re: Technology: Shall Computers be Damned? (Tor Guimaraes, Brazil/US)

On 4 November, Tor Guimaraes wrote:

Even Moore’s law will be useless if people are not buying the damned computers.

To which JE retorted:

Don’t damn our computers! Outside of a conference every two-three years, they’re the only thing that glue us together, WAISly speaking. (I’m in my Adrian office right now, looking at the Macintosh SE/30…it’s rather like contemplating Yorick’s skull.)

Tor replies:

JE is right about damning of computers in general. A few days ago I was admiring our computers/Internet for the incredible bringing together of people for business and pleasure as never before. I meant damn the computers only if you cannot afford one because you are unemployed. And, yes, they are cheaper and cheaper.

JE comments, again: I would suspect that in the US and other developed nations, computer use has actually increased during the latest recession. There are a lot of bored unemployed people surfing the ‘Net to pass the time–although many may have had to disconnect their Internet service to economize. Has a study been done on this?

re: Technology: New Uses for Old Computers (Clyde McMorrow, US)

Bookends, bookmarks, doorstops–all child’s play. Clyde McMorrow has found some truly innovative uses for obsolete computers:

Old DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation -> Compac -> now HP) 11/780 cabinets are in big demand as bars. I have two friends that have Cray 1 (Control Data 8600 -> Cray -> Silicon Graphics -> Sun -> Oracle, maybe) chassis that they use for couches. I use one of the cordwood logic modules from a CDC 6600 to hold my coffee cup. I might mention that most of these machines were built from discrete transistors; no integrated circuits. My cordwood module is about 2″x2″x1/2″ and has 28 transistors, a bunch of resistors but no capacitors. Seymour Cray felt that capacitors slowed electronics down and were, therefore, not required in his computers. Thousands of cordwood modules were strung together with 50 Ohm transmission lines to make a computer. The energy consumption for the big CDC and Cray machines was over 10,000 watts. The result was a machine with roughly the same computing power we expect to see in a good cell phone today.

JE comments: I looked for ten minutes on the ‘Net for a picture of a Cray Couch. No luck, but lots of photos of bluesman Robert Cray. I’d be grateful if Clyde McMorrow could snap a picture of one of his friends’ sofas–I’d love to share it with WAISdom.

Will we ever be lounging on old MacBooks?

re: Technology: New Uses for Old Computers (John Heelan, UK)

JE asked on 4 November:

What is the most innovative/creative use you’ve found for an obsolete computer? “Dust collector” doesn’t count. Randy Black has found a high-tech door stop.

John Heelan reports:

I have an IBM 80-column punched card (circa 1964) that I still use as a bookmark (a partner to my 1970s TWA “Sorry-Seat Occupied” plastic notice!). A friend cannibalises LEDs from obsolete machines and creates flashing jewelry from them.

JE comments: I’ve always wanted to turn my primitive MacIntosh into a planter. Take out the guts and screen, and the plant can grow sideways out of the opening where the screen used to be. An ambitious, “out-of-the-box” IT application–so for now, Protolithic Mac will remain a bookend.

re: Aviation: a Remarkable DC-3 Story (Michael Sullivan, US)

Michael Sullivan responds to Bienvenido Macario’s post of 21 October:

I gave a eulogy last Saturday for a 88 year-old former Marine pilot who won a Silver Star flying a DC-3 (C-117 or R4D in the Marines) in Vietnam. Few Silver Stars have been awarded to DC-3 pilots in all seventy years it has been operating.

This remarkable feat of heroism came when the DC-3 was flying a night flare mission. The pilot heard an emergency mission being set up on the radio to save a company of Marines who had been surrounded by an NVA Regt. in the NW corner of South Vietnam. The fast moving fighter-attack aircraft could not get into the area as the weather was too bad and it was mountainous terrain. He offered up his services as he could fly the DC-3 slow enough to see slightly underneath the weather so he could get into the target area. The DC-3 has no ordnance so he rapidly flipped on and off his landing lights simulating machine gun fire. It was enough to pin the NVA down and let the Marines make a successful withdrawal. This took great airmanship skills as well as courage above and beyond as his chances of striking higher rising terrain were excellent in bad weather and at night, not to mention getting shot down as an easy, lumbering target.

