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anonymous

Salt: More confirmation bias for your preferred narrative - 0 views

www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/...s-for-your-preferred-narrative

layscience salt criticalthinking

shared by anonymous on 21 Jul 11 - Cached
  • When it comes to health, it’s the hard outcomes we care about. We pay attention to measures like high blood pressure (hypertension) because of the relationship between hypertension and events like heart attacks and strokes. The higher the blood pressure, the greater the risk of these events. The relationship between the two is well established. So when it comes to preventive health, we want to lower blood pressure to reduce the risk of subsequent effects. Weight loss, diet, and exercise are usually prescribed (though often insufficient) to reduce blood pressure. For many, drug treatment is still required.
  • There is reasonable population-level data linking higher levels of salt consumption with higher blood pressure.
  • From a population perspective, interventions that dramatically lower salt intake result in lower blood pressure.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • the causality between salt consumption, and all of these negative effects, is less clear.
  • So does reducing dietary salt reduce cardiovascular events? That’s the key question.
  • When it comes to clinical practice guidelines, low salt diets are the mainstays of pretty much every set of guidelines on the management of high blood pressure.
  • The evidence supporting the relationship with hard outcomes is robust, but not rock-solid. We don’t have causal data, but we do have considerable epidemiologic evidence to suggest that reducing dietary salt consumption is likely to offer net benefits in the management of hypertension.
  • The vast majority of the salt we eat (75%) is from processed foods. Restaurants are a large source, too.
  • Few foods in their original state are naturally high in salt, and in general, we don’t add that much at the table.
  • Seven studies made up this meta-analysis, including 6,489 patients in total. Three studies looked at those with normal blood pressure, two included patients with high blood pressure, and one was a mixed population, including patients with heart failure. The overall effect? Interventions had small effects on sodium consumption, which led to small effects on blood pressure. There was insufficient information to analyze the effects on cardiovascular disease endpoints.
  • The authors go on to make the following point, which was ignored in the media coverage: Our findings are consistent with the belief that salt reduction is beneficial in normotensive and hypertensive people. However, the methods of achieving salt reduction in the trials included in our review, and other systematic reviews, were relatively modest in their impact on sodium excretion and on blood pressure levels, generally required considerable efforts to implement and would not be expected to have major impacts on the burden of CVD.
  • The authors did not conclude that reducing salt consumption is ineffective.
  • Despite the modest and equivocal results, the authors seem to have lost the narrative on their own research findings: Professor Rod Taylor, the lead researcher of the review, is ‘completely dismayed’ at the headlines that distort the message of his research published today. Having spoken to BBC Scotland, and to CASH, he clarified that the review looked at studies where people were advised to reduce salt intake compared to those who were not and found no differences, this is not because reduced salt doesn’t have an effect but because it’s hard to reduce salt intake for a long time. He stated that people should continue to strive to reduce their salt intake to reduce their blood pressure, but that dietary advice alone is not enough, calling for further government and industry action.
  • The true finding from the Cochrane review is that dietary interventions to reduce salt intake are largely ineffective at reducing salt consumption.
  • Until the data are more clear, you can find the data to support whatever narrative you believe. If you want to demonize salt and ignore other factors that contribute to poor cardiovascular outcomes, you can do that. And if you believe that interventions to reduce salt consumption are misguided and unwarranted, and symptomatic of an overreaching nanny state, then you can find data to support that position, too.
  • anonymous on 21 Jul 11
     
    "Judging by the recent press reports, the latest Cochrane review reveals that everything we've been told about eating salt, and cardiovascular disease, is wrong."
anonymous

Pew Study: Americans Abandoning News Outlets, Citing Lower Quality - 0 views

www.forbes.com/...s-outlets-citing-lower-quality

shared by anonymous on 18 Mar 13 - Cached
  • Nearly a third of those surveyed, or 31%, said they had ceased relying on a particular news outlet because it no longer provided them with the sort of news they were used to getting.
  • To learn exactly what respondents meant by that, Pew asked whether the issue was quantity — ie. fewer stories — or quality. Overwhelmingly, they chose the latter, with 60.7% citing “less complete” coverage as the reason for turning away, versus 23.5% who chose “fewer stories.”
  • Yet as sensitive as they are to the declining quality of news, Americans aren’t particularly perceptive about the financial pressures underlying the trend. A full 60% said they knew nothing whatsoever (36%) or very little (24%) about the economic forces disrupting the news business, although awareness was somewhat higher among the affluent and educated.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Curiously, even among those who claimed to know at least a little about the situation, a majority of 57% didn’t believe news outlets’ economic woes limited their ability to produce quality coverage.
  • With newspaper newsrooms employing 28% fewer journalists than they did in 2001 (fewer than 40,000 nationally), that’s a bizarre finding. How could anyone, you might wonder, not see the link between a dramatic reduction in the number of people producing the news and the thoroughness of that product?
  • Consumers are sending a message: They want the same quality of news they’ve always known, not excuses, and they’ll punish news outlets that fail to meet that standard by taking their business elsewhere.
  • anonymous on 18 Mar 13
     
    "Like all vicious cycles, the relationship between the declining fortunes of news outlets and the shrinking of their audiences is a difficult one to untangle, a chicken-and-egg problem. Newspaper circulations have been sliding for decades, starting well before digital media started siphoning off ad dollars and forcing widespread newsroom cutbacks that, inevitably, resulted in a poorer editorial product."
anonymous

Oil and Militancy in the Niger Delta - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...oil-and-militancy-niger-delta

geopolitics africa oil

shared by anonymous on 27 Mar 13 - Cached
  • anonymous on 27 Mar 13
     
    "With militancy in the Niger Delta on the rise, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan must convince oil investors to keep their money in Nigeria while retaining the services of Niger Delta militants -- one of his most potent political tools. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta grew from popular protest movements that believed energy companies were exploiting their home region. But militancy then became an extortion method by which the region's political elite could gain a stake in the federal government. Leaders and commanders, including imprisoned former leader Henry Okah, were given political and security leeway to attack energy infrastructure on the condition that they minimize foreign casualties and allow for enough crude oil production to leverage in political negotiations. Okah's former commanders remain in the Niger Delta and, under the auspices of oil pipeline and waterway security contracts, prosper from private and public payoffs. Frequently these leaders are in Abuja managing their relationships with government officials. Abuja will use Okah's 24-year sentence, announced by a South African court March 26, to show that it is trying to contain militancy in the Niger Delta. Jonathan's administration does not want international oil companies invested in the Nigerian oil sector to lose confidence in Nigeria's security environment or to relocate to more stable and secure countries. Increased bunkering, kidnapping and piracy operations have validated concerns of even more militancy in the region. In fact, Italian energy company ENI and Royal Dutch/Shell recently shuttered two pipelines, bringing some 200,000 barrels of oil per day offline."
anonymous

Things We Don't Know: The beast with a billion backs: Part 1 - 0 views

blog.thingswedontknow.com/...with-billion-backs-part-1.html

shared by anonymous on 15 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • We like to think of ourselves in the singular, but the reality is we are a swirling composite of thousands of species, more accurately thought of as an ecosystem than as an individual.
  • There is the core ‘us’, the cells that contain our DNA. But we are also like the land on which a rich forest might grow
  • Together they are our ‘microbiome’.
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  • in return for shelter and a share of the spoils from our meals, some make vitamins, liberate nutrients and energy from food, and protect us from their pathogenic cousins. Millions of years of co-evolution with our microbial horde have forged this relationship, shaping us both in ways whose significance we’re still trying to understand.
  • One of the biggest problems in unpicking the microbiome’s relationship with health is working out if the changes and differences are a cause, an intermediate step, or a consequence of developing a disease.
  • separating our environment from disease is proving hard.
  • Crohns disease is a good example
  • we know a disrupted microbiota is one of its features.
  • But we can’t yet say for sure if this is the cause or the effect.
  • If it starts with our own physiology, then we need to investigate treatments targeted at those changes, but if it starts with the microbiome our treatments will be different.
  • With so many branches it’s perhaps no surprise that so many other organisms can call us ‘home’.
  • In the past we’ve been well served by the one-pathogen-one-disease model for tracking, monitoring and avoiding infectious diseases. But do beneficial, or harmless, bugs in the microbiome spread like pathogens? If not, how?
  • It is important to understand this because of the number of links between the microbiome and a number of diseases like diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, food allergies, and even obesity.
  • An improved picture of how our communities of microbes – good and bad – come together and move through populations could help us to develop interventions to significantly reduce, or prevent, the numbers of people with these conditions. Or, at the least, find ways to hobble this trend.
  • Understanding both the flow of microbes and the factors which influence it may also be important for any treatments we produce.
  • We’ve been manipulating our microbial ecosystems for years, both naturally through our immune systems and, perhaps more worryingly, through a weapon of microbial mass destruction: antibiotics.
  • anonymous on 15 Apr 13
     
