliable, and (crucially) is available to learners.

If you have an activity which calls for some kind of group discussion, that could be done face-to-face in a seminar or workshop, remotely and synchronously using online conferencing, or asynchronously using online forums; or learners could watch a recording of such a discussion, or read a transcript, and make some response of their own – probably less satisfactory, but for learners in prison (for whom my university has to make provision on many of its courses) it may be the only practical option.

If you are going to have learning activities designed around some sort of PDP or portfolio function, then you need to consider that particular products for supporting these may come and go. Over an eight or ten year lifespan, which is the norm for courses at my university, then the prevailing technologies are likely to change at least once during that period. Under those circumstances, it seems to me clear that the course’s learning design, the top-level description of the activities which learners will do, is that part of the design which does not change. The question of which technology can best implement those activities is also a design question, but a separate one.


Reference
Conole et al. 2004, 'Mapping pedagogy and tools for effective learning design', Computers and Education, vol 43, pp 17-33.

Tuesday 13 September 2016

Cuttings: July 2016

Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing: did tech change literary style? by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum - review by Brian Dillon in The Guardian. "In a photograph taken in his high-tech home office at 29 Merrick Square, London, in 1968, thriller writer Len Deighton is hard at work on his next novel, Bomber. An electric typewriter is perched atop a desk, a huge telex machine extrudes paper coils on to the florid carpet, and a video camera on a tripod is pointed at the author’s face. In the foreground is another, bulkier, typewriter connected by a fat cable to a cabinet or console. The author of Billion Dollar Brain had lately taken delivery of a magnetic tape selectric typewriter (MT/ST) (marketed in Britain as the IBM 72 IV). It was first posited at IBM’s main offices in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1957; the finished product weighed 200lb and cost $10,000. And with it Deighton was about to compose the first novel ever written on a word processor."

Deal or no deal? Brexit and the allure of self-expression - article by Molly Crockett in The Guardian Headquarters column. "In the wake of the Brexit referendum, many people across the globe have expressed bewilderment at what they see as Leave voters’ irrational decision-making. Headlines and commentaries abound accusing Leavers of voting against their self-interest.... If self-interest is defined in purely economic terms, there may be some truth in these accusations. But psychologists have long known that humans consider far more than their pocketbooks when making decisions. One of the clearest demonstrations of this comes from the ultimatum game. The game is simple: one player, the 'proposer', is given some money and proposes a way to split the pie with a second player, the 'responder'. The responder has a choice: she can accept the proposer’s offer, in which case both players are paid accordingly. Or, she can reject the offer, in which case neither player gets any money. Classical economic theories [predict that] since some money is always better than no money, responders should always accept any nonzero offer. However, in reality humans play the game very differently: responders overwhelmingly reject offers they perceive to be unfair, usually around less than 30% of the stake. ... The aversion to unfair treatment is so strong that people are willing to give up as much as a few months’ wages to reject unfair offers. When Werner Güth published the first ultimatum game studies in 1982, economists were shocked – just as Brexit commentators are now flabbergasted by the referendum results. Both failed to appreciate that people often disregard economic self-interest in order to express their emotions and their identities."

Pinpoint by Greg Milner: how is GPS changing our world? - review by Will Self in The Guardian. "Milner ventures a short way into the impact of the technology on our cognitive function, and even essays a few remarks on the philosophic conundrums it raises, but these issues are better dealt with in Nicholas Carr’s account of the risks of automation, The Glass Cage, whereas the bulk of this book is a fairly nerdy account of the backroom whiz-kids who figured out the nuts and bolts of the system."

