How does one actually build something when the tool available is a hammer and there are no nails — not even any screws — in the inventory?
- RIP Tom Ulen (nothing "official" yet). Yes, I actually maintain(ed) friendships inside the L&E movement, primarily among those like Tom who viewed economic analysis of law — and legal analysis of economics! — as a powerful tool and not an answer per se (or should that be per quod?). He (and his science-fiction fandom) will be missed.
- And as to the latter, just over sixty years ago American TV boldly went where no one had gone before, in particular because it relied upon truly independent freelancers (not mere outside contractors mislabelled as freelancers) telling unpredictable stories premised on surprise and not a single overarching premise (preapproved by the studio). Maybe Disney could learn something, whether for Marvel stuff (of which there are other "ownership" issues that are not well-known, even aside from Stan Lee), or a certain other franchise devoted to ill-conceived fan service since the mid-1980s, or… Oh, wait, that would be the definition of "Not Invented Here," wouldn't it? And the less said about the respect accorded the outside inventors/inventions by transferees and other exploiters, the better… especially when misidentified and poorly-conceived legal workarounds are involved. Since it's a new academic year, here's your homework… which you should be prepared to both criticize and embrace for very much the same reasons (and for many others not visible within its underlying weltanschauung).
- Or we could note that the biggest problem with many cultural debates (and institutions) is a distressing tendency toward binarism, epitomized by CP Snow's regrettable inability to count above two (not that Leavis was any better). "A clash between diametrically opposed alternative views" is almost always oversimplified nonsense, especially when the actual stakes are not those of the argument's subject (semipaywall) — things like "reputation" (and "casualties"). Sometimes everybody involved in these false-dichotomy debates is wrong; the Snow/Leavis controversy was fuelled in part by refusal to even contemplate "boundary conditions," as inherent in the very forum of the debate — both between Snow and Leavis, and in Snow's own conception.
At present, the purported "debates" over the more-than-two-millennia-long snarl of the Levant in particular and Southwest Asia (the "Middle East") in general epitomize this, and especially so because many of the most vocal participants in those "debates" themselves have no stake in them. Let alone any knowledge of the region, or personal experience with the spillover elsewhere, or the concepts of "hidden agendas" and "undisclosed/overdiscounted conflicts of interest." For it to be meaningful, "Never Again" has to include everyone, else we're just seeing at a social level that those who were themselves abused (literally or by transferred identity) tend to become abusers; very much like, well, Northern Ireland. Meanwhile others exploit the distraction (and you should carefully ponder the meaning of "regime change" in all its multiplicity — and undisclosed conflicts of interest). That allied/proxy leader may — for now — be our bastard, but at his/her/their core still a bastard.