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anonymous

'Fake Geek Girls' Paranoia Is About Male Insecurity, Not Female Duplicity - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...267402

shared by anonymous on 23 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • I wonder if the identity-policing and insularity is simply a caducous part of geek culture, or whether it's not a more integral organ. As long as geek identity is constructed through knowledge—as long as it is essentially defined by who knows the most about a particular collection of purchaseable cultural commodities—then it seems to me that its borders are always going to demand policing. Which means that, given geekdoms' relationship to masculinity and femininity, a lot of that policing is going to be gendered and misogynist.
  • anonymous on 23 Jan 13
     
    "I'm not saying that people shouldn't love the art they love. But I am suggesting that the mean-spiritedness of geek culture-a mean-spiritedness that is often, but by no means always, directed at women-is not an accident. A culture that values knowledge and access above all things is going to be a culture dedicated to hierarchy and to power-to defining who is in and who is out. Such defining involves, and is meant to involve, a good deal of antagonism, score-settling, back-biting, and cruelty. There's not much point in defining yourself as the knower if you cannot define others as those who do not know."
anonymous

United Kingdom Moves Away from the European Project - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...om-moves-away-european-project

shared by anonymous on 22 Jan 13 - Cached
  • Cameron has pledged to hold a referendum after 2015 on the United Kingdom's role in Europe. He has also said he would reclaim powers London surrendered to the European Union. While they no doubt reflect similar anxieties across the Continent, such statements are anathema to the European project, and by making them, Cameron could be setting a precedent that could further undermine the European Union.
  • According to various opinion polls, roughly 8-14 percent of the country supports the United Kingdom Independence Party, even though it received only 3.1 percent of the popular vote in the 2010 elections. These levels of support make the party a serious contender with the Liberal Democrats as the United Kingdom's third-largest party (after the Labour Party and the Conservative Party). Some polls show that the United Kingdom Independence Party already is the third-most popular party, while others suggest it has poached members from the Conservative Party, a worrying trend ahead of elections for the European Parliament in 2014 and general elections in 2015.
  • Despite his criticisms of the bloc, Cameron has said he does not want to leave the European Union outright; rather, he wants to repatriate from Brussels as many powers as possible.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • London also believes that the United Kingdom has surrendered too much of its national sovereignty to supranational EU institutions.
  • Yet the United Kingdom is a strong defender of the single market. Roughly half of its exports end up in the European Union, and half of its imports come from the European Union.
  • Some critics suggest that the United Kingdom could leave the European Union but remain a part of the European Economic Area, the trade agreement that includes non-EU members, such as Iceland and Norway. However, the country would still be required to make financial contributions to continental Europe and adapt its legal order to EU standards, but it would not have a vote in EU decisions. According to Cameron, the United Kingdom must be part of the common market and have a say in policymaking.
  • The issue points to the United Kingdom's grand strategy. Despite an alliance with the United States, the United Kingdom is essentially a European power, and it cannot afford to be excluded from Continental affairs.
  • However, this is the first time that London has openly demanded the return to a previous stage in the process of European integration. At no other time has a country tried to dissociate itself from the bloc in this way. The decision not only challenges the Franco-German view of the European Union but also makes a compromise extremely difficult and risky between France and Germany and the United Kingdom.
  • Cameron's rhetoric suggests that he is positioning the United Kingdom to be the leader of a counternarrative that opposes Germany's view of the crisis.
  • In recent years, the country's veto power in the European Union has been reduced substantially. With each reform of the European treaties, unanimous decisions were replaced by the use of qualified majority
  • London could try to become the leader of the non-eurozone countries, but these countries often have competing agendas, as evidenced by recent negotiations over the EU budget. In those negotiations, the United Kingdom was pushing for a smaller EU budget to ease its financial burden, but countries like Poland and Romania were interested in maintaining high agricultural subsidies and strong development aid.
  • The dilemma is best understood in the context of the United Kingdom's grand strategy. Unnecessary political isolation on the Continent is a real threat to London. The more the European Union focuses on the eurozone, the less influence the United Kingdom has on continental Europe
  • As long as London is the main military ally and a major economic partner of the world's only superpower, continental Europe cannot afford to ignore the United Kingdom.
  • anonymous on 22 Jan 13
     
    "British Prime Minister David Cameron will deliver a speech in London on Jan. 23, during which he will discuss the future of the United Kingdom's relationship with the European Union. Excerpts leaked to the media suggest that harsh EU criticism will figure prominently in the speech, a suggestion in keeping with Cameron's recent statements about the bloc. But more important, the excerpts signal an unprecedented policy departure: renegotiating the United Kingdom's role in the European Union. London has negotiated exemptions from some EU policies in the past, even gaining some concessions from Brussels in the process; this time, it is trying to become less integrated with the bloc altogether."
anonymous

Captive Virgins, Polygamy, Sex Slaves: What Marriage Would Look Like if We Actually Fol... - 3 views

www.alternet.org/...we_actually_followed_the_bible

bible marriage polygamy relationships

shared by anonymous on 29 Mar 12 - Cached
  • “Bible-believing” Christians, also called “biblical literalists,” believe the Bible is the literally perfect word of God, essentially dictated by God to the writers. Thanks to the determined work of historical revisionists like David Barton, many of them also believe (very, very wrongly) that America’s Constitution and legal system also were founded on principles and laws drawn from the Bible. 
  • Not all Christians share this view. Biblical literalists are at the opposite end of the theological spectrum from modernist Christians, who see the Bible as the record of our imperfect spiritual ancestors who struggled to understand what is good and what is God and how to live in moral community with each other.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 29 Mar 12
       
      Reasonably minded Christians everywhere thank the author for pointing this very fucking important fact out.
    • Erik Hanson
      Erik Hanson on 30 Mar 12
       
      "Modernist Christians"? I'd say Modernist theology is a big part of the problem. (This is a semantic quibble.)
  • Even though divorce and teen pregnancy rates are lower in more secular parts of the country, Bible believers see both as problems caused primarily by America’s loss of faith.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Let me tell you a secret about Bible believers that I know because I was one. Most of them don’t read their Bibles. If they did, they would know that the biblical model of sex and marriage has little to do with the one they so loudly defend.
    • Erik Hanson
      Erik Hanson on 30 Mar 12
       
      That's the easy explanation, but not necessarily the right one. I've sat in Bible-study groups of fairly wealthy Christians as they spent an hour convincing themselves that Jesus doesn't really want them to sell their stuff and give the proceeds to the church and the poor, even if there are multiple instances of what I take to be fairly clear language saying that Christians should do precisely that. It's that "Modernist" stuff again-our brains aren't that rational.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 30 Mar 12
       
      That's a fair point. Whether you read the Bible or not, that lack-of-rationality thing is surely in play. As you implicitly note, though, this is not the fault of religion - it's our damned species.
    • Erik Hanson
      Erik Hanson on 30 Mar 12
       
      Theologically speaking, it's almost as if God didn't set us up to be able to have Godlike understanding of everything. Like we're limited and mortal or something.
  • Stories depicted in the Bible include rape, incest, master-slave sexual relations, captive virgins, and more. Now, just because a story is told in the Bible doesn’t mean it is intended as a model for devout behavior. Other factors have to be considered, like whether God commands or forbids the behavior, if the behavior is punished, and if Jesus subsequently indicates the rules have changed, come the New Testament. 
  • Through this lens, you find that the God of the Bible still endorses polygamy and sexual slavery and coerced marriage of young virgins along with monogamy. In fact, he endorses all three to the point of providing detailed regulations.
  • Polygamy is a norm in the Old Testament and accepted in the New Testament.
  • Concubines are sex slaves, and the Bible gives instructions on acquisition of several types of sex slaves, although the line between biblical marriage and sexual slavery is blurry.
  • In the book of Numbers (31:18) God’s servant commands the Israelites to kill all of the used Midianite women who have been captured in war, and all of the boy children, but to keep all of the virgin girls for themselves.
  • These stories might be irrelevant to the question of biblical marriage were it not that Bible believers keep telling us that God punishes people when he dislikes their sexual behavior.
  • The nuclear family model so prized by America’s fundamentalist Christians emerged from the interplay between Christianity and European cultures including the monogamous tradition of the Roman Empire.
  • Bible believers, even those who think themselves “nondenominational,” almost all follow some theological tradition that tells them which parts of the Bible to follow and how.
  • But many who call themselves Bible believers are simply, congenitally conservative – meaning change-resistant. It is not the Bible they worship so much as the status quo, which they justify by invoking ancient texts. Gay marriage will come, as will reproductive rights, and these Bible believers will adapt to the change as they have others: reluctantly, slowly and with angry protests, but in the end accepting it, and perhaps even insisting that it was God’s will all along.  
  • anonymous on 29 Mar 12
     