What is the role of the left in times of political crisis? Reading George Eliot after Brexit - article by Kathryn Hughes in The Guardian. "Set in the months following the passing of the 1832 Reform Act, the novel asks uncomfortable questions about the wisdom of putting the nation’s fate in the hands of people who believe their interests lie far from your own. Put simply: can democracy be relied upon to get the answer right? And, if the answer is no, then what does that reveal about the deep chasm that divides one part of society from another? Eliot wouldn’t have known the phrase 'haves and have-nots' but she would have grasped what it meant, and she already knew why it mattered.... When I first read the novel I could never work out why the political movers and shakers pay so much attention to the labouring classes. The Great Reform Act of 1832 was carefully designed to give the vote to a handful of urban property holders rather than to the miners whom Eliot depicts hanging around the Sugar Loaf pub waiting for the election agent to woo them with free drink. It was only on a subsequent reading that the penny dropped. Felix Holt isn’t about 1832 at all. Like any historical novel, it’s actually about the present – in this case 1866.... Eliot, as so often turns out to be the case, is actually closer to the truth that we could have guessed. It turned out that doubling the electorate in 1867 required the political parties to spend far more time and money on securing votes than ever before. Rhetoric coarsened as the stakes rose, wild and impossible promises were made and there was more drunkenness at the ballot box than anyone could remember, even the great boozy days of 1832."

Seen and heard: June 2016

Mantua Trame Sonore chamber music festival – including a Bach cello suite in the Rotunda and three short concerts by my choir Polymnia in the Basilica di Santa Barbara, Palazzo Ducale. An honour to perform in the church where Monteverdi worked, and a pleasure to sing for such appreciative audiences. Another highlight of our tour: a joint concert with the Coro Ars Nova of nearby Carpenedolo, a strong local choir built up from nothing over the past 20 years by their energetic choir master.

Pallazo Te, Mantua – better value than the more famous Palazzo Ducale, which is impressive but stuffy, whereas this summer palace for the Gonzaga dukes is light and airy and packed full of fabulous frescos, some of them (such as the Camera dei Giganti) rivalling the best comic book art. A bonus during our visit was the periodic free performances by local musicians, as part of the chamber music festival, very much at home in the Renaissance galleries.

Spotlight – slow-paced but powerful film dramatisation of the Boston Globe’s uncovering of child abuse amongst the city’s Catholic priests, when no one wanted to know. Especially interesting in the light of the reflection that the internet might have made this kind of journalism impossible now. "The Spotlight team had identified 12 priests who they knew had been implicated in child sex abuse. They wanted to get the names out there, but Baron told them to hold their fire and aim for the bigger target: the Catholic church itself. 'Would an editor have that sort of restraint now?' asks [Josh Singer, co-writer of the film Spotlight]. 'As opposed to just throwing what you have up on the web? If you’d just run those names it would have been a he-said-she-said with every single one. Instead of talking about the bigger story, which is the system.'" (Article by Henry Barnes in The Guardian.)

Star Wars: The Force Awakens – catching up with this at last on DVD, found it great fun but disappointingly reprising many of the same story tropes of the original Star Wars. A good new central female character though in Rey, played by Daisy Ridley, who is our grand-daughter’s second favourite character from the film (her first being BB8, naturally).

In Treatment, series 3 – a stronger tighter series than the previous two, with the issues of Paul’s clients bleeding into his own life and his own therapy in a clear and plausible way. We still think he’s a dangerously unsafe psychotherapist, though, by UK standards.

Cuttings: June 2016

Simon Cowell wants to write a children’s book? Here’s what will give it the X Factor - article by Michael Rosen in The Guardian. "Simon Cowell has announced a new venture: he is going to write a children’s book.... What tips can I offer...?... You need to translate your own personal experience into your chosen format. Maybe the animals in the wood are arguing about who can make the best noises – the mouse squeaks, the crow caws, the weasel squeals – they can’t decide who is the winner. Unbeknownst to them, while they were arguing, Simon the Fox was listening. Up he pops and says, 'Why don’t I be the judge, and whoever is the best will come to my palace for a meal?' 'Yes!' say the animals, and one by one they stand in front of Simon and make their noises. Simon chooses one of them and takes them off to his ... well, actually, he doesn’t have a palace, he has a den. And the meal? Oh yes, it’s Simon’s meal. He eats the winner. "

The Ancient Origins of Consciousness by Todd Feinberg and Jon Mallatt: how the brain created experience - review by Stephen Rose in The Guardian. "Feinberg and Mallatt argue that the seeds of consciousness lie in the very origins of life on Earth, more than 3bn years ago. Not of course the rich subjectivity with which the word is imbued today, but what they call sensory consciousness, the ability to respond to and act on the external environment, as when their present-day successors – single-celled animals such as amoeba – detect and navigate towards food sources and withdraw from noxious ones. Even such single-celled creatures behave as if they have a sense of bodily integrity, their membranes studded with molecular receptors which can recognise the difference between themselves and something that is not-self. This is where the authors’ neuroevolutionary path to human consciousness begins."