This particular Marine pilot was a flying Master Gunnery Sergeant and the last of the Naval Aviation Enlisted Pilots. He flew combat in jets in Korea and combat in Vietnam in helos and DC-3s. He retired out of the Marine Corps with nearly 19,000 hours (mainly as a transport plane commander) and flew another 10,000 hours in BAC-111s as a corporate pilot after he retired.

JE comments: Michael Sullivan’s flying stories never fail to captivate. Coincidentally, Vincent Littrell and I at WAIS ‘09 had a brief conversation on enlisted pilots, in the context of Mike Bonnie’s presentation. Michael Sullivan has answered my question: apparently only officers now serve as pilots in the US Armed Forces.

re: Technology: Gone the Way of the Slide Rule; on Navigation (Cameron Sawyer, Russia)

Cameron Sawyer responds to Istvan Simon’s post of 26 August:

A magnetic compass, hourglass and sundial are not the right non-electronic means of navigation on the ocean.  Long before the invention of GPS and before then LORAN, celestial navigation was developed to a high degree of accuracy.  All you need is an accurate chronometer (which can be mechanical if you like) and a good sextant, to determine your position to less than one nautical mile.  If you have an accurate compass and log (speedometer) besides that, you can do dead reckoning to keep you position between celestial shots or when it is too overcast to take a shot. 

Really good offshore sailors do celestial.  I confess that I do not, but it’s on my list, and it’s moved up my list since the risk of disruptions of the GPS system seems to be increasing.
 
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For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: Britannica vs. Wikipedia (Tim Brown, US)

Tim Brown responds to Cameron Sawyer’s post of 26 August:

I’m not enamoured of Wikipedia.
 
In discussion of the entry on the Nicaraguan Contras, I’m repeatedly labelled a pro-Reagan propagandist and my The Real Contra War is described as completely without references or notes, a piece of trash by a biased pamphleteer, by four different correspondents, not one of which has even read it.
 
The Real Contra War is a doctoral dissertation that was approved by an exceptionally large nine-member doctoral committee drawn from four disciplines and chaired by the Dean of the Graduate School. Then, before its publication it was further peer reviewed by, I was told, five independent scholars. It is the product of eight years of research into primary sources, including approximately 160,000 pages of Contra files (most can now be consulted at the Hoover Archives), several thousand pages of investigative documents produced by the Costa Rican National Assembly, more than 100,000 pages of declassified US government documents, 59 extensive oral histories of participants and 48 exclusive interviews with Sandinistas and Costa Rican, Panamanian, Honduran, Salvadoran and Nicaraguan senior officials of the period that were involved. It has 35 pages of notes, a 27-page bibliography and is illustrated by 30+ previously unpublished documents, many from original Sandinista archives of the 1962-79 period (these, too, can be consulted at Hoover). And it has no references?
 
The comments in Wikipedia are little more than highly opinionated, badly informed shrill arguments between persons with strong unsubstantiated personal opinions and no independent knowledge of the subject. If that’s typical of the people who provide input for the Wikipedia then its a discussion forum, a super blog if you will, not a reliable source of objective information. It may be bigger than any print encyclopedia, but being gigantic does not make it more accurate. In fact massive amounts of untested data appear to drown out just a few pages of meticulously researched objective scholarship in an encyclopedia. And only a real expert will ever be the wiser.
 
But then, as they say, I’m prejudiced.

JE comments:  See my comments to Eugen Solf’s post of 27 August (ten minutes ago).  Like with WAIS, can we accept that even Wikipedia can have a bad day?  Certainly there are mistakes and biases on Wikipedia, but the most egregious of them tend to be flagged and cleaned up over time.  Like Cameron Sawyer, I am a big fan of this democratically sourced archive of human knowledge.