    There's no way to understand politics anywhere without understanding religion, but to an outsider American Christianity -- and so American politics -- can seem almost incomprehensible. Over the last 2,000 years, Christians have quarreled themselves into 30,000 different denominations. On top of that, American Christianity, like American culture more broadly, tends to flout hierarchy and authority, which means that a sizeable number of American Christians consider themselves "nondenominational."
anonymous

Poland's Strategy - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...polands-strategy

shared by anonymous on 28 Aug 12 - Cached
  • Located on the oft-invaded North European Plain, Poland's existence is heavily susceptible to the moves of major Eurasian powers. Therefore, Polish history has been erratic, with Poland moving from independence -- even regional dominance -- to simply disappearing from the map, surviving only in language and memory before emerging once again.
  • Poland's national strategy inevitably is designed with an underlying sense of fear and desperation. Nothing in Polish history would indicate that disaster is impossible.
  • To begin thinking about Poland's strategy, we must consider that in the 17th century, Poland, aligned with Lithuania, was one of the major European powers. It stretched from the Baltic Sea almost to the Black Sea, from western Ukraine into the Germanic regions. By 1795, it had ceased to exist as an independent country, divided among three emerging powers: Prussia, Russia and Austria.
  • ...23 more annotations...
  • It did not regain independence until after World War I -- it was created by the Treaty of Versailles (1919) -- after which it had to fight the Soviets for its existence.
  • Poland again was brought under the power of a foreign nation when Germany invaded in 1939. Its statehood was formalized in 1945, but it was dominated by the Soviets until 1989.
  • Poland has two strategic problems.
  • The first problem is its geography. The Carpathian Mountains and the Tatra Mountains provide some security to Poland's south. But the lands to the east, west and southwest are flat plains with only rivers that provide limited protection. This plain was the natural line of attack of great powers, including Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany.
  • For Poland, the existence of a powerful Germany and Russia poses an existential problem, the ideal solution to which is to become a buffer that Berlin and Moscow respect. A secondary solution is an alliance with one for protection. The latter solution is extremely difficult because dependence on Russia or Germany invites the possibility of absorption or occupation. Poland's third solution is to find an outside power to guarantee its interests.
  • This is what Poland did in the 1930s with Britain and France.
  • This strategy's shortcomings are obvious. First, it may not be in the interests of the security guarantor to come to Poland's assistance. Second, it may not be possible at the time of danger for them to help Poland. The value of a third-party guarantee is only in deterring attack and, failing that, in the willingness and ability to honor the commitment.
  • Since 1991, Poland has sought a unique solution that was not available previously: membership in multilateral organizations such as the European Union and NATO.
  • Ostensibly, they guarantee Polish security and remove the potential threat of Germany.
  • The solution also is problematic in that it assumes NATO and the European Union are reliable institutions. Should Russia become aggressive, NATO's ability to field a force to resist Russia would depend less on the Europeans than on the Americans. The heart of the Cold War was a struggle of influence across the North European Plain, and it involved 40 years of risk and expense. Whether the Americans are prepared to do this again is not something Poland can count on, at least in the context of NATO.
  • Moreover, the European Union is not a military organization; it is an economic free trade zone.
  • The emergence of a Germany not intimately tied to a multinational European entity but with increasing economic ties with Russia is Poland's worst-case scenario.
  • Poland has three strategies available to it.
  • The first is to do everything it can to keep NATO and the European Union viable and Germany contained within them.
  • The second is to create a relationship with Germany or Russia that guarantees its interests.
  • The third strategy is to find an outside power prepared to guarantee its interests.
  • That power is currently the United States. But the United States, after the experiences in the Islamic world, is moving toward a more distant, balance-of-power approach to the world. This does not mean the United States is indifferent to what happens in northern Europe. The growth of Russian power and potential Russian expansionism that would upset the European balance of power obviously would not be in Washington's interest. But as the United States matures as a global power, it will allow the regional balance of power to stabilize naturally rather than intervene if the threat appears manageable.
  • In the 1930s, Poland's strategy was to find a guarantor as a first resort. It assumed correctly that its own military capability was insufficient to protect itself from the Germans or the Soviets, and certainly insufficient to protect itself from both. Therefore, it assumed that it would succumb to these powers without a security guarantor. Under these circumstances, no matter how much it increased its military power, Poland could not survive by itself. The Polish analysis of the situation was not incorrect, but it missed an essential component of intervention: time.
  • This points to two aspects of any Polish relationship to the United States.
  • On one hand, the collapse of Poland as Russia resurges would deprive the United States of a critical bulwark against Moscow on the North European Plain. On the other hand, intervention is inconceivable without time.
  • This is a question of economics and national will. The economic situation in Poland has improved dramatically over recent years, but building an effective force takes time and money. The Poles have time, since the Russian threat at this point is more theoretical than real, and their economy is sufficiently robust to support a significant capability.
  • Today, the will to believe in the European Union and in NATO, rather than to recognize that nations ultimately must guarantee their own national security, is an issue for Poland to settle.
  • As the Poles know, Germany and Russia can change regimes and strategies with startling speed. A conservative strategy requires a bilateral relationship with the United States, founded on the understanding that the United States is relying on the balance of power and not the direct intervention of its own forces except as a last resort.
  • anonymous on 28 Aug 12
     
    "Polish national strategy pivots around a single, existential issue: how to preserve its national identity and independence."
anonymous

Gut Microbes May Drive Evolution - 0 views

www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm

shared by anonymous on 09 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • A 2010 experiment led by Eugene Rosenberg of Tel Aviv University found that raising Drosophila pseudoobscura fruit flies on different diets altered their mate selection: the flies would mate only with other flies on the same diet. A dose of antibiotics abolished these preferences—the flies went back to mating without regard to diet—suggesting that it was changes in gut microbes brought about by diet, and not diet alone, that drove the change.
  • These studies are part of a growing consensus among evolutionary biologists that one can no longer separate an organism's genes from those of its symbiotic bacteria. They are all part of a single "hologenome."
  • Researchers believe that the microbiome is essential to human evolution as well. "Given the importance of the microbiome in human adaptations such as digestion, smell and the immune system, it would appear very likely that the human microbiome has had an effect on speciation," Bordenstein says. "Arguably, the microbiota are as important as genes."
  • anonymous on 09 Mar 12
     
    "The human body harbors at least 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells. Collectively known as the microbiome, this community may play a role in regulating one's risk of obesity, asthma and allergies. Now some researchers are wondering if the microbiome may have a part in an even more crucial process: mate selection and, ultimately, evolution."
anonymous

