Reframing history as life in a small town - the Peasant's Revolt

As I drive to work I'm listening to Melvyn Bragg's guests speak of the 14th century "Peasants Revolt". It's a fascinating story and period, and Melvyn is on game. He gets anxious and confused with modern physics, but history and culture are his home field advantage.

His professors are discussing the march on London, when, incidentally, a guest happens to mention that London at that time held perhaps 40,000 people. (This was 20 years after a spot of trouble known to us as the Black Death and around the time of the onset of the "Little Ice Age". London was a bit shrunken.)

Huh? So a few thousands (not 60,000 as was once reported) people march on a small town and history is made?

It's a framing problem. It's hard for us to imagine that almost all of human history occurred in what we now consider small communities. Boston was a village during most of the American Revolution -- everyone must have met Franklin personally.

In a town of 40,000 the "movers and shakers" all know one another, and the wealthy community can pretty much fit in an auditorium.

It's so hard for us to get our heads into this work that historians don't even bother to take much note of it themselves ...

PS. Liberate In Our Time!

American fear and our shredded honor - two ringing voices against torture

American has stunk of fear since 9/11. From fear comes torture. Torturer-in-chief Bush will hopefully leave office in about two years, but would-be torturers-in-chief Guiliani and Romney strive to succeed him. Now two former military officials join in a brutal and necessary rebuttal of the GOP's spineless front runners and a body slam against the Office of the Torturer. In this matter they join General Petraeus. (Emphases mine).

Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar - It's Our Cage, Too - washingtonpost.com
Torture Betrays Us and Breeds New Enemies
By Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar
Charles C. Krulak was commandant of the Marine Corps from 1995 to 1999. Joseph P. Hoar was commander in chief of U.S. Central Command from 1991 to 1994.
Thursday, May 17, 2007

Fear can be a strong motivator. It led Franklin Roosevelt to intern tens of thousands of innocent U.S. citizens during World War II; it led to Joseph McCarthy's witch hunt, which ruined the lives of hundreds of Americans. And it led the United States to adopt a policy at the highest levels that condoned and even authorized torture of prisoners in our custody.

Fear is the justification offered for this policy by former CIA director George Tenet as he promotes his new book. Tenet oversaw the secret CIA interrogation program in which torture techniques euphemistically called "waterboarding," "sensory deprivation," "sleep deprivation" and "stress positions" -- conduct we used to call war crimes -- were used. In defending these abuses, Tenet revealed: "Everybody forgets one central context of what we lived through: the palpable fear that we felt on the basis of the fact that there was so much we did not know."

We have served in combat; we understand the reality of fear and the havoc it can wreak if left unchecked or fostered. Fear breeds panic, and it can lead people and nations to act in ways inconsistent with their character.

The American people are understandably fearful about another attack like the one we sustained on Sept. 11, 2001. But it is the duty of the commander in chief to lead the country away from the grip of fear, not into its grasp. Regrettably, at Tuesday night's presidential debate in South Carolina, several Republican candidates revealed a stunning failure to understand this most basic obligation. Indeed, among the candidates, only John McCain demonstrated that he understands the close connection between our security and our values as a nation.

Tenet insists that the CIA program disrupted terrorist plots and saved lives. It is difficult to refute this claim -- not because it is self-evidently true, but because any evidence that might support it remains classified and unknown to all but those who defend the program.

These assertions that "torture works" may reassure a fearful public, but it is a false security. We don't know what's been gained through this fear-driven program. But we do know the consequences.

As has happened with every other nation that has tried to engage in a little bit of torture -- only for the toughest cases, only when nothing else works -- the abuse spread like wildfire, and every captured prisoner became the key to defusing a potential ticking time bomb. Our soldiers in Iraq confront real "ticking time bomb" situations every day, in the form of improvised explosive devices, and any degree of "flexibility" about torture at the top drops down the chain of command like a stone -- the rare exception fast becoming the rule.

To understand the impact this has had on the ground, look at the military's mental health assessment report released earlier this month. The study shows a disturbing level of tolerance for abuse of prisoners in some situations. This underscores what we know as military professionals: Complex situational ethics cannot be applied during the stress of combat. The rules must be firm and absolute; if torture is broached as a possibility, it will become a reality.

This has had disastrous consequences. Revelations of abuse feed what the Army's new counterinsurgency manual, which was drafted under the command of Gen. David Petraeus, calls the "recuperative power" of the terrorist enemy.

Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld once wondered aloud whether we were creating more terrorists than we were killing. In counterinsurgency doctrine, that is precisely the right question. Victory in this kind of war comes when the enemy loses legitimacy in the society from which it seeks recruits and thus loses its "recuperative power."