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For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: Britannica and Wikipedia (Eugen Solf, Germany)

Eugen Solf responds to Cameron Sawyer’s post of 26 August:

We have extensively discussed Wikipedia and will so in the future–mainly because of the reasons Cameron mentions. In these times of Information Technology, which no doubt we all at the end of the day embrace rather than neglect, the question is no longer “Encyclopedia Britannica or an online source” but rather “which online source?” There have been (probably biased) tests as to the accuracy of online sources vs. encyclopedias, but that now seems to be equal to a comparison of apples and pears. It is maybe worth noting that information is the bundling of data, whereas knowledge is the systematic connection of those data for an analytical use of the information. Over time of course information and the publication of it has increased exponentially, coupled with all biases and opinions, so the critics of new information spreading is not new. It is worth noting that Martin Luther in 1521 could not have had such a success in his criticism of the Roman Catholic Church and subsequent introduction of the Lutheran Church had not the art of book printing been invented a little earlier.

Maybe we can agree that all information should be treated with a grain of salt, and just because something appears in the Internet it is not necessarily true. This is too easy and can easily put the blame on the ‘Net rather than one’s intellect. 

JE comments:  Eugen Solf’s distinction between “information” and “knowledge” is crucial for this conversation.  A. J. Cave has brought up (in her recent meta-discussions on WAIS) the notion of “insight.”  WAIS on a good day provides all three.  On a bad day–well, WAIS operates 24/7 and everyone is entitled to the occasional bad day.

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For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: Britannica and Wikipedia (Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich, US; ex-Iran)

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich responds to Cameron Sawyer’s post of 26 August:

I can only be grateful that The Britannica has an impressive team of expert contributors and a staff of full-time editors to prevent vandalism.    No doubt, much like any information source, it has not been free of criticism for inaccuracy and bias. However, Wikipedia does not even profess to have experts contribute to it.   Anyone can make any change to any given entry.  Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, has called for “flagged revisions”–this would require changes by unknown users to be approved by one of the site’s editors prior to publication.   According to Wikimedia the system was “essentially a buffer, to reduce the visibility and impact of vandalism on these articles” (source:   http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8220220.stm   ). 

JE comments:  Our discussion of obsolete technologies has transformed itself to one of our favorite recurring topics:  Wikipedia.  Allow me to pose a question for starry-eyed futurologists:  can anyone envision a time when Wikipedia itself will become obsolete? 

More Wiki-posts to follow.

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: On IBM Cards (John Heelan, UK)

David Fleischer wrote on 26 August:
  
To Randy Black’s very interesting list of 25 August, I would like to add the “IBM card”–a data processing card we learned to use back in the 1960s and 1970s… None of my students had ever seen an “IBM card.”  

John Heelan comments:  

By coincidence, I found in a book I have had for 40+ years, an old 80-column IBM punch card that I must have been using as a bookmark. (Back in the Dark Ages of the computer industry, I started my career in IT designing and programming systems based on punched cards.)

JE comments:  John Heelan’s find reminds me of a 1906 high school “hall pass” stuck in an old book I bought a few years ago in an antiquarian book shop.  One observation:  over the last century our penmanship (penpersonship?) has really gone down the tubes.  Another observation:  why don’t I ever find original letters from, say, Lincoln, or vintage $100 bills?

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: Gone the Way of the Slide Rule (Andrew Johnson, Australia)

On 26 August, Robert Whealey wrote about the general apathy towards history in the United States.  Andrew Johnson responds:

There is a common assumption that nations from the US to Indonesia act in accord with the public’s psyche and whim. I suggest government and commercial decisions are generally made for their own reasons rather than genuine concern about transient public moods.

The confidential nature of most of these decisions can make later analysis difficult. And the apparent attitude towards history could simply be a more universal preference for a comfortable belief that your nation and own actions have always been righteous.

By the twentieth century mass advertising became a reality, both the informational form and the persuasive form. Perhaps, for a hundred years people with personality disorders (possibly even Ford and others) who placed profits above human values have been able to sway the majority into similar beliefs, with baby steps like “greed is good,” and for such people history and reality are not always helpful things.

