Last year, I was somewhat puzzled and annoyed by an inexplicable advertisement on the L platform outside my old apartment. I was rather amused, roughly a year later, when I saw an advertisement from the same bank (Citi, I believe) in Washington, D.C. (I was there for a conference). It read:
"Don't be money hungry; you don't know where it's been."
Given my confusion about their earlier ad, maybe they really were talking about promiscuous dollar bills! I'm not quite sure why that would drive me to give them my money. Perhaps I'm just not market-savvy.
8.2.06
I actually liked the underwear on the outside bit
So... I've noticed that for a so-called 'advice column', I've been remarkably terrible about actually giving any advice to petitioners. At least I haven't been charging these supposed petitioners for my services. Anyhow, here goes one from the comments a long ways back. Edited for my own personal enjoyment:
Ms. Chatul,
First off, I must congratulate you for the correct capitalization of my name. I know you didn't actually write that (I added it), but it warms my heart to see it done correctly. Kinda like Harry S Truman. But instead it's Ender 'matlabfreak' wiggin. Odd, eh?
Hmm... now to answer your question, that's a tough one. Using my amazingly in-depth knowledge of superhero lore*, I will proceed to leave you breathless at the genius of my answers. The answer depends on a lot of factors. What are my powers? If I were Superman, now that would be pretty cool... but Batman? I mean, the guy's just got a cool costume and a hot car, but no impressive powers. Er... if you know any other superhero powers, you're ahead of me.
Another thing: Do I get to keep my powers after giving up my status? After all, what do superheros have other than their powers? Just a lot of headaches with changing costumes, almost getting killed by the bad guys, foiling criminals and evil masterminds alike.
And they don't even get lucky with the ladies, either! It's possible that not every part of Superman is super, but I think that most ladies would somehow be willing to overlook some things in order to date Superman, right? *Shrugs* Yet somehow he never manages to get anywhere with Lois (uh... that is, I think so. Did they ever get together?).
Lastly, there's the bit about all those weird outfits. Those capes and skintight suits with underwear on the outside and weird hats and stuff... not really my scene.
So, there you go! Sounds pretty simple - keep the powers, get the girls, wear jeans. Without any of that 'I'll get you next time!' stuff. What could be better?
Until the next time I feel like blowing off a real post,
Wiggin
(*) I read a comic once. Well, half of one.
Dear wiggin,
If you are living the life of a superhero, what kinds of things would you give up your superhero status for.. assuming the usual problems of wanting to do good, but having identity problems where you can't tell anyone what you're really doing?
Meow,
Meowmix Chatul
Ms. Chatul,
First off, I must congratulate you for the correct capitalization of my name. I know you didn't actually write that (I added it), but it warms my heart to see it done correctly. Kinda like Harry S Truman. But instead it's Ender 'matlabfreak' wiggin. Odd, eh?
Hmm... now to answer your question, that's a tough one. Using my amazingly in-depth knowledge of superhero lore*, I will proceed to leave you breathless at the genius of my answers. The answer depends on a lot of factors. What are my powers? If I were Superman, now that would be pretty cool... but Batman? I mean, the guy's just got a cool costume and a hot car, but no impressive powers. Er... if you know any other superhero powers, you're ahead of me.
Another thing: Do I get to keep my powers after giving up my status? After all, what do superheros have other than their powers? Just a lot of headaches with changing costumes, almost getting killed by the bad guys, foiling criminals and evil masterminds alike.
And they don't even get lucky with the ladies, either! It's possible that not every part of Superman is super, but I think that most ladies would somehow be willing to overlook some things in order to date Superman, right? *Shrugs* Yet somehow he never manages to get anywhere with Lois (uh... that is, I think so. Did they ever get together?).
Lastly, there's the bit about all those weird outfits. Those capes and skintight suits with underwear on the outside and weird hats and stuff... not really my scene.
So, there you go! Sounds pretty simple - keep the powers, get the girls, wear jeans. Without any of that 'I'll get you next time!' stuff. What could be better?
Until the next time I feel like blowing off a real post,
Wiggin
(*) I read a comic once. Well, half of one.
5.2.06
Heading nowhere good
I hate to do this so soon after other Israel-related posts (I have other good ideas floating around, but they take too much time to write until anatomy is finished), but worrisome events have been cascading. I won't bother you all with my own 'analysis' of much of these, as you can find any opinion you want in the media and online.
Instead, what I wish to address is the growing rift between settlers and the rest of Israeli society - and, more worrisome, the shift of this conflict into one between the religious and secular. My comments are precipitated, of course, by the recent events in Amona, where overeager police violently removed protesting settlers from the outpost (injuring several hundred along the way), and destroyed the settlement. While not occasioning that much comment in the world, the images of the unprecedented violent confrontation between armored riot police and thousands of settlers shook many Israelis. Previously, removal of illegal outposts (or evacuation of legal settlements, as those in Sinai in the 70s and the Gaza disengagement) had been done in a forceful, but generally peacable manner (ie, people had to be carried out, but generally did not harm or attack the police/army, nor did the army use excessive force against the settlers and protestors). The Amona dismantling changed all of that, in a worrisome direction. I won't give the details of what happened - you can search either Ha'aretz or Arutz Sheva for the leftist and rightist sides of what happened, respectively. Suffice it to say, it was an ugly confrontation that had the police coming ready to do violence, and the settlers barricaded and determined not to move. Hundreds of people (mostly protestors) were injured, and dozens were arrested.
I find this development troubling, because it brings a issue that has been simmering for years into clarity.
First off: I have no problem whatsoever with the government choosing to dismantle illegally built outposts. People may whine about the timing having to do with Olmert's election strategy, but I don't care. Settlers who build illegal outposts know full well that their homes can be legally destroyed. They know that they are breaking the law to make a point - protesting the government's actions with construction (a non-violent but very visible form of protest, no?). Similarly, I have no issues with protestors using civil disobedience (ie, refusing to leave the outpost) to protest this, nor do is there an issue with the government arresting those individuals if they break a law (I don't know, obstructing something). My issues lies in the fact that the government rejected compromises with the settlers, and then came loaded for bear, more than ready and willing to use excessive force to remove the protestors. And most of the Israeli public and media noticed, shrugged, and went on with their lives, perhaps saying, 'eh, the settlers deserved it.'