The torture methods that Tenet defends have nurtured the recuperative power of the enemy. This war will be won or lost not on the battlefield but in the minds of potential supporters who have not yet thrown in their lot with the enemy. If we forfeit our values by signaling that they are negotiable in situations of grave or imminent danger, we drive those undecideds into the arms of the enemy. This way lies defeat, and we are well down the road to it.

This is not just a lesson for history. Right now, White House lawyers are working up new rules that will govern what CIA interrogators can do to prisoners in secret. Those rules will set the standard not only for the CIA but also for what kind of treatment captured American soldiers can expect from their captors, now and in future wars. Before the president once again approves a policy of official cruelty, he should reflect on that.

It is time for us to remember who we are and approach this enemy with energy, judgment and confidence that we will prevail. That is the path to security, and back to ourselves.

They did not waste words. They did not mince words. What an astounding and exceptional work. We need fear, we have things to be afraid of. When we let fear rule us, however, we become mindless victims. I think military people understand that more deeply than we civilians.

Fraud and global supply chains - unanticipated consequence

I've written about vulnerable global supply chains, melamine fraud, poisonous fake glycol and non-fake fur recently. Now I'll add a story from surgeon about a mesh used in a hernia repair in the US ... (emphases mine)

Meanwhile: Bad medicine, sneaking in - International Herald Tribune - Atul Gawande - May 15, 2007

... The mesh manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson, was reporting that the mesh I'd put in was counterfeit. It was fake.

Someone had infiltrated the supply chain somewhere between Sherman, Texas, where the authentic mesh was manufactured, and Boston, where I'd operated on the patient. Apparently, mesh can travel through many hands. The original lot had gone to a Memphis, Tennessee, warehouse, and then through at least two hospital goods distributors, which sell and trade medical supplies on what turns out to be a worldwide market, like oil. Somewhere along the way, a counterfeiter replaced the lot with fake mesh packaged exactly like Johnson & Johnson's, right down to the lot number. It is believed this happened someplace in Asia. But no one really knows.

The material looked like ordinary mesh to me. But according to the alert from the Food and Drug Administration, it wasn't sterile. And although it seemed to be polypropylene, the fibers and weave were different from the manufacturer's...

I'd love to know why a shipment of mesh went from Memphis to Asia and back, and how the switch was made. Global supply chain management is an underrated topic. I suspect these long multinational supply chains make it possible to play quite a few games with taxes, revenue recognition, earnings, inventory, price manipulation, buy low/sell high strategies and more. We also know from the glycol story that traders are incented to conceal their partners (business secrets). This shadowy, anonymous, and amoral network likely creates many "dark alleys" where switches can be made.

I suspect even "honest" supply chain vendors may have arguably legal financial incentives to keep this world in the shadows.

At this rate we won't need terrorists to destroy the world economy, petty crooks and, perhaps, aggressive corporations will suffice ...

Mr. Giuliani, meet General Petraeus

From the most respected leader in the American military:

General Petraeus Writes Letter Condemning Torture | The Moderate Voice

...Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong. Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary. Certainly, extreme physical action can make someone “talk”; however, what the individual says may be of questionable value. In fact our experience in applying the interrogation standards laid out in the Army Field Manual (2-22.3) on Human Intelligence Collector Operations that was published last year shows that the techniques in the manual work effectively and humanely in eliciting information from detainees.

We are, indeed, warriors. We train to kill our enemies. We are engaged in combat, we must pursue the enemy relentlessly, and we must be violent at times. What sets us apart from our enemies in this fight, however, is how we behave. In everything we do, we must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect.

From the leading GOP candidates:

...76 minutes. Giuliani tries to appear tougher than McCain. "I would tell the people who had to do the interrogation to use every method they could think of. Shouldn't be torture, but every method they can think of." It's unclear what he means, but it sounds a lot like torture. The crowd likes it. Applause.

77 minutes. Now Romney tries to appear tougher than McCain. "I don't want them on our soil. I want them in Guantánamo where they don't get the access to lawyers they get when they're on our soil. I don't want them in our prisons. I want them there," he says. "Some people have said we ought to close Guantánamo. My view is, we ought to double Guantánamo." More applause. Habeas corpus sucks!...

Please get these two off the stage. Now.

The state of the GOP candidates

Competing to demonstrate their psychopathic features -- the GOP candidates are a mess ...

Hullabaloo

... These guys have just spent the last fifteen minutes of the debate trying to top each other on just how much torture they are willing to inflict. They sound like a bunch of psychotic 12 year olds, although considering the puerile nature of the "24" question it's not entirely their fault.