Obama's Tightrope Walk - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...obamas-tightrope-walk

shared by anonymous on 03 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Begin with the fact that the United States was not the first country calling for military intervention in Syria after pictures of what appeared to be the dead from a chemical attack surfaced. That honor went to France, Turkey and Britain, each of whom called for action. Much as with Libya, where France and Italy were the first and most eager to intervene, the United States came late to the feast.
  • The United States did not have any overriding national interest in Syria.
  • The United States is in the process of recovering from Iraq and Afghanistan, and is not eager to try its hand at nation building in Syria, especially given the players.
  • ...30 more annotations...
  • What started to draw the United States into the matter was a statement made by the president in 2012, when he said that the use of chemical weapons would be a red line.
  • He didn't mean he wanted to intervene. He set the red line because he figured that it was the one thing Assad wouldn't try. It was an attempt to stay out, not an announcement of interest. In fact, there had been previous evidence of small-scale chemical attacks, and the president had dodged commitment.
  • A significant faction pressed him on this in his foreign policy apparatus.
  • The point is that, leaving Iraq, this faction felt that the United States failed to carry out its moral obligations in Rwanda, and applauded the intervention in Kosovo. 
  • This faction is not small and appeals to an important tendency in American political culture that sees World War II as the perfect war, because it was waged against an unspeakable evil, and not for strategic or material gain.
  • That war was more complicated than that, but there was an element of truth to it. And the world, on the whole, approved of American involvement there.
  • Secure behind distance and power, the United States ought not be a typical insecure political power, but should use its strength to prevent the more extreme injustices in the world. 
  • There was a romantic belief that the crowd in the street was always more virtuous than the tyrant in his palace. Sometimes they were right. It is not clear that the fall of the Shah reduced the sum total of human suffering.
  • Obama had learned a thing or two about the crowd, Arab and otherwise. He was far less romantic about their intent, particularly after Libya. After Libya he was also aware that after the self-congratulations, the United States would have to live with the chaos or new tyranny. He didn't want to attack, and that was clear in the first days after the affair.
  • There were two reasons.
  • First, he had lost confidence in the crowd.
  • Second, he had vowed not to go to war as Bush had, without international support validated by the United Nations
  • Pressed by the human rights faction in his administration to take action in Syria, he was also under pressure from three key countries: Britain, France and Turkey.
  • Obama resisted not the principle of attack but the scale Turkey wanted. 
  • This was one that the British had helped concoct, and the parliament voted against it, with many parliament members saying the United Kingdom was no longer the Americans' lap dog.
  • Obama, who had worked so hard to avoid leadership, had become George W. Bush to the British Parliament.
  • The Russians were completely committed to the survival of the regime.
  • The United States was less passionate, but Obama, while willing to do the minimum gesture possible to satisfy his human rights impulse, did think about what would come later and didn't want to see the regime fall. In this, the Russians and Americans had common interests. 
  • The Russian calculations came down to its read of the United States, which is that it was not in a position to impose an international system in the region because of internal political weakness.
  • Therefore the Russians had a rare opportunity to impose if not a system, then a presence. Most of all, the Russian view was that it had nothing to fear from the United States, in spite of its power imbalance. Obama was not likely to take action.
  • Others, like Poland, that had been with the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan also bowed out. The Poles are interesting because they had been the most eager for collaboration with the Americans, but felt the most betrayed by not getting an American commitment for significant military aid and collaboration.
  • By the end of the week, the Russians were hurling insults at Obama, the British finally freed themselves from American domination, and the Turks were furious at American weakness.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 03 Sep 13
       
      Haha.
  • The French -- and France's interventionist flow is fascinating (Libya, Mali, now Syria) -- stood with the United States. This is a tale to consider in itself, but not here. And the Canadians decided that much as they disliked chemical weapons use, they would not be available. The wheels just came off the strategy.
  • It is easy to blame Obama for losing control of the situation, but that is too simple. Every administration has its ideologues, and every president wants allies and no one wants to go to war without those allies flying aircraft beside them. And it would be nice if the United States could be just another country, but it isn't. The moment that it enters a coalition, it leads a coalition.
  • The United States had a strategic interest in neither faction taking power in Syria -- its Lebanonization. That is brutal, but it is true, and the United States was not the only country with that interest.
  • The real problem is this: After the Islamist wars, the United States has, as happened before, sought to minimize its presence in the world and while enjoying the benefits of being the world's leading economy, not pay any political or military price for it.
  • It is a strategy that is impossible to maintain, as the United States learned after World War I, Vietnam and Desert Storm. It is a seductive vision but a fantasy. The world comes visiting.
  • driven by an insufficient national strategy, the president was trapped by internal ideologies, the penchant of foreign allies and the temptation to do something, however ineffective. But as we know, the ineffective frequently becomes more expensive than the effective, and choosing where to be effective -- and where to pass -- is essential. 
  • This is not over yet. If Congress votes for strikes, it is likely that Obama will do something. But at that point he will be doing it by himself, and the inevitable death of innocents in even the smallest attack will bring him under fire from some of those most insistent that he do something about the war crimes in Syria. 
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 03 Sep 13
       
      Yes, because all national actions happen flawlessly, with no negative repurcussions, as long as your heart is in the right place.
  • It is not easy to be president, nor is it easy to be the world's leading power. It is nice to be able to sit in moral judgment of men like Assad, but sadly not have the power to do anything. Where life gets hard is when sitting in moral judgment forces you to do something because you can. It teaches you to be careful in judging, as the world will both demand that you do something and condemn you for doing it.
  • anonymous on 03 Sep 13
     
    "Last week began with certainty that an attack on Syria was inevitable and even imminent. It ended with the coalition supporting the attack somewhere between falling apart and not coming together, and with U.S. President Barack Obama making it clear that an attack was inevitable, maybe in a month or so, if Congress approves, after Sept. 9 when it reconvenes. This is a comedy in three parts: the reluctant warrior turning into the raging general and finding his followers drifting away, becoming the reluctant warrior again."
anonymous

A New Thermodynamics Theory of the Origin of Life - 1 views

www.simonsfoundation.org/...2-a-new-physics-theory-of-life

shared by anonymous on 23 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • From the standpoint of physics, there is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms: The former tend to be much better at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat.
  • Jeremy England, a 31-year-old assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has derived a mathematical formula that he believes explains this capacity.
  • “You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant,” England said.
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • “I am certainly not saying that Darwinian ideas are wrong,” he explained. “On the contrary, I am just saying that from the perspective of the physics, you might call Darwinian evolution a special case of a more general phenomenon.”
  • The formula, based on established physics, indicates that when a group of atoms is driven by an external source of energy (like the sun or chemical fuel) and surrounded by a heat bath (like the ocean or atmosphere), it will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy. This could mean that under certain conditions, matter inexorably acquires the key physical attribute associated with life.
  • His idea, detailed in a recent paper and further elaborated in a talk he is delivering at universities around the world, has sparked controversy among his colleagues, who see it as either tenuous or a potential breakthrough, or both.
  • Eugene Shakhnovich, a professor of chemistry, chemical biology and biophysics at Harvard University, are not convinced. “Jeremy’s ideas are interesting and potentially promising, but at this point are extremely speculative, especially as applied to life phenomena,” Shakhnovich said.
  • England’s theoretical results are generally considered valid. It is his interpretation — that his formula represents the driving force behind a class of phenomena in nature that includes life — that remains unproven. But already, there are ideas about how to test that interpretation in the lab.
  • “He’s trying something radically different,” said Mara Prentiss, a professor of physics at Harvard who is contemplating such an experiment after learning about England’s work. “As an organizing lens, I think he has a fabulous idea. Right or wrong, it’s going to be very much worth the investigation.”
  • At the heart of England’s idea is the second law of thermodynamics, also known as the law of increasing entropy or the “arrow of time.”
  • Hot things cool down, gas diffuses through air, eggs scramble but never spontaneously unscramble; in short, energy tends to disperse or spread out as time progresses.
  • It increases as a simple matter of probability: There are more ways for energy to be spread out than for it to be concentrated.
  • cup of coffee and the room it sits in become the same temperature, for example. As long as the cup and the room are left alone, this process is irreversible. The coffee never spontaneously heats up again because the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against so much of the room’s energy randomly concentrating in its atoms.
  • A plant, for example, absorbs extremely energetic sunlight, uses it to build sugars, and ejects infrared light, a much less concentrated form of energy. The overall entropy of the universe increases during photosynthesis as the sunlight dissipates, even as the plant prevents itself from decaying by maintaining an orderly internal structure.
  • Life does not violate the second law of thermodynamics, but until recently, physicists were unable to use thermodynamics to explain why it should arise in the first place.
  • In Schrödinger’s day, they could solve the equations of thermodynamics only for closed systems in equilibrium.
  • Jarzynski and Crooks showed that the entropy produced by a thermodynamic process, such as the cooling of a cup of coffee, corresponds to a simple ratio: the probability that the atoms will undergo that process divided by their probability of undergoing the reverse process (that is, spontaneously interacting in such a way that the coffee warms up).
  • Using Jarzynski and Crooks’ formulation, he derived a generalization of the second law of thermodynamics that holds for systems of particles with certain characteristics: The systems are strongly driven by an external energy source such as an electromagnetic wave, and they can dump heat into a surrounding bath.
  • This class of systems includes all living things.
  • Having an overarching principle of life and evolution would give researchers a broader perspective on the emergence of structure and function in living things, many of the researchers said. “Natural selection doesn’t explain certain characteristics,” said Ard Louis, a biophysicist at Oxford University, in an email. These characteristics include a heritable change to gene expression called methylation, increases in complexity in the absence of natural selection, and certain molecular changes Louis has recently studied.
  • If England’s approach stands up to more testing, it could further liberate biologists from seeking a Darwinian explanation for every adaptation and allow them to think more generally in terms of dissipation-driven organization.
  • They might find, for example, that “the reason that an organism shows characteristic X rather than Y may not be because X is more fit than Y, but because physical constraints make it easier for X to evolve than for Y to evolve,” Louis said.
  • anonymous on 23 Jan 14
     