    "This post is by freelance science writer Gavin Hubbard. Gavin originally trained as a Medical Biochemist at the University of Surrey and spent over 10 years working in biotechnology, immunology and clincal trials. He writes both for industry and for a general audience, with a focus on health, immunology and pathology. He blogs at Sciencehubb.co.uk and can be found on twitter as @GavinHub"
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

Cars? Not For Us: The Cheapest Generation Explains 'the Freedom of Not Owning' - 1 views

www.theatlantic.com/...261516

generations

shared by anonymous on 24 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 24 Aug 12
     
    "I'm in the demographic that this article is talking about and I nodded my head in agreement to everything they said. My attitudes about lifestyle and my relationship to driving has shaped my value system about new car ownership and home ownership. When I owned a car it was simply a means to an end and not an identity. A method of getting from one place to another. Living in the city (I've lived in several) the car gets beat to hell, so having a new car is largely impractical without an off-street parking space. I also have absolutely no desire to live in distant cul-de-sac style suburbs, and I'd prefer to walk to the store if I can, even though I'm at the point where I'm thinking about buying a house and raising a family.  "
anonymous

Annual Forecast 2012 - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...annual-forecast-2012

annual forecast stratfor

shared by anonymous on 25 Jan 12 - Cached
  • In this period, the European Union has stopped functioning as it did five years ago and has yet to see its new form defined. China has moved into a difficult social and economic phase, with the global recession severely affecting its export-oriented economy and its products increasingly uncompetitive due to inflation. The U.S. withdrawal from Iraq has created opportunities for an Iranian assertion of power that could change the balance of power in the region. The simultaneous shifts in Europe, China and the Middle East open the door to a new international framework replacing the one created in 1989-1991.
  • Our forecast for 2012 is framed by the idea that we are in the midst of what we might call a generational shift in the way the world works.
  • the driving force behind developments in Europe in 2012 will be political, not economic.
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  • Normally, we would predict failure for such an effort: Sacrificing budgetary authority to an outside power would be the most dramatic sacrifice of state sovereignty yet in the European experiment -- a sacrifice that most European governments would strongly resist. However, the Germans have six key advantages in 2012.
  • First, there are very few scheduled electoral contests, so the general populace of most European states will not be consulted on the exercise.
  • Second, Germany only needs the approval of the 17 eurozone states -- rather than the 27 members of the full European Union -- to forward its plan with credibility.
  • Third, the process of approving a treaty such as this will take significant time, and some aspects of the reform process can be pushed back.
  • Fourth, the Germans are willing to apply significant pressure.
  • Fifth, the Europeans are scared, which makes them willing to do things they would not normally do -- such as implementing austerity and ratifying treaties they dislike.
  • The real political crisis will not come until the sacrifice of sovereignty moves from the realm of theory to application, but that will not occur in 2012.
  • The economic deferment of that pain is the sixth German advantage. Here, the primary player is the ECB. The financial crisis has two aspects: Over-indebted European governments are lurching toward defaults that would collapse the European system, and European banks (the largest purchasers of European government debt) are broadly insolvent -- their collapse would similarly break apart the European system.
  • In 2012, the Kremlin will face numerous challenges: social unrest, restructuring Russia's political makeup (both inside and outside of the Kremlin) and major economic shifts due to the crisis in Europe.
  • Russia will continue building its influence in its former Soviet periphery in 2012, particularly by institutionalizing its relationships with many former Soviet states. Russia will build upon its Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan as it evolves into the Common Economic Space (CES).
  • This larger institution will allow the scope of Russia's influence over Minsk and Astana, as well as new member countries such as Kyrgyzstan and possibly Tajikistan, to expand from the economic sphere into politics and security as Moscow lays the groundwork for the eventual formation of the Eurasian Union, which it is hoping to start around 2015.
  • In the Baltic countries -- which, unlike other former Soviet states, are committed members of NATO and the European Union -- Russia's ultimate goal is to neutralize the countries' pro-Western and anti-Russian policies
  • Russia will continue managing various crises with the West -- mainly the United States and NATO -- while shaping its relationships in Europe.
  • Russia will attempt to push these crises with the United States to the brink without actually rupturing relations -- a difficult balance.
  • Numerous factors will undermine Central Asia's stability in 2012, but they will not lead to a major breaking point in the region this year.
  • Iran's efforts to expand its influence will be the primary issue for the Middle East in 2012.
  • In 2012, Saudi Arabia will lead efforts to shore up and consolidate the defenses of Gulf Cooperation Council members to try to ward off the threat posed by Iran, but such efforts will not be a sufficient replacement for the United States and the role it plays as a security guarantor.
  • Iran's goal is for Syria to maintain a regime -- regardless of who leads it -- that will remain favorable to Iranian interests, but Iran's ability to influence the situation is limited, and finding a replacement to hold the regime together will be difficult.
  • Despite its rhetoric, Turkey will not undertake significant overt military action in Syria unless the United States leads the intervention -- a scenario Stratfor regards as improbable -- though it will continue efforts to mold an opposition in Syria and counterbalance Iranian influence in Iraq.
  • Hamas will take advantage of the slowly growing political clout of Islamists throughout the region in hopes of presenting itself to neighboring Arab governments and the West as a pragmatic and reconcilable political alternative to Fatah.
  • Three things will shape events in East Asia: China's response to the economic crisis and possible social turmoil amid a leadership transition; the European Union's debt crisis and economic slowdown sapping demand for East Asia's exports; and regional interaction with the U.S. re-engagement in the Asia-Pacific region.
  • While Beijing knows that rolling out another massive fiscal stimulus and bank loans as it did in 2008-2009 is unsustainable and would put the economy at risk, it sees few other short-term options and thus will use government-led investment to sustain growth in 2012.
  • As it learned from the Tiananmen Square incident, CPC factional infighting exploited at a sensitive time is a serious risk, and we expect to see measures to ensure ideological and cultural control throughout the Party and down through the rest of society.
  • The United States will continue to consider a political accommodation with the Taliban, but such accommodation is unlikely to be reached this year.
  • The most important development in South Asia is Pakistan's ongoing political evolution.
  • Regardless of any change in party, Mexico's underlying challenges will remain. The country's drug war rages on, with Los Zetas having consolidated control over most of Mexico's eastern coastal transportation corridor and the Sinaloa cartel having done the same in the west.
  • Brazil will spend 2012 focused on mitigating shocks to trade and capital flows from the crisis in Europe. However, with only 10 percent of Brazil's gross domestic product dependent on exports, Brazil is much less vulnerable than many other developing countries.
  • anonymous on 25 Jan 12
     
    "There are periods when the international system undergoes radical shifts in a short time. The last such period was 1989-1991. During that time, the Soviet empire collapsed. The Japanese economic miracle ended. The Maastricht Treaty creating contemporary Europe was signed. Tiananmen Square defined China as a market economy dominated by an unchallenged Communist Party, and so on. Fundamental components of the international system shifted radically, changing the rules for the next 20 years. We are in a similar cycle, one that began in 2008 and is still playing out."
anonymous