This debate is a window into what really drives the GOP id. The biggest applause lines were for faux tough guy Giuliani demanding Ron Paul take back his assertion that the terrorists don't hate us for our freedom, macho man Huckabee talking about Edwards in a beauty parlor and the manly hunk Romney saying that he wants to double the number of prisoners in Guantanamo "where they can't get lawyers."...

...John McCain is the only adult on that stage and that scares the living hell out of me considering that he's half nuts too. Wow.

I think Rudy won it. These people don't care if he's wearing a teddy under his suit and sleeping with the family schnauzer as long as he promises to spill as much blood as possible.

These guys are losers. They know it. It's time for the second tier to come forward, probably starting with Gingrich.

Hacking war and the end of globalization: Wired interviews John Robb

Wired has a brief interview with John Robb. He's written a book on the modern warfare, with a subtitle of 'the next stage of terrorism and the end of globalization'. From the interview it sounds a lot like the 'falling cost of havoc' stuff with a flavor of emergent networks, hacking war, distributed systems, etc. Fairly prosaic for anyone who's been awake since 2001.

The interesting part is the 'end of globalization'. I can't tell exactly what he means, but from the interview I gather he's saying the global supply chain is extremely vulnerable to disruption. The best way to "attack" the US is to attack our supply chain, since that would drive our economy into deep depression. Sounds plausible to me, the one caveat being the 'x factor'.

X factor? Whatever it is that has allowed us to avoid inevitable doom since Oct 31, 1952.

Phil Carter on the "war czar"

Bush has appointed a "war czar" to deal with his bureaucracy. Phil Carter has written the definitive summary of the situation. It's worth reading the whole piece.

INTEL DUMP - Doug Lute: dream the impossible dream

Okay, I'm still scratching my head over this one. None of my thoughts are new on this, but I thought I'd air them anyway:

1) Isn't this guy supposed to be the "war czar"? If he can't make the interagency process work by knocking a few heads and firing a few cabinet officers, who can?

2) What's going to happen the first time that Lt. Gen. Lute doesn't get his way? Imagine a hypothetical where Gen. David Petraeus asks for more Justice Department personnel to promote the rule of law , and Al Gonzales tells him to go swimming in the Tigris....

3) How are the other agencies going to react to having yet another general in charge of policy? Maybe about as well as State reacted to having Jay Garner appointed as the head of ORHA during the early stages of the war?...

4) How broken is the U.S. national security apparatus that we need a "czar" to run it? Is the NSC that f---ed up that it needs a 3-star with some juice in the Pentagon to make things work? (This is a rhetorical question; the only possible answer is yes.)...

and the first comment is well chosen ...

Someone needs to tell President Bush that if you're sitting in the Cabinet Room and you don't see a President, then it's you.

Why did Lute take the job? Does Rove have incriminating photos of him with a North Korean agent? (that's a joke) Weird. Very weird.

Falwell's father

Now we understand why Falwell was the way he was:

With What Measure Ye Mete, It Shall Be Measured to You Again

...Via the New Yorker, this section from Falwell's 1987 autobiography, Strength for the Journey, goes a long way toward explaining ...

Read the excerpt from Falwell's biography. The father was a sociopath; the son doesn't seem to have ever recognized this.

In Our Time: light and John Barrow

If you were to enter the black hole at the center of our galaxy ... 'you easily pass into it without disruption and find it had the density of air ... but you would find yourself unable to return ...'. Which is a crude paraphrase of John Barrow speaking on the speed of light for In Our Time. There's lots more like that, such as "information cannot travel faster than the speed of light", which is a bit different from the way that law has been traditionally expressed.

I was thinking that, even for IOT, this was a rather erudite and interesting guest. The wikipedia profile explains things.

Another excellent episode, but of course no longer available as a podcast. If you don't like that, then help liberate In Our Time. In the meantime, maybe you should start collecting the podcasts ...

A brief and plausible guide to writing a resume

Over too many years I've seen numerous guides to resume writing. I think this condensed summary is among the most interesting and superficially persuasive of the lot: Clint Covington: Software design, Microsoft Office Access : Resume best practices revealed.

I'll quibble about the request for "evidence". I think he means "claims to objective deliverables" rather than evidence in the scientific or criminal sense.

Pet food: new recalls continue

I think if a company has not publicly stated that they've tested their food and it's clean, it may be best to assume it contains melamine:

National Ledger - Pet Food Recall: Costco Dog Food, American Nutrition Dog Food Added

... Costco - American Nutrition, in cooperation with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is conducting a voluntary recall of products containing rice protein concentrate potentially contaminated by melamine, the company has announced...

