Syriana. Pollyanna et al.

As I was leaving the theatre after viewing this very impressive and complex movie, my deep thoughts were disturbed by the general comments of the masses around me. Most of them centered around greed. A few of them tried to go deeper and draw some meaningful "live and let live" political strategy. The National Review said that the first part of the movie was good but devolved into a liberal, left-wing message so I was on guard for it. But I didn't find such a message. I saw a very accurate movie depicting the realities of the energy business.

Big oil is an easy target and I think undeservedly so. The problem we encounter in the US is that most of our citizens are emotional adolescents who simply prefer myths and narratives to hard truths. Look at our facination with religion and intelligent design. Here's a hard truth: This lifestyle we enjoy in the United States is 100% based on cheap energy. Here's another one: Practically nothing you do as an individual will affect the price of oil on the world market.

Do you drive a hybrid because it makes you feel morally superior? Well that superiority is a house of cards. It's smoke and mirrors. Fictitious. Even if everyone in this country was to drive hybrids (a current impossibility because of trucking), the price of oil would still not drop any appreciable amount.

In the movie, the USGOV backs a particular prince's rise to the throne because he's friendly to our interests whereas his brother is not. The movie is at it's most heavy handed when contrasting the two princes. The pro-American prince is protrayed as shallow and greedy while the other is a leader who has the support of his people and wants nothing more than to raise the standard of living for all in his Kingdom. Were it always so black and white. More accurate would have been two shallow, greedy, venal princes with one more agreeable to American policies than the other. Anyway, this particular juxtaposition produced the standard cries against American empire. I've heard this particular rant ad nauseum. "I would gladly give up much of my current lifestyle if those people could have a better life." Yeah,right. This is cousin to the same pronouncemnt made after Abu Ghraib where many a Muslim man stated that they would rather be tortured by Saddam than stripped naked. Easy thing to say when you know you're not going to be tortured by Saddam.

The point of all this? The global energy business is rough and if you can't play by those rules, it's best you leave it to those who can. Everything good has it's price. The greater the reward, the greater the cost.

Athena and Islam

A few years back, I wrote a piece for a magazine that never got picked up. The editor of this particular magazine had asked me to write a piece on my opinion of how to liberalize the Middle Eastern Islamic nations. I questioned my qualifications for such a piece but he assured me that my educations coupled with my singular experiences in the Arab states would give me a fresh perspective. It took a while to flesh out but it was easier than I thought because I had some vague notions of this floating around in my head already. What was produces of roughly 5000 words titled "Athena and Islam." I was quite chuffed with the product until the editor (still a friend) convinced me that my idea was of questionable value.

My idea was simple. If you want lasting positive change in the Middle East, you must begin by educating the women. Now I'm not so arrogant to believe that I had an original idea. I probably stole in from someone and I just can't remember who. But it was extremely gratifying to read in Thomas Barnett's book "Blueprint for Action" that he felt the same way. Dr. Barnett states quite powerfully that any nation that treats its women as breeding vessels will be doomed to a lower level standard of living. Women have always been the Guardians of Culture. Civilization itself is a feminine idea. For a developing nation, there is simply no downside to educating its female population. The birthrate and infant mortality rate goes down. Women who wait longer to have children generally treat those children better thereby giving them a better chance at not just surviving but succeeding.

All the authoritarian regimes are masculine by nature. Empower women and the country will attain democracy and pluralism naturally and at it's own pace. Women's rights should be a primary agenda of the US and the UN. Remarkably, the UN has never done much to aid the plight of women in these countries. In fact, UN officials have been positively linked to the sex slave trade. What we should be doing in Iraq and Afghanistan is not just opening the schools up to girls but compelling all females under the age of 16 to attend. Admittedly, this 'seeding' will take a long time to fully flower and depending on the political situation may never happen. But it's the only chance those countries have at long terms success. Trying to impose it from top down will fail. Democracy will fail unless the women in those countries learn to read.

Mosca and the Unions

Mosca's Iron Law: For no matter what reason an organization was started, it will sooner or later serve to further the goals of its leaders.

I just don't get it. I'm absolutely stunned by the irresponsible behavior of the Transit Workers Union in NYC. Their self-serving behavior and the general shortsightedness of Unions in general will be the death of them if not the economy as a whole. As far as the Transit workers are concerned, their strike is illegal. They have certain level of job security working for the New York City Municipal government the few workers enjoy. The cost of this long term stability is their legal ability to strike. I don't want to get into the general morality of this case. (One of the primary issues the workers are striking over the is the right to retire at 50.) But they are trying to maximize their leverage by striking at this time of year of much like when the sanitation workers strike at the height of a New York summer. That's not bargaining in good faith- something the Unions never do.

But what's more disgusting to me is the blatant greed and shortsightedness of labor in general. Don't they realize that it's this very behavior that encourages employers to outsource their labor needs? How do they intend to combat this? By giving money to political candidates who will do their best ot make outsourcing illegal? If that happens, the company itself may be forced to close and then they'll be out of a job. It seems to me that Unions and their members have a complete lack of the ability to follow things out to their logical ends. It's never enough for labor. Is this a dearth of cognitive capacity or just naked opportunism?

