Recently in the news has been a report of U.S. marines who desecrated the corpses of slain Afghani insurgents. Much give-and-take has been had and will be had on the subject, but there are some angles to this worth bearing in mind.
The readiest is an appeal to that fundamental maxim, "Be excellent to one another." There's a term floating around, about which much more shall be spoken at another time, as it's become foundational to certain schools of philosophy, psychology, and anthropology, and their extensions into politics. That term is "monkey sphere". To illustrate in brief, a person's monkey sphere is the social group towards which the person owes a certain standard of behavior. One doesn't steal from a member of one's monkey sphere, or deceive them, or treat them badly. From a strictly evolutionary standpoint, though, everyone else is fair game. The only limit to what you can do to them is what they can do to prevent it.
However, it's one of the conceits of ethics that one's morality can grow beyond one's monkey sphere. "[...]for you were strangers in Egypt", "[...]and love your neighbor likewise", and yes, even, "be excellent to one another." Moral enlightenment comes when we can grow our monkey sphere to encompass the entire world. Even our enemies.
Our moral aspirations, the "arrow of longing [we] shoot beyond [ourselves]", say that we can exceed our neurobiology. That we can treat even our enemies with respect. That being a moral human being means not desecrating the dead, even the hated dead.
"But," you say, "you yourself have in the past held up Achilles as the exemplar of a certain standard of behavior. A behavior you yourself have felt worthy of emulation. And Achilles desecrated the body of his fallen foe, Hector."
True, yes, he did. But remember, Achilles is an 'eros. He is not quite a god, but more than a man. He rages as the gods rage, and his slaying of Hector is as a deific act. Then Priam visited him in the night, and even Achilles repented. At that moment, he became human, and as a human, he became capable of shooting the arrow of his longing beyond himself. He could aspire to be a better person. Achilles repented.
Some have said that the dead enemy should be desecrated. That they "did it to us, first." Is that how we want to be remembered by this cold, uncaring universe once we are gone? As not being any better than we are, not any better than our enemies? Has the arrow of our longing fallen so short? Or have we forgotten to fit it to our bow? Surely we can do better than that. Nothing we do means anything, therefore what we do means everything.
What if we could imagine a new species of warrior? Ones who could mourn and praise the dead, even as they fall? "Teach us to care and not to care."
...
"If we do this, then we will show our ferocity." There is no doubt that fear is a force multiplier. When one must use force or the threat of force, then fear becomes a tool in the toolbox. The Assyrians built pyramids of skulls. The Mongols conscripted their defeated enemies to be fed into the maw of the next seige. The Luftwaffe fit sirens to the Ju-87 (and apparently the Galactic Empire did the same with the TIE fighter, in defiance of the conventional acoustics of vacuums).
But desecrating the dead is not a force multiplier. It does not gain one an advantage. One looks monstrous, yes, but not terrifying. There is no use for this is the mathematics of conflict.
Doing this sort of thing simply disgust those who would try to allies. It disgusts foes. In a war of signs and propaganda and ideology such as the U.S. is engaged in, the only victorious endgame is to make peace with the enemy. To remove the reasons the enemy is fighting. To paraphrase Lincoln, "I make my enemy my friend."
...
At the same time, this sort of behavior is predictable. War, as so many have noted, is hell. It takes its toll on those who fight it. In order to fight effectively, one must eschew being a man of peace, and become a man of war. "One who fights with monsters must take care that he not become a monster."
One must expect atrocities in war. There is no such thing as a war crime, because in truth, all wars are crimes. Because the sword is so terrible, one must always use exacting care in choosing to unsheath it. Acts like these are the ugly consequences of war, and one of many reasons why war must never be entered into casually. Even the living are casualties of war.
------
Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Monday, January 9, 2012
Sherlock, series 2
One of the guys I live with has recently turned me on to Sherlock,
the latest English reimagining of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's tales of
Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective. This particular series updates
the legend for the 21st century, which is a fresh take. The basic stories have been rewritten, but are packed with sly allusions to the canon. Sherlock also continues the recent television meme of the super-genius investigator, drawing off of such series as House, Bones, Psych, Lie to Me, and others.
This is, unfortunately, where the series tends to stumble. The original canon tales carry with them a sense of wonder. They're set in the late Victorian period, when forensics was an emerging science. The study and classification of fingerprints was new, Bertillion had just started using his invariant biometrics, and the idea of investigating crimes after the fact was still something of a novelty. The Holmes stories carry some of their strength by their view of the monomaniacal, eccentric genius who is willing to study 143 different types of tobacco ash and so gains an advantage by doing so.