    Why does life exist? Popular hypotheses credit a primordial soup, a bolt of lightning and a colossal stroke of luck. But if a provocative new theory is correct, luck may have little to do with it. Instead, according to the physicist proposing the idea, the origin and subsequent evolution of life follow from the fundamental laws of nature and "should be as unsurprising as rocks rolling downhill."
anonymous

Recognizing the End of the Chinese Economic Miracle - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...g-end-chinese-economic-miracle

shared by anonymous on 23 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • A crisis can exist before it is recognized.
  • The admission that a crisis exists is a critical moment, because this is when most others start to change their behavior in reaction to the crisis.
  • First, The New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-recipient Paul Krugman penned a piece titled "Hitting China's Wall." He wrote, "The signs are now unmistakable: China is in big trouble.
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  • Later in the week, Ben Levisohn authored a column in Barron's called "Smoke Signals from China." He wrote, "In the classic disaster flick 'The Towering Inferno' partygoers ignored a fire in a storage room because they assumed it has been contained. Are investors making the same mistake with China?"
  • Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs -- where in November 2001 Jim O'Neil coined the term BRICs and forecast that China might surpass the United States economically by 2028 -- cut its forecast of Chinese growth to 7.4 percent. 
  • The New York Times, Barron's and Goldman Sachs are all both a seismograph of the conventional wisdom and the creators of the conventional wisdom. Therefore, when all three announce within a few weeks that China's economic condition ranges from disappointing to verging on a crash, it transforms the way people think of China.
  • Now the conversation is moving from forecasts of how quickly China will overtake the United States to considerations of what the consequences of a Chinese crash would be. 
  • Suddenly finding Stratfor amid the conventional wisdom regarding China does feel odd, I must admit. Having first noted the underlying contradictions in China's economic growth years ago, when most viewed China as the miracle Japan wasn't, and having been scorned for not understanding the shift in global power underway, it is gratifying to now have a lot of company.
  • One of the things masking China's weakening has been Chinese statistics, which Krugman referred to as "even more fictional than most."
  • China is a vast country in territory and population. Gathering information on how it is doing would be a daunting task, even were China inclined to do so. Instead, China understands that in the West, there is an assumption that government statistics bear at least a limited relationship to truth. Beijing accordingly uses its numbers to shape perceptions inside and outside China of how it is doing.
  • The Chinese release their annual gross domestic product numbers in the third week of January (and only revise them the following year). They can't possibly know how they did that fast, and they don't. But they do know what they want the world to believe about their growth, and the world has believed them -- hence, the fantastic tales of economic growth. 
  • China in fact has had an extraordinary period of growth. The last 30 years have been remarkable, marred only by the fact that the Chinese started at such a low point due to the policies of the Maoist period.
  • Growth at first was relatively easy; it was hard for China to do worse. But make no mistake: China surged. Still, basing economic performance on consumption, Krugman notes that China is barely larger economically than Japan. Given the compounding effects of China's guesses at GDP, we would guess it remains behind Japan, but how can you tell? We can say without a doubt that China's economy has grown dramatically in the past 30 years but that it is no longer growing nearly as quickly as it once did.
  • China's growth surge was built on a very unglamorous fact: Chinese wages were far below Western wages, and therefore the Chinese were able to produce a certain class of products at lower cost than possible in the West.
  • China had another essential policy: Beijing was terrified of unemployment and the social consequences that flow from it. This was a rational fear, but one that contradicted China's main strength, its wage advantage.
  • Growing the economy is possible, but not growing profitability. Eventually, the economy will be dragged down by its inefficiency. 
  • As businesses become inefficient, production costs rise. And that leads to inflation. As money is lent to keep inefficient businesses going, inflation increases even more markedly. The increase in inefficiency is compounded by the growth of the money supply prompted by aggressive lending to keep the economy going. As this persisted over many years, the inefficiencies built into the Chinese economy have become staggering. 
  • The second thing to bear in mind is the overwhelming poverty of China, where 900 million people have an annual per capita income around the same level as Guatemala, Georgia, Indonesia or Mongolia ($3,000-$3,500 a year), while around 500 million of those have an annual per capita income around the same level as India, Nicaragua, Ghana, Uzbekistan or Nigeria ($1,500-$1,700).
  • China's overall per capita GDP is around the same level as the Dominican Republic, Serbia, Thailand or Jamaica.
  • Stimulating an economy where more than a billion people live in deep poverty is impossible. Economic stimulus makes sense when products can be sold to the public.
  • The Chinese have maintained a strategy of depending on exports without taking into account the operation of the business cycle in the West, which means that periodic and substantial contractions of demand will occur. China's industrial plant is geared to Western demand. When Western demand contracted, the result was the mess you see now.
  • The Chinese can prevent the kind of crash that struck East Asia in 1997. Their currency isn't convertible, so there can't be a run on it. They continue to have a command economy; they are still communist, after all. But they cannot avoid the consequences of their economic reality, and the longer they put off the day of reckoning, the harder it will become to recover from it.
  • The Chinese are not going to completely collapse economically any more than the Japanese or South Koreans did. What will happen is that China will behave differently than before. With no choices that don't frighten them, the Chinese will focus on containing the social and political fallout, both by trying to target benefits to politically sensitive groups and by using their excellent security apparatus to suppress and deter unrest.
  • The Chinese economic performance will degrade, but crisis will be avoided and political interests protected. Since much of China never benefited from the boom, there is a massive force that has felt marginalized and victimized by coastal elites. That is not a bad foundation for the Communist Party to rely on.
  • The Chinese are, of course, keeping a great deal of money in U.S. government instruments and other markets. Contrary to fears, that money will not be withdrawn. The Chinese problem isn't a lack of capital, and repatriating that money would simply increase inflation.
  • Had the Chinese been able to put that money to good use, it would have never been invested in the United States in the first place.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 23 Jul 13
       
      I'm having a hard time following all the econ stuff, but I understand this to mean that the U.S. is 'old reliable': Not an investment of last resort, but an investment to run to when you don't have a sure thing.
  • Rather than the feared repatriation of funds, the United States will continue to be the target of major Chinese cash inflows.
  • In a world where Europe is still reeling, only the United States is both secure and large enough to contain Chinese appetites for safety. Just as Japanese investment in the 1990s represented capital flight rather than a healthy investment appetite, so the behavior we have seen from Chinese investors in recent years is capital flight:
  • money searching for secure havens regardless of return. This money has underpinned American markets; it is not going away, and in fact more is on the way. 
  • The major shift in the international order will be the decline of China's role in the region. China's ability to project military power in Asia has been substantially overestimated.
  • Its naval capacity is still limited compared with the United States. The idea that it will compensate for internal economic problems by genuine (as opposed to rhetorical) military action is therefore unlikely.
  • In our view, the most important shift will be the re-emergence of Japan as the dominant economic and political power in East Asia in a slow process neither will really want.
  • China will continue to be a major power, and it will continue to matter a great deal economically. Being troubled is not the same as ceasing to exist. China will always exist. It will, however, no longer be the low-wage, high-growth center of the world. Like Japan before it, it will play a different role.
  • anonymous on 23 Jul 13
     