The point is this. There was a time in history when unions were necessary. Collective bargaining raised the living standards of many people. But that time has passed. Labor unions no longer serve any purpose other than to enrich their leaders. In no place is this truism more apparent than in Hawaii where the unions are king. There is a reason why most unions have close ties with organized crime which interestingly enough has no unions itself. WalMart has proven that employers can be fair to their workers without unions. Whereas it was in the past when companies needed to be brought to heel with their treatment of their employees. Now it is unions who need to be slapped hard in the face so they recognize reality in the global economy. This relationship between labor and management doesn't have to be adversarial. It's only in the interests of the Union Bosses that this animosity and distrust continues. And honest day's pay for an honest day's work? These days, it seems that it we all would be better served if that adage was reversed. An honest's days work for an honest day's pay.

Barrett's Privateers

I was having dinner last night at a pub and I found myself in a conversation with a nice couple. The man was a Japanese national- a chemist and a professor at a prestigious Japanese University. His wife was a Canadian from Halifax, Nova Scotia who had received her Ph.D. in Japanese. The gentleman and I engaged in a lengthy discussion about Japanese history and culture, most notably the Sengoku Period leading up to the Tokugawa Shogunate. Fascinating conversation actually. We ended our discussion with the Takeda clan and their contribution to bushi damashi or the idea of warrior spirit. I was stoked because the Takeda clan is where the Japanese portion of my martial lineage is housed. Soon after that, his wife started talking about her family history and mentioned privateering. I asked if she knew the song Barrett's Privateers- and old Halifax sea shanty. She almost fell out of her seat. She couldn't believe I even knew of the song. She said if I could sing it, they would pay for my supper. Unfortunately for her, I've spent much of my life in places of ill repute where you learn things like sea shanties. So I sang the song and they bought me dinner. And who says obscure knowledge can't work in your favor? If she had asked me about Ancient Greek history and the Hellenistic Period, I could have really let it fly. But besides all that, it's a great song and I'd like to share some of it with you.

Barrett's Privateers

Oh, the year was 1778
HOW I WISH I WAS IN SHERBROOKE NOW (Caps sung in unison by drunken shipmates)
When a letter of marque came from the King
To the scummiest vessel I'd ever seen

Chorus:
GOD DAMN THEM ALL
I WAS TOLD WE'D CRUISE THE SEAS FOR AMERICAN GOLD
FIRE NO GUNS, SHED NO TEARS
NOW I'M A BROKEN MAN ON A HALIFAX PIER
THE LAST OF BARRET'S PRIVATEERS

The Antelope sloop was a sickening sight
HOW I WISH I WAS IN SHERBROOKE NOW
She'd list to the port and her sails in rags
And the cook in scuppers with the staggers and jags
(CHORUS)

On the 96th day we sailed again
HOW I WISH I WAS IN SHERBROOKE NOW
When a bloody great Yankee hove in sight
With our cracked four pounders we mde to fight
(CHORUS)

Then at length we stood two cables away
HOW I WISH I WAS IN SHERBROOKE NOW
Our cracked four pounders made quite a din
But with one fat ball the Yank stove us in
(CHORUS)

The Antelop shook and pitched on her side
HOW I WISH I WAS IN SHERBROOKE NOW
Barrett was smashed like a bowl of eggs
And the Maintruck carried off both me legs
(CHORUS)

So here I lay in my 23rd year
HOW I WISH I WAS IN SHERBROOKE NOW
It's been 6 years since we sailed away
And I just made Halifax yesterday
GOD DAMN THEM ALL
I WAS TOLD WE'D CRUISE THE SEAS FOR AMERICAN GOLD
FIRE NO GUNS, SHED NO TEARS
NOW I'M A BROKEN MAN ON A HALIFAX PIER
THE LAST OF BARRETT'S PRIVATEERS.

What a great song. Ranks right up there with "Whisky You're the Devil" and "Johnson's Motor Car."

I Don't Care About Natalee Holloway

It has to be said so I'll say it. If Natalee Holloway wasn't cute and white, there would be nearly this ruckus. Walk through any ethnic neighborhood in any major American city and you'll undoubted find flyers for missing folks of all age ranges. I don't blame Beth Holloway Twitty. She's doing what any loving mother would do. I certainly am more charitable to her position than that of the crazily anti-Semitic Cindy Sheehan. But Natalee herself bears some blame. She went got liquored up, possibly took some drugs and went off with 3 boys she'd just met in a foreign country. Any way you look at it, that's just stupid. Now, the Holloway family is trying to organize a boycott of Aruba. Crass as it may be to say, wouldn't have this energy been better spent teaching their daughter a little about the world before they sent her on a vacation to a foreign coutry?

Why should the people of Aruba who as a group, bear no blame for this tragedy, suffer just so Beth Holloway Twitty can have some closure? Why are US Government officials supporting her in this? As for myself, I'm just embarrassed about the way we are handling this. Besides the Gov, the media refuses to let this story go. It reminds me of that kid who got busted in Singapore for vandalism and President Clinton tried to intervene on his behalf. The most powerful man in the free world steps in so an American can be free to disrespect the laws of another country. How bad did that make us look? The USGOV barely gets involved if you get kidnapped overseas. As an adult, you are expected to bear some responsibility for the consequences of your actions. Natalee made an error in judgment and punched the big ticket. That's her mistake, not the people of Aruba's.

