Monday, January 06, 2003
BOOK REVIEW: The Forging of a Rebel
Arturo Barea.....Rating: 5 Stars
We had to fight them. This meant that we would have to shell or bomb Burgos and its towers, Cordova and its flowered courtyards, Seville and its gardens. We would have to kill so as to purchase the right to live.
I wanted to scream.
The Spanish Civil War is more relevant to Americans than it might have seemed a few years ago. In the aftermath of 9/11, it is easier to imagine the reality of a Madrid under sustained shellfire. In the environment of hysterical political correctness which exists on so many campuses, it is easier to understand how a casual remark could land someone in front of a firing squad. And in a time of suicide bombings, the slogan "Long Live Death" (first adopted by the Spanish Foreign Legion and later by the Fascist movement) becomes even more chilling.
This book is "about" the Spanish Civil War, but it is not conventional military or political history. It is the story of Spain in the first half of the 20th century, as seen through the eyes of one man. The writing is so rich, dense, and vivid that reading it is like finding yourself inside someone else's dream. more
10:12 AM
INTRODUCING THE BOOK REVIEW SECTION
I'm going to be periodically posting book reviews--especially of books that I think deserve a wider readership than they're getting. Logistically, I'll post the full text of the review over at Photon Plaza, with only the first couple of paragraphs posted here to give you the general idea. Then, if you're interested, you can click "more" and read the whole thing.
10:08 AM
Wednesday, January 01, 2003
PROFESSOR, PLEASE
Misquantifying Terrorism
An "e-salon" known as Edge advertises its mission as "to arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and ask them the questions they are asking themselves." As reported by The Wall Street Journal, Edge asked leading scientists and humanists how they would respond to a request from President Bush as to "What are the pressing scientific issues for the nation and the world, and what is your advice on how I can begin to deal with them?"
Marvin Minsky, MIT professor and pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, recommends scrapping "the whole 'homeland defense' thing" as "cost-ineffective." According to the WSJ, Minsky calculates that the cost of preventing each terrorist-caused airplane fatality will be around $100MM, and that "we could save a thousand times as many lives at the same cost by various simple public-health measures."
Is Minsky perhaps writing tongue-in-cheek? There's no hint of this in the WSJ article, so perhaps he's really serious. I've heard the same thought expressed by others. It's difficult to believe, though, that an individual as highly-educated and intellegent as Minsky could fall into the clear intellectual fallacies which seem to me to be displayed in this analysis. At least in the capsule version published in the WSJ, Minsky ignores the key concepts of trend and positive feedback.
Calculations of probability and cost-effectiveness must be based on the assumption of a trend or lack of a trend. If probabilities of a particular phenomenon are changing over time, you can't just snapshot the phenomenon at one point in time and extrapolate those probabilities into the future. Suppose that for a particular model of car, there are 2 million vehicles on the road. In a particular year, 2 of these cars encounter complete steering failure. How much of an issue is this? A simplistic statistical analysis might conclude that there is only one chance in a million of encountering the failure in any given year--representing a fairly small increase in the risk of driving--and hence, from a cost-effectiveness standpoint, money would be better spent on other aspects of automotive safety.
But a more sophisticated analysis might show that the failures are occuring at about the point where the car has 50,000 miles on it (as might occur if the problem is due to metal fatigue or the failure of a seal). We may now have a much more serious situation, in which most or all of these vehicles will encounter steering failure as they reach the critical mileage range. The entire risk and cost-effectiveness equation changes completely. If one believes that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 may represent the leading edge of a broader phenomenon, then the situation is like the second example above, not the first. A static statistical analysis is meaningless, and so are any cost-effectiveness numbers drawn from it.
Furthermore, terrorist attacks are not a natural phenomenon like metal fatigue; they are caused by deliberate decisions of human beings. Thus, the success of one terrorist attack may well encourage others, as will lack of an effective response to these attacks. This is a simple example of a positive feedback loop. Again, this phenomenon makes static statistical analysis meaningless. As a distinguished professor of computer science, Prof Minsky is certainly familiar with the concept of positive feedback. Why does he not apply it in this instance?
Millions of ordinary Americans understand the above logic in its essence, even if they are unable to articulate it precisely. Why should such things be less-well understood by so many denizens of college campuses?
Eric Hoffer once said, famously, that he would rather be governed by the first 100 people in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard. When confronted with analysis like Professor Minsky's, it's hard to conclude that he didn't have a point.