Europe: What to Expect After Germany's Elections | Stratfor - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...xpect-after-germanys-elections

shared by anonymous on 19 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Germany's economic performance is tied strongly to external developments because of the country's reliance on exports.
  • Europe is Germany's largest customer, so the German economy depends on the strength of the European consumer base.
  • However, Germany's economy has not escaped the crisis unscathed. Over the past few years, German economic growth has slowed. According to the International Monetary Fund, Germany's GDP grew by only 0.9 percent in 2012, down from 4 percent in 2010.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Strengthening domestic demand -- by raising wages, for example -- would limit its exposure to external risks, but it would also make German exports less competitive.
  • One option under consideration is the introduction of a minimum wage.
  • Berlin will also address its immigration issue.
  • Germany has actually seen an uptick of immigrants over the past few years due to its resilience to the crisis, but historically it has trouble retaining them. Any new government will have to introduce policies to retain immigrants while allaying fears that foreigners will abuse the national social security system.
  • A third priority for the new German government will be re-evaluating the country's energy strategy.
  • Because Germany has few domestic energy resources, the country's energy strategy is also part of its foreign policy. Infrastructure integration with other countries is important for German energy imports, as are bilateral relations with Russia, Germany's main oil and natural gas provider.
  • How effectively Germany integrates Europe will depend largely on its willingness to aid other European countries, particularly those in the eurozone.
  • Continued financial assistance is a crucial element in Germany's national strategy of ensuring cohesion in Europe and preserving the currency union.
  • Legal and institutional hurdles will limit Berlin's ability to be proactive in helping other countries. Even if there were general consensus among the political elite that Germany should provide aid more extensively, small opposition groups can challenge and delay assistance plans relatively easily.
  • To ensure survival of the eurozone, Germany will also try to preserve the Franco-German alliance. Historically, European integration meant solidifying German economic strength and French political leadership, but the European crisis has strained their relationship. The pressure Berlin will face in giving in to French demands, which include allowing more government spending, mutualizing debt and changing the European Central Bank's role to accept higher inflation and to more openly intervene in sovereign bond markets, will largely depend on how strongly the economic performance of both countries diverges.
  • anonymous on 19 Sep 13
     
    "Much of Europe is eagerly anticipating the results of Germany's Sept. 22 parliamentary elections, but this anticipation may be somewhat misplaced. Of course, Germany's importance to Europe is well founded. It is Europe's largest economy and its main bailout creditor to struggling eurozone countries, so Germany's economic health is vital to the economic health of Europe as a whole. But the relationship goes both ways: Germany's economy relies on the free trade zone and on exports, which the rest of Europe can buy only if it can afford to do so. Thus any government in Berlin will continue to aid countries afflicted by the European crisis -- even at the risk of growing domestic opposition."
anonymous

Central Asia and Afghanistan: A Tumultuous History | Stratfor - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...afghanistan-tumultuous-history

shared by anonymous on 26 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Contrary to popular perception, Central Asia is not likely to see an immediate explosion of violence and militancy after the U.S. and NATO drawdown from Afghanistan in 2014. However, Central Asia's internal issues and the region's many links with Afghanistan -- including a web of relationships among militant groups -- will add to the volatility in the region. 
  • Central Asia is linked to Afghanistan geographically; Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan share borders with Afghanistan that collectively span more than 2,000 kilometers (about 1,240 miles).
  • the topography of Afghanistan's frontiers with Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan is largely desert. 
  • ...13 more annotations...
  •  Afghanistan is an ethnically diverse country, with more than a dozen ethno-linguistic groups represented substantially in the country's population of slightly more than 31 million.
  • The Pashtuns are the largest such group (42 percent), with Tajiks (27 percent), Hazaras (9 percent), Uzbeks (9 percent) and Turkmen (3 percent) constituting significant cohorts as well.
  • Historically, Afghanistan's borders with the Central Asian states did not exist in a modern sense; rather, they consisted of frontier areas that constantly shifted hands, given that warfare in the region was the norm.
  • Russia's imperial expansion into Central Asia coincided with the growth of the British domain over India, and the result was the establishment of a buffer zone in what is now Afghanistan.
  • This set the borders of Afghanistan as we know them and -- with the transition from the Russian Empire to the Soviet Union in the early 20th century -- led to a closing off of the borders between Central Asia and Afghanistan for the first time in history.
  • The ensuing 70 years of Soviet rule in Central Asia created significantly different political and cultural identities among the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Turkmen in the Soviet Union and those within Afghanistan, given the vastly different governing structures.
  • Because of the geography of the border areas, interaction and movement between the peoples of Central Asia and Afghanistan was difficult to stop.
  • The Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the collapse of the Soviet Union only two years later created a dramatically new environment both within Central Asia and within Afghanistan.
  • In 1991, the Central Asian states of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan (along with Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan farther north) became independent states for the first time in modern history.
  • Beginning in 1994 and starting from their stronghold in Kandahar, the Taliban were able to spread their influence and control over much of Afghanistan. It took the movement only months to take control of most southern provinces from various Pashtun warlords, and they quickly made progress in capturing regional centers in the west and east of the country like Herat and Jalalabad.
  • The rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan coincided with a number of significant developments in Central Asia. The post-Soviet regimes in the region had no experience of ruling their territories directly. Moreover, Central Asia faced immense economic and political challenges as Russia withdrew subsidies and the Soviet military-industrial complex with which the Central Asians were so integrated collapsed.
  • Tajikistan descended into civil war almost immediately, when groups from the Kulyabi and Khujand regions known as the Popular Front were pitted against an array of opposition elements including Islamists, democrats and the Pamiri clan from the east collectively known as the United Tajik Opposition. 
  • Outside groups got involved in the civil war, supporting the different sides along political and ideological lines. Russia and Uzbekistan supported the secular and neo-communist Popular Front, while many Tajiks in Afghanistan supported the United Tajik Opposition, particularly the Islamist elements of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan. 
  • anonymous on 26 Sep 13
     
    "This is the first installment of a two-part series on the relationship between Central Asia and Afghanistan and the expected effects of the U.S. drawdown in Afghanistan on Central Asian security."
anonymous

The history of inequality (by Peter Turchin) - 0 views

www.aeonmagazine.com/...peter-turchin-wealth-poverty

shared by anonymous on 21 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Today, the top one per cent of incomes in the United States accounts for one fifth of US earnings. The top one per cent of fortunes holds two-fifths of the total wealth.
  • As the Congressional Budget Office concluded in 2011: ‘the precise reasons for the rapid growth in income at the top are not well understood’.
  • In his book Wealth and Democracy (2002), Kevin Phillips came up with a useful way of thinking about the changing patterns of wealth inequality in the US.
  • ...67 more annotations...
  • He looked at the net wealth of the nation’s median household and compared it with the size of the largest fortune in the US. The ratio of the two figures provided a rough measure of wealth inequality, and that’s what he tracked, touching down every decade or so from the turn of the 19th century all the way to the present.
  • We found repeated back-and-forth swings in demographic, economic, social, and political structures
  • From 1800 to the 1920s, inequality increased more than a hundredfold.
  • Then came the reversal: from the 1920s to 1980, it shrank back to levels not seen since the mid-19th century.
  • From 1980 to the present, the wealth gap has been on another steep, if erratic, rise. Commentators have called the period from 1920s to 1970s the ‘great compression’. The past 30 years are known as the ‘great divergence’.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 21 Nov 13
       
      I'd like to pull this citation and superimpose another period-chart onto my timeline.
  • when looked at over a long period, the development of wealth inequality in the US appears to be cyclical. And if it’s cyclical, we can predict what happens next.
  • Does observing just one and a half cycles really show that there is a regular pattern in the dynamics of inequality? No, by itself it doesn’t.
  • In our book Secular Cycles (2009), Sergey Nefedov and I applied the Phillips approach to England, France and Russia throughout both the medieval and early modern periods, and also to ancient Rome.
  • And the cycles of inequality were an integral part of the overall motion.
  • Cycles in the real world are chaotic, because complex systems such as human societies have many parts that are constantly moving and influencing each other.
  • Understanding (and perhaps even forecasting) such trend-reversals is at the core of the new discipline of cliodynamics, which looks at history through the lens of mathematical modelling.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 21 Nov 13
       