Dumbing up - letter by Paul Shepheard to The Guardian (print edition only, 11.6.16, p 19). "Richard Dawkins gets it wrong about fiction ('What's in a number?', 4 June). He asks, what's so special about things that never happened? But fiction is analogous. Whether War and Peace or Beowulf, fiction is, by analogy, about things that happen to everybody every day."

Vinegar Girl [reversion of 'The Taming of the Shrew'] by Anne Tyler: a sparky spin on Shakespeare - review by Elizabeth Lowry in The Guardian. "Tyler draws out the warning implicit in the play: that if men will persist in finding weakness and deviousness in women sexually attractive, they are going to get the half-formed partners they deserve. At her school Kate is often 'downright astonished by how much the women in the faculty lounge sounded like the little girls nattering away in Room 4'. Other men make Kate 'feel too big and too gruff and too shocking', but Pyotr is 'the kind of person who liked her true self, for better or for worse'. By taking him as her husband, the shrew doesn’t surrender her moxie, but rather finds a counterweight to her own strength. The balance of power the two Kates and their Petruchios achieve is the basis of a successful marriage. This sparky, intelligent spin on Shakespeare’s controversial classic demolishes the old saw that you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar with a simple question posed by Pyotr. That may be true, he says – but why would you want to catch flies?"

Could Steiner schools have a point on children, tablets and tech? - article by Sarfraz Manzoor in The Guardian. "The methods at [the Iona school in Nottingham], which are based on the controversial teachings of Austrian 19th century philosopher Rudolf Steiner, may be different from those employed in mainstream state schools, but the Iona was recently declared outstanding by the School Inspection Service – the independent equivalent of Ofsted. The report noted that 'pupils do not use computers or the internet when in school but staff have ensured that they have learned about internet safety'. It went on: 'Teaching is inspirational and highly effective … teachers are very well trained and highly skilled.' Any school would be grateful to be described in such glowing terms but the staff here are particularly proud that they achieved their outstanding status without technology. In addition to the ban on computers in school, parents are discouraged from letting their children watch television, play computer games or use smartphones at home...."

The English language is under siege from tone-deaf activists - column by Clive James in The Guardian. "In Australia there is some outfit going by the name of the Productivity Commission that calls books 'cultural externalities'. Speaking as someone who, when well, writes cultural externalities for a living, I think it might be more efficient, from the productivity angle, if we could go on calling them books. But I admit that this is merely my opinion, not settled science. If I were advancing this opinion in the form of a tweet or comment, I could insert the acronym IMO, so proving that the standard dead white male language of Jane Austen is now being assailed not only by expansive phrases from institutions that wish to sound more important, but also by piddling abbreviations from individuals who wish to sound pressed for time. Admittedly, some of those individuals wish to sound humble, too, and might even be so; but saying IMO is a counterproductive way of conveying that impression, because we already assume that your opinion is only your opinion. And saying IMHO is an even more counterproductive way of conveying it, because nobody who says 'in my humble opinion' is any more humble than Saddam Hussein and Imelda Marcos dancing the tango."