    "Major shifts underway in the Chinese economy that Stratfor has forecast and discussed for years have now drawn the attention of the mainstream media. Many have asked when China would find itself in an economic crisis, to which we have answered that China has been there for awhile -- something not widely recognized outside China, and particularly not in the United States."
anonymous

Japan's Military Normalization and U.S. Relations - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...normalization-and-us-relations

shared by anonymous on 08 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • The United States has long encouraged Japan to normalize its military and national defense posture, but now Japan's accelerating that process may inflame some of the longstanding tensions in the relationship.
  • Washington officials asked Japan to clarify an element of the defense guideline revisions that would allow Japan to strike enemy bases first, particularly to defend against ballistic missiles that pose an imminent threat.
  • As the Japanese broaden their definition of self-defense, their neighbors raise objections -- especially China and the Koreas, victims of Japan's imperialism in the first half of the 20th century.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Tensions over Japan's military normalization have risen recently for a number of reasons.
  • Japan is making more moves to guard against China's rise
  • North Korea has also spurred Japan to change.
  • at the moment, Japan's Liberal Democratic Party controls both houses of parliament after elections in July. It's popular at home, and it likely does not face elections again until 2016. So this is a rare chance for the country to move forward on policy changes that have normally met with a lot of resistance
  • Japan's neighbors are naturally wary when they see the country relatively unified, experimenting with new policies and trying to show that it remains a major world power.
  • The U.S. tried for decades to encourage Japan to contribute more to international security, but Japan offered mostly tokens of support, using its pacifist constitution as a means of dodging heavier commitments.
  • Japan's attitude began to change in the 1990s, but especially over the past decade in the face of Chinese assertiveness and, to a lesser extent, Russian resurgence and North Korean provocations. 
  • Essentially, Washington must worry about both China's challenge to the status quo and Japan's potential recalcitrance to China's rise. Washington wants its allies, both Japan and also Korea, to carry more of the burden of preserving order, but it does not want to lose control over the initiation of conflict, which is a risk when the allies start taking on more responsibility and improving their power projection capabilities as they've done, for instance, with aerial refueling.
  • anonymous on 08 Aug 13
     
    "According to Kyodo News, the United States has asked Japan to make sure that its neighbors understand the intention behind its latest attempt to adjust its national defense guidelines. Washington officials asked Japan to clarify an element of the defense guideline revisions that would allow Japan to strike enemy bases first, particularly to defend against ballistic missiles that pose an imminent threat."
anonymous

Thoughts on Minority Threat and Modern Day Vigilantes - 0 views

crimegeek.com/reat-and-modern-day-vigilantes

shared by anonymous on 17 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • What do many of them initially believe about Crime in America? Two things stand out. . . One, cities are a dangerous place filled with gang bangers, thieves, and drug dealers. Two, the criminal justice system is essentially at war with a group of bad people who are hell bent on making life miserable for the rest of us.
  • We tend to fear what is either unknown or different. We all have our personal boogeymen, those things that cause the hair on the back of our necks to stand up. In the academic study of policing, we call this boogeyman the symbolic assailant (SA).
  • When I first discuss SA’s with my students they automatically assume I am talking about profiling. Not exactly. The symbolic assailant is a composite of every person who has ever given you shit, acted out of line, or been a threat to themselves or others.
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • What separates this from profiling is that this imaginary person is based upon direct experiences the officer has had with specific citizens. When an officer looks over their shoulder to see what went bump in the night, this is what they’re looking for – a trigger that lets them know if the situation they’ve wandered into is safe or not.
  • Profiling, on the other hand, is based upon indirect experiences with broad groups (or types) of people.
  • Zimmerman is not alone in using race as a primary indicator of perceived dangerousness. A common refrain used to justify behavior like Zimmerman’s is that sadly young African-American males do commit the lions share of crime in America.
  • This argument uses Uniform Crime Report (UCR) data to back up its assertions. By that standard, it becomes very easy to then connect the dots and see somebody like Travyon Martin as a potential threat.
  • the UCR is not only voluntarily submitted by police departments but more importantly only measures crime actually reported to the police.
  • Research studies have found that anywhere from 30 to 50% of crime goes unreported. If anything, this data reflects citizen and police behavior more than actual crime incidents.
  • When our images of young African Amrican males are limited to hoodlums and athletes it should come as little surprise that Zimmerman (and the jury) thought he’d made the right call in his pursuit of Martin. This works both ways however.
  • One of my favorite courses to teach is Criminal Justice and Film. One of my favorite parts of the course is when I screen a double feature of “Dirty Harry” and “Taxi Driver.” Everybody always cheers and collectively feels a sense of relief when Eastwood takes matters into his own hands and guns down the psychotic Scorpio killer. At the end of the film, Eastwood tosses his badge away in disgust.
  • The reaction is markedly different with “Taxi Driver”. Instead of relief, the audience feels disgust and revulsion when the psychotic Travis Bickle saves a child prostitute by massacring a tenement full of pimps and thugs. The public reaction within the film treats Bickle as a hero. As an audience we know the truth, Bickle is a mentally disturbed Vet and a failed political assassin.
  • Despite the wildly different audience reactions to these two films, both characters are eerily similar. Both Harry and Bickle are struggling to overcome personal traumas ( the death of a wife and the horrors of War respectively). Both view the decaying cities of the 70s as being filled with animals. Both are increasingly disgusted with a society that seems to care more about protecting scum than the innocent. Both men are overwhelmingly alone and have trouble maintaining any semblance of a social relationship. And both have developed speeches and phrases to deliver as they mete out their own brand of vigilante justice.
  • Why do we view these characters so differently? One word: perception.
  • It becomes much easier to excuse and justify Harry’s actions simply because he’s a much more (seemingly) likable and charming person. This is why stand your ground laws are so problematic from a public policy perspective.
  • Public policy, particularly criminal justice policy, tends to be based more on conventional wisdom or common sense than empirical research.
  • Academics need to not only do a better job publicizing their research but we need to make it more accessible and relatable to non professional nerds. Only when this happens will public policy reflect science instead of somebody’s gut feeling. Let’s get to work.
  • anonymous on 17 Aug 13
     
    "I teach Criminal Justice in a rural and predominantly White state. One of the difficulties teaching my discipline in this environment is that I am mainly discussing urban problems in a place where the nearest large city is several hours and an entire state away. Many of my students only know about crime and urban America from what their family, cable news and AM radio tell them."
anonymous