JE comments:  WAISers will best remember Andrew Johnson (no relation to the 17th US president) for his postings a couple of years back on Papua New Guinea-Indonesia relations.  According to my records, Andrew hasn’t written the Forum since April 2007.  I trust all is well, and am very glad to hear from him.

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: Gone the Way of the Slide Rule (Istvan Simon, US)

Istvan Simon writes, in response to George Krajcsik,  John Eipper, David Fleischer, Eugen Solf and others:

I own several slide rules, and I know how to use them very well, though the best of them, the K+E tri-log one that I learned how to use in college is somewhere in my mother’s apartment, I think. I should have it near my computer like George.

I am amazed and admire George for his piloting skills. There are a number of pilots in WAIS, from fighter pilots like Michael Sullivan to more recreational fliers like George and Randy Black, if memory serves me right. I admire them all, because it is a skill I would love to have, but do not.  

Speaking of pilots, Eugen Solf wrote how he teaches his children that they must learn more primitive methods of navigation and I agree. Actually, put them on a boat in the Atlantic, with a sail, provisions, a magnetic compass, an hourglass and a sundial, and tell them to sail to the United States, like Columbus did.  Just for emergencies take some two-way radios too.

Navigation is an amazing thing, and the primitive methods are the most amazing, and it should be mandatory in every classroom. How useful this is, is illustrated by the Second World War, and the Battle of Britain. The Luftwaffe had a modern system for their bombers, in which they beamed two radio beams so they would cross over the required target in Britain. This system was so accurate and scientific that they taught all Luftwaffe bomber pilots no other navigation skills. The only catch was that the British learned about the system, and would electronically bend the beams, so the Luftwaffe would happily release their bombs over some cow pasture instead of, say, Coventry.  So,  Eugen’s care to teach his children some old-fashioned skills is very wise indeed.

The voting machines that David Fleischer wrote about are simple and can be effective. To guard against fraud, the machine could and should print a card with duplicates of the vote, so the voter can check it,  nd physically cast the duplicate in the ballot box.

Many people, including some WAISers, accused Diebold of fraud in the second election of George W. Bush. I voted with a Diebold machine, by the way. I think that this is completely unwarranted, as I wrote in WAIS at the time, and I would bet large quantities of my cash that no fraud occurred. Still, fraud is possible, if unlikely, when electronic voting is used. The simple measure of printing the vote on a card that I just mentioned, would insure against fraud. It would still be possible for the machine to print the right vote, but internally count the fraudulent one, but it would be caught in any recount of the vote. Random certification would also insure honesty.  

Another risk of the system that David described, is that it is possible to violate the secrecy of the vote with such a system, in which the voter is identified as he described.  Such systems were used in dictatorships to coerce people to vote for whom the authorities wanted, hence elections in which 99% voted for a candidate in communist countries.  

JE comments:  Set one’s children adrift in the Atlantic?  I don’t think Protective Services would approve…

A request for participants in WAIS ‘09 (just six weeks away!):  can someone (hint:  Istvan) offer us a slide rule demonstration?  It would be extremely informative.

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: Gone the Way of the Slide Rule (Cameron Sawyer, Russia)

Cameron Sawyer responds to Eugen Solf’s post of 26 August:

I have three sets of Encyclopedia Britannica, one each from the late 20th century, the late 19th century, and the late 18th century.  I spend endless hours with them.  But they are vastly inferior to Wikipedia and other online sources in almost every way.  EB contains probably five or six orders of magnitude less information than Wikipedia, is updated only once in a decade or so, and is edited by a small group of people with similar prejudices to each other.  How different is Wikipedia, with its immense volume of information and editing by extremely broad groups of people!  I’ve said it before but it’s worth saying again–this is a true revolution in knowledge.

JE comments:  I cannot disagree with Cameron; WAISers know that Wikipedia is my second favorite website.  That it remains forever current is perhaps its biggest strength.  This morning, for example, I noted that Sen. Kennedy’s entry had been rendered entirely in the past tense a mere hour or two after the announcement of his death.