Of course, in the modern age, forensic science is a well matured field. The research has been done. Any competent medical examiner knows how to judge time of death, identify post-mortem injuries, examine blood pooling, and so on. Identifying the type and brand of cigarettes from their ash is now a routine job for lab techs with mass spectrometers. It no longer takes a supergenius to examine and draw conclusions from this sort of evidence.
Warning: spoilers for the second season of Sherlock follow. Assumption is made that anyone reading this will have seen the first season and at least the first episode f the second, "A Scandal in Belgravia"..
No really.
Consider yourself warned.
Oone of the fun aspects from the original stories that is still preserved is the Sherlock scan. Sherlock is still able to quickly scan people and determine their occupation, habits, and something of their personality. This, too, is a field that has developed over the last century, but still remains somewhat ad hoc. People transmit messages every moment that most of them are unaware of. How they sit or stand, the clothes they choose to wear, the words they choose, the constructions of their speech, their expressions... these all tell a patient and acute observer something about them. One of the delights of the Sherlock Holmes mythos is how he reads these signs (a sort of applied psycho-anthro-semiotics). This new series continues that tradition, even going so far as to highlight these observations with graphics that pop up on the screen as Sherlock completes his scan.
The other fun innovation in this new series is the attempts by people to fool or mislead Sherlock's scans. Irene Adler in this latest episode is a valiant attempt: knowing that Sherlock could read so much from her clothing, when she meets him, she appears naked. It works: Sherlock is apparently unable to read anything from her. A nice moment, narratively.
But should Sherlock really draw such a blank? He shouldn't. He may not be able to read the minute signs he's used to reading, but he should still be able to draw information. For instance:
Adler presents a body image that corresponds to contemporary beauty standards. She's slender and obviously not overweight. This is a body image that takes some discipline and effort to maintain.
She initially appears unperterbed by her nudity in front of a stranger, presenting herself somewhat brazenly. She may be accustomed to nudity in semi-public settings (we have already been told that she is a dominatrix by trade, so this is a reasonable conclusion); she wouldn't choose nudity as a tactic unless she were at least somewhat comfortable with it.. She flaunts herself: she may be intending on the shock value, eliciting confusion and possibly arousal. She's using both a breach of convention and sexuality as power. But within a few minutes, she sits in a chair, crossing her arms and legs, covering up. The nudity becomes more obviously a ploy; someone without a modesty taboo (a naturist or nudist) won't become self-conscious. She covers up because she feels vulnerable in some way.
Her nudity was a tactic, meant to shock and confuse. She knows Sherlock by name. Her nakedness prevents him from reading anything from her clothing or the way she wears it. She knows who he is and how he operates. She's making a deliberate bid to confuse him and restrict what he learns. This is useful to know.
Her hair and makeup are neatly done, which also argues against naturism. She's chosen a specifically blood-red shade of lipstick. This is an assertion of experienced sexuality. That particular shade also implies an assertion of power and control. As we already know, she's a dominatrix by trade: a woman doesn't typically blunder into the business. That implies a certain awareness and fascination with power and control. That's an interpersonal paradigm she knows and is comfortable with. This makes her somewhat predictable.
The room is an unremarkable sitting room. It is clean and uncluttered (a housekeeper is inferred). This is not an intimate room. There are no personal emblems on display, except a somewhat ornate mirror over a similarly ornate mantle that serves as the visual focus of the room. The prominence of the mirror suggests a reliance on appearance and seemings. Combined with the centrality of power and control, this suggests a pattern of interpersonal striving dependent on bluff and deception.
This is the room that Sherlock was ushered into, rather than a kitchen, a washroom, or a bedroom. The sitting room is distant and impersonal, which is at odds with Adler's nudity; more confirmation of a ploy. Sherlock has gained access to the house by pretending to be injured and in distress, a facade that Adler quickly penetrates. Once again we have an attempt to assert control by the manipulation of appearances: by penetrating Sherlock's facade while attempting simultaneously to avoid revealing any information transmits that a game is being played in which appearances are central.
And the above doesn't even account for that infromation which someone with the right skillset could derive from such things as facial features, calluses, skeletal formation (showing itself through posture and movement), static facial features, facial expressions, and so on.
All of this can be learned in just a few minutes. Much more information than just a blank because there are no clothes.