Treppenwitz, a blog I've recently begun reading, has an interesting analysis of the systematic exclusion and disenfranchisement of settlers by the Israeli government as it relates to the Amona demolition. I don't agree with all of it, but it helped highlight some of the issues that have been bothering me.
The so-called 'hilltop youth' of the settler movement have been demonized by Israeli society in an unseemly way. They are portrayed as blindly following the orders of ideological leaders, willing to do anything and everything to preserve settlements. In the disengagement from Gaza, the media and government as violent radicals that would resort to deadly force against Israeli police and soldiers to keep the evacuations from proceeding. Though this failed to materialize (yes, yes, there were some incidents of assault, I won't deny this - but with tens of thousands of protestors, things could easily have gotten much, much worse, though they never did), most people attributed this to the amazingly sensitive job done by the IDF (there is a great deal of truth to this) rather than on any restraint on the part of the young protestors.
In the months following Gaza and leading up to Amona, this perception has been reinforced further. The hilltop youth are no longer seen as Israeli citizens with a legitimate right to peacefully protest the destruction and negotiation away of their homes and ideals, but rather as a dangerous fringe group of fundamentalists who will tear the fabric of Israeli society. Not cool at all.
Many Israelis are legitimately frustrated that the settlement movement has such sway over the government's security and diplomatic considerations. Many, particularly the secular Israelis, believe that the settlers are dragging Israel into a costly and painful war over their own religious beliefs, imposing them on the rest of Israel. They neglect to realize that every Israeli administration has supported the building and expansion of settlements, and that the vast majority of settlers are peacable, deeply patriotic Israelis who are great assets to their society.
The settlers, on the other hand, by and large religious, see the majority of Israel reversing on its earlier encouragement to build settlements, and joining forces to ostracize the very people who used to protest Israeli national interests.
This growing dichotomy in Israeli society has merged with another difficult issue - the secular/religious divide on religious, social, political, and diplomatic issues. Unfortunately, these issues are not being addressed or minimized by any parts of Israeli society. Most of the meaningful contact that religious and secular Israelis (and settler and non-settler Israelis) has occured in the IDF, and much good has come out of this 'great equalizer'. But I wonder... if the settlers begin to see the army and police as brutal arms of a government policy intentionally aimed against them (as Amona would seem to indicate), then how long will even this last? IDF commanders had talked about not allowing 'hilltop youth' who participated in protesting disengagement to join the military... will this become a trend?
If things like this continue, it is all too easy to see the change of the National Religious (dati leumi) community into a large, disenfranchised, reviled section of Israeli society. Israel would be foolish to allow this to continue; the National Religious community is a very important asset to Israel, full of dynamic, hardworking, committed citizens. To dump them as the 'unwanted children' of former government policies would be immoral and foolish.
I can only hope that someone in Israel realizes this - soon - and fixes the problems. This is *not* something that can wait.
(One last point: I do understand that the NR community has also distanced itself from the rest of Israeli society and created poltical rifts, further exacerbating the issue. I think that people from both sides need to reach out to bridge the growing rift. Yet Amona was far more a fault of the Israeli government and vilification in the media than any actions by the settlement movement. And the Yesha Council, though often unhappy with things, has consistently tried to create compromises with the government, only to be spurned after which the media blames 'settler intransigence'. The rule of law must hold, of course, but this goes way beyond enforcing government decisions.)
Instead, what I wish to address is the growing rift between settlers and the rest of Israeli society - and, more worrisome, the shift of this conflict into one between the religious and secular. My comments are precipitated, of course, by the recent events in Amona, where overeager police violently removed protesting settlers from the outpost (injuring several hundred along the way), and destroyed the settlement. While not occasioning that much comment in the world, the images of the unprecedented violent confrontation between armored riot police and thousands of settlers shook many Israelis. Previously, removal of illegal outposts (or evacuation of legal settlements, as those in Sinai in the 70s and the Gaza disengagement) had been done in a forceful, but generally peacable manner (ie, people had to be carried out, but generally did not harm or attack the police/army, nor did the army use excessive force against the settlers and protestors). The Amona dismantling changed all of that, in a worrisome direction. I won't give the details of what happened - you can search either Ha'aretz or Arutz Sheva for the leftist and rightist sides of what happened, respectively. Suffice it to say, it was an ugly confrontation that had the police coming ready to do violence, and the settlers barricaded and determined not to move. Hundreds of people (mostly protestors) were injured, and dozens were arrested.
I find this development troubling, because it brings a issue that has been simmering for years into clarity.
First off: I have no problem whatsoever with the government choosing to dismantle illegally built outposts. People may whine about the timing having to do with Olmert's election strategy, but I don't care. Settlers who build illegal outposts know full well that their homes can be legally destroyed. They know that they are breaking the law to make a point - protesting the government's actions with construction (a non-violent but very visible form of protest, no?). Similarly, I have no issues with protestors using civil disobedience (ie, refusing to leave the outpost) to protest this, nor do is there an issue with the government arresting those individuals if they break a law (I don't know, obstructing something). My issues lies in the fact that the government rejected compromises with the settlers, and then came loaded for bear, more than ready and willing to use excessive force to remove the protestors. And most of the Israeli public and media noticed, shrugged, and went on with their lives, perhaps saying, 'eh, the settlers deserved it.'
Treppenwitz, a blog I've recently begun reading, has an interesting analysis of the systematic exclusion and disenfranchisement of settlers by the Israeli government as it relates to the Amona demolition. I don't agree with all of it, but it helped highlight some of the issues that have been bothering me.
The so-called 'hilltop youth' of the settler movement have been demonized by Israeli society in an unseemly way. They are portrayed as blindly following the orders of ideological leaders, willing to do anything and everything to preserve settlements. In the disengagement from Gaza, the media and government as violent radicals that would resort to deadly force against Israeli police and soldiers to keep the evacuations from proceeding. Though this failed to materialize (yes, yes, there were some incidents of assault, I won't deny this - but with tens of thousands of protestors, things could easily have gotten much, much worse, though they never did), most people attributed this to the amazingly sensitive job done by the IDF (there is a great deal of truth to this) rather than on any restraint on the part of the young protestors.