Natalee got caught up with the wrong group of boys. It happens everywhere. Some women are naive. Some are attracted to bad boys. The point is, this could have happened just as easily in most any U.S. city. It's sad. It's tragic and it happens everyday in America. Like it or not, the world is fundamentally Hobbesian and when we forget it, it makes up pay.

Stupid Never Knows It's Stupid

There is a difference between knowledge and intelligence. Knowledge is just the accumulation of information. Intelligence has to do with processing that information to achieve a result. This is a key point of the book "Executive Intelligence" by Justin Menekes. He uses the great analogy of a computer. The hard drive is equivalent to knowledge while the processor speed is linked to intelligence. The analogy I like to use when I'm working in Leadership Training conferences is from the martial arts (not surprisingly). In the martial arts, there are these guys who are extremely knowledgable about technique. They know every variation, every nuance and can impress you with the breadth of their knowledge. But the interesting thing is, very few of these "notebook warriors" can actually fight. They may know 150 defenses from 12 different martial arts against a straight right punch but in the fluid, dynamic and deceptive arena of an actual fight, they are relatively powerless. These guys look great in the practice hall where everything is controlled but they're decidely less impressive on the street.

According to Justing Menekes, it's not that different in the executive world. Proper decision making under pressure with limited information is the primary responsibility of the executive. Menekes shows how this is a lot more difficult than it seems and why finding A players is such a difficult task. Part of the reason is the many times, incompetence cannot recognize itself or when others are more competent. As the truism goes, A players hire A players while B players hire C players. Menekes cites the work done by Cornell psychologists Kruger and Dunning in their article, "Unskilled and Unaware of It." Their research was telling and quite startling. Apparently the lower someone is on the competence meter, the higher they think they actually are. People who scored in the 12th percentile generally placed themselves in the 62nd percentile. Nor were they able to recognize the superior thinking of others. I took this as validation for my stringent evaluation process in determining whether or not someone is a worthy conversation partner.

Menekes goes into his particular methodology for evaluating potential hires. It's clear he has something to promote. But at the same time, he raises some very good points and his work is well researched. He goes into brain physiology, psychology and education. He explains human tendencies. He has by far the most gentle manner of basically saying, "Some folks just aren't smart enough to do the job well and there's nothing they can do about it." Intellectual horsepower is genetic. You're given your allotment and that's it. Elitist? Maybe but that's probably why I liked it so much.

I remember having a conversation with a young lady once. We were discussing International Relations and having a difficult time at it. Finally I said that our disagreement was a matter of first principles. I saw the world as Hobbesian and she didn't. She replied, "I think it's really stupid of you to base your world view on a comic strip." She then shot me a withering, contemptuous and oh so superior smirk. I turned away to hide my smile as she continued to prattle on. I stopped listening. You can't tell stupid it's stupid. And it's pointless to try.

Justice, Moral Indignation and a Man Named Tookie

Tookie Williams got the needle like I predicted. I have absolutely no feelings about the execution itself. Perhaps I should care more but I really don’t. As I’ve said before, I’m well aware that our justice system has flaws. For the most part, our prosecutors, whatever they might say about themselves, are after convictions, not the truth. It is through successful convictions they are promoted and rewarded. There is no tangible reward, save personal ones, for Truth. When one of these prosecutors is matched against an overworked public defender, he has the advantage in every way. The prosecutor can bring to bear the weight of the police department. By very virtue of his retention, the public defender will not be able to afford his own investigation. Our system of justice is adversarial by design. Our Founding Fathers thought tragically and thankfully so. By refusing to depend on the goodness of man, they provided the framework for the longest living democracy in the history of the world. A far cry from the motto of the French Revolution (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity) which ended with Robespierre and the Reign of Terror. That being said, Williams was granted far more judicial attention than most of his cohorts in the Crips. He was a true “cause celeb” like Mumia and Peltier. He spent over two decades on death row and had access to first class legal aid. For many, particularly the victims’ families I would guess, this was far too long of a wait. For myself, I’ve been to too many countries where the catch you on Wednesday and kill you on Friday and this way is much much better.

I don’t know if he was truly guilty or not. I wasn’t there and I didn’t see him pull the trigger. But I do know the very liberal 9th Circuit Court among others affirmed his guilt even with the admission of new evidence. I also think that his defense was diluted as well. His supporters could not make up their minds. To them he was a reformed killer and falsely accused at the same time. That’s a logical impossibility as both conditions are mutually exclusive. You cannot be a reformed killer without being a killer first. One is predicated on the other. And if you are a killer, then you weren’t falsely accused. How do you reform a falsely accused man who has spent half his life on death row? Why would you need to? This incoherency as promoted by his supporters did him no good. He would have been better served by consistency either by fully admitting his guilt and begging for leniency or defiantly maintain his innocence to the very end in hopes of shaking the legal foundations of the death penalty. But he tried to hedge and in doing so achieved nothing but creating a ruckus until the next “cause celeb.”