------
Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org
This is, unfortunately, where the series tends to stumble. The original canon tales carry with them a sense of wonder. They're set in the late Victorian period, when forensics was an emerging science. The study and classification of fingerprints was new, Bertillion had just started using his invariant biometrics, and the idea of investigating crimes after the fact was still something of a novelty. The Holmes stories carry some of their strength by their view of the monomaniacal, eccentric genius who is willing to study 143 different types of tobacco ash and so gains an advantage by doing so.
Of course, in the modern age, forensic science is a well matured field. The research has been done. Any competent medical examiner knows how to judge time of death, identify post-mortem injuries, examine blood pooling, and so on. Identifying the type and brand of cigarettes from their ash is now a routine job for lab techs with mass spectrometers. It no longer takes a supergenius to examine and draw conclusions from this sort of evidence.
Warning: spoilers for the second season of Sherlock follow. Assumption is made that anyone reading this will have seen the first season and at least the first episode f the second, "A Scandal in Belgravia"..
No really.
Consider yourself warned.
Oone of the fun aspects from the original stories that is still preserved is the Sherlock scan. Sherlock is still able to quickly scan people and determine their occupation, habits, and something of their personality. This, too, is a field that has developed over the last century, but still remains somewhat ad hoc. People transmit messages every moment that most of them are unaware of. How they sit or stand, the clothes they choose to wear, the words they choose, the constructions of their speech, their expressions... these all tell a patient and acute observer something about them. One of the delights of the Sherlock Holmes mythos is how he reads these signs (a sort of applied psycho-anthro-semiotics). This new series continues that tradition, even going so far as to highlight these observations with graphics that pop up on the screen as Sherlock completes his scan.
The other fun innovation in this new series is the attempts by people to fool or mislead Sherlock's scans. Irene Adler in this latest episode is a valiant attempt: knowing that Sherlock could read so much from her clothing, when she meets him, she appears naked. It works: Sherlock is apparently unable to read anything from her. A nice moment, narratively.
But should Sherlock really draw such a blank? He shouldn't. He may not be able to read the minute signs he's used to reading, but he should still be able to draw information. For instance:
Adler presents a body image that corresponds to contemporary beauty standards. She's slender and obviously not overweight. This is a body image that takes some discipline and effort to maintain.
She initially appears unperterbed by her nudity in front of a stranger, presenting herself somewhat brazenly. She may be accustomed to nudity in semi-public settings (we have already been told that she is a dominatrix by trade, so this is a reasonable conclusion); she wouldn't choose nudity as a tactic unless she were at least somewhat comfortable with it.. She flaunts herself: she may be intending on the shock value, eliciting confusion and possibly arousal. She's using both a breach of convention and sexuality as power. But within a few minutes, she sits in a chair, crossing her arms and legs, covering up. The nudity becomes more obviously a ploy; someone without a modesty taboo (a naturist or nudist) won't become self-conscious. She covers up because she feels vulnerable in some way.
Her nudity was a tactic, meant to shock and confuse. She knows Sherlock by name. Her nakedness prevents him from reading anything from her clothing or the way she wears it. She knows who he is and how he operates. She's making a deliberate bid to confuse him and restrict what he learns. This is useful to know.
Her hair and makeup are neatly done, which also argues against naturism. She's chosen a specifically blood-red shade of lipstick. This is an assertion of experienced sexuality. That particular shade also implies an assertion of power and control. As we already know, she's a dominatrix by trade: a woman doesn't typically blunder into the business. That implies a certain awareness and fascination with power and control. That's an interpersonal paradigm she knows and is comfortable with. This makes her somewhat predictable.
The room is an unremarkable sitting room. It is clean and uncluttered (a housekeeper is inferred). This is not an intimate room. There are no personal emblems on display, except a somewhat ornate mirror over a similarly ornate mantle that serves as the visual focus of the room. The prominence of the mirror suggests a reliance on appearance and seemings. Combined with the centrality of power and control, this suggests a pattern of interpersonal striving dependent on bluff and deception.
This is the room that Sherlock was ushered into, rather than a kitchen, a washroom, or a bedroom. The sitting room is distant and impersonal, which is at odds with Adler's nudity; more confirmation of a ploy. Sherlock has gained access to the house by pretending to be injured and in distress, a facade that Adler quickly penetrates. Once again we have an attempt to assert control by the manipulation of appearances: by penetrating Sherlock's facade while attempting simultaneously to avoid revealing any information transmits that a game is being played in which appearances are central.
And the above doesn't even account for that infromation which someone with the right skillset could derive from such things as facial features, calluses, skeletal formation (showing itself through posture and movement), static facial features, facial expressions, and so on.
All of this can be learned in just a few minutes. Much more information than just a blank because there are no clothes.