In the months following Gaza and leading up to Amona, this perception has been reinforced further. The hilltop youth are no longer seen as Israeli citizens with a legitimate right to peacefully protest the destruction and negotiation away of their homes and ideals, but rather as a dangerous fringe group of fundamentalists who will tear the fabric of Israeli society. Not cool at all.
Many Israelis are legitimately frustrated that the settlement movement has such sway over the government's security and diplomatic considerations. Many, particularly the secular Israelis, believe that the settlers are dragging Israel into a costly and painful war over their own religious beliefs, imposing them on the rest of Israel. They neglect to realize that every Israeli administration has supported the building and expansion of settlements, and that the vast majority of settlers are peacable, deeply patriotic Israelis who are great assets to their society.
The settlers, on the other hand, by and large religious, see the majority of Israel reversing on its earlier encouragement to build settlements, and joining forces to ostracize the very people who used to protest Israeli national interests.
This growing dichotomy in Israeli society has merged with another difficult issue - the secular/religious divide on religious, social, political, and diplomatic issues. Unfortunately, these issues are not being addressed or minimized by any parts of Israeli society. Most of the meaningful contact that religious and secular Israelis (and settler and non-settler Israelis) has occured in the IDF, and much good has come out of this 'great equalizer'. But I wonder... if the settlers begin to see the army and police as brutal arms of a government policy intentionally aimed against them (as Amona would seem to indicate), then how long will even this last? IDF commanders had talked about not allowing 'hilltop youth' who participated in protesting disengagement to join the military... will this become a trend?
If things like this continue, it is all too easy to see the change of the National Religious (dati leumi) community into a large, disenfranchised, reviled section of Israeli society. Israel would be foolish to allow this to continue; the National Religious community is a very important asset to Israel, full of dynamic, hardworking, committed citizens. To dump them as the 'unwanted children' of former government policies would be immoral and foolish.
I can only hope that someone in Israel realizes this - soon - and fixes the problems. This is *not* something that can wait.
(One last point: I do understand that the NR community has also distanced itself from the rest of Israeli society and created poltical rifts, further exacerbating the issue. I think that people from both sides need to reach out to bridge the growing rift. Yet Amona was far more a fault of the Israeli government and vilification in the media than any actions by the settlement movement. And the Yesha Council, though often unhappy with things, has consistently tried to create compromises with the government, only to be spurned after which the media blames 'settler intransigence'. The rule of law must hold, of course, but this goes way beyond enforcing government decisions.)
22.1.06
Sobering yet fascinating thoughts from the front
I have lost count of the articles, books, interviews, blog posts, speeches, presentations, etc. I have read and/or attended about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I've tried reading histories, current events, political and military analyses, etc... but none of them has captured the most recent intafada in a more human light than a blog that is being serialized on Jpost, Chayal Boded. The author is a non-ideological American who made aliyah (ie, moved permanently to Israel) in 2001. He spent six months in an ulpan (a intensive Hebrew instruction course), and then was drafted into the Israeli army (like everyone else his age). He ended up getting into an elite commando unit, and the blog is a serialization of bits from letters home.
The blog brilliantly shows the dilemma being faced by soldiers in the IDF. The IDF prides itself on attempting to be the moral army of the world, but they are always faced with contradictions between the need to secure their country, and always adhering to a strict ethical code.
The latest entry was very powerful. An excerpt:
At the bottom of the linked page are the previous posts, which are all uniquely fascinating. I found Sabrinah, a post about apprehending a female would-be suicide bomber, to be particularly interesting. He explores some of the most difficult issues facing the IDF counter-terror operations today from a first-person perspective.
If you have to read anything I've written or linked to on this website, read this.
The blog brilliantly shows the dilemma being faced by soldiers in the IDF. The IDF prides itself on attempting to be the moral army of the world, but they are always faced with contradictions between the need to secure their country, and always adhering to a strict ethical code.
The latest entry was very powerful. An excerpt:
For all of us, but especially for Tomer, it all seemed like a big game. Tomer was the crew's medic, and he breezed through training with a funky kipa and a grin so big that it threatened to swallow his whole face. His pants were always a little too baggy and his helmet a little cock-eyed, and before long, his careless happiness and trademark smile earned him the moniker "Joker" from the other recruits. He was our mascot. Even in basic training, our officer would catch a glimpse of Tomer in rank in the midst of reprimanding us for one thing or another, and he'd have to turn and walk away in a vain attempt to stifle a smile. On our final and most difficult march before "graduating" to operation status, when everybody was pushed to the limit and absolutely exhausted, there was Tomer, singing and skipping along.
Then, on one of our first missions inside the Palestinian cities, Tomer killed a kid, or at least he thought he did, and suddenly it wasn't fun anymore.
At the bottom of the linked page are the previous posts, which are all uniquely fascinating. I found Sabrinah, a post about apprehending a female would-be suicide bomber, to be particularly interesting. He explores some of the most difficult issues facing the IDF counter-terror operations today from a first-person perspective.
If you have to read anything I've written or linked to on this website, read this.
16.1.06
The Scientist as Hero, indeed
A few years ago, a friend of mine had been raving at me about Kim Stanley Robinson, so I picked up his Mars Trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars). Briefly, it chronicles a truly fascinating method of colonizing Mars, and all of the trials and tribulations involved over the course of some two centuries. I tried reading the trilogy then, and found it interesting, but interminably slow at parts. I got the general idea (though I never did finish Blue Mars), but I just put the books aside until another time.
A few months ago, I picked up Red Mars and tried rereading it in earnest. I read the books in small blocks of time chipped out of my anatomy studying, and found that the books were really quite enjoyable. KSR takes quite a bit of poetic license in some arenas - for one, predicting technological advances and a speed of innovation that are ridiculously accelerated. But his ideas are always fascinating, his humor is oddball but amusing, and his landscapes are impressive.
What makes his books more than just another random SF trilogy, though, are his characters. Robinson has a knack for creating eminently likable people of a wide variety of temperaments. Part of it is that he stereotypes characters, but then draws out what makes them so stereotyped, and uses this to make a point. He has the Mind Doctor, Michel, who needs more doctoring than anyone else, the Engineer, Nadia, who has a compulsion to build lasting things, the Politician, the Revolutionary, etc, etc. All of the characters are beautifully constructed, and a joy to read about.