Lastly, I’d like to say that I’ve heard quite enough of the word “justice.” To me, it’s a word like “fair” which I’ve already expounded on. The only working definition of justice worth a damn is the Roman one. Justice is what we are able to compel. There is, inarguably, no cosmic arbiter of Justice as it exists in the material world. Whatever happens after, if anything, is far beyond the purview of man. Unfortunately, this word has become meaningless because it is used universally to bolster one’s position whatever it may be. Everybody wants justice. It’s just that my justice may not be your justice. Any attempt to find an empirical standard of justice that all parties can agree on is dependant on the subjects involved being rational. How often does that happen in death penalty cases? The families of Tookie’s victims feel as if they finally have their justice. His supporters vow to fight on until they get theirs. Which side is right? In terms of feelings, it doesn’t matter because in situations like this the side that loses will always fall back on righteous indignation, preferring to believe in an unlikely conspiracy rather than their error. My sympathies personally don’t lie with Tookie’s faction. I have no time for moral indignation particularly because I distrust it so much when I feel it. Erich Fromm wrote, “There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.” That’s my bias, but in the tradition of the Founding Fathers, I choose to think tragically about Man as well.

Consciousness and Competence

I started the martial arts formally when I was 6. In my 29 years of practice, I’ve developed proficiency in a little over a dozen arts and their derivatives. I’m highly proficient in about half of those. I’ve participated in all manner of sports and competed at a professional level in two and at an international player level in one. In the words of Brian Kilmeade, the Games Do Count because they teach us about living life and they force us to confront our biggest impediment- ourselves.

Through sports and martial arts, I’ve learned a great deal about triumph, failure and the importance of getting back on the bike. But I learned one lesson as a little boy from a martial arts instructor that I feel allowed me to gain high level proficiencies in all manner of activities from fighting to riding a motorcycle to learning a language to negotiating a business deal. What he said was quite simple. “You have to make things big before you can make them small.” I must have been 10 when he told me this. I was a precocious youngster and gifted in the arts but I had no idea what he meant then. It’s only recently that I’ve really come to understand the depth of his words and what they symbolized- patience, perseverance and faith in the method all to attain the goal of simplicity.

Basically, there are four levels of competence. They are:
1. Unconscious and Incompetent- You suck and you don’t know it.
2. Conscious and Incompetent- You suck and you know you suck.
3. Conscious and Competent- You’ve got the skill set and you know it.
4. Unconscious and Competent- You’ve got the skill set and don’t need to know it.

These categories aren’t stove-piped Cartesian distinctions. For them to be useful, you have to view them as they really are which is a methodology. For instance, you can’t get to level 3 without first achieving level 2. They are cumulative. There’s also no way to predict how much time you’ll spend at each level or at what level you’ll hit the ceiling of your natural ability. Far too many people are stuck at the first rung. And to those that make it to level 3, few realize there is a level 4.

High-level Japanese martial artists have a great analogy for levels of skill using the human body. At the first level, when an opponent strikes, you meet him with bone. The contact is hard and jarring. As you progress in skill, the opponent’s strikes are met with muscle, still hard but also pliable and able to yield to gain an advantage. At the next level, the opponent strikes blood or liquid. He has the vague feeling of hitting something but it is unsubstantial and the blows achieve nothing. Lastly his attack only finds air. You simply aren’t there anymore. The attack is irrelevant.

That last level is the one I’m interested in. It’s being in the Zone. It’s moving effortlessly but effectively through the world. I’ve only seen it a few times exhibited by a few people but this ineffable quality is instantly recognizable. It is powerful, subtle and sublime all at the same time. The great sword master Yagyu Munenori said in his book, The Sword and the Mind, “There is no beauty in anything forced.” How do we bring this quality of action into realm of intellect and ideas? How do we think and not be aware that we are thinking? Why does this even matter? Well, my self-conscious is the greatest hindrance to the proper execution of any physical action. When I’m able to lose “I”, my actions are always more effective and graceful. I can only suspect that this is true of my mind as well. I want to get past, observe and direct the voice in my head that says, “I”, not be directed and limited by it. Then perhaps my thoughts will exhibit the efficacy, power and grace my body is capable of. That can only be a good thing.

The Terminator and Cyborg Ethics

I'm curious about the fate of Tookie Williams. Will Schwarzenegger pardon him or not? I'm not going to get into a big thing about the death penalty. Trying to have a rational discussion about that is about as difficult as finding one regarding abortion. I know our justice system has serious flaws but I think that any system administered by man will. I don't believe that Tookie's good works since he's been in prison should necessarily grant him leniency. I think for certain crimes, once you cross a line, you simply can't make up for it. I'm not sure where that line is but I'm pretty sure that the leader of the Crips would find himself on the far side of it. So the issue here is not whether Tookie deserves the gas chamber or whether the State has the right to take his life- at least not to me.

The issue is the Governor's constituency. He lives in LA. His social circle is full of well-meaning but essentially vapid Hollywood types. If he fails to grant Tookie clemency, he will be persona non grata in many Hollywood circles. He may never make another movie. Now when his political career was going great guns, that wasn't so much of a concern. But with the recent schlacking he took with the initiatives, he has to be thinking about what his future plans will be if he loses the Governor's seat. My gut feel is that he's not going to side with the Hollywood set. If you look at his past history, he has committed himself fully to every endeavor. He's not the type to hedge and that's why he's successful. I don't care a bit about Tookie one way or the other. But the decision the Gov makes here will define him as a leader and more importantly, as a man.