The actual text of Minsky's letter is supposed to be up on Edge on January 6.
8:13 AM
Saturday, December 21, 2002
ACADEMIC ARROGANCE AND THE SUPPRESSION OF FREE SPEECH
An extremely strange and disturbing series of events has occurred at St Cloud State University, in Minnesota. Earlier this month, the College Republicans set up a booth expressing their support for Israel. They had an Israeli flag, a list of Israelis killed by terrorists, and also some literature from an organization called Jews for Preservation of Firearms Ownership.
Two professors approached the booth. They reportedly identified themselves as Jewish, and asserted that the College Republicans had no right to fly the Israeli flag because they were not themselves Jewish. The debate evidently became somewhat heated. One of the professors asked a College Republican (who had a small camera) to stop taking pictures because, she said, she didn't want to be photographed in front of "anti-Semitic material." (This may well be the first time in history that an Israeli flag, combined with documents supporting Israel and documents provided by a Jewish group, has been referred to as "anti-Semitic material.") There was a further verbal exchange (the professor says the student "taunted" her), after which some sort of altercation took place. The student says that the professor tried to snatch the camera from his hand and then grabbed him by the neck and shoved him up against a wall. The professor denies any neck-grabbing or shoving, but admits that she did grab for the camera. The student has filed a complaint with the St Cloud Police Department. (See article here.)
The university's vice president for student life and development, Nathan Church, then approached and said he "had to ask (the College Republicans) to take down the flag" because some people were offended. He reportedly also reiterated the opinion that the College Republicans had no right to fly the Israeli flag because they were not Jewish themselves. Church also said that the professor involved in the altercation had become upset because she felt that the flying of the flag implied that the College Republicans had the support of the Israeli government and people.
Prior to writing this article, I e-mailed Church and asked him to clarify his and the university's position on this matter, and specifically to cite what he thought was the legal basis for his claim concerning the right to fly the Israeli flag. I have received no response, nor have I received a response to my follow-up e-mail to the President of the University.
Thus...
1) Two professors asserted that students had no right to fly a particular flag, because of their ethnicity/religious background
2) A professor attempted to grab a student's camera
3) A university official denied, or at least questioned, the right of students to fly a particular flag, again based on their ethnicity/religious background..and also based on a totally spurious theory about flag display implying governmental endorsement
4) Two officials of this state university failed to respond to communication on this matter from a member of the public, even after being advised that their response or non-response would probably be published
There's one word for all of the above. Arrogance. And increasingly, it's a defining characteristic of the way in which universities in this country are being run.
7:49 AM
Tuesday, December 17, 2002
MERCHANTS OF DEATH
According to respected columnist A M Rosenthal, chief weapons inspector Hans Blix stated his intent to delete from UN documents the names of companies that have sold supplies and equipment to Iraq and thereby have turned up in the Iraqi submission relating to weapons of mass destruction. This is confirmed, with a slightly different twist, by NPR:
***
NORRIS: Those who've seen the table of contents also say that it provides information about foreign suppliers who assisted what Iraq describes as its past chemical weapons program. Are the names of those companies or individuals likely to be made public?
O'HARA: Hans Blix says that the practice in the past, you know, during previous declarations by Iraq to the United Nations was to put that kind of information in the category of being sensitive and not to release it. He pointed out that sometimes, you know, the suppliers who were involved with Iraq, you know, in the chemical weapons program might not have realized how their technology, their products were actually being used, and you know, they don't want to, you know, sort of blacklist people. But he said the decision actually will be made by the Security Council.
***
It appears that some of the names are already out, however. A German newspaper has reported that German companies are extensively implicated in these transactions. It seems very likely that companies from other European countries are also implicated. Certainly one factor in Europe's posture on Iraqi regime change is their reluctance to give up profitable business deals.
For many years, American "progressives" have denounced companies that profit by selling weapons to our own military. Will we an outpouring of anger from them on this issue? It seems unlikely. Their rage is reserved (a) primarily for American companies, and (b) for those who sell to the American military (and lately also the Israeli military) -- not for those who sell to regimes such as Iraq.
Ours is the golden age of hypocrisy. By comparison, the Victorians were amateurs.
3:10 PM
Saturday, December 14, 2002
EDUCATION OR INDOCTRINATION?
Over at Chronicle of Higher Education, there's a lively discussion of the new web site noindoctrination.org. This web site, in case you're not already familiar with it, provides a forum for students to air their complaints about excessive political indoctrination in college courses.