The best character by far, though, is the Scientist, Sax Russel. In the beginning of Green Mars KSR had one beautiful passage that left me speechless at his aptness in describing how scientists like to look at the world:
Later in the book, Sax discusses with a few characters about why he cannot abide by his 'Great Unexplainable', and works always to reduce the boundaries of it. Robinson shows a deep understanding of what drives true scientists - the wish to know, to understand, to explain.
I am an engineer, so my desire for understanding is tempered by a desire to use knowledge usefully, but I can understand Sax's frustration at not being able to answer, "Why?" I don't think we will ever know all of those why's from science... even the answer, "That's how it came out in the Big Bang," isn't really an answer, but rather just a more ultimate Why. Nevertheless, there is a certain joy and satisfaction in being able to quantify the universe, and to point at something that occurs, and say, "Aha! This is happening because of X."
I view this as a means to an end, a way to then change things given our understanding of how they work. The Scientist, though, pursues the answer as a means to its own end, on the premise that more knowledge is a good end to itself.
I wonder if teaching this fundamental value of natural knowledge to the non-scientists of the world would be a good thing. I think it would be. Thoughts?
A few months ago, I picked up Red Mars and tried rereading it in earnest. I read the books in small blocks of time chipped out of my anatomy studying, and found that the books were really quite enjoyable. KSR takes quite a bit of poetic license in some arenas - for one, predicting technological advances and a speed of innovation that are ridiculously accelerated. But his ideas are always fascinating, his humor is oddball but amusing, and his landscapes are impressive.
What makes his books more than just another random SF trilogy, though, are his characters. Robinson has a knack for creating eminently likable people of a wide variety of temperaments. Part of it is that he stereotypes characters, but then draws out what makes them so stereotyped, and uses this to make a point. He has the Mind Doctor, Michel, who needs more doctoring than anyone else, the Engineer, Nadia, who has a compulsion to build lasting things, the Politician, the Revolutionary, etc, etc. All of the characters are beautifully constructed, and a joy to read about.
The best character by far, though, is the Scientist, Sax Russel. In the beginning of Green Mars KSR had one beautiful passage that left me speechless at his aptness in describing how scientists like to look at the world:
About a year later Nirgal and the other children began to figure out how to deal with the days when they were taught by Sax. He would start at the blackboard, sounding like a characterless AI, and behind his back they would roll their eyes and make faces as he droned on about partial pressures or infrared rays. Then one of them would see an opening and begin the game. He was helpless before it. He would say something like, "In nonshivering thermogenesis the body produces head using futile cycles," and one of them would raise a hand and say, "But why, Sax?" and everyone would stare hard at their lectern and not look at each other, while Sax would frown as if this had never happened before, and say, "Well, it creates heat without using as much energy as shivering does. The muscle proteins contract, but instead of grabbing they just slide over each other, and that creates heat."
Jackie, so sincerely the whole class nearly lost it: "But how?"
He was blinking now, so fast they almost exploded watching him. "Well, the amino acids in the proteins have broken covalent bonds, and the bonds release what is called bond dissociation energy."
"But why?"
Blinking ever harder: "Well, that's just a matter of physics." He diagrammed vigorously on the blackboard: "Covalent bonds are formed when two atomic orbitals merge to form a single bond orbital, occupied by electrons from both atoms. Breaking the bond releases thirty to a hundred kcals of energy."
Several of them asked, in chorus, "But why?"
This got him into subatomic physics, where the chain of whys and becauses could go on for a half hour without him ever once saying something they could understand. Finally they would sense they were near the end game. "But why?"
"Well," going cross-eyed as he tried to backtrack, "atoms want to get to their stable number of electrons, and they'll share electrons when they have to."
"But why?"
Now he was looking trapped. "That's just the way atoms bond. One of the ways."
"But WHY?"
A shrug. "That's how the atomic force works. That's how things came out-"
And they would all shout, "in the Big Bang."
They would howl with glee, and Sax's forehead would knot up as he realized that they had done it to him again. He would sigh, and go back to where he had been when the game began. But every time they started it again, he never seemed to remember, as long as the initial why was plausible enough. And even when he did recognize what was happening, he seemed helpless to stop it. His only defense was to say with a little frown, "Why what?" That slowed the game for a while; but then Nirgal and Jackie got clever in guessing what in any statement most deserved a why, and as long as they could do that, Sax seemed to feel it was his job to continue answering, right on up the chains of because to the Big Bang, or, every once in a while, to a muttered "We don't know."
"We don't know!" the class would exclaim in mock dismay. "Why not?"
"It's not explained," he said, frowning. "Not yet."
Later in the book, Sax discusses with a few characters about why he cannot abide by his 'Great Unexplainable', and works always to reduce the boundaries of it. Robinson shows a deep understanding of what drives true scientists - the wish to know, to understand, to explain.
I am an engineer, so my desire for understanding is tempered by a desire to use knowledge usefully, but I can understand Sax's frustration at not being able to answer, "Why?" I don't think we will ever know all of those why's from science... even the answer, "That's how it came out in the Big Bang," isn't really an answer, but rather just a more ultimate Why. Nevertheless, there is a certain joy and satisfaction in being able to quantify the universe, and to point at something that occurs, and say, "Aha! This is happening because of X."
I view this as a means to an end, a way to then change things given our understanding of how they work. The Scientist, though, pursues the answer as a means to its own end, on the premise that more knowledge is a good end to itself.
I wonder if teaching this fundamental value of natural knowledge to the non-scientists of the world would be a good thing. I think it would be. Thoughts?
27.12.05
Iran and Syria... rational actors?
Now this is a surprise... two posts in as many days?!
As most of my well-informed (and stunningly attractive and intelligent) readers may know, tensions along the Israeli-Lebanese border have been heating up. Several weeks ago, there were barrages of rocket attacks on Israeli towns in the northern Galil, and several infiltration/kidnapping attempts on IDF positions. Just today, Kiryat Shmoneh was hit by Katyusha fire. Needless to say, Israelis are not happy - they pulled out of Lebanon over five years ago precisely to end this sort of violence.