The Soft Stuff of Management

A couple of days ago, I was lucky enough to have lunch with a friend of mine currently working towards his MBA. His schedule has been rather full, as you can imagine, at though we lived in rather close proximity, I had only seen him once every 6-8 weeks or so. After catching up, the conversation turned to his classmates with whom he sent roughly 70 hours a week. We were talking about the different social interactions between various groups of people when he used the term "mainland haole." For those of you unfamiliar with the Hawaiian language, "haole" technically means foreigner but has come to only be applied to those of Caucasian decent. My friend is from an affluent suburb of San Francisco but has spent many years overseas and served as a police officer as well before his poor driving skills earned him a medical discharge. A shrewd judge of character, if not motion and distance, he had pretty much separated the class into mainland haoles, locals and Pac Rim (Pacific Rim) students. Of the three, he generally categorized the local people as having the best people skills. This makes sense as relationships are a far better gauge of success in Hawaii than actual competence. He went on to say that the mainland haoles were mostly nice but when the pressure was on, they could become very rude and selfish. They also had a habit of talking down to their classmates. This wasn't news to me either. Growing up in Hawaii and watching the way the mainland tourist spoke to locals, I was quite aware of this style of communication.

But most interesting to me was the behavior of the Pac Rim students. As far as the hard stuff went, they were very competent but their people skills were generally below par. Though they brought prodigious skills to the table, they were often problematic teammates, creating difficulties for themselves and everybody around them. To me this is the greatest failing of the Asian style of education- a focus on the hard stuff at the exclusion and denegration of everything else. That's why there is simply no star management talent coming out of Asia. Kishore Mahbubani- current Dean of the Lee Kew Yuan School of Public Policy and former Singaporean ambassador to the UN, wrote a very controversial book called Can Asian Think? He asks why Asians, when thaken out of their native culture, generally excel in every new environment but yet, most of the Asian countries short of Japan and nominally Korea and Taiwan, are considered developing nations? What it is about the culture that limits their development? The answer clearly is in the educational system. Tacitus once wrote, "In order to know the character of any people, you have only to observe what they love." Asian culture is hamstrung by tradition. In a rapidly accelerating global economy, this creates a great deal of difficulty. Asians love education, but the education they love is symbolic of their character-based language. Memorization matters above all. If you have mental energy left, you simply need to memorize more, not ponder why or how.

I see this that my old high school, Iolani. Generally considered the most academically demanding prep school in Hawaii, my experience with its current student body has been uniformly poor. Out of a group of 15 kids I had close contact with over an extended period of time, only one exhibited the beginnings of any critical thinking skills. I remember my days back at that institution. Critical thinking simply wasn't tolerated. You were expected to memorize and regurgitate. Instead of evolving the method, the school insists it is preparing its students for life by asking them to memorize more thereby understanding less. Iolani is doing nothing but traing a superlative group of middle managers for Citigroup, none of whom will be able to afford the tuition to send their children to Iolani.

So where's the tipping point? When does China and the rest of Pac Rim countries start realizing that the soft stuff is the very lifeblood of management? When will they learn that intellectual property rights are the sine qua non of a truly developed nation? I think it's a long way away. Until the Pac Rim students start taking the "people" part of management seriously, their own countries will always be rife with rampart corruption and developmental woes. Do they ignore it because they lack proficiency or do they lack proficiency because they ignore it? I don't know, and I question if their social fabric can withstand such a change.

Further Cartesian Follies- Science and the Environmental Movement

A few years ago, I came across an article in the Economist about Bjorn Lomborg’s book The Skeptical Environmentalist. The editorial itself didn’t say much about the veracity of the book choosing to focus instead on the interesting fact that Scientific America devoted an entire issue to slamming it. The author thought if a such a book was capable of provoking such a response, it must be worth reading. I agreed and immediately went out to buy it. The Skeptical Environmentalist is Lomborg’s application of hard statistics (of which he is a professor) using the same numbers that the environmental movement uses to justify their positions. In some cases, he came to the same conclusion they did. In most others he did not. When he arrived at a different conclusion, he was very clear why and usually went on to explain how faulty statistical reasoning skewed their results.

Much more recently, I read an article by a scientist attending the climate change conference in Montreal. He was stunned by how few scientists were actually there. It was mostly politicians, various government officials and the detritus that accumulates around them. While there is no dispute that global climate change is occurring, what is up for debate is whether or not this is natural or caused by man. Until we understand the mechanism, we can do little to change it. The indicator is NOT the mechanism. Global warming is the indicator. What’s the mechanism? There’s absolutely no scientific consensus on that.

I don’t trust scientists when it comes to making judgment calls. That’s not what science is about anyway. It’s about hard facts and finding them by trying every possible way to invalidate a hypothesis. One of my professors once told me that science has nothing to do with proving something right. It’s about trying like hell to prove it wrong and begrudging admitting you can’t- for the moment. Judgment is a humanistic skill and one most scientists don’t have a natural proclivity for- at least the ones I've met. Good judgment requires introspection, self-awareness and a desire to uncover one’s unconscious biases. I don’t know many hard scientists who take studies into the “softer” skill sets very seriously. And that is their failing. It’s that damned Cartesian mode of thought again. The very same philosophy that puts reason above all fails miserably when it comes to regulating itself. If science is there to keep religion honest, how do we keep science (or scientists) honest?