      Cliodynamics - Another thing to learn a bit more about.
  • First, we need to think about jobs.
  • One of the most important forces affecting the labour supply in the US has been immigration
  • it turns out that immigration, as measured by the proportion of the population who were born abroad, has changed in a cyclical manner just like inequality.
  • Another reason why the labour supply in the US went up in the 19th century is, not to put too fine a point on it, sex.
  • This connection between the oversupply of labour and plummeting living standards for the poor is one of the more robust generalisations in history.
  • The population of England doubled between 1150 and 1300.
  • causing the population of London to balloon from 20,000 to 80,000.
  • fourfold increase in food prices and a halving of real wages.
  • when a series of horrible epidemics, starting with the Black Death of 1348, carried away more than half of the population, the same dynamic ran in reverse.
  • The tug of war between the top and typical incomes doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game, but in practice it often is
  • Much the same pattern can be seen during the secular cycle of the Roman Principate.
  • Naturally, the conditions affecting the labour supply were different in the second half of the 20th century in the US. An important new element was globalisation
  • an oversupply of labour tends to depress wages for the poorer section of the population. And just as in Roman Egypt, the poor in the US today eat more energy-dense foods — bread, pasta, and potatoes — while the wealthy eat more fruit and drink wine.
  • Falling wages isn’t the only reason why labour oversupply leads to inequality. As the slice of the economic pie going to employees diminishes, the share going to employers goes up.
  • And so in 13th-century England, as the overall population doubles, we find landowners charging peasants higher rents and paying less in wages: the immiseration of the general populace translates into a Golden Age for the aristocrats.
  • the number of knights and esquires tripled between 1200 and 1300.
  • Only the gentry drank wine, and around 1300, England imported 20,000 tuns or casks of it from France per year. By 1460, this declined to only 5,000.
  • In the US between around 1870 and 1900, there was another Golden Age for the elites, appropriately called the Gilded Age.
  • And just like in 13th-century England, the total number of the wealthy was shooting up. Between 1825 and 1900, the number of millionaires (in constant 1900 dollars) went from 2.5 per million of the population to 19 per million.
  • In our current cycle, the proportion of decamillionaires (those whose net worth exceeds 10 million in 1995 dollars) grew tenfold between 1992 and 2007 — from 0.04 to 0.4 per cent of the US population.
  • On the face of it, this is a wonderful testament to merit-based upward mobility. But there are side effects. Don’t forget that most people are stuck with stagnant or falling real wages. Upward mobility for a few hollows out the middle class and causes the social pyramid to become top-heavy.
  • As the ranks of the wealthy swell, so too do the numbers of wealthy aspirants for the finite supply of political positions.
  • The civil wars of the first century BC, fuelled by a surplus of politically ambitious aristocrats, ultimately caused the fall of the Republic and the establishment of the Empire.
  • So far I have been talking about the elites as if they are all the same. But they aren’t: the differences within the wealthiest one per cent are almost as stark as the difference between the top one per cent and the remaining 99.
  • very intense status rivalry
  • Archaeology confirms a genuine and dramatic shift towards luxury.
  • Social Darwinism took off during the original Gilded Age, and Ayn Rand (who argued that altruism is evil) has grown astonishingly popular during what we might call our Second Gilded Age.
  • Twilight of the Elites (2012): ‘defenders of the status quo invoke a kind of neo-Calvinist logic by saying that those at the top, by virtue of their placement there, must be the most deserving’. By the same reasoning, those at the bottom are not deserving. As such social norms spread, it becomes increasingly easy for CEOs to justify giving themselves huge bonuses while cutting the wages of workers.
  • Labour markets are especially sensitive to cultural norms about what is fair compensation, so prevailing theories about inequality have practical consequences.
  • the US political system is much more attuned to the wishes of the rich than to the aspirations of the poor.
  • Inverse relationship between well-being and inequality in American history. The peaks and valleys of inequality (in purple) represent the ratio of the largest fortunes to the median wealth of households (the Phillips curve). The blue-shaded curve combines four measures of well-being: economic (the fraction of economic growth that is paid to workers as wages), health (life expectancy and the average height of native-born population), and social optimism (the average age of first marriage, with early marriages indicating social optimism and delayed marriages indicating social pessimism).
  • In some historical periods it worked primarily for the benefit of the wealthy. In others, it pursued policies that benefited the society as a whole. Take the minimum wage, which grew during the Great Compression era and declined (in real terms) after 1980.
  • The top marginal tax rate was 68 per cent or higher before 1980; by 1988 it declined to 28 per cent.
  • In one era, government policy systematically favoured the majority, while in another it favoured the narrow interests of the wealthy elites. This inconsistency calls for explanation.
  • How, though, can we account for the much more broadly inclusive policies of the Great Compression era? And what caused the reversal that ended the Gilded Age and ushered in the Great Compression? Or the second switch, which took place around 1980?
  • Unequal societies generally turn a corner once they have passed through a long spell of political instability.
  • We see this shift in the social mood repeatedly throughout history — towards the end of the Roman civil wars (first century BC), following the English Wars of the Roses (1455-85), and after the Fronde (1648-53), the final great outbreak of violence that had been convulsing France since the Wars of Religion began in the late 16th century.
  • Put simply, it is fear of revolution that restores equality. And my analysis of US history in a forthcoming book suggests that this is precisely what happened in the US around 1920.
  • The worst incident in US labour history was the West Virginia Mine War of 1920—21, culminating in the Battle of Blair Mountain.
  • Although it started as a workers’ dispute, the Mine War eventually turned into the largest armed insurrection that the US has ever seen, the Civil War excepted. Between 10,000 and 15,000 miners armed with rifles battled against thousands of strikebreakers and sheriff deputies.
  • Quantitative data indicate that this period was the most violent in US history, second only to the Civil War. It was much, much worse than the 1960s.
  • The US, in short, was in a revolutionary situation, and many among the political and business elites realised it.
  • The US elites entered into an unwritten compact with the working classes. This implicit contract included the promise that the fruits of economic growth would be distributed more equitably among both workers and owners. In return, the fundamentals of the political-economic system would not be challenged (no revolution).
  • The deal allowed the lower and upper classes to co-operate in solving the challenges facing the American Republic — overcoming the Great Depression, winning the Second World War, and countering the Soviet threat during the Cold War.
  • while making such ‘categorical inequalities’ worse, the compact led to a dramatic reduction in overall economic inequality.
  • The co-operating group was mainly native-born white Protestants. African-Americans, Jews, Catholics and foreigners were excluded or heavily discriminated against.
  • When Barry Goldwater campaigned on a pro-business, anti-union and anti-big government platform in the 1964 presidential elections, he couldn’t win any lasting support from the corporate community. The conservatives had to wait another 16 years for their triumph.
  • But by the late 1970s, a new generation of political and business leaders had come to power. To them the revolutionary situation of 1919-21 was just history. In this they were similar to the French aristocrats on the eve of the French Revolution, who did not see that their actions could bring down the Ancien Régime — the last great social breakdown, the Fronde, being so far in the past.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 21 Nov 13
       
