The Day Today - 13th March 2008

Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling writes:

Ben Goldacre on the inanities of ethics committees. He also puts the call out for horror stories from researchers trying to get their research approved. As someone who has been acquainted with folk on both Human Subject Ethics and Discipline committees I can vouch for them being a rich vein of anecdotes.

Some research from M.I.T. on one of those little irrational foibles that still plague us - "keeping too many options open".

Xiang Yu was a Chinese general in the third century BC who took his troops across the Yangtze River into enemy territory and performed an experiment in decision making. He crushed his troops' cooking pots and burned their ships.

As "Chase Me Ladies! I'm In the Cavalry" would say - Killer Fact!

Among Hungarian Gypsies, equally strict rules apply to brandy: brandy may only be consumed first thing in the morning, during the middle of the night at a wake, or by women prior to a rubbish-scavenging trip.

Rescuing Victorian Britain from the Tories (a bit).

There are many difficulties present in a trip to Mars, the crew's social dynamics and getting back again...so...let's just make it a one-way trip for one!

A diversion into fiction. On Evelyn Waugh...on Nabokov...

And, Theodore Dalrymple on how the "intelligentsia" manages to shut out any real engagement with social issues...

Complacency and denial dominate public as well as private discourse, and when a little of the unpleasant side of contemporary English reality is allowed an airing, a damage-control exercise swiftly ensues.

..I well remember John Campbell's damage control exercise, instead being a journalist like those on "Hard Talk" and grilling him one-on-one, John decided to have Theodore and 37 other commentators on as well. More heat, less light, as the saying goes.

The Day Today - 17th January 2008

Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling writes:

Reading for sheer pleasure. I am not alone.

I dream of reading the way Machiavelli described it during the boom years of Italian humanism in the 16th century. He said:

"Evenings I return home and enter my study; and at its entrance I take off my everyday clothes, full of mud and dust, and don royal and courtly garments. Decorously reattired, I enter into the ancient sessions of ancient men. Received amicably by them, I partake of such food as is mine only, and for which I was born. There, without shame, I speak with them and ask them the reasons for their actions; and they in their humanity respond to me."

More discussion on the few who did good during the Holocaust.

Here we want to remember precisely so that such acts of compassion will be repeated in the future. Just as to the evil we say "never again," to the goodness we must say "again and again." These acts of solidarity, although accomplished by only a fraction of the 700 million people who lived in Nazi-occupied countries, are part of the story. Indeed, the only way out of the antihumanist darkness is to follow those lights that did shine, even if only here and there.

Read on for the story of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.

The planet's future has never looked better. Here's why.

Since Morthos has gone, I'll provide the conspiracyising with a very entertaining review of a Richard Hoagland (Face on Mars, see the image at the top) press conference which was long and tedious and filled with the kind of tortured logic that turns out to be rather common for conspiracy theorists who take disparate pieces of data and insist that they’re connected and that they make more sense than, well, more logical explanations.

And to finish, some science. Physics to be exact, the interpretation of quantum theory to be even exacter.

Bohr believed that the uncertainty was not just a product of observation, but an actual feature of nature itself. It was not that the experimenter was too clumsy to measure the position and momentum at the same time. Rather there was simply no such thing as a particle that possessed these two attributes simultaneously and to an arbitrary degree of accuracy. The uncertainty principle expressed an inherent limitation in nature.

The Day Today - January 16th 2008

Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling writes:

Brain Stab - Blog of the Living Dead.

A little something on why Jared Diamond is wrong - "No one visits Stonehenge, she noted, and asks whatever happened to the English."

If you feel like a good read. .. Resource Exhaustibility A Myth Refuted by Entrepreneurial Capital Maintenance.

An interesting diversion from Andrew Sullivan on testosterone, long enough for a lunch break.

Something I missed late last year, Jacques Barzun turned 100. The book mentioned"From Dawn to Decadence" is, incidentally, an excellent read but since holidays are over (unless you are a teacher) it might pay to leave it untill next Christmas. I do so love my big-picture theorising, probably too much testosterone and an abiliy to concentrate on the details.

Finally, if you've read all that, you can go for a walk.

The Day Today - January 1. 2008

Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling writes:

As Brain Stab desiccates around me...

Here's Camille Paglia telling the Europeans she don't take kindly to their sort.



Theodore Dalrymple on modern art that has merit!

All this one understands at once—immediately—on seeing the photographs that make up a series that simultaneously satisfies the eye. It is a brilliant conception, brilliantly carried out. But it is no mere exercise in cleverness, such as one might expect from artists in more fortunate political climes: for one understands at once also that the artist is a patriot, a man whose heart genuinely bleeds for his beloved country, whose emotions run too deep to be satisfied by expression in simple propositional form.

There is, within the study of modern German history, a debate as to whether Germany was "defeated" or "liberated". I tend towards the latter view, an opinion reinforced by a study of German resistance movements which consist basically of half a dozen - albeit courageous and commendable - bomb plots. The rest of Germany's seventy million seemed to have just done nothing. so this article by Peter Schneider is welcome because he begins to bring out stories of Germans who did try and do something and explains why their stories have until now been hidden.