A friend of mine is a rising star in a geological department of a major university. She explained to me one day that the earth had a long (geological time long) history of violent weather. In fact, the earth experience violent extremes and massive storms in periods tens of thousands of years in duration. These periods of unrest were bracketed by roughly ten thousand years of relatively mild weather. This unrest-lull-unrest pattern happened with enough regularity that its acceptance is widespread among the geological community. In fact, she mentioned, human civilization started at the beginning of one of these "lull" brackets adding that it was probably due to the more regular weather that larger human encampments were able to develop. I asked when this lull was ending (already anticipating the answer given the history of civilizations) to which she replied, “Oh, about now.” Not less than 10 minutes later, she launched into a rant on how fossil fuel consumption was causing weather pattern changes. I asked if she saw the incoherence of her viewpoints but she couldn’t or wouldn’t see what I was talking about. One was based on hard scientific data. The other was based on emotion. As I’d like to get printed on a T-Shirt, “The indicator is NOT the mechanism.” On the back, it can say, “Causation and correlation are two different things.” But it’s easier to change the facts than it is to change a tightly constructed mental and emotional framework. Here, many scientist aren't that much different than religious zealots. Challenge their core beliefs and you won't be met with a reasonable response. When it comes right down to it, "sacred" can apply to any idea or conept that you fervently believe but can't really explain. Stuff like that tends not to bend. Push it too far and it generally snaps.

Shaking Hands with the Wookie

I've been told that my banter ability is markedly substandard. Mea Culpa. I pray to Zeus that my seriousness is not intellectual pretension which in fact, masks a nominal cognitive ability. I don't think I could live that down. I'm inclined to think not for the sake of my ego but in my defense, I really do stay awake at night and wonder how we in the United States can be so dominated by the philosophy of a man when there is no record of his actual teachings? I'm talking about Jesus Christ. Why are there no original Aramaic accounts of his words? The first records that we have are in Greek which is a very different language. What's the deal here? Okay, in some cases, it's not really necessary. "Love your neighbor like yourself" is a pretty good idea no matter who said it. But "turn the other cheek?" Did he actually mean to say that? I personally own 4 translations of the Iliad, each trumpeting it's greater accuracy. We can't even get into that discussion about the Gospel of Christ because there's no orginal standard except the Greek which is a translation itself! Poor translation is the root of much silliness such as the virgin birth. Peter and Paul's insistence of a virgin birth was motivated by a mis-translation of Hebrew. Mark speaks nothing about it. Neither does Thomas. I say this with all seriousness- how can I receive the soothing balm of Faith when there are just so many inconsistencies? Will I subjugate myself to sloppy thinking? I cannot, in good conscience do so.

So instead, dear reader, as a reward for indulging my ecclesiastical rant, I offer you this:

Top 10 Star Wars Fan Euphemisms For Not Having a Girlfriend

10. Camping aloone outside the theater.
9. My force is no longer with me.
8. The Death Star is not yet operational.
7. The Empire's striking out.
6. Shaking hands with the wookie.
5. Darth Vader has no place to put his helmet.
4. Oiling the droid.
3. Unable to set coordinates for the planet Babe.
2. Spending the night with Han Solo.
1. Tractor beam not powerful enough.

Someonce once told me that if it weren't for my dashing good looks and proclivity for activities that may result in my untimely demise, I'd be the world's biggest nerd.


Okay. I added in the "dashing good looks" part. But I can't really argue with the rest of the statement.

The Meaninglessness of Fair

A very dear friend of mine once gave me C.S. Lewis’ book Mere Christianity. Though not as clever as St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, I still found the book engaging and a very clear methodology for how a thinking, educated man, grounded in science could honestly call himself a Christian. Ultimately, I was unconvinced. As I say repeatedly to anyone who will listen, a well-crafted argument doesn’t necessarily prove anything. For all the aesthetic pleasure the book gave me, it was, at its core, post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning. One thing that did stay with me and informs much of my thinking today is Lewis’ idea that words, because of our goodwill and natural bonhomie have stopped meaning anything empirical. As a result many words are no longer very useful when imparting unbiased information. He gives the word “gentleman” as an example. It used to mean that a particular man was landed and possessed a coat of arms. These days, it has completely lost that meaning and now refers to a person’s character. So instead of imparting concrete information about a specific individual, the word itself says more about how the person using it feels about the person in question.

This is much like the word “fair.” Outside of sports, I don’t see much use for it. Fair, in a minimalist sense, means that the competitors are acting within the same rule set equally applied. That’s it. As long as the parties involved agree to the rule set going in, the competition is fair. But this doesn’t work for anything else- business, media, whatever. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t want to give my competitors a fair shot. I want to crush them at every opportunity. I want every competitive advantage and once I acquire them, I will use them relentlessly and mercilessly.

There’s no such thing as fair in the media either because impartiality in the matter of human judgment is simply impossible. I remember a conversation I had with some friends in San Francisco recently. We were talking about the political center and I maintained that it was much further to the right then they realized. The easy explanation for this is the nature of San Francisco politics. It is a city where the sitting mayor, a man who would be too left wing to be elected anywhere else in America, is referred to, competuously, as conservative. But there’s more to it than that. Every person wants to believe that they are fundamentally a fair person. Because of this, they zero the fair meter on themselves. If they are the sort to make an extra effort, they will push the zero point a little over to the side they don’t agree with in an attempt to balance out their natural bias. But that has nothing to do with where the critical mass of the center actually exists. Trying to find the actual “center” is impossible because by which standard do you judge the “rightness” or “leftness” of an idea? You only have a center if you can find the ends.