------
Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org
Sunday, January 8, 2012
This is not the FCC's Fault
Science education in American schools is in a disgraceful state.
A customer (and by "customer", I of course mean the product my company packages up for sale to our real customers, the advertisers) decided to call me the other day, wondering why he could hear Rush on his local AM station, and not Jason Lewis, his preferred source of conservative obfuscation. He seemed confused as to why the signal would disappear late in the day.
Here's how it works:
There is a layer of charged particles in the upper atmosphere known as the 'ionosphere'. The ionosphere reflects radio waves in the AM frequency band. AM radio takes advantage of this phenomenon by deliberately reflecting its signal off the ionosphere and back to Earth, thus allowing AM extend its range without a larger draw of power. This is why AM radio stations tend to be cheaper to buy and run, and thus less-popular formats like talk radio manage to be commercially viable.
The FCC is the quasi-governmental organization within the U.S. charged with managing the radio-frequency spectrum. One of the goals of the FCC is to prevent interference and cross-talk: two stations on the same frequency are not supposed to broadcast to the same geographical point, lest their signals overlap and become mutually unintelligible. Although digital radio, particularly encrypted digital packet radio, offers solutions. But that requires an infrastructure not yet in place.
When night comes, the ionosphere rises to a higher altitude. This has the effect of increasing the range of a given AM radio station, allowing it to cover more area. This leads to a tendency for more stations to overlap and come into conflict. The FCC counters that effect by requiring roughly half of the AM stations to power down or off during nightime hours.
Thus, one stands roughly a 50% chance of losing the signal to a given AM station as night comes on. The time in which that happens will tend to get earlier and earlier as the days get shorter. Short of drastically changing the composition of the atmosphere, altering the axial tilt or rate of rotation of the planet, or traveling off-world there is nothing at all that can be done about this. This is not Obama's fault, voting for Santorum or Bachman will not change this (although if either one takes power, I'll lay money that an an increasing number of Americans won't understand why they can't).
Whether one believes is an naturalistic process of planetary formation or prefers to believe in divine intervention, this is the inherent nature of the planet we live in. Denying scientific inquiry will not change this. No longer teaching science in schools will not change this. Stuffing one's head in a bag, ignoring the complexities of the world, and relying only on "common sense" will not change this. The funny thing about the natural world is that it doesn't care whether or not you believe in it. The solar system will keep doing its thing despite all of your denials, pleadings, or conspiracy theories.
------
Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org
A customer (and by "customer", I of course mean the product my company packages up for sale to our real customers, the advertisers) decided to call me the other day, wondering why he could hear Rush on his local AM station, and not Jason Lewis, his preferred source of conservative obfuscation. He seemed confused as to why the signal would disappear late in the day.
Here's how it works:
There is a layer of charged particles in the upper atmosphere known as the 'ionosphere'. The ionosphere reflects radio waves in the AM frequency band. AM radio takes advantage of this phenomenon by deliberately reflecting its signal off the ionosphere and back to Earth, thus allowing AM extend its range without a larger draw of power. This is why AM radio stations tend to be cheaper to buy and run, and thus less-popular formats like talk radio manage to be commercially viable.
The FCC is the quasi-governmental organization within the U.S. charged with managing the radio-frequency spectrum. One of the goals of the FCC is to prevent interference and cross-talk: two stations on the same frequency are not supposed to broadcast to the same geographical point, lest their signals overlap and become mutually unintelligible. Although digital radio, particularly encrypted digital packet radio, offers solutions. But that requires an infrastructure not yet in place.
When night comes, the ionosphere rises to a higher altitude. This has the effect of increasing the range of a given AM radio station, allowing it to cover more area. This leads to a tendency for more stations to overlap and come into conflict. The FCC counters that effect by requiring roughly half of the AM stations to power down or off during nightime hours.
Thus, one stands roughly a 50% chance of losing the signal to a given AM station as night comes on. The time in which that happens will tend to get earlier and earlier as the days get shorter. Short of drastically changing the composition of the atmosphere, altering the axial tilt or rate of rotation of the planet, or traveling off-world there is nothing at all that can be done about this. This is not Obama's fault, voting for Santorum or Bachman will not change this (although if either one takes power, I'll lay money that an an increasing number of Americans won't understand why they can't).
Whether one believes is an naturalistic process of planetary formation or prefers to believe in divine intervention, this is the inherent nature of the planet we live in. Denying scientific inquiry will not change this. No longer teaching science in schools will not change this. Stuffing one's head in a bag, ignoring the complexities of the world, and relying only on "common sense" will not change this. The funny thing about the natural world is that it doesn't care whether or not you believe in it. The solar system will keep doing its thing despite all of your denials, pleadings, or conspiracy theories.
