Shots In The Dark

A few years back, my cousin George Blow sent me a copy of a book he was writing about the golf swings of the greatest golfers in history. George has spent years not only working on his own game, but studying those of other golfers, and you could see that from the book, which was really quite smart. I don't golf—not unless you're feeling incredibly charitable—but George obviously knew his stuff through and through. Golf was his obsession.

Now George has gotten the book published. It's called Master Classes: The Evolution of the Golf Swing, and it looks terrific. If you're a golfer, or you know a golfer—and who doesn't, really?—this is a great Christmas gift.

...because this is too important: Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey are breaking up.*

It's a shame when any marriage doesn't work—although my fellow Groton alum Curtis Sittenfeld thinks that there's some pleasure in the implosion of celebrity marriages—so I guess I'm sorry to hear that. But here's what makes me laugh: Their statement to the press, which reads, in part, "We hope that you respect our privacy during this difficult time."

This from the couple which starred in a reality television show about their new marriage....

Well, I don't think that the press is going to respect their privacy. But then, since Nick and Jessica don't respect their own privacy, why should it?

I happened to see the Johnny Cash film, "Walk the Line," last night—Joaquin Phoenix is terrific, Reese Witherspoon perhaps even better—and it presented a fascinating counterpart to the Simpson-Lachey story. Cash's early years as a singer were remarkable: Imagine recording at Sun Studio, then touring small-town America in a rock 'n' roll show with Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, and June Carter...with virtually no one paying attention. Now, up and coming artists are chronicled from their first steps.

I'm sure that something is lost without the omnipresent video and aural recording. But something is lost with it, too—the ability to develop under the radar as an artist and as a person without the self-consciousness effected by an ever-present video camera. Because as Nick and Jessica have learned, once that camera makes its way into your private life, you can never erase those images.
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P.S. I also laugh a bit that they released this statement the day before Thanksgiving, in an attempt to borrow a Washington trick and bury the news. As if. Moreover, I think there's an argument to be made that this trick just doesn't work any more....and all it does is make us media types work on holidays. Which we don't like one bit.

I'll be away for a day or so, spending some time with my family up in Connecticut. I have two wonderful nieces and an equally special nephew—my favorite nephew in the world, as I like to tell him—and we'll get to spend some quality time together. Along with, of course, their parents, my brother and sister-in-law, and mother and stepfather. (Dad and stepmother are in Florida, to which they retreat at the hint of cold weather—lucky them!) Thursday, we eat and watch the Lions; Friday, we're taking the kids to see "Disney Live." It'll be fun for the kids to watch, and fun for the adults to watch the kids.

I hope that you all have a wonderful time with your families. And a special nod to the men and women in the military overseas. We're grateful for your service, and we haven't forgotten you. Stay safe, and come home soon.

Writing for the conservative thinktank, the American Enterprise Institute, Charles Murray uses Larry Summers' musings on women and science as a starting point to ask, "Where Are the Female Einsteins?"

He begins by saying, "Last January, Harvard University president Lawrence Summers offered a few mild, off-the-record remarks about innate differences between men and women in their aptitude for high-level science and mathematics, and was treated by Harvard's faculty as if he were a crank."

(Italics added.)

An observation here: Ever since Larry Summers' infamous speech, conservatives have rushed to his defense by pointing out that his remarks were off-the-record.

It's a curious logic. The stipulation that one's remarks not be reported—which is what "off the record" means—has no bearing on their merits or demerits. If someone says something incredibly brilliant, it would be no less so for being off the record. And if someone says something incredibly offensive—used the "n" word, for example, or an anti-Semitic term—the fact that it was not intended for publication would not diminish its offensiveness. If a liberal called Rush Limbaugh a fat piece of human waste, and then said, "What are you so upset about, it's off the record?", conservatives would rightly disregard that caveat.

Charles Murray is welcome to defend President Summers' remarks on countless other grounds. That's a healthy debate. But the fact that they were off the record is irrelevant.

...while I set up my new iMac G5, with—I blush—a 20-inch monitor, 250 gigs of hard drive space, wireless keyboard and mouse, and built-in iSight.

After four years and two books, the old iBook was just running out of steam—not to mention hard drive space. I suppose 2700 songs in iTunes will do that to a computer. But it served me well, and it will eventually be put into the closet, along with my clamshell iBook and my Powerbook 3400, neither of which I have any idea what to do with but can't bear myself to toss/recycle.

Problem was that in transporting files from the iBook, with OS 10.3.9, to the iMac, with OS 10.4.3, things went a little haywire, leading to no less than five hours on the phone with four different Apple reps. Adam, I apologize again for saying that my computer was FUBAR. Devon, it took 118 minutes and fifteen seconds, but we finally got those addresses imported. (1066 of them, to be precise.)

Now can I say that this computer is a thing of beauty?

Yes, I can. Let's just say that if this blog were written as well as this computer is engineered.... Well, it's something to shoot for.