The Jerusalem Post had an interesting editorial that matches much of what has been recommended by a number of Israeli sources in the last few months. To summarize: The old model of Israeli retaliation on terrorist sites after an attack needs to be replaced by direct raids and retaliation on the governments that support such terrorist organizations - in this case, most notably Syria (though other editorials do not feel that Iran and the PA should be free of said attacks).
This is not news - there have been statements coming out of IDF High Command for quite some time that seem to agree on most points. If Hezbollah continues to attack targets in northern Israel, Israel will begin to attack targets in Syria (likely military installations and terrorist training grounds, using IAF strikes).
The logic, the article claims, is thus: Syria is reacting to intense international pressure by attacking Israel through its proxy. As the rest of the world refuses to do anything other than talk, Syria must be taught forcefully that it will directly pay for using such tactics.
I feel that this article may have a point, but its logic is flawed. In another JPost editorial (I can't seem to find it anymore; roughly 2-3 weeks before this post), the author was claiming that while no one would like to see a nuclear Iran, Israel could survive with one, given their enormous deterrence capability. The article suggested improving Israel's nuclear and retaliatory powers even further so that Iran would be foolish to start a nuclear war.
Both of these articles assumed something quite dangerous. They assume that Iran and Syria are rational players in international politics. (I don't mean rational in the colloquial sense, but rather in the political science context.) Can Syria truly 'learn' that its behavior in reacting to international pressure will have dire consequences from Israeli retaliations - and will this translate into better policies? Syria knows that Israel is a leashed guard dog - it may bark, it may even bite anyone who gets close enough, but it is being held back from truly ruinous retaliation by the US (and, to a lesser extent, by other nations). Even if it is scared by the Israeli threats (and eventually, actions), will Syria make the connection between this and its actions?
I think not. Similarly, I could argue that deterrence in Iran only works assuming that Iran is rational.
IDF High Commands knows this more than I do. Why are they developing this new policy toward Syria? I think that the true target of this policy is not Syria, but rather the rest of the world. The rest of the world realizes that Israel is just waiting for a chance to really mess with Syria. They fought a proxy war with Syria for 20 years to no real end, and never really got to damage them much in either of the major wars they fought directly with the country. If the international community can be spooked by Israel's more provocative actions, they may bring even greater pressure to bear on Syria to shape up.
The danger of this, of course, is that if Israel is too aggressive, the attention will shift from Syrian intransigence to Israel, and the opportunity will have been lost. For now, the world sympathizes with Israel on its northern border... but for how long? I wonder.
What is much more worrisome than Syria, though, is Iran. Israel cannot have a logical reason for believing that deterrence will work. And they have only made vague noises about attacking Iran. In reality, most 'experts' seem to think that it would be extremely difficult to carry off. Iran's nuclear facilities are dispersed and well-protected, and are at the very edge of the IAF's striking distance. More difficult would be the presence of a huge American force directly between Israel and Iran, meaning that Israel would either have to skirt around Iraq, or suffer the consequences (either political or military) of infringing on US-controlled airspace.
Thus, Israel seems to have no real options in dealing with Iran... and the world's diplomatic efforts seem to have failed in the light of new Iranian president.
Israel must hope that Iran is rational. That is not the most reassuring of thoughts.
Any suggestions?
As most of my well-informed (and stunningly attractive and intelligent) readers may know, tensions along the Israeli-Lebanese border have been heating up. Several weeks ago, there were barrages of rocket attacks on Israeli towns in the northern Galil, and several infiltration/kidnapping attempts on IDF positions. Just today, Kiryat Shmoneh was hit by Katyusha fire. Needless to say, Israelis are not happy - they pulled out of Lebanon over five years ago precisely to end this sort of violence.
The Jerusalem Post had an interesting editorial that matches much of what has been recommended by a number of Israeli sources in the last few months. To summarize: The old model of Israeli retaliation on terrorist sites after an attack needs to be replaced by direct raids and retaliation on the governments that support such terrorist organizations - in this case, most notably Syria (though other editorials do not feel that Iran and the PA should be free of said attacks).
This is not news - there have been statements coming out of IDF High Command for quite some time that seem to agree on most points. If Hezbollah continues to attack targets in northern Israel, Israel will begin to attack targets in Syria (likely military installations and terrorist training grounds, using IAF strikes).
The logic, the article claims, is thus: Syria is reacting to intense international pressure by attacking Israel through its proxy. As the rest of the world refuses to do anything other than talk, Syria must be taught forcefully that it will directly pay for using such tactics.
I feel that this article may have a point, but its logic is flawed. In another JPost editorial (I can't seem to find it anymore; roughly 2-3 weeks before this post), the author was claiming that while no one would like to see a nuclear Iran, Israel could survive with one, given their enormous deterrence capability. The article suggested improving Israel's nuclear and retaliatory powers even further so that Iran would be foolish to start a nuclear war.
Both of these articles assumed something quite dangerous. They assume that Iran and Syria are rational players in international politics. (I don't mean rational in the colloquial sense, but rather in the political science context.) Can Syria truly 'learn' that its behavior in reacting to international pressure will have dire consequences from Israeli retaliations - and will this translate into better policies? Syria knows that Israel is a leashed guard dog - it may bark, it may even bite anyone who gets close enough, but it is being held back from truly ruinous retaliation by the US (and, to a lesser extent, by other nations). Even if it is scared by the Israeli threats (and eventually, actions), will Syria make the connection between this and its actions?
I think not. Similarly, I could argue that deterrence in Iran only works assuming that Iran is rational.
IDF High Commands knows this more than I do. Why are they developing this new policy toward Syria? I think that the true target of this policy is not Syria, but rather the rest of the world. The rest of the world realizes that Israel is just waiting for a chance to really mess with Syria. They fought a proxy war with Syria for 20 years to no real end, and never really got to damage them much in either of the major wars they fought directly with the country. If the international community can be spooked by Israel's more provocative actions, they may bring even greater pressure to bear on Syria to shape up.
The danger of this, of course, is that if Israel is too aggressive, the attention will shift from Syrian intransigence to Israel, and the opportunity will have been lost. For now, the world sympathizes with Israel on its northern border... but for how long? I wonder.