------
Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
The Origin of the Platypus
It's 23:47. It's late, and the design and coding team is exhausted, strung out on too much caffeine, and a little punchy. Too many hours, too little food, and everyone's snapping at each other. But the Day 4 deliverables are almost done, and everyone's looking forward to getting a little downtime before the start of a fifth, gruelling, full day. The only consolation is, if they get everything done on time, they'll get a full day off.
Then the project lead slaps himself on the forehead. "We forgot Australia!" Oh, sh-. And we were almost done.
No time to do it right. Slap some tag-ends of code together, and give it a quick run-through to see if there are any flaws. Do a thorough debugging? Nah, if it works, post it and fix any problems in the first patch. But, as a bit of black humor, the design team makes everything deadly poisonous.
And so the world got the platypus.
------
Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org
Then the project lead slaps himself on the forehead. "We forgot Australia!" Oh, sh-. And we were almost done.
No time to do it right. Slap some tag-ends of code together, and give it a quick run-through to see if there are any flaws. Do a thorough debugging? Nah, if it works, post it and fix any problems in the first patch. But, as a bit of black humor, the design team makes everything deadly poisonous.
And so the world got the platypus.
------
Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org
Friday, December 16, 2011
A Tale of Karma
In the West, we've forgotten somewhat what karma is.
The other day I was in a gas station / convenience store buying lunch. In line was a young woman, digging in her pockets looking for spare change. As she found each coin, she placed it on the counter, totalling them up in the end. She was buying gas: trying to get enough gas to get home, she said. The man standing behind her, unprompted, laid a ten dollar bill on the counter, saying, "go ahead and add this in."
I've been there before. Hoping that the fumes will be enough to get you just far enough. The stress and the worry is almost worse than actually running out of gas. Not having to worry about it for another three gallons or so can only have been a relief. An unquestionably good deed, follwing the age-old dicta, "be excellent to one another and party on, dudes!"
That's not the topic, tonight.
As is commonly used in Western pop culture, karma is the idea that if you do good things, some sense of universal justice will see to it that good things happen to you. "What goes around, comes around," is the cliche. More commonly in Eastern pop culture, karma sees to it that in your next life, you get what you deserve based on what you did in this one. Bad people become dung beetles and cockroaches the next time around. Again, universal justice.
But that's probably not what Prince Siddhartha had in mind. Karma is the ripples in a limitless pond, the echoes that spread outward from the locusof our deeds. The man in the gas station need not expect karma to repay him, now or in the future. But the ripples of his kind act undoubtadly spread out and have kept spreading. The young woman with the gas is freed from worry; perhaps she is happier. Later, when she arrives, her positive feeling prevents her from being short or angry with the people she encounters at her destination. They, in turn, feel better (or less worse) than they otherwise might. And the good deed continues to ripple outwards.
The world, then, is a pond that is unguessably vast. We don't expect our good deeds to return to us. No universal justice, no treasures in Heaven, no coming around of what goes around. The ripples have no reflection. But when we are gone, then the ripples may continue to spread and expand: our legacy. Our karma. "The signal's loud and clear, but the transmitter's gone."*
Right speech, right action, right livelihood.
Though the stars burn out, their light shines throughout the universe.
* Assemblage 23, "Document"
------
Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org
The other day I was in a gas station / convenience store buying lunch. In line was a young woman, digging in her pockets looking for spare change. As she found each coin, she placed it on the counter, totalling them up in the end. She was buying gas: trying to get enough gas to get home, she said. The man standing behind her, unprompted, laid a ten dollar bill on the counter, saying, "go ahead and add this in."
I've been there before. Hoping that the fumes will be enough to get you just far enough. The stress and the worry is almost worse than actually running out of gas. Not having to worry about it for another three gallons or so can only have been a relief. An unquestionably good deed, follwing the age-old dicta, "be excellent to one another and party on, dudes!"
That's not the topic, tonight.
As is commonly used in Western pop culture, karma is the idea that if you do good things, some sense of universal justice will see to it that good things happen to you. "What goes around, comes around," is the cliche. More commonly in Eastern pop culture, karma sees to it that in your next life, you get what you deserve based on what you did in this one. Bad people become dung beetles and cockroaches the next time around. Again, universal justice.