‘Could he actually win?’ Dave Eggers at a Donald Trump rally - article by Dave Eggers in The Guardian. "Believing that Trump’s supporters are all fascists or racists is a grave mistake. This day in Sacramento presented a different picture, of a thousand or so regular people who thought it was pretty cool how Trump showed up in a plane with his name on it. How naughty it was when he called the president 'stupid'. How funny it was when he said the word 'huge' the peculiar way he does, without the “h” (the audience yelled back “uuuuge!”, laughing half with him, half at him). In the same way we rooted for Clay a few years ago when he showed up as an actual actor in a Woody Allen movie, the audience at a Trump rally is thinking, How funny would it be if this guy were across the table from Angela Merkel? That would be classic. Americans who have voted for Trump in the primaries have done so not because they agree with all, or any, of his statements or promises, but because he is an entertainment. He is a loud, captivating distraction and a very good comedian. His appeal is aided by these rallies, and by media coverage, and both are fuelled not by substance but by his willingness to say crazy shit. Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager, has insisted that they 'let Trump be Trump' and the wisdom of the strategy is undeniable. As long as he continues to say crazy shit, he will continue to dominate the news and will continue to attract crowds. The moment he ceases to entertain – to say crazy shit – he will evaporate."

Brexit is a fake revolt: working-class culture is being hijacked to help the elite - column by Paul Mason in The Guardian. "I ... know what a real revolt looks like. The miners strike; the Arab spring; the barricade fighting around Gezi Park in Istanbul in 2013. So, to people getting ready for the mother of all revolts on Thursday, I want to point out the crucial difference between a real revolt and a fake one. The elite does not usually lead the real ones. In a real revolt, the rich and powerful usually head for the hills, terrified. Nor are the Sun and the Daily Mail usually to be found egging on a real insurrection. But, all over Britain, people have fallen for the scam. In the Brexit referendum, we’ve seen what happens when working-class culture gets hijacked – and when the party that is supposed to be defending working people just cannot find the language or the offer to separate a fake revolt from a real one."

Reading from the screen: Good for education? - post by Mark Nichols, in his blog 'TEL-ling it like it is'. "A conference paper by Geoff Kaufman ... and Mary Flanagan ... called “High-low split: Divergent cognitive construal levels triggered by digital and non-digital platforms” has had some coverage.... The studies published in the paper compared levels of construal (perception and comprehension, or ‘gist’) of subjects reading the same matter from print, and a screen in an RCT (Randomised Control Trial).... In a recently accepted article entitled “Reading and studying on the screen: An overview of literature toward good learning design practice” (I’ll provide a link once it’s published), I overview much of the recent literature on reading from the screen vs reading print. My conclusions are, as relevant to Kaufman and Flanagan, as follows: (1) Reading from the screen is perceived by readers as being a different genre to reading from print. Various studies show that readers approach reading from the screen differently than they do reading from print. Surface reading (or overconfidence) is common for on-screen reading. The issue is not so much the fact that text is on screen, rather the approach of the reader is not self-critical enough. (2) Education design techniques geared to raise the readers’ construal with on screen text can be applied to reduce cognitive load, overconfidence, and the natural tendency toward lower construal. The final study clearly demonstrates that readers can improve their construal level if they are properly calibrated or oriented to the task at hand. While 48% is still short of the 66% correct attained by print readers, the significant gain is evidence that intervention can make a positive difference. (3) Comparing text from the screen and in print is not a fair appraisal of the former’s utility in education. If all the on screen student is exposed to is the same text they could otherwise have printed, the educational opportunities of on screen have not been applied. Educational designers can – and ought to – apply on screen reading in ways that encourage effective engagement with the ideas in the text."

Death by GPS: are satnavs changing our brains? - article by Greg Milner in The Guardian, extracted from his book Pinpoint: How GPS is Changing Our World. "So what happens to our brains as we transition into a world where GPS does it all for us? Some cognitive experts believe we may be undergoing fundamental changes. 'Physical maps help us build cognitive maps,' Julia Frankenstein of the Center for Cognitive Science at the University of Freiburg in Germany has argued. Spending our days moving through various environments, we fill in the details of our cognitive map based on our egocentric experiences. Can the granular detail of that map fade through misuse? 'The problem with GPS systems is, in my eyes, that we are not forced to remember or process the information. As it is permanently "at hand", we need not think or decide ourselves,' Frankenstein says. 'The more we rely on technology to find our way, the less we build up our cognitive maps.' Life becomes a series of strip maps: 'We see the way from A to Z, but we don’t see the landmarks along the way… developing a cognitive map from this reduced information is a bit like trying to get an entire musical piece from a few notes.'"