      This heavily mirrors many aspects of Strauss & Howe's observations. Namely that generational cohorts roughly conform to archetypes precisely *because* memory of prior situations moves from accessible-memory (in those who have it) to history/myth once those who remember it have died.
  • It is no coincidence that the life of Communism (from the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989) coincides almost perfectly with the Great Compression era.
  • when Communism collapsed, its significance was seriously misread. It’s true that the Soviet economy could not compete with a system based on free markets plus policies and norms that promoted equity.
  • Yet the fall of the Soviet Union was interpreted as a vindication of free markets, period. The triumphalist, heady atmosphere of the 1990s was highly conducive to the spread of Ayn Randism and other individualist ideologies. The unwritten social contract that had emerged during the New Deal and braved the challenges of the Second World War had faded from memory.
  • all of these trends are part of a complex and interlocking system. I don’t just mean that everything affects everything else; that would be vacuous.
  • Rather, that cliodynamic theory can tell us specifically how demographic, economic and cultural variables relate to one another, and how their interactions generate social change.
  • Cliodynamics also explains why historical reversals in such diverse areas as economics and culture happen at roughly similar times. The theory of secular cycles was developed using data from historical societies, but it looks like it can provide answers to questions about our own society.
  • Three years ago I published a short article in the science journal Nature. I pointed out that several leading indicators of political instability look set to peak around 2020.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 21 Nov 13
       
      2020-2025 is a date-range that continues to pop up in my forecasting readings - and from quite a variety of sources.
  • In other words, we are rapidly approaching a historical cusp, at which the US will be particularly vulnerable to violent upheaval. This prediction is not a ‘prophecy’. I don’t believe that disaster is pre-ordained, no matter what we do. On the contrary, if we understand the causes, we have a chance to prevent it from happening. But the first thing we will have to do is reverse the trend of ever-growing inequality.
  • anonymous on 21 Nov 13
     
    "After thousands of scholarly and popular articles on the topic, one might think we would have a pretty good idea why the richest people in the US are pulling away from the rest. But it seems we don't. As the Congressional Budget Office concluded in 2011: 'the precise reasons for the rapid growth in income at the top are not well understood'. Some commentators point to economic factors, some to politics, and others again to culture. Yet obviously enough, all these factors must interact in complex ways. What is slightly less obvious is how a very long historical perspective can help us to see the whole mechanism."
anonymous

Letter from Kurdistan | Stratfor - 3 views

www.stratfor.com/...letter-kurdistan

shared by anonymous on 11 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • The armies fought to the limits of their empires and, after a series of wars culminating in the Treaty of Zuhab of 1639, the Zagros Mountains came to define the borderland between the Ottomans and Persians, with the Kurds stuck in the middle.
  • The Turkic-Persian competition is again being fought in Kurdistan, only this time, energy pipelines have taken the place of gilded cavalry.
  • Roughly 25 million Kurds occupy a region that stretches from the eastern Taurus Mountains in Turkey through the Jazira Plateau of northeastern Syria across the mountains and plateaus of southeastern Anatolia before dead-ending into the northern spine of the Zagros Mountains, which divide Iran and Iraq.
  • ...27 more annotations...
  • This is a territory spread across four nations with bitter histories and a shared commitment to prevent Kurdish aspirations for independence from eroding their territorial integrity.
  • the Kurds remained too divided and weak to become masters of their own fate able to establish a sovereign Kurdish homeland.
  • But unique circumstances over the past decade enabled a politically coherent Iraqi Kurdistan to temporarily defy its own history and inch toward quasi-independence.
  • The chain of events began with the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein.
  • His attempts to eradicate Iraq's Kurdish population through chemical attacks in the Anfal campaign of the late 1980s and other aggressions in the region eventually led to the creation of a U.S.-imposed no-fly zone in northern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War.
  • Iraq's Kurdish leadership put aside their differences to form the Kurdistan Regional Government
  • When U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq, a nervous Kurdistan looked to energy firms as their next-best insurance policy.
  • as tensions with Baghdad grew over the distribution of energy revenues, the Iraqi Kurds unexpectedly found a sponsor in Ankara.
  • a new strategy toward its Kurdish population. Instead of suppressing Kurdish autonomy with an iron fist, Ankara went from regarding Kurds as confused "mountain Turks" to recognizing Kurdish language and cultural rights and launching its most ambitious peace negotiation to date with the Kurdistan Workers' Party.
  • The Iranian regime was busy defending its allies in Syria and Lebanon while trying to manage a highly antagonistic relationship with the United States.
  • A cooperative Ankara, a weak Damascus, a preoccupied Tehran, an overwhelmed Baghdad and a host of anxious investors formed the ingredients for an audacious pipeline project.
  • When the pipeline quietly skirted past the power plant it was supposed to feed, underwent a conversion to transport oil and began heading northward to Turkey, the secret was out: Turkey and the Kurdistan Regional Government were working to circumvent Baghdad and independently export Kurdish energy.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 11 Dec 13
       
      This gets my vote for a future 'proximal cause' of a regional dispute that has yet to flourish.
  • As the pipeline construction progressed, Kurdish peshmerga forces continued spreading beyond formal Kurdistan Regional Government boundaries in disputed areas and held their ground against demoralized Iraqi army forces.
  • And in the name of guarding against a real and persistent jihadist threat, Kurdish forces built deep, wide ditches around the city of Arbil and are now building one around the disputed oil-rich city of Kirkuk, marking the outer bounds of a slowly expanding Kurdish sphere of influence.
  • We have now arrived at the question of when, and not if, Kurdish oil will flow to Turkey without Baghdad's consent.
  • Turkey has put itself in a position where it can receive 250,000 to 300,000 barrels per day of crude from Iraqi Kurdistan
  • Plans are quietly being discussed to build another parallel line on the Turkish side to Ceyhan to completely divorce the pipeline infrastructure from any claims by Baghdad.
  • The speed and cunning with which the pipeline was completed demand respect, even -- however reluctantly -- from an outraged Baghdad.
  • Iran and the United States are both serious about reaching a strategic rapprochement in their long-hostile relationship. Though there will be obstacles along the way, the foundation for a U.S.-Iranian detente has been laid.
  • For now, the United States is trying to avoid becoming entangled in this political morass, prioritizing its negotiation with Iran while publicly maintaining a "one Baghdad, one Iraq" policy.
  • the sharpest tools Iran and its allies in Baghdad have to undermine Turkey's alliance with the Kurdistan Regional Government are the Kurds themselves.
  • The past decade of Kurdish unity between Massoud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party and Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is highly anomalous and arguably temporary.
  • On the surface, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan have united their peshmerga forces into a single, unified ministry. In reality, the political lines dividing Peshmerga forces remain sharper than ever.
  • One does not even have to reach far back in history to get a sense of just how deep Kurdish rivalries can run. The Kurdistan Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan were engaged in an all-out civil war from 1994 to 1996 that arose from a property dispute.
  • the Kurdistan Democratic Party reached out to Ankara for assistance, while the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan took help from Iran and even Saddam Hussein.
  • But matters of territorial integrity, financial sovereignty and nationalism are not easily trifled with at the intersection of empires.
  • "you know … we have a saying here. Kurdistan is a tree. After a long time, we grow tall, we become full of green leaves and then the tree shrivels and becomes bare. Right now, our leaves are green. Give it enough time. This tree won't die, but our leaves will fall to the ground again."
  • anonymous on 11 Dec 13
     
    "At the edge of empires lies Kurdistan, the land of the Kurds. The jagged landscape has long been the scene of imperial aggression. For centuries, Turks, Persians, Arabs, Russians and Europeans looked to the mountains to buffer their territorial prizes farther afield, depriving the local mountain dwellers a say in whose throne they would ultimately bow to."
anonymous