I don’t know if I’m fair. I don’t think it’s for me to say. I do think I tend to be more fair about issues I don’t particularly care about. But is that the choice I have? Care or be fair? And is it either fair or unfair? Seems much more grey to me.

The Indicator is NOT the Mechanism

I’m fascinated by the human mind and how various cultures have developed certain patterns of viewing the world. Towards my hope of better understanding my own mind and how it works or fails too, I spend a great deal of time observing the thought processes of people from varying cultures. As much as I am able (which is not very much), I try to take a dispassionate view, seeing each for it’s strengths and it’s faults. What I’ve learned is that cultures are not equal when it comes to moving through the modern world and the quicker we can accept this simple fact, the greater good we can do for the people who are forced to live in Gap countries.

Today, I had a lesson in the workings of the Asian mind and it wasn’t particularly pretty. Before I get anybody all riled up, I’m speaking of the Asian mind as a cultural construct and not as a biological entity. I’m certainly not speaking of innate biological functioning potential. A crew of Asians who had come to work on my house couldn’t get their van out of my driveway. I was informed that the transmission was stuck and wouldn’t go into reverse or drive. Not knowing anything about transmission, I suggested that they wait for my housemate to get home as he knew much more about cars than I did. To make a long story short, turns out that the car had no mechanical problems at all. It easily went into reverse and drive. The only thing that was broken was the indicator on the dashboard. When he tried to explain this, the driver was still visibly nervous that the little plastic indicator foretold impending doom as far as his new transmission was concerned. It wouldn’t have surprised me a bit if they had opted to wait for the tow truck.

This just brought up bad memories of my transplant ordeal in China when the nurses refused to let me see them unwrap a needle out of sterile plastic before I let them stick me with it. I fought them repeatedly on this and they would only give in when I threatened violence. They simply didn’t understand why I would ask (sterility) or how transmission from a dirty needle worked. (basic microbiology)

The Asian educational system doesn’t place much emphasis on how and why. So when the indicator is broken, the mechanism must be too. Paradoxically, this concept exists in Asian philosophy particularly Zen. (A finger that points at the moon is still a finger and not the moon.) For some reason, when applied to modern life, this lesson seems mostly lost. I wonder if there’s an indicator for that.

Kyoto Accords Fire Blanks

Surfers, as a whole, are an apolitical lot. When they do choose to throw their collective weight around, they usually do so in support of environmental causes particularly those pertaining to the ocean. Ask pretty much any surfer if they support stricter environmental guidelines for corporations and I bet you would get a resounding yes. But events don’t happen in a vacuum and life just isn’t that simple. Because of the continued harassment and punitive assessments of Clark Foam by the California Environmental Protection Agency. Grubby Clark has decided to close his doors. His company, which provided 90% of the foam blanks for a piece of equipment that drives an international billion-dollar business closed their doors for business on Monday, December 5, 2005. Besides the end user, the ripple effect is tremendous. Employees of Clark Foam no longer have jobs right at Christmas and may other individual shapers and retail outlets will have difficulties replenishing their stocks. People will lose jobs all because of a good policy initiative that simply went too far.

Now imagine this very draconian measure taking place in all manner of industries across the board. How many people would lose their jobs then? We would see what we see now- Europe backing away from the Kyoto accords because their economies simply could not and cannot bear the strain. There’s one lesson to learn from this and I doubt we (as humanity) will ever learn it: there is barely a correlation and absolutely no causation between passion and competence. Feeling strongly about something, when it comes right down to it, means nothing. People get hurt when we start thinking it does.

Artistic Temperment on the Street (On Polk)

I love fried chicken. If I had to pick a death bed meal fried chicken would definitely be part of it. Sundays at Street on Polk is fried chicken night and they serve as superb a piece as I've had outside of the South. Along with the chicken, the plate includes mashed potato with gravy, sour cream cornbread and a wonderful but disappointingly small serving of corn off the cob. The ratios weren't quite right so I asked for more corn. I was informed that I couldn't have more. So I assumed that the bartender misunderstood my request. So I made her a proposition I was sure they couldn't turn down. I was going to pay for another entire entree but all I wanted was the corn. Still no joy. Apparently, the servings of corn are so precisely measured out that they could not spare another serving EVEN IF I PAID FOR THE ENTIRE ENTREE! Okay, I understand that chefs can be picky about their creations. And I would understand this if I was dining at Scott Howard. But fried chicken? Are you kidding. Bad service and idiotic business practices. I'm surprised that this restaurant has been around as long as it has. Jim, is chowhound useful for something like this?

So You Read the Paper... So What?

I rarely read the paper. Perhaps over coffee on a Sunday but other than that, I can't think of the last time I picked up a physical newspaper. For breaking news, I'll watch TV or check the internet. For timely analysis, I'll read the Economist. If I want to make a deper cut, I'll read the Atlantic Monthly and Harper's. I just don't have much use for a physical newspaper. Having said that, I'm consistently blown away by folks who are obviously diligent consumers of the various news sources and how they tend to consider themselves savvy foreign policy hands. I don't blame them though. Perhaps they are better than those who do not pay attention at all, but that begs the question, "Is it better to possess faulty understanding than no understanding at all?"

