Quick Reviews

Manufacturing Consent

Public Opinion by Walter Lippman

Public Opinion

Walter Lippmann

MacMillan 1922, 1941

Thick plebs are endangering democracy by thinking for themselves without curation. Therefore, it must be provided. 

Formulaically written in a complacent authoritative tone. Backed by Science. Imagine an American Baby Boomer waffling on and on and on about how they would reform baseball and acting like they reinvented the wheel for stating some basic observation about human nature and on and on and oh all men of goodwill and on and on.

If I see one more person (Jericho) who was in military intelligence of some kind and went on to do big things in the media I'm going to start calling it a pattern.

What if, right, there was this war, right, and some people told lies about what was happening in this war, right, and some people believed the lies, right, or even, we just say that people believed the lies, wouldn't that prove that people aren't omniscient, right, which as we all know right, was always the basic premise of democracy, right, that people have direct and total knowledge of everything that's happening in the world, right, like a god, right, so since democracy is broken, right, you need some special people to shoulder the burden, right, to manage democracy by putting the burden on responsible administrators, right, also they should have life tenure, liberal pensions and sabbatical years and that.

(p.13)   "I have seen a young girl, brought up in a Pennsylvania mining town, plunged suddenly from entire cheerfulness into a paroxysm of grief when a gust of wind cracked the kitchen window-pane... her father had frightened her into running away from home." 🤔🤔🤔

(p.248)   "That the manufacture of consent is capable of great refinements no one, I think, denies. [...] the opportunities for manipulation open to anyone who understands the process are plain enough."

(p.249)   "It has been demonstrated that we cannot rely upon intuition, conscience, or the accidents of casual opinion if we are to deal with the world beyond our reach."

Does what it says on the wireless

You're Better Than That! by Chris Sutton

You're Better Than That!: How to Fix Modern Football

Chris Sutton

Octopus Publishing 2020

A good ol' moan about football – alongside plenty of entertaining lists, insights and anecdotes – and a comprehensive set of proposals to sort it out. Okay, you'll have heard a lot of this before, but if your dream commentary pair is, like mine, Chris Sutton and Ally McCoist, you'll be entertained... oh wait, what's Sutton doing here, Sutton's got himself in a bit of a muddle here, oh no, he's SPOILERED THE MOUSETRAP. CHRIS SUTTON HAS SPOILERED THE MOUSETRAP! Why he didn't look across for the editor only he will know, the reader has entrusted him with the bully pulpit and he's got it horribly wrong. Poor, poor decision-making on Chris Sutton's part. What was going through his head at that moment.

(p.IX)   "I've never been mealy-mouthed and I've no intention to start now."

(p.11)   "For whatever reason (although executives justifying their own jobs isn't a bad first guess), there has been too much change for change's sake."

(p.22)   "Again, the lawmakers have embarrassed themselves here."

(p.29)   "Billy McKinlay at Blackburn intimidated people throughout his career... [he] told me it was all a front... he told me he used to play in fear. He just fronted it out and made a good career thanks to his psychology."

(p.99)   "When you're left out in favour of a player who you deem to be inferior to yourself, that's when the problems start. That's when the disagreements come in."

(p.101)   "There had been a long-term plan around Carrow Road – everyone was talking about keeping the squad together and about the chairman Robert Chase loosening the purse strings."

(p.106)   "If you did that when we went to see The Mousetrap..."

YOU'VE LOST ME THERE, CHRIS

Future Fertility

Bob's Basics: Composting by Bob Flowerdew

Bob's Basics: Composting

Bob Flowerdew

Kyle Cathie Limited 2010

'Basic' but very useful and marvellously presented take on composting. Daleks are a bad lot but better than nothing if need be. Otherwise, the bigger the bin the better. Layers of soil and garden lime speed things up and keep flies off, but they're bad for worms (others say they're good for worms – garden advice is a bit like fitness advice in that respect).

(p.30)   "Don't worry, though, whatever you do the result will still be compost, it may just take longer to get there."

Legitimate Business Interests

Barbarians Led by Bill Gates by Jennifer Edstrom & Marlin Eller

Barbarians Led by Bill Gates: Microsoft from the Inside

Jennifer Edstrom & Marlin Eller

Henry Holt 1998

Entertaining insider tale of Microsoft succeeding despite Bill Gates (not an outsider tale with insider info and a broader perspective). Dilbertian birth agonies of the technology of 2003 and 2023 in 1993.

(p.69)   "Like Disneyland, Windows had been designed with a mouse in mind."

(p.73)   "Our policy is simple, Microsoft developers explained. If a problem surfaces and a customer reports it, we'll fix it."

[Lovely Head intro starts playing]

(p.115)   "The Midland Bank developers had written the code, but their managers wouldn't let them use it because Microsoft didn't support it. Still, the developers were so eager for Microsoft to include the code in Windows that they offered to give it away for free."

(p.117)   "OLE was designed to protect the developers of big applications... Microsoft wanted to make it so gnarly that anybody who couldn't devote a team of one hundred programmers to every Windows application would be out of the game."

(p.147)   "Microsoft does best when it has a successful competitor it can copy and crush."

(p.196)   "In January of 1994, Waggener Edstrom began recruiting 100 key editors, 32 analysts, and 150 third-party vendors for the Windows 95 bandwagon... Waggener Edstrom leaked exclusive Windows 95 puff stories to all of the important newspapers and publications. The PR firm fed the New York Times a story with a marketing twist, the Wall Street Journal received a more technical angle, and People magazine got an exclusive revealing that NBC's Friends sitcom stars Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry would be a doing a twenty-five-minute video, educating people on the wonders of Windows 95."

If we do generic ad copy but fill it with smarmy knowing zingers to pwn the viewer, we win 😏

Breezy Britannia

Everything Explained that is Explainable by Denis Boyles

Everything Explained that is Explainable

Denis Boyles

Vintage Books 2017

Rollicking, richly illustrated tale of Anglo-American can do and cutthroat, the 11th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, Cecil Rhodes in a shelf, a colossus of knowledge, the granite monument to the Transatlantean Age. Former Playboy man Denis Boyles sprawls at high intensity over late Victorian and Edwardian publishing, marketing and academia. 

(p.7)   "Although it beggars many modern imaginations, publishing and selling books was very good business back then."

(p.115)   "So if he was so clever, why did he end up becoming a journalist?"

EMINENTLY READABLE

Pub Quiz Classics

A Classical Education by Caroline Taggart

A Classical Education: The stuff you wish you'd been taught at school

Caroline Taggart

Michael O'Mara Books Limited 2013

Pub quiz classics; nice idea but too flippant.

(p.60)   "The first famous figure to emerge from this was Draco, who has given his name to very harsh measures in any context, as well as to a character in Harry Potter who provokes the audience to hiss whenever he appears."

Austriae est imago orbi universo

The Habsburgs: Embodying Empire by Andrew Wheatcroft

The Habsburgs: Embodying Empire

Andrew Wheatcroft

Penguin 1996

Constructing the image of the Habsburgs. A lot of work for something at a tangent to what you would have expected. I hate to say this, but needs more story, fewer words, and less conjecture.

Dreamy Sexy Nightmares

Spin Cycle by Zoë Strachan

Spin Cycle

Zoë Strachan

Picador 2004

Zoë Strachan is a talented writer; Spin Cycle is a readable novel. The drawback is the stretching of believability, especially winding up the story, and maybe the author being a bit too obvious in one of the characters. Scottishisms present in just the right amount to be piquant and digestible for clueless southerners. Wouldn't read this again, but would read something else by her.

© Bryn Roberts 2023