Israel's New Strategic Position - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...israels-new-strategic-position

shared by anonymous on 03 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • After two years of stress, its peace treaty with Egypt remains in place. Syria is in a state of civil war that remains insoluble.
  • Hezbollah does not seem inclined to wage another war with Israel
  • In other words, the situation that has existed since the Camp David Accords were signed remains in place. Israel's frontiers are secure from conventional military attack. In addition, the Palestinians are divided among themselves, and while ineffective, intermittent rocket attacks from Gaza are likely, there is no Intifada underway in the West Bank.
  • ...29 more annotations...
  • Clearly, a nuclear strike on Tel Aviv would be catastrophic for Israel. Its ability to tolerate that threat, regardless of how improbable it may be, is a pressing concern for Israel.
  • In this context, Iran's nuclear program supersedes all of Israel's other security priorities. Israeli officials believe their allies, particularly those in the United States, should share this view.
  • Israel understands that however satisfactory its current circumstances are, those circumstances are mercurial and to some extent unpredictable.
  • There are plenty of scenarios in which Israel would not be able to manage security threats without American assistance.
  • Thus, Israel has an overriding interest in maintaining its relationship with the United States and in ensuring Iran never becomes a nuclear state. So any sense that the United States is moving away from its commitment to Israel, or that it is moving in a direction where it might permit an Iranian nuclear weapon, is a crisis.
  • Israel's response to the Iran talks -- profound unhappiness without outright condemnation -- has to be understood in this context, and the assumptions behind it have to be examined.
  • Iran does not appear to have a deliverable nuclear weapon at this point. Refining uranium is a necessary but completely insufficient step in developing a weapon. A nuclear weapon is much more than uranium. It is a set of complex technologies, not the least of which are advanced electrical systems and sensors that, given the amount of time the Iranians have needed just to develop not-quite-enough enriched uranium, seems beyond them.
  • Iran simply does not have sufficient fuel to produce a device.
  • The idea that the Iranians will use the next six months for a secret rush to complete the weapon simply isn't the way it works.
  • Nations do not even think of deploying nuclear weapons without extensive underground tests -- not to see if they have uranium but to test that the more complex systems work. That is why they can't secretly develop a weapon: They themselves won't know they have a workable weapon without a test.
  • Of course, there are other strategies for delivering a weapon if it were built. One is the use of a ship to deliver it to the Israeli coast. Though this is possible, the Israelis operate an extremely efficient maritime interdiction system, and the United States monitors Iranian ports.
  • But these weapons are not small. There is such a thing as a suitcase bomb, but that is a misleading name; it is substantially larger than a suitcase, and it is also the most difficult sort of device to build.
  • even assuming Iran's acquisition of a nuclear weapon, its use against Israel would kill as many Muslims -- among them Shia -- as Israelis, an action tantamount to geopolitical suicide for Tehran.
  • If the Israelis forward-deployed to other countries, the Iranians would spot them. The Israelis can't be certain which sites are real and which are decoys.
  • Some will dismiss this as overestimating Iranian capabilities. This frequently comes from those most afraid that Tehran can build a nuclear weapon and a delivery system. If it could do the latter, it could harden sites and throw off intelligence gathering.
  • But ultimately, the real reason Israel has not attacked Iran's nuclear sites is that the Iranians are so far from having a weapon. If they were closer, the Israelis would have attacked regardless of the difficulty.
  • The Americans, on the other hand, saw an opportunity in the fact that there are no weapons yet and that the sanctions were hurting the Iranians. Knowing that they were not in a hurry to complete and knowing that they were hurting economically, the Iranians likewise saw an opportunity to better their position.
  • What the Americans wanted was an understanding with the Iranians, whereby their role in the region would be balanced against those of other countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, the Arabian emirates and to some extent Israel.
  • Washington wants to have multiple relations with regional actors, not just Israel and Saudi Arabia.
  • The Israelis tempered their response initially because they knew the status of Iran's nuclear program. Even though a weapon is still a grave concern, it is a much longer-term problem than the Israelis admit publicly.
  • if the negotiations fail, no one will be in a more dangerous position for trying. Six months won't make a difference.
  • The Israelis could not simply applaud the process because there is, in fact, a strategic threat to Israel embedded in the talks. Israel has a strategic dependency on the United States.
  • But they understand that the outcome of these talks, if successful, means more than the exchange of a nuclear program for eased sanctions; it means the beginning of a strategic alignment with Iran.
  • As Richard Nixon's China initiative shows, ideology can relent to geopolitical reality. On the simplest level, Iran needs investment, and American companies want to invest. On the more complex level, Iran needs to be certain that Iraq is friendly to its interests and that neither Russia nor Turkey can threaten it in the long run.
  • The United States is trying to create a multipolar region to facilitate a balance-of-power strategy in place of American power.
  • Egypt went from disaster in 1967 to a very capable force in 1973. They had a Soviet patron. They might have another patron in 10 years.
  • But the real Israeli fear is that the United States is moving away from direct intervention to a more subtle form of manipulation. That represents a threat to Israel if Israel ever needs direct intervention rather than manipulation.
  • it threatens Israel because the more relationships the United States has in the region, the less significant Israel is to Washington's strategy.
  • In the end, Israel is a small and weak power. Its power has been magnified by the weakness of its neighbors. That weakness is not permanent
  • anonymous on 03 Dec 13
     
    "Israel has expressed serious concerns over the preliminary U.S.-Iranian agreement, which in theory will lift sanctions levied against Tehran and end its nuclear program. That was to be expected. Less obvious is why the Israeli government is concerned and how it will change Israel's strategic position."
anonymous

The Trouble With Intuition - 0 views

chronicle.com/...65674

philosophy criticalthinking

shared by anonymous on 11 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Some 45 years after Wise found the private edition of the Sonnets, two British book dealers, named John Carter and Graham Pollard, decided to investigate his finds. They re-examined the Browning volume and identified eight reasons why its existence was inconsistent with typical practices of the era. For example, none of the copies had been inscribed by the author, none were trimmed and bound in the customary way, and the Brownings never mentioned the special private printing in any letters, memoirs, or other documents.
  • The 1847 edition had to be a fake.
  • According to Gladwell, those experts' intuitions proved correct, and the initial scientific tests that authenticated the statue turned out to have been faulty.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • Cases in which forgeries that intuitively appear real but later are discovered through analysis to be frauds are fairly common in the art world.
  • Gladwell's message in Blink has been interpreted by some readers as a broad license to rely on intuition and dispense with analysis, which can lead to flawed decisions.
  • Intuition means different things to different people. To some it refers to a sudden flash of insight, or even the spiritual experience of discovering a previously hidden truth.
  • In its more mundane form, intuition refers to a way of knowing and deciding that is distinct from and complements logical analysis.
  • The idea that hunches can outperform reason is neither unique nor original to Malcolm Gladwell, of course. Most students and professors have long believed that, when in doubt, test-takers should stick with their first answers and "go with their gut." But data show that test-takers are more than twice as likely to change an incorrect answer to a correct one than vice versa.
  • Intuition does have its uses, but it should not be exalted above analysis.
  • There is, moreover, one class of intuitions that consistently leads us astray—dangerously astray. These intuitions are stubbornly resistant to analysis, and it is exactly these intuitions that we shouldn't trust. Unfortunately, they are also the intuitions that we find the most compelling: mistaken intuitions about how our own minds work.
  • The finding that people fail to notice unexpected events when their attention is otherwise engaged is interesting. What is doubly intriguing is the mismatch between what we notice and what we think we will notice.
  • If you believe you will notice unexpected events regardless of how much of your attention is devoted to other tasks, you won't be vigilant enough for possible risks.
  • In the vast majority of cases in which DNA evidence exonerated a death-row inmate, the original conviction was based largely on the testimony of a confident eyewitness with a vivid memory of the crime. Jurors (and everyone else) tend to intuitively trust that when people are certain, they are likely to be right.
  • Study after study has shown that memories of important events like those are no more accurate than run-of-the-mill memories. They are more vivid, and we are therefore more confident about their accuracy, but that confidence is largely an illusion.
  • The most troublesome aspect of intuition may be the misleading role it plays in how we perceive patterns and identify causal relationships.
  • To determine whether two events are truly associated, we must consider how frequently each one occurs by itself, and how frequently they occur together. With just one or a few anecdotes, that's impossible, so it pays to err on the side of caution when inferring the existence of an association from a small number of examples.
  • We can rely on accumulated data, but too often we don't. Why not? Because our intuitions respond to vivid stories, not abstract statistics.
  • But more than a dozen large-scale epidemiological studies, involving hundreds of thousands of subjects, have shown that children who were vaccinated are no more likely to be diagnosed with autism than are children who were not vaccinated. In other words, there is no association between vaccination and autism. And in the absence of an association, there cannot be a causal link.
  • Many people who believe that vaccination can cause autism are aware of those data. But the intuitive cause-detector in our minds is driven by stories, not statistics, and once a compelling story leads us to ascribe an effect to a cause, we can hold to that belief as stubbornly as when we trust in our ability to talk on a phone while driving—or to spot a person wearing a gorilla suit.
  • Gladwell surrounds his arguments with examples that suggest an association, letting his readers infer the causal relationships he wants to convey.
  • The kouros example is effective because it capitalizes on our tendency to generalize from a single positive association, leading to the conclusion that intuition trumps reason. But in this case, a bit of thought would show that conclusion to be unlikely, even within the confined realm of art fakery. Think about how often experts throughout history have been duped by forgers because intuition told them that they were looking at the real thing. It is ironic that Gladwell (knowingly or not) exploits one of the greatest weaknesses of intuition—our tendency to blithely infer cause from anecdotes—in making his case for intuition's extraordinary power.
  • anonymous on 11 Jun 10
     