But that's probably not what Prince Siddhartha had in mind. Karma is the ripples in a limitless pond, the echoes that spread outward from the locusof our deeds. The man in the gas station need not expect karma to repay him, now or in the future. But the ripples of his kind act undoubtadly spread out and have kept spreading. The young woman with the gas is freed from worry; perhaps she is happier. Later, when she arrives, her positive feeling prevents her from being short or angry with the people she encounters at her destination. They, in turn, feel better (or less worse) than they otherwise might. And the good deed continues to ripple outwards.
The world, then, is a pond that is unguessably vast. We don't expect our good deeds to return to us. No universal justice, no treasures in Heaven, no coming around of what goes around. The ripples have no reflection. But when we are gone, then the ripples may continue to spread and expand: our legacy. Our karma. "The signal's loud and clear, but the transmitter's gone."*
Right speech, right action, right livelihood.
Though the stars burn out, their light shines throughout the universe.
* Assemblage 23, "Document"
------
Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Uzbeckibeckibeckistanstan is important.
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan...*
Despite what Herman Cain may believe, these places are important. I don't blame him for not wanting to know anything about them; indeed, in the West it's hard to find decent maps of Central Eurasia. The borders and the topography are inscrutable: rivers and mountains are foreign sounding and difficult to place. The Oxus, the Altai, Samarkand, Karakorum, Baikal: we have no references to these, and we can't find them on a map. This place is on the periphery of Western culture. Central Eurasia is the homeland of barbarians and nomads, forgotten places and forgotten peoples. It is the Other. The important cultural events happen elsewhere.
Or do they? A great grassland sea extends from Budapest to Vladivostok. Its green and amber waves wash upon five significant civilizations: Europe, China, India, Persia, Arabia. Over these steppes and prairies wash peoples, and with those peoples ideas, memories, and goods. Here on the edges of the legible maps of civilization you'll find Islam, Buddhism, Nestorianism, Manicheanism, Taoism, Judaism, and even the paganism of the great open sky all rubbing elbows in ways that their prophets and proselytizers never imagined.
These are the lands of the Silk Road, and of Marco Polo. The lands of Atilla, Tamujin, and Timur the Lame. These lands created the stirrup, the composite bow, and the curved sword. The brought silk, paper, and gunpowder west, and gold and silver East. The journeys of these peoples are at least as important as the travels of the Spanish and Portugese by sea in later centuries. But these peoples are all but forgotten.
Central Asia, the "Empire of the Steppes" as Rene Grousset puts it, has always been a land on the periphery. This is the land of the Scythians of the Greco-Roman period. Out of the sea of grass came Atilla and his Huns, who pushed the Goths westward and southward to trigger the final fall of Rome. This land gave us three beacheads upon the shores of Europe: the Finns, a people apart from the rest of Scandinavia; the Hungarians, who started out as the Magyars, but couldn't shake the reputation of the earlier Huns; and the Turks, who in their turn overthrew Byzantium, nearly came to occupy Eastern Europe, played a pvitol role in European history for 900 years, and who are still important to U.S. relations to NATO and to the Middle East.
We in the West almost remeber Genghis Khan. He and his troops we vaguely think of as murderous barbarians and thugs. It's true that our English word 'horde' comes from the Mongolian 'ordu'. What we don't remember is that the Khanite was the largest contiguous empire in the history of the world. We also don't remember that the Khanite practiced religious tolerance and freedom of conscience almost unheard of in the 12th century. We forget that Genghis Khan is remembered in much of Asia as a unifier and builder of nations. We also forget that it was the recall of Batu in order to establish an orderly succession that freed Hungary and Eastern Europe from Mongol rule.
It is these people against whom the Great Wall was built. The Khitai lent their name to northern China, remembered as Polo's 'Cathay'. It was the Manchu who made Beijing the capital of modern China and re-instituted the civil service exams. Kublai Khan founded the Mongol dynasty of China, the forerunners to the Ming. Before the Hollywood elite knew the Tibetans as an occupied people, they were conquerors of their plateau. It was memory of the pax Mongolia that led to the Mughal empire of northern India. It was the hurricane that repelled the forces of Kublai from Nippon that first bore the name kamikaze.
Because this sea of grass and sand is the buffer zone between cultures, it will play a pivotal role in the 21st century. We in the U.S. are in the habit of seeing Afghanistan as some sort of appendage onto the Middle East, peripheral to the culture and conflicts there. Instead, we might see it as a nearer wing of the vaster stage of Central Eurasia, a place where West meets East.