What is much more worrisome than Syria, though, is Iran. Israel cannot have a logical reason for believing that deterrence will work. And they have only made vague noises about attacking Iran. In reality, most 'experts' seem to think that it would be extremely difficult to carry off. Iran's nuclear facilities are dispersed and well-protected, and are at the very edge of the IAF's striking distance. More difficult would be the presence of a huge American force directly between Israel and Iran, meaning that Israel would either have to skirt around Iraq, or suffer the consequences (either political or military) of infringing on US-controlled airspace.
Thus, Israel seems to have no real options in dealing with Iran... and the world's diplomatic efforts seem to have failed in the light of new Iranian president.
Israel must hope that Iran is rational. That is not the most reassuring of thoughts.
Any suggestions?
26.12.05
Can individual beliefs be abstracted to a communal level?
I was in a bookstore this evening, and as usual I quickly browsed through the 'current affairs' section before continuing my shopping. There wasn't really anything new there, but something about the collection of books - the zeitgeist of the times, if I can steal a term - something struck me. I suddenly was convinced down to my bones that there was something fundamentally wrong with the world. I had a moment where I felt like a complete stranger, looking at the world as if anew, and thought to myself, 'Wow. This place is messed up in a really sad way.'
Okay, okay, 99% of my readers are not surprised by this (or, rather, since I doubt I have 100 readers, one might say that one reader is completely unsurprised, and the other is only 2% surprised). Nor am I, really - I've known this for years, but was overwhelmed by the ringing truth of this thought in my head.
Why, do you ask? Well, permit me an excursion into the past, and I will presently explain it. Oh, and apologies if I write a bit oddly today; I've been reading too much Paarfi lately.
Since a fairly young age, I've kept abreast of news, at least on the barest levels. My parents always encouraged us to read the newspapers, and I took an active interest in increasing numbers of world news topics as I grew older. It always seemed a good idea to have a firm grasp of current events, but by the time I was 14 or 15, I began to be intrigued not by the news itself, but by the underlying subtext.
I began to first ask the hows of the world - how are decisions made and carried out, how do events occur as they do, etc... and these answers inevitably led me to ask the more ultimate whys. For the last 5 or 6 years, then, I've developed a hobby of trying to understand why the world works the way it does. I've spent quite a bit of time reading histories, political science texts, essays, news analyses, economics, dabbling in sociological theory, etc, in an attempt to answers these questions. Obviously, I have only attained a cursory understanding of each topic (scholars in any of these fields could undoubtedly leave me in the dust), but I've aimed for a global understanding of the driving forces of world events.
There are plenty of ideologies out there to explain things, from popular to scholarly, and from emotionally based to the most rigorous of logics. I feel that most of these fail in that they base their understandings on a few basic theses of human interaction and behavior, whereas true motivations are much more complex. Some of the more interesting bits I've seen have tried to model events and interactions by chaos theory or by evolutionary pressures, but even that fails as it tries to quantify too many variables that are unquantifiable (is that a word? now it is).
Whatever the root causes, though, this leads to the world as it is today. And the topics covered in this section of the bookstore were revealing. There was a large emphasis on empire building, clashes of culture, humanitarian failures, failures in systems of government, increasingly limited resources (in a presumably closed system), struggles for cultural and political supremacy, and the personalities driving all of these events. You can fill in the blanks for specifics regarding your country's current events (or global politics), but that's a function of the specific snapshot in time, not of the underlying state of the world.
What is bothersome about this all is that most individuals would not say that our world should be in that form. Oh, for a specific decision or state, they may side one way or another, but fundamentally people do not work on the same principles that the world does. This curious contrast between the motivations of individuals and the events of the world is probably why there exist the aforementioned scholarly (and not-so-scholarly) disciplines.
How does the sums of billions (well, trillions) of human interactions, actions, and reactions create the world as we see it today? Ignoring any partisan influence, I think that everyone would agree that starvation is a bad thing. Or that the deaths of millions annually in human-organized slaughters (ie, war) is similarly unwanted. Or that people should be given as much choice in their destinies as possible, so long as they do not impinge on the choices of others (yes, the interpretations of this can be quite varying, but the fundamental idea is one that most people could agree on, no?). No one can seriously say they do not care about equity of one sort or another, from resources to 'rights' to 'choice' or any other concept that they find overridingly important. So then, why does the world have such obvious discrepancies?
I will bring up some specific points from current events just to drive the point home. In the Arab-Israeli conflict, it seems that stripped of all of the ideologies, there should be no fundamental disagreement between the two sides. Oh, yes, there are people who would like to wipe Israel off the map - along with a few Israelis who wouldn't mind wiping most of the Arabs out. But when you get down to their actual values - completely bypassing concepts of 'nationality' and 'religion' and such that drive them - they would probably have very little reason to fight, as it would be much more productive to work in tandem.
In the United States, we've recently been outraged by (or firmly supportive of) our government's invasion of our privacy and reductions in personal liberties. For some reason, we have come to a situation where many feel that our two desires for personal security and personal liberty are at odds. With such seemingly disparate concepts, how has this occurred? Theoretically, everyone would love to have the maximum of both.
I could go on, but you get the point. Individual choices and ideals, when abstracted to communal or global ones, fail to be realized. Now, some people would argue that this is merely because we have imperfect systems - and that is true, we do have extremely flawed systems. But I wonder if somehow, in this leap from the one to the many, the sum of our interactions somehow makes a utopia impossible. Something causes a fundamental clash of our individually held beliefs (the barest of which are nearly universal) when they come to the fore.
And this causes a world that most of us shudder to contemplate. So, then - should we even bother measuring the state of the world by our individual beliefs, or by some other rubric?
Hmm.
I know this isn't really that clear or organized, I was just rambling in a stream-of-consciousness after my odd feeling at the bookstore. But it is quite fascinating to consider how this all works.
Okay, okay, 99% of my readers are not surprised by this (or, rather, since I doubt I have 100 readers, one might say that one reader is completely unsurprised, and the other is only 2% surprised). Nor am I, really - I've known this for years, but was overwhelmed by the ringing truth of this thought in my head.
Why, do you ask? Well, permit me an excursion into the past, and I will presently explain it. Oh, and apologies if I write a bit oddly today; I've been reading too much Paarfi lately.
Since a fairly young age, I've kept abreast of news, at least on the barest levels. My parents always encouraged us to read the newspapers, and I took an active interest in increasing numbers of world news topics as I grew older. It always seemed a good idea to have a firm grasp of current events, but by the time I was 14 or 15, I began to be intrigued not by the news itself, but by the underlying subtext.