    By Daniel J. Simons and Christopher F. Chabris at The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education on May 30, 2010.
anonymous

The Caucasus Cauldron - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...20100706_caucasus_cauldron

geopolitics russia geography

shared by anonymous on 08 Jul 10 - Cached
  • U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited some interesting spots over the July 4 weekend. Her itinerary included Poland and Ukraine, both intriguing choices in light of the recent Obama-Medvedev talks in Washington. But she also traveled to a region that has not been on the American radar screen much in the last two years — namely, the Caucasus — visiting Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia.
  • Given that her visit to the region seems on the surface to have achieved little — and indeed, little seems to have been intended — it is worth taking time to understand why she went there in the first place, and the region’s strategic significance.
  • The Caucasus is the point where Russia, Iran and Turkey meet. For most of the 19th century, the three powers dueled for dominance of the region. This dispute froze during the Soviet period but is certainly in motion again. With none of these primary powers directly controlling the region, there are secondary competitions involving Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, both among these secondary powers and between the secondary powers and the major powers. And given that the region involves the Russians, Iranians and Turks, it is inevitable that the global power would have an interest as well — hence, Hillary Clinton’s visit.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • Of all the regions of the world, this one is among the most potentially explosive.
  • Think of it as a cauldron framed by Russia, Iran and Turkey, occasionally stirred by Washington
  • The Caucasus region dominates a land bridge between the Black and Caspian seas.
  • The Greater Caucasus Mountains serve as the southern frontier of Russia. To the north of these mountains, running east to west, lies the Russian agricultural heartland, flat and without any natural barriers. Thus, ever since the beginning of the 19th century, Russia has fought for a significant portion of the Caucasus to block any ambitions by the Turkish or Persian empires.
  • In the chaos of the fall of the Soviet Union, various Georgian regions attempted to secede from Georgia with Russian encouragement. From the Georgian point of view, Russia represented a threat.
  • But from the Russian point of view, Georgia represented a double threat.
  • First, the Russians suspected the Georgians of supporting Chechen rebels in the 1990s — a charge the Georgians deny. The more important threat was that the United States selected Georgia as its main ally in the region.
  • In response to what it saw as U.S. pressure around its periphery, the Russians countered in Georgia in 2008 to demonstrate U.S. impotence in the region.
  • For its part, Azerbaijan cannot afford to fight a war against Russian troops in Armenia while it also shares a northern border with Russia. Azerbaijan also faces a significant Iranian problem. There are more Azerbaijanis living in Iran than in Azerbaijan; Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is a prominent Azerbaijani-Iranian. The Soviets occupied all of Azerbaijan during World War II but were forced to retreat under British and American pressure after the war, leaving most of Azerbaijan inside Iran.
  • The remainder became a Soviet republic and then an independent state.
  • The Azerbaijanis are deeply concerned about the Iranians. Azerbaijan is profoundly different from Iran.
  • We could put it this way: Bosnia and Kosovo were obscure concepts to the world until they blew up. Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Abkhazia are equally obscure now.
  • They will not remain obscure unless strategic measures are taken. It is not clear to us that Clinton was simply making a courtesy call or had strategy on her mind. But the logic of the American position is that it should think strategically about the Caucasus, and in doing so, logic and regional dynamics point to a strong relationship with Azerbaijan.
  • For Azerbaijan, the burning issue is Nagorno-Karabakh. This is not a burning issue for the United States, but the creation of a stable platform in the region is.
  • Iran, which should be viewed as an Azerbaijani country as well as a Persian one, has two reasons to want to dominate Azerbaijan.
  • First, it would give Tehran access to Baku oil, and second, it would give Tehran strategic bargaining power with the Russians, something it does not currently have.
  • Altogether, the United States has the opportunity to forge a beneficial relationship with Azerbaijan that would put U.S. hands on one of Turkey’s sources of oil.
  • anonymous on 08 Jul 10
     
    "U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited some interesting spots over the July 4 weekend." What it might have meant. By George Friedman at StratFor on July 7, 2010.
anonymous

Victims of bullying suffer academically as well - 0 views

www.labspaces.net/...ng_suffer_academically_as_well

layscience

shared by anonymous on 20 Aug 10 - Cached
  • The UCLA study was conducted with 2,300 students in 11 Los Angeles–area public middle schools and their teachers. Researchers asked the students to rate whether or not they get bullied on a four-point scale and to list which of their fellow students were bullied the most — physically, verbally and as the subject of nasty rumors.
  • A high level of bullying was consistently associated with lower grades across the three years of middle school.
  • "We cannot address low achievement in school while ignoring bullying, because the two are frequently linked," said Jaana Juvonen, a UCLA professor of psychology and lead author of the study. "Students who are repeatedly bullied receive poorer grades and participate less in class discussions. Some students may get mislabeled as low achievers because they do not want to speak up in class for fear of getting bullied. Teachers can misinterpret their silence, thinking that these students are not motivated to learn.
  • anonymous on 20 Aug 10
     
    "Students who are bullied regularly do substantially worse in school, UCLA psychologists report in a special issue of the Journal of Early Adolescence devoted to academic performance and peer relationships." No surprises here. At Lab Spaces on August 20, 2010.
anonymous

Beyond 1-D in Science and Human Spirituality - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ensions-of-science-vs-religion

religion technology science layscience

shared by anonymous on 26 Jul 10 - Cached
  • The extremes of the science and religion debate have had their say. They offer little to us anymore but a tired standard that fails to meet the most important challenge of our moment – the need to create something new.
  • On one side are the religious fundementalists brandishing scripture like bullies and willing to force their particular interpretations of their particular religions into textbooks and courthouses.
  • On the other side are … what? As an atheist myself, finding the right term is difficult but come to rest on strident atheists. 
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The human world we build is established in mind and heart and spirit.  It will come down to what we hold sacred. Yes those words spirit and sacred must be included however you choose to define it.
  • In mathematics orthogonality refers to line elements or vectors which are perpendicular, i.e., forming right angles. To move orthogonally to a line, like the linear spectrum of fundamentalist vs strident atheist, means to move into a new dimension. 
  • anonymous on 26 Jul 10
     
    "If science v. religion has nothing more to offer, we must we must create a new way of thinking about their relationship." By Adam Frank at NPR on July 26, 2010.
anonymous

Animal and human behaviour: Manager's best friend - 0 views

www.economist.com/...16789216

shared by anonymous on 14 Aug 10 - Cached
  • anonymous on 14 Aug 10
     
    "There are plenty of studies which show that dogs act as social catalysts, helping their owners forge intimate, long-term relationships with other people. But does that apply in the workplace? At The Economist on August 12, 2010
anonymous

