Category: Society

War & Peace

The Futurist is running a two part article (titled “The Winds of War, The Sands of Time”) discussing the relative state of peace in the world.  The article points out that from the metric of human beings killed in combat; the last couple years have been the most peaceful in recorded human history.  The reasons for this “”expansion of peace” are the usual suspects; expansion of democracy and an increase in overall absolute wealth worldwide.

The other interesting piece of data gleaned from the article is the wikipedia List of wars and disasters by death toll.  When I saw this page I had the same feeling as the one I got the day I first saw the History channel.  Something along the lines of “Ohhhh, crap!  There goes my free-time for the next six months.”  They even list the individual battles by death toll.

Please excuse me, I have some reading to do.

Weak Willed and Sleepy

Great article on “How to Become an Early Riser” Part I and Part II. The best quote from the article is about the more general topic of self-discipline.

If you can’t get yourself out of bed when your alarm goes off, this is likely due to a lack of self-discipline. If you have enough self-discipline, you’ll get out of bed no matter what. Motivation can also help, but motivation is short lived and may only last a few days. Discipline is like a muscle. The more you build it, the more you can rely on it. Everyone has some discipline (can you hold your breath?), but not everyone develops it. There are a lot of ways to build discipline… But basically it comes down to taking on little challenges, conquering them, and gradually progressing to bigger ones. It’s like progressive weight training. As your self-discipline gets stronger, a challenge like getting out of bed at a certain time will eventually become trivially easy. But if your self-discipline has atrophied, it can seem an almost insurmountable hurdle.

Umpire Effect

I overheard a discussion on NPR the other day that exemplified something that I have been thinking about. The discussion was a panel debate on last weeks news. The conversation inevitably centered around the war in Iraq and the current public opinion about the war.

A caller to the radio show (actually I think it was an email submission) made an articulate remark about the failure of the media to accurately report the successes the U.S. has had in Iraq. When the panel responded; they admitted that many military personal in Iraq make the exact same comment to them. Each of the panel members was a reporter of some type (the question of why expert panels are always filled with reporters and professors is left for another day) and as such each of them had heard this complaint a number of times in the past.

Then one panelist responded with the counter-point that “The problem is that I often hear the exact opposite remark; that if we (as reporters) had been more critical of the president when he made the case for war, we might not have ever gotten into Iraq.”

The problem with that statement is that its not the exact opposite remark (the opposite stance would be that the media doesn’t report enough about the current violence in Iraq.) In fact the two positions can actually be explained in relation to one another. People tend to “compensate” for their mistakes by making up for the short coming. Something of an enforced karma. It’s similar to when a baseball umpire makes a really bad call, realizes it as such, and then “compensates” for it by giving his next call to the infringed upon player/team; regardless of what the correct call should have been.

In some ways I think the media is trying to compensate for their own perceived failure to critically report on the argument for the war. The way they are “balancing” things out is by being overly critical of the success of the rebuilding effort. I don’t necessarily believe this umpire effect is intentional; but the evidence for it is pretty strong. While there is no doubt that the insurgency in Iraq is getting stronger, by almost any other measure things are getting much better there. Public projects are at an all time high, as is the number of completed project. Political involvement has steadily increased, oil revenue is up, the majority of law enforcement work is being done by Iraqis now, and GDP is steadily on the rise. What is more, the vast majority of Iraqis don’t want the U.S. to leave yet and think they are better off now then they were under Saddam (even if the really don’t like us.)

Because of the pathological nationalism that was rampant post 9/11 the media felt reluctant to criticize the President. Now that the President is unpopular it is much easier to be critical of him and the war he started. I guess that is really the point of this observation. More than I would like to believe the media is not simply a distributor of information but a reflection of our own prejudices. The umpire effect exists in the media (I have noticed it in a least a couple of other non-national news stories) because it exists among us. It is a way to make life (and baseball) a little more fair; as least from our point of view.

I’ve Read 6

The Guardian is running a list of the Top 20 geek novels of the past 100 years (or so.) The HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy places number one with multiple entries for Neal Stephenson and Isaac Asimov. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was not on the list. Probably because, as one responder put it:

I think that (the LOTR trilogy) comes under the category ‘Geek Bible’.