Actually, I think the site is a bit misnamed...nointimidation.org might capture the spirit better. What most of the students seem to be objecting to is not just having to listen to a lengthy exposition of the professor's own political views (sometimes relating only vaguely if at all to the stated subject of the class), but to instances of completely one-sided presentation, refusal to present alternative viewpoints when requested, and in some cases a professor's unwillingness to hear opposing views expressed in discussion...indeed, several students report that professors actually became quite angry at the expression of dissenting views. If you haven't already done so, go read the entries on the site. It's certainly possible that some of the incidents are exaggerated..but still, the overall pattern should be very disturbing to anyone who believes in freedom of expression. Indeed, some of the incidents reported can only be described as frightening.
The discussion at Chronicle has been, for the most part, well-balanced. There is understandable concern that the anonymity of posting could lead to unfair comments being distributed; on the other hand, most seem to feel that given the student-teacher power imbalance, anonymity is an understandable if regrettable necessity.
Some of the Chronicle commenters, though, seem to feel that any students posting on noindoctrination.org must be doing so because the they (or their parents) feel threatened by having their own ideas challenged. It's a worldview of the American public as something out of American Gothic, from which the youth can be rescued only by the intecession of bold college professors. But it should not be assumed that the only alternative to the enforcement of one orthodoxy is the enforcement of another orthodoxy. And, in many of the cases reported on the site, it would seem as if it's the professors who feel threatened by having their ideas challenged.
It's interesting to speculate as to why so much college instruction today seems to take the form of political indoctrination. More than 50 years ago, C S Lewis wrote a book ("The Abolition of Man") which is relevant to this question. In the book, he reviews a high school textbook, which (to protect the guilty) he refers to only as "The Green Book." The book purported to be an "English" book, but, in Lewis' opinion, was instead primarily an attempt to inculate a particular set of social and philosophical beliefs. The following quote is interesting:
"But I doubt whether Gaius and Titus (the authors) have really planned, under cover of teaching English, to propagate their philosophy. I think they have slipped into it for the following reasons. In the first place, literary criticism is difficult, and what they actually do is very much easier..." (emphasis added)
It's much easier to denounce "oppression" than to really analyze the thought of Karl Marks and, say, Friedrich Hayek.
I've previously speculated that the vast expansion of higher education has swept into the ranks of academia a number of people who aren't really that interested in or qualified for the intellectual life (much as the great proliferation of public companies in the late '90s brought many people into CEO roles who arguably weren't up to the job.) If this speculation is true, then perhaps many of these people focus on indoctrination rather than education partly for the simple reason that Lewis suggests--it's easier.
No doubt, there are some dedicated and hard-working scholars who also engage in excessive political indoctrination--but I bet they're a distinct minority among the visibly politicized professoriate.
The Chronicle discussion also surfaced another issue. Increasingly, people don't feel that an opinion is something that has to be based on logical argument and defended against other logical arguments--it's "just the way I feel and you don't have any right to challenge that." This trend is connected to other trends in our society, from the excessive worship of "self-esteem" to the pseudo-psychological programs on daytime TV. It is also tied up with the whole notion of cultural relativism--if there is no ground for criticizing the actions or beliefs of people from another culture, then there soon is no ground for criticizing the beliefs of another person (since we all, to some degree, have different patterns of cultural background). Nothing is left but "I think this way and you think that way"..no way to exists find a common ground. On campus, this view seems increasingly common among both students and professors.
9:24 AM
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
MOUTH RUNNING, BRAIN DISENGAGED
When "talking pictures" first came along, Harry Warner (of Warner Bros) was not enthusiastic about the prospects. "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" he reportedly asked.
Now, a group of Hollywood types has favored us with their thoughts (if that word can be applied) on Iraq.
Maybe ol' Harry had it right, after all.
6:48 PM
Monday, December 09, 2002
ABSOLUTELY UNBELIEVABLE
I first saw this on a blog, and thought it must be a misquote...no former U.S. President could say such a thing. So I tracked down the source (CNN), and it seems that Jimmy Carter really did say it. In a speech given prior to his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, he spoke of "the inability of Israel to live in peace with its neighbors."
Specifically, he said: "One of the key factors that arouses intense feelings of animosity in the world is the festering problem in the Holy Land, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the inability of Israel to live in peace with its neighbours. I think this is the single most disturbing element in animosities and misunderstandings and hatred and even violence in the world." (emphasis added.)
Read the whole article here.
11:05 AM
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