The problem starts with the fact that the human mind cannot understand things without context. Facts, ipso facto, mean nothing (to the human mind) without a reference point. This truth bears itself out in our inability to determine the actual speed while in an airplane to our dependence on clocks to accurately tell time. This leads me to my archnemesis, Rene Descartes. Most educated people fall victim to the Cartesian system of belief where the mind commits two very separate and deliberate acts when faced with a new idea. (1) Understanding. (2) Assessment. This sounds nice but it's just not true.

Okay, I have to admit that I'm biased here. I love Spinoza's work. Tractus Politicus changed my life as much as the Republic and The History of Pelopenessian War. I don't say that lightly. These books changed my life because each gave me a new lens with which to view the world. The Spinozan system posits that comprehension and belief is the same act. In order for us to truly understand something, we have to believe it as true at first. Only then, with some work and through directed effort, do we assess it validity." Okay, that's nice Mr. Kahuna, but what's that got to do with anything?" you may ask.

Why are freshly graduated college students fundamentally useless? Because they haven't acquired the experience to test the validity of any of their beliefs. Now ask yourself the next time you encounter a self-appointed pundit what are the chances that they are parroting the framework that was presented as accurate in college? This is also an instrinsic failing of Western modes of thought which tend to be linear- one path and one path alone to the Truth. The Eastern path has been described in comparison as many spokes leading to the hub. When presented with new data, the vast majority of us view that data through the same lens, fundamentally unchanged, since college or whatever seminal event shaped our thinking.

The late Kirk Varnedoe, whom I was blessed beyond words to have briefly as a friend and mentor, said once that Western Civilization's greatest gift was the idea of hypothesize and criticize. Hypothesize and criticize over and over. It's only through that process we can hope to arrive at beliefs that are truly defendable. That's why I'm a voracious consumer of books. I read everything I can because I'm in search of those ideas that can give me a new lens or at least refine the ones I already use. You can't get that from a newspaper, magazine or TV. You need the heft of a book. And I do my best to test these ideas in reality as strenuously as I can because what works is always more important than a clever argument.

The beliefs that we hold most sacred are the very ones we must most vigorously test.

He's Rone-ry, So Rone-ry

Okay, it's not news but I have just been recently reminded how truly insane Kim Jong Ill is. How we tolerate this guy- who's undoubtedly criminally mad- on the international scene is simply beyond me. Let's look at this nutter:
1. It's clear he's anxious to traffic nuclear weapons. Buy, Sell, Trade... he's the Buffalo Exchange of the illicit radiological material. He's so crazy, he's actually admitted to wanting to develop a nuclear arsenal. And the UN and IAEA seemed stunned into inaction by his boldness.
2. His bizarre and cruel regime is funded by the export of narcotics and schwag American dollars.
3. He once kidnapped 2 South Korean movie stars and forced them to star in his own movies filmed on his Universally Insane movie lot.
4. He likes sushi so he kidnapped a sushi chef from Japan who has since run away and still remains in hiding for fear of reprisal.
5. He self-inflicted a famine on his own country responsible for 2 to 4 million deaths.

And that's just a surface cut. Kim's regime is a fun house of horrors. The deeper you look, the weirder it gets. How this guy hasn't earned himself a one way ticket to the Hague is a greater mystery than David Hasselhof and Germany. Unreal. I just hope we (or whomever) does something about him (okay, regime change) before the Beijing Olympics because you know he's dying to make a serious nuisance of himself then. I can only imagine Beijing's response to his shenanigans- a resonse that will undoubtedly spill over into South Korea and we'll be unavoidably involved. So let's save a bunch of lives and Hague this guy before it gets to that. Few men deserve it more.

The Bigotry of Low Expectations

Is caring enough? Does feeling deeply about the plight of others absolve you of the responsibility of having to act? Having acted with noble intentions, do those intentions shield you from the results of your actions? Africa long suffered from the worst of our intentions now suffers from the best of them. We throw money at corrupt governments and expect them to change. We hold huge rock concerts and stun the world with our self-congradulatory arrogance. Our NGO's crusade into barely functional nations and with their good will eviscerate the fledgling hope for functional, native institutions. Latest in this litany of failures is World AIDS Day highlighting the West's dismal failure in stemming this epidemic.

Let me be clear, we cannot control the spread of HIV in Africa unless the nations in question can develop a functional, native medical institutional system. This won't happen unless education is sorted out. And that's not a possibility until we in the West stop catering to failed regimes. It's not a question of just giving them free medications. What good does that do when many of those infected are operationally incapable of taking that medication on time. We might as well flush it down the toilet for all the good it would do. Unless... we are just doing the minimum to make ourselves feel better. Then yeah, it makes sense to pack those life saving drugs up and send them to those in need. And never worry our pretty little heads about it again.

Now I don't know whether or not we should try to tackle this problem. One of the clearest lessons of International Relations is never to let your reach exceed your grasp. But I do think we should stop being hypocritical. We enjoy a high standard of living in the West because we adhere to certain cultural standards. Unless we hold others to the same standard- accounting for the time necessary to reach those standards- we cannot expect them to realistically create the future every mother and father want for their children. In most cases, cultural relativism is just soft bigotry. And it's at its most destructive when we convince the other culture that they themselves deserve less.