If it only contains melamime it may not be particularly toxic, the current theory is that a mixture of cyanuric acid and melamime, possibly influenced by urinary pH, is what produces the crystalline nephropathy.

At this point we need lists of food supplies that are more likely to be safe, not lists of food supplies that have been found unsafe. I'm disappointed that the ASPCA has not posted information on food supplies that have been tested as safe, such as Natura.

As I've mentioned before, there's one way a pet food manufacturer could win my confidence. They would prepare a version of the food for human consumption based on the same ingredient sources. They wouldn't need to sell this, but it should be sold and eaten at board meetings. It would, of course, invoke FDA regulations, and board members would have the right to sue. Anything short of that? Well ...

Guy Kawasaki interviews the head of World Vision

An inflammatory middle eastern radical still has a few followers left... (excerpt from an interview with Guy Kawasaki, emphases mine)

How to Change the World: Ten (or so) Questions with Richard Stearns, President of World Vision

...Question:How can people who do not want to radically change their lives make a difference in the lives of the poor?

Answer: To really change the world, values must change. Consider the civil rights movement. Racial discrimination was once openly accepted in the United States. Today it is unacceptable to our mainstream culture. Very few of us are civil rights activists, but we let our values speak in our work places, our schools and to our elected officials.

Today, we live in a world that tolerates extreme poverty much like racism was tolerated fifty-plus years ago. We can all become people determined to do something to change the world. We can speak up, we can volunteer and we can give. Ending extreme poverty will take money, political and moral will, and a shift in our value system. When enough ordinary people embrace these issues, things will begin to change. Margaret Mead once said: "Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

Question:What keeps you awake at night as the CEO of World Vision?

Answer: If I thought every moment about the incredible suffering around the world I would never sleep. I worry about keeping the covenant we have with the poor and with our donors. It is a very sacred responsibility.

Question: What are biggest hurdles to alleviating poverty?

Answer: One word: apathy. The very frustrating part is that we actually have the knowledge and the ability to end most extreme poverty. The world just doesn't care enough to do it. The U.S. government has spent more than $400 billion on the war in Iraq to date.

Our annual humanitarian assistance budget for the whole world is only about $21 billion. We spend less than a half percent of our federal budget on humanitarian assistance and less than two percent of private charitable giving goes to international causes. People and governments make choices based on their priorities. Poverty is still not a high priority for the world.

Question: What's the biggest obstacle to get rich people to care about poor people?

Answer: The obstacle is that poverty is often not personal. If your next-door neighbor's child was dying and you could save her for $100, you wouldn't think twice. But a child 10,000 miles away whom you have never met, that's just different.

About 29,000 kids die every day of preventable causes--29,000! These kids have names and faces, hopes and dreams. Their parents love them as much as we love our kids. We've got to make poverty personal. Stalin once said: "A million deaths is a statistic, one death is a tragedy." We must try to see the face of the one child.

Question: Why is World Vision so successful at fund raising?

Answer: The real secret of our fundraising is the notion of child sponsorship. We allow people to see the face of that one child - we make that child real to them. It is very difficult to raise money for poverty eradication - much easier to raise money to help a specific child. It makes it personal....

...Question: Do the efforts of rock stars and movie stars really help alleviate poverty and AIDS or are these people just seeking more publicity to sell albums?

Answer: They make a difference. Given the number of celebrities in our world it is actually shocking that so few of them are using their celebrity to make a difference. Bono is amazing. He has perhaps done more for the poor than anyone in the last century. I call him "Martin Luther Bono" because he has really been the leader of our movement.

Bill and Melinda Gates are changing the global landscape for health and development. The media rarely want to talk to me about poverty, but many reporters gush at the chance to talk with Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, or Oprah. That's just the way it is. I welcome celebrities who really want to make a difference...

Kristoff recently cried out in despair about the human disposition to protect a lost puppy nearby, while ignoring Darfur. We are not wired to deal with remote suffering. I don't think that will change short of widespread genetic engineering; we have to work with the levers we've got. I've personally favored CARE International's "roots of poverty" approach over the sponsor-a-child approach of World Vision, but I see the value of that peraonl connection.

As for Darfur -- well, if Bill Clinton were around he'd have figured something out. It's a miserable misfortune that the Darfur genocide occurred during the Bush regime ...

