Sunday, August 05, 2007

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Grocer's Apostrophe

As Matt said, Oliver Kamm must be livid. I'm thinking of ordering the reprint of "Pretty Straight Guy's".

I don't have much to say about his airport piece except I'd like to note that "Despite the publicity, most people still don't know what happiness economics is..." is a reference to his New Statesman interview with Andrew Oswald which contains the almost prophetic passage:


As I thought about the objections, I felt the temptation to shrug my shoulders and conclude that all that the happiness economists have done is to recast the old arguments between left and right without settling them. But that isn't fair. New ways of thinking produce new results. If the government goes ahead with the planned expansion of airports, protesters will now be able to put an exact figure on how much distress living under a flight path will cause - just as those who object to new commuter towns will be able to say that regular long-distance travel is a good route to mental distress.


My, admittedly naive, understanding of happiness economics suggests that it doesn't involve exact figures at all.

But the real fun comes from Guardian regular troll MarkGreen0 in the first two comments.

Since no one seems to be watching Aaro any more, I give you Craig Murray.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Re Aaro, a moment's googling would have given Murray (or you) this link: http://timesonline.typepad.com/david_aaronovitch/2006/10/after_this_ster.html.
Some watchers.

8/05/2007 11:27:00 PM  
Blogger Captain Cabernet said...

I quite enjoyed:

"Chicago University's Law School held the world's first conference on the legal implications of the new research on happiness. Everyone agreed they were enormous."

What? Really? A bunch of academics held a conference on something and they agreed with one another that that something was important? Never!

8/06/2007 08:46:00 AM  
Blogger Gabriel said...

I sent this post to Dave Aaronovitch's weblog and will be interested to see if it gets posted online or not...

"Hi Dave, we last met at the CP students caucus at the NUS conference in 1979. I recollect you sat cross legged on the table half asleep whilst Sally Hibbin went through the amendments in her role as student organiser, it seems like another world does'nt it??. I would be delighted if you would permit your many readers to read my blog 'An Unrepentant Communist'

http://unrepentantcommunist.blogspot.com/

which shows that at least one of us in that room has not altered their views as much as you have, (which of course is no claim to being right !!). Nevetheless I still would like to keep an old fashioned CP -type flag flying in the blogosphere and perhaps a post on your blog may help.. John Woods

8/09/2007 12:14:00 AM  

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