In recent years, Gitmo has been home to a population of Uighurs, people that briefly became the bane of Western newsreaders who called them instead "Chinese Muslims" because that was easier to pronounce*. Chinese Muslims? Chinese, perhaps, because over the years they've become Sinocized, and because a majority of them live inside the lines on the map that China has claimed. And muslim too, because in this buffer zone of Asia, many unexpected things are true. But do the newsreaders remember that these are the people who gave their alphabet to the Mongols, the people who served as councilors and advisers in the 'civilized' art of government to Genghis Khan, his sons, and grandsons? That they are muslim because under the Grand Khanite, there was freedom of conscience and freedom of religion? "The religions are like the fingers of the hand," Tamujin once said. Not bad for a barbarian.
In the 21st century, as in the last part of the 20th and before, Asia will be defined by four great powers: Russia, the Middle East, China, and India. The place where all of these powers touch is an ocean of grass, with amber waves of grain. Central Eurasia is important, and we might as well learn something about it.
* Nursultan Nazarbayev, Islam Karimov, Roza Otunbayeva, Emomalii Rahmon, and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow respectively serve as presidents.
** It's "Wee-goorr", by the way.
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Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org
Despite what Herman Cain may believe, these places are important. I don't blame him for not wanting to know anything about them; indeed, in the West it's hard to find decent maps of Central Eurasia. The borders and the topography are inscrutable: rivers and mountains are foreign sounding and difficult to place. The Oxus, the Altai, Samarkand, Karakorum, Baikal: we have no references to these, and we can't find them on a map. This place is on the periphery of Western culture. Central Eurasia is the homeland of barbarians and nomads, forgotten places and forgotten peoples. It is the Other. The important cultural events happen elsewhere.
Or do they? A great grassland sea extends from Budapest to Vladivostok. Its green and amber waves wash upon five significant civilizations: Europe, China, India, Persia, Arabia. Over these steppes and prairies wash peoples, and with those peoples ideas, memories, and goods. Here on the edges of the legible maps of civilization you'll find Islam, Buddhism, Nestorianism, Manicheanism, Taoism, Judaism, and even the paganism of the great open sky all rubbing elbows in ways that their prophets and proselytizers never imagined.
These are the lands of the Silk Road, and of Marco Polo. The lands of Atilla, Tamujin, and Timur the Lame. These lands created the stirrup, the composite bow, and the curved sword. The brought silk, paper, and gunpowder west, and gold and silver East. The journeys of these peoples are at least as important as the travels of the Spanish and Portugese by sea in later centuries. But these peoples are all but forgotten.
Central Asia, the "Empire of the Steppes" as Rene Grousset puts it, has always been a land on the periphery. This is the land of the Scythians of the Greco-Roman period. Out of the sea of grass came Atilla and his Huns, who pushed the Goths westward and southward to trigger the final fall of Rome. This land gave us three beacheads upon the shores of Europe: the Finns, a people apart from the rest of Scandinavia; the Hungarians, who started out as the Magyars, but couldn't shake the reputation of the earlier Huns; and the Turks, who in their turn overthrew Byzantium, nearly came to occupy Eastern Europe, played a pvitol role in European history for 900 years, and who are still important to U.S. relations to NATO and to the Middle East.
We in the West almost remeber Genghis Khan. He and his troops we vaguely think of as murderous barbarians and thugs. It's true that our English word 'horde' comes from the Mongolian 'ordu'. What we don't remember is that the Khanite was the largest contiguous empire in the history of the world. We also don't remember that the Khanite practiced religious tolerance and freedom of conscience almost unheard of in the 12th century. We forget that Genghis Khan is remembered in much of Asia as a unifier and builder of nations. We also forget that it was the recall of Batu in order to establish an orderly succession that freed Hungary and Eastern Europe from Mongol rule.
It is these people against whom the Great Wall was built. The Khitai lent their name to northern China, remembered as Polo's 'Cathay'. It was the Manchu who made Beijing the capital of modern China and re-instituted the civil service exams. Kublai Khan founded the Mongol dynasty of China, the forerunners to the Ming. Before the Hollywood elite knew the Tibetans as an occupied people, they were conquerors of their plateau. It was memory of the pax Mongolia that led to the Mughal empire of northern India. It was the hurricane that repelled the forces of Kublai from Nippon that first bore the name kamikaze.
Because this sea of grass and sand is the buffer zone between cultures, it will play a pivotal role in the 21st century. We in the U.S. are in the habit of seeing Afghanistan as some sort of appendage onto the Middle East, peripheral to the culture and conflicts there. Instead, we might see it as a nearer wing of the vaster stage of Central Eurasia, a place where West meets East.