I began to first ask the hows of the world - how are decisions made and carried out, how do events occur as they do, etc... and these answers inevitably led me to ask the more ultimate whys. For the last 5 or 6 years, then, I've developed a hobby of trying to understand why the world works the way it does. I've spent quite a bit of time reading histories, political science texts, essays, news analyses, economics, dabbling in sociological theory, etc, in an attempt to answers these questions. Obviously, I have only attained a cursory understanding of each topic (scholars in any of these fields could undoubtedly leave me in the dust), but I've aimed for a global understanding of the driving forces of world events.
There are plenty of ideologies out there to explain things, from popular to scholarly, and from emotionally based to the most rigorous of logics. I feel that most of these fail in that they base their understandings on a few basic theses of human interaction and behavior, whereas true motivations are much more complex. Some of the more interesting bits I've seen have tried to model events and interactions by chaos theory or by evolutionary pressures, but even that fails as it tries to quantify too many variables that are unquantifiable (is that a word? now it is).
Whatever the root causes, though, this leads to the world as it is today. And the topics covered in this section of the bookstore were revealing. There was a large emphasis on empire building, clashes of culture, humanitarian failures, failures in systems of government, increasingly limited resources (in a presumably closed system), struggles for cultural and political supremacy, and the personalities driving all of these events. You can fill in the blanks for specifics regarding your country's current events (or global politics), but that's a function of the specific snapshot in time, not of the underlying state of the world.
What is bothersome about this all is that most individuals would not say that our world should be in that form. Oh, for a specific decision or state, they may side one way or another, but fundamentally people do not work on the same principles that the world does. This curious contrast between the motivations of individuals and the events of the world is probably why there exist the aforementioned scholarly (and not-so-scholarly) disciplines.
How does the sums of billions (well, trillions) of human interactions, actions, and reactions create the world as we see it today? Ignoring any partisan influence, I think that everyone would agree that starvation is a bad thing. Or that the deaths of millions annually in human-organized slaughters (ie, war) is similarly unwanted. Or that people should be given as much choice in their destinies as possible, so long as they do not impinge on the choices of others (yes, the interpretations of this can be quite varying, but the fundamental idea is one that most people could agree on, no?). No one can seriously say they do not care about equity of one sort or another, from resources to 'rights' to 'choice' or any other concept that they find overridingly important. So then, why does the world have such obvious discrepancies?
I will bring up some specific points from current events just to drive the point home. In the Arab-Israeli conflict, it seems that stripped of all of the ideologies, there should be no fundamental disagreement between the two sides. Oh, yes, there are people who would like to wipe Israel off the map - along with a few Israelis who wouldn't mind wiping most of the Arabs out. But when you get down to their actual values - completely bypassing concepts of 'nationality' and 'religion' and such that drive them - they would probably have very little reason to fight, as it would be much more productive to work in tandem.
In the United States, we've recently been outraged by (or firmly supportive of) our government's invasion of our privacy and reductions in personal liberties. For some reason, we have come to a situation where many feel that our two desires for personal security and personal liberty are at odds. With such seemingly disparate concepts, how has this occurred? Theoretically, everyone would love to have the maximum of both.
I could go on, but you get the point. Individual choices and ideals, when abstracted to communal or global ones, fail to be realized. Now, some people would argue that this is merely because we have imperfect systems - and that is true, we do have extremely flawed systems. But I wonder if somehow, in this leap from the one to the many, the sum of our interactions somehow makes a utopia impossible. Something causes a fundamental clash of our individually held beliefs (the barest of which are nearly universal) when they come to the fore.
And this causes a world that most of us shudder to contemplate. So, then - should we even bother measuring the state of the world by our individual beliefs, or by some other rubric?
Hmm.
I know this isn't really that clear or organized, I was just rambling in a stream-of-consciousness after my odd feeling at the bookstore. But it is quite fascinating to consider how this all works.
17.11.05
I normally don't preach, but...
Well, here's a really fascinating blog by a friend of my family's. He's a brilliant guy with pretty good ideas/thoughts on many technological issues. In fact, he's just written a book about how revolutions in technology come about, and the best way to structure businesses to encourage them.
Anyhow, his blog is here:
http://www.pebbleandavalanche.com/weblog
Give it a look if you have a few minutes, eh?
Anyhow, his blog is here:
http://www.pebbleandavalanche.com/weblog
Give it a look if you have a few minutes, eh?
22.10.05
Not-so-invisible barriers
First, a caveat: I am not an expert on Baltimore. Don't take what I say as the gospel truth; come here and find out for yourself. Hell, I'll even make you dinner or something if one of my loyal readers visits. This is just my (admittedly limited) observations.
I moved into Pikesville, a suburb on the northwest corner of the city (I'm half a block away from the Bmore city neighborhood of Mount Washington). In the five or six weeks before I finally got a car, I was taking public transit to Hopkins every day. Aside from my rather low opinion of the system itself (precipitating my decision to buy a car), I was somewhat disappointed by some of the things I noticed about the city, particularly with regards to race relations.
Baltimore is roughly two thirds black and one third white (virtually no other ethnicities exist in the city). I imagine the suburbs are a bit more skewed in the direction of whites (or other ethnicities), but that's pretty much the makeup of the city itself. The area from which I picked up a bus and then the Metro (subway) is one of the few predominantly white neighborhoods in the city. Yet oddly, the proportion of white people taking public transit, even from my area, was vanishingly small, confined to students and the occasional downtown professional who didn't care to drive to work (don't get me started on the traffic flow management here...).
This bothered me for a while, and I think I've finally put my finger on why. As far as I can tell, Baltimore has rigid racial boundaries. Any number of children I've spoken to have unconsciously voiced a feeling that the other race was somehow 'other' (both white and black kids, though my sample of white kids was larger). There are extremely few neighborhoods that have any significant amount of racial mixing; even if people live in the same area, they simply don't associate with other races.
And what bothered me about public transit was this: Baltimore's public transit is shitty. It's slow, rarely on schedule, and it can't even get you anywhere (one subway line with 20 or so stops, a light rail akin to Metra from Chicago, and a small and poorly organized bus system). Before I bought a car, I felt trapped I could not use my time effectively to shop, commute, study, etc. It was simply impossible to get to any number of places in and around the city in any decent amount of time (and sometimes not at all).