In the Times, Katie Hafner writes an article about Harvard librarian Sidney Verba and his role overseeing Harvard's partnership with Google, as Google attempts to digitize all the books in Harvard's libraries.

Although this was not Ms. Hafner's intention, the article raises questions about whether the deal between Harvard and Google was made not on its merits, but because of a close relationship between Larry Summers and a top Google executive.

Hafner's piece romps along for some time, rather sympathetically to Mr. Verba. Hafner suggests that Verba was well aware of the implications of Google's project—which many authors believe constitutes copyright violation on an unprecedented scale—but at the same time, she quotes Verba saying, "It's become much more controversial than I would have expected. I was surprised by the vehemence."

Given that the Google project could one day allow readers to search every book in existence online, without authors receiving a penny, one wonders how much Verba had truly considered its implications. Google vows that it won't allow readers to read whole books online...but once the scanning is done and the books are posted, that genie will be out of the bottle. Either Google will change its mind...or hackers will write programs, much like peer-to-peer file sharing networks, that allow users to download entire books from Google, all free of charge.

Moreover, there's a local angle for Harvardians: President Larry Summers is profoundly skeptical about Harvard's libraries—how much they cost, and whether all of their resources are really necessary—and during his tenure, Harvard's libraries have come under steady pressure to cut hours and staff.

So how did Verba decide to support this initiative? That's where Hafner's article gets really interesting.

She writes, "When Sheryl Sandberg, a Google executive, first visited Harvard two years ago and put forth the idea of digitizing millions of books spread out over Harvard's more than 90 libraries, Mr. Verba was skeptical. The sheer magnitude of the task seemed staggering."

Hafner then discusses Google's awesome scanning abilities.

But wait—there's a critical fact about Sheryl Sandberg that Hafner either doesn't know or doesn't mention.

True, Sheryl Sandberg is a Google executive; she is the vice-president of global online sales and operations.

"In this role," according to Google's website, "Sheryl is responsible for online sales of Google's advertising and publishing products. She also runs sales operations and support for Google's consumer products and for Google Print."

Huh. No mention of any work with university libraries. So why was Sandberg chosen to propose this project to Harvard?

Turns out that Sandberg has some pretty tight Cambridge connections. She's a 1991 graduate of the college, an economics major who graduated summa cum laude and was awarded the John H. Williams prize for the top graduating student in economics. And she's a 1995 graduate of HBS.

But perhaps most important was this: Prior to joining Google, Sandberg was chief of staff to none other than Treasury secretary Larry Summers.

From all I hear, the two of them were close at Treasury and have remained good friends. So Google's decision to send Sandberg to Harvard—never previously disclosed, as far as I can tell—would seem to have something to do with her relationship with Harvard's president.

All of which makes one wonder: Was Harvard's decision to join the Google project influenced by the relationship between Larry Summers and Sheryl Sandberg?

In Washington, from whence Summers and Sandberg came, this is called lobbying. It's illegal to leave the government and immediately start lobbying your former employer, because your close connections to that employer could inappropriately influence that employer's decisions. But no such restrictions apply to the non-profit world.

Nonetheless, since the Google decision could affect the livelihoods of every Harvard professor who's published a book—presumably all of them—and since it will have a profound effect on writers everywhere, it behooves the faculty to start asking questions about how the Harvard-Google relationship was forged, and whether the process was corrupted by the relationship between Sandberg and Summers. After all, this deal between a non-profit university and a private sector company was made in the utmost secrecy, with absolutely no discussion among the people affected—those who write the books that are in Google's libraries.

At the next faculty meeting, Harvard's professors should ask questions such as:

Why was there no public discussion about a deal involving the entire Harvard faculty?

Did Sandberg and Summers discuss the Google deal before any decision was made?

When Sandberg came to Harvard to see Verba, did she also visit Summers? After she met with Verba, did she subsequently contact Summers?

Did Summers and Verba discuss the deal before a decision was made?

Did Verba feel any pressure from Larry Summers to play ball with Google?

Did Verba have any incentive to try to please the president by going along with the Google deal?

Was it really Verba who made the decision to go along with Google, or was it Larry Summers' decision, for which Verba is the front man?

If Larry Summers were to leave the Harvard presidency—not an insane proposition—could he ever profit financially from a relationship with Google—by, for example, serving as a member of Google's board? And would he now take a public oath to avoid any such financial relationship?

Harvard's participation in Google's project is a hugely valuable endorsement, one that is surely having a broad impact. You can imagine librarians at many universities saying to themselves, "Well, if Harvard is doing it, then it must be a good idea."

(I'd say that Google couldn't buy that kind of publicity, except that may be exactly what Google has done: Was Sandberg was hired precisely because of her connections with Summers?)

But it isn't a good idea if the real reason why Harvard joined forces with Google is the tight relationship between the university's president and his former closest aide.