In recent years, Gitmo has been home to a population of Uighurs, people that briefly became the bane of Western newsreaders who called them instead "Chinese Muslims" because that was easier to pronounce*. Chinese Muslims? Chinese, perhaps, because over the years they've become Sinocized, and because a majority of them live inside the lines on the map that China has claimed. And muslim too, because in this buffer zone of Asia, many unexpected things are true. But do the newsreaders remember that these are the people who gave their alphabet to the Mongols, the people who served as councilors and advisers in the 'civilized' art of government to Genghis Khan, his sons, and grandsons? That they are muslim because under the Grand Khanite, there was freedom of conscience and freedom of religion? "The religions are like the fingers of the hand," Tamujin once said. Not bad for a barbarian.
In the 21st century, as in the last part of the 20th and before, Asia will be defined by four great powers: Russia, the Middle East, China, and India. The place where all of these powers touch is an ocean of grass, with amber waves of grain. Central Eurasia is important, and we might as well learn something about it.
* Nursultan Nazarbayev, Islam Karimov, Roza Otunbayeva, Emomalii Rahmon, and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow respectively serve as presidents.
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Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Why Debates Matter
Caller of the day: [paraphrased] "I don't understand why everyone is
picking on Perry for his debate performances. I know lots of people who
are fine in their day-to-day work who freeze when they're taking exams
or certification tests. Having problems when he's center stage doesn't
mean he can't do the work of governing."
Umm... I suppose, for thirteen days in 1963, if John F. Kennedy had choked under pressure, everything would have worked out fine?
...
There are those saying that the GOP is having to many debates. That debates among presidential candidates don't matter or shouldn't matter.
I disagee. While I have a certain distrust and dislike of organized government (much as I have a dislike and distrust of organized religion), if I'm going to be stuck with a federal government, then there are certain qualities I like in a president. Debates highlight some of them.
If there must be a commander in chief, let's have one that can think on his feet. "Nonsense!" some would say. "Presidents have advisers who provide information and suggest possible courses of action. All the president has to do is read speeches and make decisions." There's more to it, I think. Executives have to learn information, filter it, and make decisions. While taking information in quickly, they have to be able to filter it. Rats have to be smelled, biases detected, fallicies unmasked, groupthink disassembled, context gleaned and examined. This process is best done against a background of a diverse education. A chief executive who knows where Cyprus is, who knows what the issue is with South Osseta, and who knows who the president of 'uzbeckiceckiceckistanstan' is is better prepared to catch errors, find biases, and detect smoke being blown in his direction than someone who is limping along, leaning on their advisors.
A good debate will highlight that. It will demonstrate who can think on their feet and who is relying on canned responses. A debate will show who actually has numbers and facts ready to hand, and who can't go off script. It will illustrate who has actually opinions on things and who is following a party platform.
Debates matter. They separate the minds at work from the cardboard cutouts. And in the case of Michelle Bachman, debates highlight who is bats*** crazy.
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Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org
Umm... I suppose, for thirteen days in 1963, if John F. Kennedy had choked under pressure, everything would have worked out fine?
...
There are those saying that the GOP is having to many debates. That debates among presidential candidates don't matter or shouldn't matter.
I disagee. While I have a certain distrust and dislike of organized government (much as I have a dislike and distrust of organized religion), if I'm going to be stuck with a federal government, then there are certain qualities I like in a president. Debates highlight some of them.
If there must be a commander in chief, let's have one that can think on his feet. "Nonsense!" some would say. "Presidents have advisers who provide information and suggest possible courses of action. All the president has to do is read speeches and make decisions." There's more to it, I think. Executives have to learn information, filter it, and make decisions. While taking information in quickly, they have to be able to filter it. Rats have to be smelled, biases detected, fallicies unmasked, groupthink disassembled, context gleaned and examined. This process is best done against a background of a diverse education. A chief executive who knows where Cyprus is, who knows what the issue is with South Osseta, and who knows who the president of 'uzbeckiceckiceckistanstan' is is better prepared to catch errors, find biases, and detect smoke being blown in his direction than someone who is limping along, leaning on their advisors.
A good debate will highlight that. It will demonstrate who can think on their feet and who is relying on canned responses. A debate will show who actually has numbers and facts ready to hand, and who can't go off script. It will illustrate who has actually opinions on things and who is following a party platform.
Debates matter. They separate the minds at work from the cardboard cutouts. And in the case of Michelle Bachman, debates highlight who is bats*** crazy.
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Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org
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