You Broke Peer Review. Yes, I Mean You | Code and Culture - 0 views

codeandculture.wordpress.com/...youbrokepeerreview

shared by anonymous on 19 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • no more anonymous co-authors making your paper worse with a bunch of non sequiturs or footnotes with hedging disclaimers.
  • The thing is though that optimistic as I am about the new journal, I don’t think it will replace the incumbent journals overnight and so we still need to fix review at the incumbent journals.
  • So fixing peer review doesn’t begin with you, the author, yelling at your computer “FFS reviewer #10, maybe that’s how you would have done it, but it’s not your paper”
  • ...32 more annotations...
  • Nor, realistically, can fixing peer review happen from the editors telling you to go ahead and ignore comments 2, 5, and 6 of reviewer #6.
  • First, it would be an absurd amount of work
  • Second, from the editor’s perspective the chief practical problem is recruiting reviewers
  • they don’t want to alienate the reviewers by telling them that half their advice sucks in their cover letter
  • Rather, fixing peer review has to begin with you, the reviewer, telling yourself “maybe I would have done it another way myself, but it’s not my paper.”
  • You need to adopt a mentality of “is it good how the author did it” rather than “how could this paper be made better” (read: how would I have done it). That is the whole of being a good reviewer, the rest is commentary. That said, here’s the commentary.
  • Do not brainstorm
  • Responding to a research question by brainstorming possibly relevant citations or methods
  • First, many brainstormed ideas are bad.
  • When I give you advice as a peer reviewer there is a strong presumption that you take the advice even if it’s mediocre
  • Second, many brainstormed ideas are confusing.
  • When I give you advice in my office you can ask follow-up questions
  • When I give advice as a peer reviewer it’s up to you to hope that you read the entrails in a way that correctly augurs the will of the peer reviewers.
  • Being specific has the ancillary benefit that it’s costly to the reviewer which should help you maintain the discipline to thin the mindfart herd stampeding into the authors’ revisions.
  • Third, ideas are more valuable at the beginning of a project than at the end of it.
  • When I give you advice about your new project you can use it to shape the way the project develops organically. When I give it to you as a reviewer you can only graft it on after the fact.
  • it is essential to keep in mind that no matter how highly you think of your own expertise and opinions, you remember that the author doesn’t want to hear it.
  • time is money. It usually takes me an amount of time that is at least the equivalent of a course release to turn-around an R&R and at most schools a course release in turn is worth about $10,000 to $30,000 if you’re lucky enough to raise the grants to buy them.
  • Distinguish demands versus suggestions versus synapses that happened to fire as you were reading the paper
  • A lot of review comments ultimately boil down to some variation on “this reminds me of this citation” or “this research agenda could go in this direction.” OK, great. Now ask yourself, is it a problem that this paper does not yet do these things or are these just possibilities you want to share with the author?
  • As a related issue, demonstrate some rhetorical humility.
  • There’s wrong and then there’s difference of opinion
  • On quite a few methodological and theoretical issues there is a reasonable range of opinion. Don’t force the author to weigh in on your side.
  • For instance, consider Petev ASR 2013. The article relies heavily on McPherson et al ASR 2006, which is an extremely controversial article (see here, here, and here).
  • One reaction to this would be to say the McPherson et al paper is refuted and ought not be cited. However Petev summarizes the controversy in footnote 10 and then in footnote 17 explains why his own data is a semi-independent (same dataset, different variables) corroboration of McPherson et al.
  • These footnotes acknowledge a nontrivial debate about one of the article’s literature antecedents and then situates the paper within the debate.
  • Theoretical debates are rarely an issue of decisive refutation or strictly cumulative knowledge but rather at any given time there’s a reasonable range of opinions and you shouldn’t demand that the author go with your view but at most that they explore its implications if they were to.
  • There are cases where you fall on one side of a theoretical or methodological gulf and the author on another to the extent that you feel that you can’t really be fair.
  • you as the reviewer have to decide if you’re going to engage in what philosophers of science call “the demarcation problem” and sociologists of science call “boundary work” or you’re going to recuse yourself from the review.
  • Don’t try to turn the author’s theory section into a lit review.
  • The theory section is not about demonstrating basic competence or reciting a creedal confession and so it does not need to discuss every book or article ever published on the subject or even just the things important enough to appear on your graduate syllabus or field exam reading list.
  • If the submission reminds you of a citation that’s relevant to the author’s subject matter, think about whether it would materially affect the argument.
  • anonymous on 19 Nov 13
     
    "I'm as excited as anybody about Sociological Science as it promises a clean break from the "developmental" model of peer review by moving towards an entirely evaluative model. That is, no more anonymous co-authors making your paper worse with a bunch of non sequiturs or footnotes with hedging disclaimers. (The journal will feature frequent comment and replies, which makes debate about the paper a public dialog rather than a secret hostage negotiation). The thing is though that optimistic as I am about the new journal, I don't think it will replace the incumbent journals overnight and so we still need to fix review at the incumbent journals."
anonymous

Voters, Not Tycoons, Should Set Priorities - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-tycoons-should-set-priorities

shared by anonymous on 27 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Charity is a virtue -- and it is one of the great, traditional strengths of U.S. civil society. The problem is that as the gap between the rich and everyone else increases, among the super-elite there is a creeping temptation to conflate charity with taxation.
  • "I think we should get rid of taxes as much as we can," Friess explained. "Because you get to decide how you spend your money, rather than the government. I mean, if you have a certain cause, an art museum, or a symphony, and you want to support it, it would be nice if you had the choice to support it. Where we're headed, you'll be taxed, your money taken away, and the government will support it."
  • From the point of view of the person writing the check, the appeal of the self-tax is self-evident: you get to choose where your money goes and you get the kudos for contributing it. But for society as a whole, the self-tax is dangerous. For one thing, someone needs to pay for a lot of unglamourous but essential services, like roads and bank regulation, which are rarely paid for by private charity.
  • anonymous on 27 Nov 13
     
    "Philanthro-capitalism, as its fans have dubbed the muscular and innovative charitable giving favored by today's super-rich, can be an energetic contribution to global civil society. But it must not replace or, worse yet, usurp, public policy as formulated and implemented by our society as a whole. That is called democracy, and it takes taxes, including those paid by the philanthro-capitalists, to pay for it."
anonymous

In search of perfection, young adults turn to Adderall at work - 1 views

america.aljazeera.com/...dultsturntoadderallatwork.html

shared by anonymous on 04 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Benson (whose name, like all the people in this story who discuss their ADHD drug use, has been changed to protect her identity) is typical of a growing population of young adults who went to college in the 2000s. As they age out into the workplace, they’re taking with them the ADHD med habits they developed in college — and finding the drugs still work.
  • a more complete explanation suggests an environment that encourages stimulant use.
  • what is fast becoming the modern condition: guilt and anxiety over any minute not spent working or promoting that work.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • According to IMS Health, in 2007, 5.6 million monthly prescriptions for ADHD medications were written for people ages 20 to 39.
  • By 2011, that number had jumped to 14 million, a staggering 150 percent increase.
  • The active ingredients in Adderall target the parts of the brain responsible for executive function. In other words, Adderall solves the very problems the modern world creates. Long now uses the drug daily
  • The drugs are so popular because they work. “Adderall opens up time for you,” Collier said, emphasizing that using it enables him to get all his work done and still have time to work on other projects.
  • Essentially, Chatterjee argues that the advances in cognitive neuroscience and neuropharmacology mean the question of to what extent we want to create and live in a drug-enhanced society may no longer be relevant. That way of life is already here, and society must now account for the moral implications it brings.
  • Like cosmetic surgery, cosmetic neurology will likely be available only to those with the disposable income to afford elective medicine, expanding the already wide gap between the haves and have-nots.
  • An added concern is that the growing use of stimulants in the workplace will produce a new work environment in which use of neurological enhancement through pharmaceuticals is just one more thing expected of the perfect worker.
  • “Everyone is in an arms race of accomplishment,” Chatterjee said.
  • anonymous on 04 Dec 13
     
    "Ella Benson was a junior in college the first time she took it. With a class assignment due, she was offered the drug as a means to stay up all night and crank out something respectable by morning. It worked, and Benson now says it was the first time she "really connected" with something she was working on. "It was the first paper I wrote where I felt like I came up with an idea that was meaningful and important," she said. "I got an A on it." An A for Adderall."
anonymous