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: Gone the Way of the Slide Rule (Robert Whealey, US)

Robert Whealey writes: 

When I finished my graduate work in 1959 at the University  
of Michigan, I was informed that for history before 1911 the 11th edition  
was the best Britannica ever published.  The University of Chicago in  
subsequent editions cut down the space for history. American society is  
putting its history down Orwell’s Memory Hole.

JE comments:  Americans don’t like history–but why is that?  Might Henry Ford, as good a candidate as anyone for the person who ushered in Modernity, have correctly gauged the American psyche when he (famously) said, “History is bunk”?

Eugen Solf is a proud owner of the 1911 Britannica.  For another perspective on the EB, see Cameron Sawyer’s thoughts (next in the queue).

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: Gone the Way of the Slide Rule (Miles Seeley, US)

Following Randy Black’s post of 25 August, Miles Seeley comments on obsolete technologies:

I finally gave up and used a turntable and software to convert about 80 of our prized vinyl records to CDs and flash drives. I’ll get around to doing the other 250 or so eventually.

Like most 80-year-olds, I miss quite a few things from a simpler age. But having today’s computers is a joy, and the biggest joy of all is the Kindle reader.

JE comments: Ahem…wouldn’t Miles’s biggest joy be WAIS?

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: Gone the Way of the Slide Rule (Eugen Solf, Germany)

Eugen Solf responds to Randy Black’s post of 25 August:

Some thoughts that may go beyond the use of “extinct” products.

Encyclopedia Britannica: I bought one, but it was an edition of 1911–it was about 20 years ago and it was a present for my father’s 65th birthday. Yet I have it and use it out of curiosity. It is fascinating read because it discusses things extensively which are now taken for granted and opens an eye for the thoughts of about a hundred years ago. On a more serious issue I bought the German equivalent (Brockhaus Enzyklopädie) for obvious reasons (language) and in paperback version (price). It is well used, as I make the children often look up things in there rather than out of reflex go to some Internet site. An example: one child wanted to find out about Marco Polo and rather than let her type the name into the internet I made her look it up. Sure enough she looked at “M” rather than “P,” and of course found nothing! As one of my teachers told me:  If you cannot calculate without a calculator then you may not use one.

Photos: Also here I often use the old-fashioned film camera rather than a digital camera. I bet you that in the end its cheaper to make real photos and have them developed rather than buy a digital camera, make endless redundant photos, store them on some hard disc and forget about them than to make some good ones, not waste memory and actually look at them rather than huddle in front of a PC and see little. Maybe I exaggerate a bit . . .

Telephones: The trend seems to go towards households without land lines as discussed, I believe in vast empty Norway (Nokia-country), 70% of households have only cell phones. Here in Germany it is maybe 15%. The implication however is that after a certain moment the average cost for the remaining users will be prohibitively high (lots of businesses depend on land lines), that a whole important industry may price itself out of the market–with all the implications for society (unchanged high fixed costs have to be distributed among fewer customers, so fixed cost per customer will rise). The average use in Germany of a telephone is 10 minutes per day (households)–so an industry will have to reinvent itself sooner rather than later. And of course all of you have encountered the moment when during a long conversation you told the person you were talking to that you should switch to a land line, as the quality is probably better.

Navigation systems: I agree with all that has been said so far but I will certainly teach the kids to read a map (see “calculators”)–if they can do that they will be “allowed” to use a sat nav system and use the information provided with a grain of salt. Does everybody remember where the sun sets and rises and in what direction you’d be travelling? East? West? What if you programmed the sat nav incorrectly and are stuck somewhere without a proper map?

On second thought: Of all the products extinct (or nearly extinct), I am sure there will be someone who will make a business out of revitalising those products as the industry for “retro” products is rising and people will be reluctant to depend only on electronic products.

Not all is lost!