Now, the alternative to taking public transit is to own a car - but that is an extremely expensive proposition, no? Car insurance rates in Baltimore city are extremely high due to the car theft rate. So that leaves those without the means of buying a car in a bit of a fix.
The black people riding the Metro were not poor, or criminals, or anything else I've heard as stereotypes in the last two months. They were just people trying to get to work or school, like everyone else... but they simply didn't have the means for their own transportation. To me, this highlighted and extremely disturbing financial divide that correllates with racial lines. These people were not from the inner city, yet they still were clearly not as well off as their white counterparts in similar jobs and situations. The abominable state of the Baltimore public transit system exacerbates this problem, splitting the city into 'haves' and 'have nots' in a very recognizable manner.
(I should mention that while I'm sure this happens in every city, it's nowhere near as obvious. In Chicago, vast hordes of people of every stripe take public transit every day, because it gets them to work/school/whatever with a minimum of fuss. It's just that in Baltimore, the cost/benefit analysis is so skewed in favor of cars that the makeup of the population riding the train can be so instructive.)
I found this obervation coupled with other tidbits I picked up here and there to be... disappointing. Why do we have such obvious and rigid racial/economic boundaries? I grew up being taught the credo that people were just people regardless, and should be treated accordingly. On any random street in my neighborhood you could find a dozen nationalities, ethnicities, religions, etc. Why do some places have these sharp divisions? I thought such silliness was a thing of the past.
Now, I can understand the existence of urban ghettos, no matter how I abhor them. But these were normal, middle class, working people. Why do they also need to reap the harvest of our countries' past mistakes?
I think that these glaringly obvious demarcations between the races is the thing that I most dislike about Baltimore. I am sad that situations like this still exist.
I moved into Pikesville, a suburb on the northwest corner of the city (I'm half a block away from the Bmore city neighborhood of Mount Washington). In the five or six weeks before I finally got a car, I was taking public transit to Hopkins every day. Aside from my rather low opinion of the system itself (precipitating my decision to buy a car), I was somewhat disappointed by some of the things I noticed about the city, particularly with regards to race relations.
Baltimore is roughly two thirds black and one third white (virtually no other ethnicities exist in the city). I imagine the suburbs are a bit more skewed in the direction of whites (or other ethnicities), but that's pretty much the makeup of the city itself. The area from which I picked up a bus and then the Metro (subway) is one of the few predominantly white neighborhoods in the city. Yet oddly, the proportion of white people taking public transit, even from my area, was vanishingly small, confined to students and the occasional downtown professional who didn't care to drive to work (don't get me started on the traffic flow management here...).
This bothered me for a while, and I think I've finally put my finger on why. As far as I can tell, Baltimore has rigid racial boundaries. Any number of children I've spoken to have unconsciously voiced a feeling that the other race was somehow 'other' (both white and black kids, though my sample of white kids was larger). There are extremely few neighborhoods that have any significant amount of racial mixing; even if people live in the same area, they simply don't associate with other races.
And what bothered me about public transit was this: Baltimore's public transit is shitty. It's slow, rarely on schedule, and it can't even get you anywhere (one subway line with 20 or so stops, a light rail akin to Metra from Chicago, and a small and poorly organized bus system). Before I bought a car, I felt trapped I could not use my time effectively to shop, commute, study, etc. It was simply impossible to get to any number of places in and around the city in any decent amount of time (and sometimes not at all).
Now, the alternative to taking public transit is to own a car - but that is an extremely expensive proposition, no? Car insurance rates in Baltimore city are extremely high due to the car theft rate. So that leaves those without the means of buying a car in a bit of a fix.
The black people riding the Metro were not poor, or criminals, or anything else I've heard as stereotypes in the last two months. They were just people trying to get to work or school, like everyone else... but they simply didn't have the means for their own transportation. To me, this highlighted and extremely disturbing financial divide that correllates with racial lines. These people were not from the inner city, yet they still were clearly not as well off as their white counterparts in similar jobs and situations. The abominable state of the Baltimore public transit system exacerbates this problem, splitting the city into 'haves' and 'have nots' in a very recognizable manner.
(I should mention that while I'm sure this happens in every city, it's nowhere near as obvious. In Chicago, vast hordes of people of every stripe take public transit every day, because it gets them to work/school/whatever with a minimum of fuss. It's just that in Baltimore, the cost/benefit analysis is so skewed in favor of cars that the makeup of the population riding the train can be so instructive.)
I found this obervation coupled with other tidbits I picked up here and there to be... disappointing. Why do we have such obvious and rigid racial/economic boundaries? I grew up being taught the credo that people were just people regardless, and should be treated accordingly. On any random street in my neighborhood you could find a dozen nationalities, ethnicities, religions, etc. Why do some places have these sharp divisions? I thought such silliness was a thing of the past.
Now, I can understand the existence of urban ghettos, no matter how I abhor them. But these were normal, middle class, working people. Why do they also need to reap the harvest of our countries' past mistakes?
I think that these glaringly obvious demarcations between the races is the thing that I most dislike about Baltimore. I am sad that situations like this still exist.
Yes, yes, yes. I know. This is rather late in coming.
Let's skip all of the 'where the hell were you for five months's, shall we? It's been a very interesting time. I moved to Baltimore in late August for grad school, and things have been amazingly hectic. First, I was homeless for a week due to school starting before my lease did. Then, I was suffering from internet withdrawal at home because getting broadband takes time. *sighs* And somewhere in there I realized that graduate school is actually supposed to be difficult, and it started taking over my life. Add that to buying an ugly car and racking up amazing amounts of minutes on the phone with the lady, and well... I'm sure you get the idea.
So, there are quite a number of things I'd just love to write about, but I think I'll start with some impressions of Baltimore, in the next post. Stay tuned! I can't say I'll be updating daily, but it might be semi-regular again, for all of you (*cough*) readers.
So, there are quite a number of things I'd just love to write about, but I think I'll start with some impressions of Baltimore, in the next post. Stay tuned! I can't say I'll be updating daily, but it might be semi-regular again, for all of you (*cough*) readers.
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