The Reunion

This weekend was my 10 year high school class reunion. Actually it was not my class reunion, I graduated from Little Rock Catholic High School (CHS), but it was the reunion for what would have been my high school class (Rogers High, aka RHS) had I not moved to Little Rock. I missed the reunion for CHS because they had it the same weekend as my wife’s due date. The weekend as a whole was pretty amazing. We stayed at my daughters God Parents house (probably the most wonderful people I know) and Heather and I became God Parents to two very sweat (and stunningly beautiful) little girls. The reunion get-together consisted of a family night on Friday and an adults semi-formal social on Saturday. I went to both events and the after parties.

Many of the friends I had at RHS I still keep in contact with; while my very closest friends I see fairly regularly as they have remained my best friends. It was nice to visit with everyone, especially those that I had not actually seen in many years. But what struck me most about the reunion was change in social interactions between what had previously been warring parties. No one held over any grudges, no one cared which “group” you belonged too. With only a few notable exceptions, everybody had grown up. I was honestly excited to see everyone and they all seemed glad that I was there. A school, its students, and its faculty can be evaluated by the quality of its graduates. By that standard it looks like the Rogers High School Class of 1995 has reflected well.

I will post pictures when I get them. A special thanks needs to go out to Molly and Fairy forthe best class reunions I have ever seen; Susan and Pete for their gracious hospitality to me and my family; and Marie and James for the honor of being God parents to their girls. All around, it was one of the nicest weekends I had in a while.

Parochial Schools Score

A very interesting article in “This is London” point to the success of Parochial and Anglican schools in affecting the moral direction of young men concerning sex, abortion, and pornography. The article gives rise to the debate of the place of schools in molding the nature of children and imparts the importance of the quality of education available to students. While the age of consent in England probably has a significant effect on the applicability of the study in the US; it should still act as a reminder of the awesome responsibility that parents have with regards to education.

As a parent of a young girl (and a another child on the way) I am exceedingly conscience of the effect the environment has on my child. As long as children need to attend school (not simply as a matter of law but also as a vehicle for self improvement), it will be a major factor in their moral development. The choice of a child’s school is, therefore, one of the most important decisions I, as a parent, can make.

Peer Review & The Scientific Method

One of the cornerstones of environmental man-made global warming theories is the “MBH98 Northern Hemisphere Climate index” study. The basic findings of the Mann, Bradley & Hughes (MBH) study conclude the the 20th century is (by far) the hottest century on record; using known global temperature indicators such as tree rings and ice core samples. These number have been the basis for global temperature models and public environmental policy.

The primary rebuttal to this study is the ” M&M Critique of the MBH98 Northern Hemisphere Climate index.” McKitrick & McIntyre’s (M&M) basic findings are that the algorithms used by MBH98 produce a “hockey stick” shaped pattern (a pattern showing the 1900’s as the hottest century ever) in 99% of cases… even when the feed data was random noise! This would point to a statistical failure (or outright bias) on the part of the MBH98 algorithms. Using the same base data (i.e. the tree rings, ice core samples, etc..) against their own statistical analysis package, the M&M team gets a very different result. Their results conclude that the hottest century on record is the 15th century, not the 20th.

The debate has gone on for a number of years with strong opinions and heavy politics on both sides. Well things have taken a fairly significant turn recently. The M&M team has decided to open source their analysis and algorithm data. This provides for the much higher level of peer review. In addition, they use the well know (and well respected) R Statistics Package as the basis for their calculations suite. MBH has described their process but refused to open the entire algorithm suite (some select sources have been made available) to full peer review. While a number of third party studies have duplicated the MBH results, in each case the MBH algorithms (in closed source form) where used to produce the results. This leads to some serious questioning of the MBH methodology and therefore the validity of their results.

Success in a Global Environment

Spotting the Losers: Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States is an article by Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters for the U.S. Army War College Quarterly. The article talks about some major factors that limit a countries military and economic abilities in the world market. The article offers some insights into how developing countries can hold themselves back even when natural resources are abundant. It also does a spectacular job of showing how inter-related the issues of liberty and the free market really are. While most people understand that capitalism is not truly possible without liberty; many fewer people to understand the liberty is not possible without capitalism. Happy Meals and women’s rights have more in common that one might think.