As an English European, this is the biggest defeat of my political life - article by Timothy Garton Ash in The Guardian. "As an English European I see two tasks before us, which stand in a certain tension with each other. On the one hand, now the people’s decision has been made, we must do everything we can to limit the damage to this country. And if it turns out that 'this country' is to be without Scotland, then let England be the one of Charles Dickens and George Orwell, not that of Nigel Farage and Nick Griffin. Since we have predicted, in entirely good faith, that the consequences of Brexit will be disastrous, this means we have to work to prove ourselves wrong. I would be so happy if we were proved wrong. As Europeans, on the other hand, we must do everything we can to ensure the European Union learns the lessons of this stinging reverse, which has its origins as much in recent European as in earlier British history. For if the EU and the eurozone do not change, they will be engulfed too, by a thousand continental versions of Farage. And with all its faults, the union is still worth saving. I stand by my adaptation of that great English European Winston Churchill’s famous remark on democracy: this is the worst possible Europe, apart from all the other Europes that have been tried from time to time."

How painter Winifred Knights became Britain’s ‘unknown genius’ - article by Kathryn Hughes in The Guardian. "This summer [until 18 September] the Dulwich Picture Gallery is mounting a retrospective of [Knights'] work, the first ever. On display are all her significant pieces, including The Marriage at Cana (1923), shipped from New Zealand, and Scenes from the Life of St Martin of Tours (1928‑33), a stunning triptych that will be unhooked from the wall of Canterbury Cathedral and trundled up the A2 to south London. Most thrilling of all, The Santissima Trinita (1924-30), generally considered Knights’ masterpiece, has been lent by its private owners. These works appear alongside The Deluge, together with scores of preparatory sketches. In a Knights painting, a group of monumental figures typically pauses at a moment of revelation or transcendence. Although individual shapes have been simplified and stylised, the figures are still emphatically human, much in the manner of an early Renaissance church fresco. Indeed, Knights’ painstakingly drawn and luminously coloured work is a reminder that pre-Raphaelite art – with its love of detail, decorative colour, interest of line and the conveyance of nature – had a long and distinguished influence in British painting right up to the second world war. Yet here, in fact, may lie the reason for Knights’ fall from critical favour following her early death in 1947. When art historians in the postwar period came to describe what they believed had happened during the first part of the 20th century, they inevitably privileged modernism, with its international language of abstraction, over the kind of figurative work that seemed tied to a regressively local way of seeing the world. According to this paradigm, Knights’ work wasn’t just old-fashioned, it was wrong.

Sunday 11 September 2016

Cuttings: August 2016

From Twister’s ‘sex in a box’ to Pokémon Go’s new reality: how games define the times - article by Arwa Mahdawi in The Guardian. "Monopoly... was initially called the Landlord’s Game and was invented at the turn of the 20th century to teach people about social inequality. 'It is a practical demonstration of the present system of land-grabbing, with all its usual outcomes and consequences,' wrote Elizabeth Magie, its inventor, in a political magazine. 'In a short time, I hope … men and women will discover that they are poor because Carnegie and Rockefeller, maybe, have more than they know what to do with,' she added. The Landlord’s Game was popular with leftwing intellectuals. However, over the next few decades less pedagogical versions of the game popped up. It seems that during the economic depression of the 1930s, people were more interested in playing at being a tycoon than interrogating tycoonism. In 1935, Parker Brothers (now a subsidiary of Hasbro) purchased the rights to a version of the game created by Charles Darrow, and this became the one we know today: a training ground for tiny Trumps. Ironically, and perhaps inevitably, the Landlord’s Game was subsumed by the very power structures it was criticising. As the game went on to sell more than 250 million copies worldwide, its female inventor was forgotten, while a man monopolised the glory and the profit. Monopoly is a practical demonstration of the way in which capitalism doesn’t just grab land but minds; appropriating its critics and turning counter-culture into consumer culture."