He also has a bit of a go at Goldhagen and his view that German civilization had for centuries been driving toward the "project" of the Holocaust; at any point, millions of Germans could have stepped into the shoes of the hundreds of thousands who actually committed the crime. A good listen is Clive James interviewing Michael Burleigh. I have, apparently, wasted my money on Goldhagen's book, but Burleigh's is at the local "Second Hand". Might look out for Fest as well.

Harry Potter - nihil novum sub sol este.

From this very interesting piece on primate cultures comes something we libertarians have known all along. Treating people as individuals is better - in this case to ward off xenophobia.

There is a structure deep inside the brain called the amygdala, which plays a key role in fear and aggression, and experiments have shown that when subjects are presented with a face of someone from a different race, the amygdala gets metabolically active—aroused,...Or, as in a wonderful experiment by Susan Fiske, of Princeton University, subtly bias the subject beforehand to think of people as individuals rather than as members of a group, and the amygdala does not budge.

Anzac Day

Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling writes:

1918

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The Hell where youth and laughter go
- Siegfried Sassoon

2007

As an aside, the first picture is of a disfugured Fench soldier at an Armistice Day parade in 1918. I have it in a book, and it serves as the inspiration for this post juxtaposed with another disfigured soldier from a war ninety years later. I found it on the internet, by going here, and typing "850-16" into the "picture number" field, but alas it is obviously not of the quality of the image in the book. If anyone can find a link of the image of a decent size, or manages to find out how to get a login at the Roger Viollet site (my French is non-existant, my Allemande little better and fading) I would be grateful.

The second soldier is Tyler Ziegel, you might remember him as the the chap who married his childhood sweetheart on Valentine's Day.

Lesser Moments of Hesitation: Up the Crete Without a Paddle

Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling writes:

Crete, May 1941. Greece has fallen to the naughty Germans, and General Freyburg (local lad made good) is the new commander for the island, taking over from General Wavell. Despite Crete being one of Churchill's pet interests for the past six months, saying that it would a crime if it fell to the Germans, Freyburg finds that Wavell has done sweet fuck all in preparing the island for battle - some of which could be excused due to the paucity of resources.

There are many things in Freybourg's favour. He is on an island - which saved Britain less than a year ago, and naval superiority. He has a good 45,000 men, and strong local support. Best of all, through Ultra intercepts, Freyburg knew the German battle plan, and was able to position his troops accordingly. For the Germans, although their troops were better, and better supplied with air superiority, they were under the misapprehension that there were only 5,000 British troops on Crete, and also suffered from that incomprehensible but common conceit that they would be welcomed as liberators.

The Germans launched Operation Mercury, their paratroop attack, on the morning May 20th, and it was a disaster. They Germans were heavily mauled and failed to take any of their objectives (the airfields), but that night and the next day a lesser moment of hesitation gave the island to the Germans. There is a phrase called "the fog of war", which refers to how messy and confusing battle is to all concerned. Communications break down, troops get isolated from their units, Generals don't know what is happening at the front line and when the enemy does something unexpected the front line troops don't know what the generals want them to do.

During the first night of the 20th, a fog of war event took place. There were some New Zealand troops overlooking Maleme airfield on a vital strategic spot called "Hill 107", they had been fighting all day, and their last attack with some of the only few tanks on Crete had failed. The defenders on the airfield had no radio. The only radio was at the command post, which was out of sight of the airfield. And out of sight of the airfield, thinking the Germans had broken through, and without any sign of reinforcements, the Command Post ordered a withdrawal from the hill.

You might think, no problem, the British probably ploughed up and mined the runway to make it unuseable. Unfortunately - in a classic case of stupidity - they didn't. On the morning of the 21st, a German Junkers 52 landed and took off again from Maleme airfield - proving that it was safe to bring troops in, which the Germans started doing. But still, all was not lost for the British, if their counterattack - planned for the morning of the 22nd - went well. But it didn't. Freyburg could have used 6,000 troops in his counterattack, but he held many back including his best regiment, the 1st Battalion Welch. Why?

In the afternoon of the 21st, Freyburg received the following telegraph:

"Personal for General Freyburg

On continuation of attack Colorado [Crete], reliably reported that among operations planned for Twenty-first May is air landing two mountain battalions and attack Canea. Landing from echelon of small ships depending on situation at sea."

Not too long afterwards, Freyburg sent out the following order…

"Reliable information. Early seaborne attack in area Canea likely. New Zealand Division remains responsible coast from west to Kladiso River. Welch battalion forthwith to stiffen existing defences from Kladiso to Halepa."

See what happened? Freyburg misread the two sentences in the order to him, mentally ignoring the fullstop. The thought that "attack Canea" referred to an attack by German paratroopers from the South-West or by air missed him. All Freyburg saw was "Canea" and "Landing", and so he stretched his reserves accordingly, meaning not only that his counter attack on the 22nd was too small, but also that the Germans could bring in an endless stream of reinforcements and take Crete.

Freyburg hesitated, and lost. It was a lesser hesitation, with no impact on the outcome of the war (we won), but a cliché prover nonetheless.