Pet food security: the libertarian solution

This will be bad if it's used in place of FDA regulation, good if it provides another avenue of security:

IMI Global Launches Pet Food Verification Service in Response to Pet Food Recall Issues

CASTLE ROCK, Colo., May 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Integrated Management Information, Inc. (IMI Global), a leading provider of verification and Internet solutions for the agricultural/livestock industry, today announced the launch of Pet Supply Verified(TM), a comprehensive new pet food verification system designed to build consumer confidence in pet food products.

"Pet Supply Verified, which is modeled on our industry leading USVerified and Supply Verified services for the cattle and livestock industry, enables pet food suppliers and manufacturers to build consumer confidence in the origin and safety of pet food products," said John Saunders, president and CEO of IMI Global. "The recent recalls and related consumer confusion in the marketplace underscore the need for a more comprehensive and reliable pet food verification system. Our verification processes, which are setting the standard for verification of meat products for human consumption, are ideally suited for the pet food industry."

IMI Global works with many of America's leading meat industry supply chains helping them build consumer confidence and enable brand differentiation. IMI has helped these agribusinesses build and audit USDA verification programs. In some instances these programs are mandatory for export markets. IMI Global's audit based programs can assist the pet food industry in addressing similar consumer concerns through the verification of production claims.

Since IMI will be funded by the industry, it has a fundamental conflict of interest. It will only stay honest if backstopped by an effective and adequately funded regulatory agency.

The single speed universe

For the photon, there is neither time nor distance. Every destination takes no time at all to reach, which is, of course, also true of non-local "transmission" of non-meaning. I've retained that much from Gribbin and my recent readings of popular works on cosmology and quantum physics.

So does that mean that there's only one "space-time speed" for everything, namely to be as motionless as a photon?

After all, the more gravity one feels, and the more history of acceleration one has, the more one moves through time rather than space alone. in other words, as one gets closer to the speed of light the energy input of an accelerating force is diverted into time travel rather than space travel.

So, if one thinks of speed as movement through space and time, is it true to say that everything in the universe has the same "speed"?

I did a quick google on the topic, and found this article. So maybe that is the way physicists think about spacetime velocity. BTW, the article claims that one interpretation of general relativity is consistent with both the transactional interpretation of QM and Tralfamadorian philosophy.

Truly, all of modern physics is an attempt to understand the photon ...

Update 5/15: Turns out I was remembering chapter one (relativity theory) of Greene's overview of cosmology and theoretical physics! I'd skimmed the chapter a few weeks ago and I was basically recalling what he'd written, though the Tralfamadorian bit is mine. Nice to know I wasn't just spouting off! Even Greene mentions how alien and astounding special and general relativity theory feel when he reviews the concepts -- and that's his profession. These are concepts so beyond our everyday existence that they easily slip out of my feeble mind ...

I'm now taking a leisurely slow read through the book and will doubtless have further related comments ..

Globalization: Krugman on mitigating the social impact

I've written quite a bit about globalization lately, particularly in the context of toxic food, medicine, and consumer products. Not to mention the toaster problem, or those DVD/VCR combo units that last (at most) six months. Cheap goods from Walmart aren't cheap if you need to buy 3 times as many of them. (Incidentally, this shows up as increased productivity rather than increased inflation.)

So I'm against trade agreements and globalization? Well, no. I not only buy the party line on trade and poverty, I saw the positive effects of trade in Bangladesh in the early 80s. It's true that Ricardo's theory comparative advantage didn't anticipate how fraud and deception would lessen the mutual advantages of trade, but it's also true that billions of people are emerging from poverty on the back of international trade flows. Even from the selfish perspective of the privileged, that translates into a much safer, albeit warmer world. The net balance is clearly positive, and the balance for all participants is individually positive.

It also won't be sustained if we don't mitigate the disadvantages for the non-wealthy American, including soon-to-be outsourced IBM workers and everyone who doesn't have an advanced degree. We need stronger regulation of imports, and the beginnings of a world regulatory authority. We need to treat declining product lifespans as increased inflation rather than increased productivity. And, above, all, we need to change the American contract between society and citizen, starting with health-care...

Divided Over Trade - Krugman -New York Times:

...So what’s the answer? I don’t think there is one, as long as the discussion is restricted to trade policy: all-out protectionism isn’t acceptable, and labor standards in trade agreements will help only a little.

By all means, let’s have strong labor standards in our pending trade agreements, and let’s approach proposals for new agreements with an appropriate degree of skepticism. But if Democrats really want to help American workers, they’ll have to do it with a pro-labor policy that relies on better tools than trade policy. Universal health care, paid for by taxing the economy’s winners, would be a good place to start...

John Edwards, in other words. Everyone else is just business as usual.