The Happiness Industry by William Davies: why capitalism has turned us into narcissists - review by Terry Eagleton in The Guardian. "What Davies recognises is that capitalism has now in a sense incorporated its own critique. What the system used to regard with suspicion – feeling, friendship, creativity, moral responsibility – have all now been co-opted for the purpose of maximising profits....  Happiness for the market researchers and corporate psychologists is a matter of feeling good. But it seems that millions of individuals don’t feel good at all, and are unlikely to be persuaded to buck up by technologies of mind control that induce them to work harder or consume more. You can’t really be happy if you are a victim of injustice or exploitation, which is what the technologists of joy tend to overlook. This is why, when Aristotle speaks of a science of well-being, he gives it the name of politics. The point is of little interest to the neuroscientists, advertising gurus or mindfulness mongers, which is why so much of their work is spectacularly beside the point."

Richard Ford, Joyce Carol Oates, David Hare and more ... leading writers on Donald Trump - article with contributions from various writers in The Guardian. Steven Pinker: "Most people idealise democracy as a form of governance in which an informed populace deliberates about the common good and carefully selects leaders who carry out their preferences. By that standard the world has never had a democracy. Political scientists such as Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels, authors of Democracy for Realists, who study how democracies really work are repeatedly astonished by the shallowness and incoherence of people’s political beliefs and the tenuous connection of those beliefs to their votes. Most voters are ignorant not just of current policy alternatives but of the most elementary facts about politics and history, such as the major branches of government or which countries have used nuclear weapons. Their opinions flip depending on how a question is worded: they say that the government spends too much on 'welfare' but too little on 'assistance to the poor', and that it should use 'military force' but not 'go to war'. When they do formulate a preference, they commonly vote for a candidate with the opposite one. Nor does voting provide a feedback signal on a government’s overall performance. Voters punish incumbents for recent events over which they have dubious control, such as macroeconomic swings and terrorist strikes, or no control at all, such as droughts, floods or even shark attacks. Achen and Bartels suggest that most people correctly recognise that their votes are astronomically unlikely to affect the outcome of an election and so they prioritise work and family over educating themselves about politics. They use the franchise as a form of self-expression: they vote for candidates who they think speak up for their kind of people."

From Trump to Brexit rhetoric: how today's politicians have got away with words - article by Mark Thompson in The Guardian. "I believe instead that the crisis in our public language springs from a set of interlocking political, cultural and technological forces – forces that go beyond any one ideology, or interest group, or national political situation. The first factor is the changing character of western politics, with previous affiliations based on class and other forms of traditional group identity giving way, especially after the end of the cold war, to a more complex and uncertain landscape in which political leaders struggle for definition and differentiation....  The second factor is that widening gulf between the worldview and language of the experts who make modern policy and those of the public at large. ...  The next factor is digital technology and its impact both on pre-existing media and on the wider dissemination and discussion of political ideas....  The fourth force at work is related to our understanding of how persuasive language works. Over the course of the 20th century, empirical advances were made in the way words are used to sell to goods and services. They were then systematically applied to political messaging, and the impressionistic rhetoric of promotion increasingly came to replace the rhetoric of traditional step-by-step political argument. The effect has been to give political language some of the brevity, intensity and urgency we associate with the best marketing, but to strip it of explanatory and argumentative power."

Mythomania by Peter Conrad: the real meaning of Apple, cronuts and the Kardashians - review by Steven Poole in The Guardian. "Mythomania is a collection of themed essays about modern culture, some of which began life as BBC Radio 4 programmes, and it follows consciously in the footsteps of the first great deconstructor of cultural symbols, Roland Barthes. In Mythologies, published in 1957, Barthes mused brilliantly on the meaning of subjects ranging from detergents to red wine, plastic and wrestling. 'The topics Barthes dealt with uncovered the hidden mythical content of daily reality,' Conrad notes approvingly, and in similar fashion he inquires in elegant and allusive style about such up-to-date phenomena as laptops, selfies, S&M fiction, vampire movies, the Kardashians, the downfall of Oscar Pistorius, and chicken-based restaurant chains.