War Games: Civil-Military Relations, c. 2030 - 0 views

www.worldaffairsjournal.org/...full-Cohen-MA-2010.html

predictions military generations

shared by anonymous on 04 Aug 10 - Cached
  • four leaders—two military, two civilian—sit around a table at the White House or the Pentagon
  • One is an Army general
  • The second is an Air Force general
  • ...41 more annotations...
  • The third is a Foreign Service officer
  • The fourth is a more traditional political appointee
  • The participants in this hypothetical meeting exemplify four very different types of leaders, who, if current trends continue, will all be coming to prominence and power by 2030.
  • Part of the baggage they will bring to this meeting is a complex history of civil-military relations during the post–September 11 era.
  • When they reached general officer rank, the Vietnam-era officers then found themselves sitting across the table from civilians who probably had avoided the draft, if not actively protested the war.
  • The emotional scars of a conflict that had taken place decades earlier, therefore, were part of their relationship.
  • Today’s member of the ground forces will spend, if current trends hold true, an even greater percentage of his time in combat than did officers of the Vietnam generation.
  • unlike his predecessors, he will not be sitting opposite a civilian who actively opposed his war. The challenge of this hypothetical meeting will be based not necessarily on inherent hostility between the warrior and civilian, but rather on whether the warrior and the civilian can comprehend each other.
  • With the growing presence of civilians on battlefields, there will be significant numbers of “civilian-warriors,” some with as much time in combat zones as their military counterparts.
  • It is conceivable, then, that a situation may arise in which an Army officer of 2030 might have more shared experience with a Foreign Service officer than with his Air Force or Navy counterpart.
  • As a result, the traditional competition of “civilian versus warrior” will be replaced by a series of new relationships and alliances.
  • What will be the profile of general officers in 2030?
  • they will have grown up in services at war.
  • They will be battle-hardened and somewhat removed from society, having spent six, seven, maybe eight years in combat and the intervening years recovering from one engagement and preparing for the next.
  • At the same time, there will be a second class of flag officers.
  • Ultimately, they have a very different exposure to irregular warfare than their ground counterparts, if for no other reason than that there are far fewer two-way air or naval engagements in asymmetrical conflict.
  • And what about the civilians these military elites will face across the table in 2030?
  • They likely will have gone to elite universities for undergraduate and professional degrees. Neither they nor any member of their immediate family will have served in the military.
  • They will look on the generals across the table from them in 2030 with a degree of puzzlement, if not actual mistrust, as inhabitants of a world they really do not know. 
  • There also, however, will be “civilian-warriors.”
  • this group is the most inscrutable but also the most interesting to study
  • retired soldier turned statesman
  • A second class of civilian-warriors will come from the ranks of other government agencies
  • Still a third group will come from entities outside of government
  • growing core of professional civilian advisers to military commands
  • this latter category may serve as the natural bridge between the political and military worlds. Ultimately, civilian-warriors may spend as much—if not more—time at war than some of their uniformed counterparts.
  • The gap between the military and the socially elite classes will have grown even greater than it is today.
  • what will the four talk about
  • Perhaps more importantly, unlike in previous eras, our Army general of 2030 will be as much at home discussing governance as weapons systems, having wrestled with the issues since his days as a junior officer coaching some small village in Afghanistan or supervising a district meeting in Iraq.
  • No matter the topic, our civilians and flag officers will approach the issues with certain biases.
  • the ground force general will be “conventionally unconventional,”
  • He will be accustomed to manipulating foreign media to serve his tactical ends, but not used to being criticized. Above all, he will be used to getting his way.
  • traditional political appointee has the weakest hand to play
  • there will be a tremendous temptation for our civilian to kowtow to the man in uniform.
  • This Air Force general, or perhaps Navy admiral, will be as conservative and as conventional, if not more so, as the Army general.
  • Enter our civilian-warrior. Sharing many of the traits and the experiences of our ground forces general, he may in some ways be his natural ally. It is not inconceivable that their careers paths may have crossed on some remote battlefield.
  • Ultimately, there are any number of alternative ways the balance of power between these four actors might play out. The military duo may unite behind the common fraternity of officers; the military may join with the civilian-warrior against the politico; the civilian-warrior may join with the Air Force or Navy officer in order to balance the natural clout of those fighting the ground war; one actor might dominate the rest simply by force of personality. Or they all might agree.   
  • Should the United States have to assist a counterinsurgency effort in a small, landlocked country in central Asia, for example, our ground forces general and our civilian warrior may take the lead.
  • Conversely, in a conventional conflict dominated by air and naval power—perhaps with China over Taiwan—our Air Force or Navy flag officer, now in his element, may take center stage.
  • Perhaps the more interesting case is a hybrid of the two—a mixture of low- and high-intensity conflict, particularly if it occurs outside the traditional turf of the current war on terror and, consequently, outside the realm of expertise of any single member of the quartet.
  • No one view is correct per se: each member of our quartet is merely viewing the scenario through the lens of his own experience.
  • anonymous on 04 Aug 10
     
    "The year is 2030 and four leaders-two military, two civilian-sit around a table at the White House or the Pentagon, perhaps, or at a military headquarters or embassy halfway around the world." By Raphael Cohen at World Affairs Journal on March/April 2010.
anonymous

An Emboldened China Pressures Washington - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...ned_china_pressures_washington

geopolitics china us

shared by anonymous on 12 Oct 10 - Cached
  • For the United States, then, these exercises amounted to watching Turkey demonstrate its independence and wealth of options against U.S. regional interests and Beijing exploit a rift in the U.S. alliance system and gain an opportunity to test out projecting air power unprecedentedly far afield.
  • The United States needs to come to some kind of agreement with Iran to form a regional power arrangement that enables a functional Iraq and an acceptable situation in Afghanistan.
  • the United States has not shown how it intends to handle China’s rising economic and military power and greater insistence on its strategic prerogatives. These trends are increasingly conflicting with U.S. objectives in Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • All this raises the question of whether Washington is about to spring something on China, to gain leverage — for instance, on the trade front, where China’s reluctance to reform its currency policy has forced the U.S. administration into an uncomfortable situation immediately ahead of midterm elections.
  • anonymous on 12 Oct 10
     
    "China has essentially activated a bolder foreign policy than ever before, built around showing uncompromising commitment to following its core interests, especially in territorial disputes and its broader periphery, as well as using its economic might and various diplomatic relationships to show gradually expanding capabilities and rising potential. In contradistinction, the United States has become consumed with domestic politics and economic worries while trying to remove itself from a quagmire of foreign wars without giving the appearance of failure." At StratFor on October 12, 2010
anonymous

Germany's Geopolitical Opening - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/..._germanys_geopolitical_opening

geopolitics germany

shared by anonymous on 10 Nov 10 - Cached
  • Germany is, of course, not like any other country. It was the primary culprit behind the deadliest conflict to ever befall mankind — World War II — and of the greatest state-organized massacre of a single group of people — the Jewish Holocaust. As such, it essentially was forced to give up much of its sovereignty for the next 40 years and to serve as the board for the geopolitical chess match between Washington and Moscow throughout the Cold War.
  • Germany is forcefully defending its interests and national economic strategy ahead of the G-20 summit. The stage is therefore set for a serious disagreement between Washington and the chief trade surplus countries, specifically Germany and China, at the summit. Germany is also beginning to take shots at China, especially for its decision to limit exports of rare earth elements crucial for German industry. These economic disagreements come as Berlin becomes comfortable with its own geopolitical assertiveness. As far as Germany is concerned, it is no longer anybody’s chessboard. It is beginning to see itself as one of the world powers again — with grand strategies, pawns to sacrifice and everything else that goes along with the title of a chess grand master.
  • anonymous on 10 Nov 10
     
    "German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg said on Tuesday that Germans as a nation "must really do something to articulate the relationship between regional security and economic interests without coming to deadlock." Guttenberg cited China's decision to limit rare earth element exports as an example of how competition for resources with the emerging powers could negatively affect Germany's economic well-being. In other words, Guttenberg made a direct link between Berlin's economic and security policies. In any other country such a link is obvious and often reiterated by policymakers, but when German President Horst Koehler expressed similar sentiments in May, he was forced to resign a week later due to criticism that he was overstepping his constitutional bounds (the presidency in Germany is a ceremonial position and one of Europe's constitutionally weakest head-of-state institutions). "
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