In Praise of Idleness By Bertrand Russell - 0 views

www.zpub.com/idle.html

shared by anonymous on 08 Oct 13 - Cached
  • Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so.
  • Usually two opposite kinds of advice are given simultaneously by two organized bodies of men; this is called politics. The skill required for this kind of work is not knowledge of the subjects as to which advice is given, but knowledge of the art of persuasive speaking and writing, i.e. of advertising.
  • A system which lasted so long and ended so recently has naturally left a profound impress upon men's thoughts and opinions. Much that we take for granted about the desirability of work is derived from this system, and, being pre-industrial, is not adapted to the modern world.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.
  • Leisure is essential to civilization, and in former times leisure for the few was only rendered possible by the labors of the many.
  • But their labors were valuable, not because work is good, but because leisure is good.
  • And with modern technique it would be possible to distribute leisure justly without injury to civilization.
  • Why? Because work is a duty, and a man should not receive wages in proportion to what he has produced, but in proportion to his virtue as exemplified by his industry.
  • This is the morality of the Slave State, applied in circumstances totally unlike those in which it arose.
  • The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich. In England, in the early nineteenth century, fifteen hours was the ordinary day's work for a man; children sometimes did as much, and very commonly did twelve hours a day.
  • When meddlesome busybodies suggested that perhaps these hours were rather long, they were told that work kept adults from drink and children from mischief. When I was a child, shortly after urban working men had acquired the vote, certain public holidays were established by law, to the great indignation of the upper classes. I remember hearing an old Duchess say: 'What do the poor want with holidays? They ought to work.' People nowadays are less frank, but the sentiment persists, and is the source of much of our economic confusion.
  • We have no attempt at economic justice, so that a large proportion of the total produce goes to a small minority of the population, many of whom do no work at all.
  • By a combination of all these devices we manage, though with difficulty, to keep alive the notion that a great deal of severe manual work must be the lot of the average man.
  • anonymous on 08 Oct 13
     
    "I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work."
anonymous

The Limits of Public Opinion: Arabs, Israelis and the Strategic Balance - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...israelis_and_strategic_balance

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 08 Jun 10 - Cached
  • The question has now become whether substantial consequences will follow from the incident. Put differently, the question is whether and how it will be exploited beyond the arena of public opinion.
  • the probability of an effective, as opposed to rhetorical, shift in the behavior of powers outside the region is unlikely. At every level, Israel’s Arab neighbors are incapable of forming even a partial coalition against Israel. Israel is not forced to calibrate its actions with an eye toward regional consequences, explaining Israel’s willingness to accept broad international condemnation.
  • On one side is Fatah, which dominates the West Bank. On the other side is Hamas, which dominates the Gaza Strip. Aside from the geographic division of the Palestinian territories — which causes the Palestinians to behave almost as if they comprised two separate and hostile countries — the two groups have profoundly different ideologies.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • Fatah arose from the secular, socialist, Arab-nationalist and militarist movement
  • Hamas arose from the Islamist movement.
  • at some point, Fatah will try to undermine the political gains the flotilla has offered Hamas.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 08 Jun 10
       
      This clearly qualifies as a prediction. Will await confirmation.
  • divergent opinions among what used to be called the confrontation states surrounding Israel — Egypt, Jordan and Syria.
  • Egypt, for example, is directly hostile to Hamas, a religious movement amid a sea of essentially secular Arab states.
  • Jordan views Fatah with deep distrust.
  • Syria is far more interested in Lebanon than it is in the Palestinians.
  • the Saudis and other Arabian Peninsula regimes remember the threat that Nasser and the PLO posed to their regimes.
  • Fatah doesn’t trust the Iranians, and Hamas, though a religious movement, is Sunni while Iran is Shiite.
  • Under these circumstances, the Israelis see the consequences of actions that excite hostility toward Israel from the Arabs and the rest of the world as less dangerous than losing control of Gaza.
  • A single point sums up the story of Israel and the Gaza blockade-runners: Not one Egyptian aircraft threatened the Israeli naval vessels, nor did any Syrian warship approach the intercept point. The Israelis could be certain of complete command of the sea and air without challenge. And this underscores how the Arab countries no longer have a military force that can challenge the Israelis, nor the will nor interest to acquire one. Where Egyptian and Syrian forces posed a profound threat to Israeli forces in 1973, no such threat exists now. Israel has a completely free hand in the region militarily; it does not have to take into account military counteraction.
  • And while the break between Turkey and Israel is real, Turkey alone cannot bring significant pressure to bear on Israel beyond the sphere of public opinion and diplomacy because of the profound divisions in the region.
  • The most significant threat to Israel is not world opinion; though not trivial, world opinion is not decisive. The threat to Israel is that its actions will generate forces in the Arab world that eventually change the balance of power. The politico-military consequences of public opinion is the key question, and it is in this context that Israel must evaluate its split with Turkey.
  • Egypt is the center of gravity of the Arab world, the largest country and formerly the driving force behind Arab unity. It was the power Israel feared above all others. But Egypt under Mubarak has shifted its stance versus the Palestinians, and far more important, allowed Egypt’s military capability to atrophy.
  • Turkey’s emerging power combined with a political shift in the Arab world could represent a profound danger to Israel.
  • The Israelis are calculating that these actions will not generate a long-term shift in the strategic posture of the Arab world.
  • If they are wrong about this, recent actions will have been a significant strategic error.
  • If they are right, then this is simply another passing incident.
anonymous

Russia: Expanding the FSB's Powers - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...11_russia_fsbs_powers_expanded

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 11 Jun 10 - Cached
  • The Russian Duma on June 11 voted in favor of expanding the powers of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).
  • The bill essentially would allow the FSB to take action against anyone without needing a legal reason.
  • For the Kremlin, the new law is about opening its doors to foreign firms and money while keeping an eye on foreigners’ moves and removing their presence if need be.
  • anonymous on 11 Jun 10
     
    June 11, 2010
anonymous

The 30-Year War in Afghanistan - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...100628_30_year_war_afghanistan

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 01 Jul 10 - Cached
  • The Afghan War is the longest war in U.S. history. It began in 1980 and continues to rage. It began under Democrats but has been fought under both Republican and Democratic administrations, making it truly a bipartisan war. The conflict is an odd obsession of U.S. foreign policy, one that never goes away and never seems to end. As the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal reminds us, the Afghan War is now in its fourth phase.
  • The first phase of the Afghan War began with the Soviet invasion in December 1979, when the United States, along with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, organized and sustained Afghan resistance to the Soviets.
  • The second phase lasted from 1989 until 2001.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • The third phase began on Sept. 11, 2001, when al Qaeda launched attacks on the mainland United States.
  • The fourth phase of the war began in 2009, when U.S. President Barack Obama decided to pursue a more aggressive strategy in Afghanistan. Though the Bush administration had toyed with this idea, it was Obama who implemented it fully.
  • While al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan in 2001, Afghanistan is no longer its primary base of operations. The group has shifted to Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and other countries. As al Qaeda is thus not dependent on any one country for its operational base, denying it bases in Afghanistan does not address the reality of its dispersion. Securing Afghanistan, in other words, is no longer the solution to al Qaeda.
  • the real strategy is to return to the historical principles of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan: alliance with indigenous forces.
  • The American strategy is, therefore, to maintain a sufficient force to shape the political evolution on the ground, and to use that force to motivate and intimidate while also using economic incentives to draw together a coalition in the countryside.
  • Afghanistan ultimately is not strategically essential, and this is why the United States has not historically used its own forces there.
  • The forces the United States and its allies had trained and armed now fought each other in complex coalitions for control of Afghanistan. Though the United States did not take part in this war directly, it did not lose all interest in Afghanistan.
  • First, the Americans intended to keep al Qaeda bottled up and to impose as much damage as possible on the group.
  • Second, they intended to establish an Afghan government, regardless of how ineffective it might be, to serve as a symbolic core.
  • Third, they planned very limited operations against the Taliban, which had regrouped and increasingly controlled the countryside.
  • The three phases of American involvement in Afghanistan had a common point: All three were heavily dependent on non-U.S. forces to do the heavy lifting. In the first phase, the mujahideen performed this task. In the second phase, the United States relied on Pakistan to manage Afghanistan’s civil war. In the third phase, especially in the beginning, the United States depended on Afghan forces to fight the Taliban.
  • The United States commenced operations barely 30 days after Sept. 11, which was not enough time to mount an invasion using U.S. troops as the primary instrument. Rather, the United States made arrangements with factions that were opposed to the Taliban (and defeated in the Afghan civil war).
  • anonymous on 01 Jul 10
     
    By George Friedman on July 29, 2010
anonymous

Tea Partiers' concerns are virtually identical to those of Republicans, poll shows - 0 views

voices.washingtonpost.com/...tea_partiers_concerns_are.html

criticalthinking media generations

shared by anonymous on 07 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Those arguing that the Tea Partiers aren't really anything new tend to point out that the vast majority of them are Republicans. But by itself, that isn't really surprising or conclusive. This new chart from Gallup, on the other hand, documents that the political concerns and priorities of Tea Party supporters are virtually identical to those of Republicans:
  • For some time now, the Post's E.J. Dionne has been valiantly making the case that the Tea Partiers, rather than representing some new political phenomenon, are essentially just right-wing Republicans. The only new thing about them, Dionne suggests, is the ham-handed revolutionary garb and the signs of Obama as the Joker.
  • anonymous on 07 Jul 10
     
    Really? By Greg Sargent at The Plum Line on July 6, 2010
anonymous

Russian Spies and Strategic Intelligence - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...ies_and_strategic_intelligence

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 13 Jul 10 - Cached
  • The way the media has reported on the issue falls into three groups: That the Cold War is back, That, given that the Cold War is over, the point of such outmoded intelligence operations is questionable, And that the Russian spy ring was spending its time aimlessly nosing around in think tanks and open meetings in an archaic and incompetent effort.
  • First, it needs to know what other nations are capable of doing.
  • Second, the nation needs to know what other nations intend to do.
  • ...25 more annotations...
  • The more powerful a nation is, the more important it is to understand what it is doing.
  • Knowing what the United States will do, and shifting policy based on that, can save countries from difficulties and even disaster.
  • What they excelled at, however, was placing undetectable operatives in key positions. Soviet talent scouts would range around left-wing meetings to discover potential recruits. These would be young people with impeccable backgrounds and only limited contact with the left. They would be recruited based on ideology, and less often via money, sex or blackmail. They would never again be in contact with communists or fellow travelers.
  • Recruiting people who were not yet agents, creating psychological and material bonds over long years of management and allowing them to mature into senior intelligence or ministry officials allowed ample time for testing loyalty and positioning. The Soviets not only got more reliable information this way but also the ability to influence the other country’s decision-making.
  • There were four phases: Identifying likely candidates, Evaluating and recruiting them, Placing them and managing their rise in the organization, And exploiting them.
  • It is difficult to know what the Russian team was up to in the United States from news reports, but there are two things we know about the Russians: They are not stupid, and they are extremely patient.
  • If we were to guess — and we are guessing — this was a team of talent scouts.
  • One of the Russian operatives, Don Heathfield, once approached a STRATFOR employee in a series of five meetings.
  • We would guess that Anna Chapman was brought in as part of the recruitment phase of talent scouting.
  • Each of the phases of the operatives’ tasks required a tremendous amount of time, patience and, above all, cover. The operatives had to blend in (in this case, they didn’t do so well enough).
  • Were the Americans to try the same thing, they would have to convince people to spend years learning Russian to near-native perfection and then to spend 20-30 years of their lives in Russia. Some would be willing to do so, but not nearly as many as there are Russians prepared to spend that amount of time in the United States or Western Europe.
  • The United States has substituted technical intelligence for this process. Thus, the most important U.S. intelligence-collection agency is not the CIA; it is the National Security Agency (NSA).
  • In many ways, this provides better and faster intelligence than the placement of agents, except that this does not provide influence.
  • it assumes that what senior (and other) individuals say, write or even think reveals the most important things about the country in question.
  • The fall of the Shah of Iran and the collapse of the Soviet empire were events of towering importance for the United States.
  • Either of those scenarios would not have made any difference to how events played out. This is because, in the end, the respective senior leadership didn’t know how events were going to play out. Partly this is because they were in denial, but mostly this is because they didn’t have the facts and they didn’t interpret the facts they did have properly. At these critical turning points in history, the most thorough penetration using either American or Russian techniques would have failed to provide warning of the change ahead.
  • The people being spied on and penetrated simply didn’t understand their own capabilities — i.e., the reality on the ground in their respective countries — and therefore their intentions about what to do were irrelevant and actually misleading.
  • if we regard anticipating systemic changes as one of the most important categories of intelligence, then these are cases where the targets of intelligence may well know the least and know it last.
  • We started with three classes of intelligence: capabilities, intentions and what will actually happen.
  • The first is an objective measure that can sometimes be seen directly but more frequently is obtained through data held by someone in the target country. The most important issue is not what this data says but how accurate it is.
  • For example, George W. Bush did not intend to get bogged down in a guerrilla war in Iraq. What he intended and what happened were two different things because his view of American and Iraqi capabilities were not tied to reality.
  • But in the end, the most important question to ask is whether the most highly placed source has any clue as to what is going to happen.
  • Knowledge of what is being thought is essential. But gaming out how the objective and impersonal forces will interact and play out it is the most important thing of all.
  • The events of the past few weeks show intelligence doing the necessary work of recruiting and rescuing agents. The measure of all of this activity is not whether one has penetrated the other side, but in the end, whether your intelligence organization knew what was going to happen and told you regardless of what well-placed sources believed. Sometimes sources are indispensable. Sometimes they are misleading. And sometimes they are the way an intelligence organization justifies being wrong.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 13 Jul 10
       
      This feels like that old saying, amateurs study tactics but experts study logistics. Perhaps that's the angle on this spying stuff that we haven't taken because we subconsciously imagine the crap of popular culture where knowledge should be.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 13 Jul 10
       
      It certainly makes my thoughts here (http://longgame.org/2010/07/spies-like-them/) feel pretty damned quaint.
  • There appeared to be no goal of recruitment; rather, the Russian operative tried to get the STRATFOR employee to try out software he said his company had developed. We suspect that had this been done, our servers would be outputting to Moscow. We did not know at the time who he was.
  • anonymous on 13 Jul 10
     
    Some amount of spying is the cost of doing business for any power. By George Friedman at StratFor on July 13, 2010.
anonymous

Sun Could Set Suddenly on Superpower as Debt Bites - 1 views

www.realclearworld.com/...power_as_debt_bites_99088.html

generations geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 28 Jul 10 - Cached
  • We have been raised to think of the historical process as an essentially cyclical one. We naturally tend to assume that in our own time, too, history will move cyclically, and slowly.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Jul 10
       
      Really? I had thought that we all assumed a linear-time-frame. Strauss & Howe's cyclical view doesn't strike me as common main-stream thought.
  • Yet what if history is not cyclical and slow-moving but arhythmic, at times almost stationary, but also capable of accelerating suddenly, like a sports car? What if collapse does not arrive over a number of centuries but comes suddenly, like a thief in the night?
  • Complex systems share certain characteristics. A small input to such a system can produce huge, often unanticipated changes, what scientists call the amplifier effect.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • What are the implications for the US today? The most obvious point is that imperial falls are associated with fiscal crises: sharp imbalances between revenues and expenditures, and the mounting cost of servicing a mountain of public debt.
  • There is a zero-sum game at the heart of the budgetary process: even if rates stay low, recurrent deficits and debt accumulation mean that interest payments consume a rising proportion of tax revenue. And military expenditure is the item most likely to be squeezed to compensate because, unlike mandatory entitlements (social security, Medicaid and Medicare), defence spending is discretionary.
  • It may not have escaped your notice that China now has the second-largest economy in the world and is almost certain to be the US's principal strategic rival in the 21st century, particularly in the Asia-Pacific.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Jul 10
       
      This is conventional thinking. StratFor disagrees, though. I can't wait to see what *actually* unfolds. One or another could be wrong. Moreover, *both* could be wrong.
  • But what if the sudden waning of American power that I fear brings to an abrupt end the era of US hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region? Are we ready for such a dramatic change in the global balance of power?
  • anonymous on 28 Jul 10
     
    A counter-argument to Strauss & Howe's generational view of the world - with particular regard to global power-politics. By Niall Ferguson at RealClearWorld on July 28, 2010. Hat Tip to Matt Eckel at Foreign Policy Watch (http://fpwatch.blogspot.com/2010/07/again-on-empire-and-punctuated.html).
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