JE comments:  Retro is always in style!  The last time I was lost while driving was in Eugen Solf’s Germany–on August 4th I drove for about 45 minutes around Berlin looking for our hotel.  Using the setting sun as a guide, I figured out how to go in a westerly direction.  No, I didn’t have a nav system, but the free map from the car rental place eventually came to the rescue.  (Maps don’t help in the penultimate place I got lost, San Jose, Costa Rica, as very few of the streets are marked or even seem to have names; as a wise traveler once remarked, you can’t tell where you’re going if you don’t know where you are.  It took us three hours to find the hotel.)

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For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: Gone the Way of the Slide Rule (John Heelan, UK)

John Heelan (JH) responds to JE’s comments of 25 August (see Randy Black’s posting from that date):

JE:  We have no telephone land line, and my two 35-mm Nikons haven’t been used in half a decade.  (One of them is 30 years old.)  I still hold on to them, however, as they are exquisite equipment and those newfangled digital cameras are just appliances–gadgets basically.

JH:  Gadgets only for those who use them for “family snaps”–usually missing either heads or feet–and such utilitarian tasks.   We “artists” can now concentrate on composing photo-masterpieces, turning off the automatic options when we want to play with lens, setting, shutter speeds and so on.

JE:  A question for WAISdom:  how many can actually use a slide rule?  My late father, a chemical engineer, was a SR virtuoso.  My sister, trained a generation later in the same profession, has never had to pick one up.

JH:  I have long forgotten how to use a flat slide-rule!  I even used to have a circular “commercial” slide-rule shaped like a cosh (short nightstick?) that would have been useful as a weapon, if ever needed, in combative commercial negotiations.

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: Gone the Way of the Slide Rule (David Fleischer, Brazil)

David Fleischer writes:
 
To Randy Black’s very interesting list of 25 August, I would like to add the “IBM card”–a data processing card we learned to use back in the 1960s and 1970s.
 
Yesterday, in my “Election Systems” class at the University of Brasília, we reviewed the diverse voting mechanisms used by US states and counties–from “touch screens” to IBM cards, paper ballots and lever machines. 
 
None of these students had ever seen an “IBM card.”  Then, I asked them, “Do you remember the recount of the presidential vote in the state of Florida in November - December 2000, when the whole nation (and world) held its breath waiting for the result?”  They all said “yes”–that was only eight years ago.
 
Then, I asked them–do you remember the persons doing the recount holding cards up to the light to confirm the punched hole and the presence of “chads” (something else they had never heard of).  After some thought, their answer was again “yes.” 
 
In 2000, 34.4% of US voters used “punch cards” to vote (either an IBM-type card or what is called the “butterfly ballot”).  At that time, these IBM cards were “read” by a “card reader” or a ”counter-sorter” that were then very obsolete machines–replacement parts and maintenance hard to find in most US states.
 
New York state still uses the “lever voting machines” that were first used in the early 1900s (long before most WAISers were born)–17.8% of US voters used these in 2000.  That same year, 27.5% of US voters used “optical scan”  systems–with a paper sheet marked with a 2B pencil.  The “very modern” mechanism–touch screens–were used by only 10.7% of US voters in 2000–because they are very expensive.
 
In Brazil, we have been using “electronic voting machines” since the late 1990s.  These relative simple and cheap (some US$200.00 each) machines are equipped with a keyboard (buttons) similar to a touch-tone phone (that all Brazilians are familiar with) and a small color TV screen.  For each office by sequence, the voter is asked to key in the code for the candidate he/she wishes to vote for.  Then, that candidate’s picture, name, party label and code number pop up on the screen, and the machine asks–”Is this who you wish to vote for?”  If the answer is “yes,” the voter simply pushes the “Confirm” button.  If the voter has a “crib sheet” with the code numbers for his/her preferred candidates, this process can take about one minute.  Each voter has a voter registration card with a bar-code that is scanned by the poll worker at the voter’s precinct.  Once he/she is correctly identified, then the poll worker “opens” the voting machine for the voter to use.  PROBLEM:  Because there is no “paper trail,” there can be no recount of ”ballots”–the same problem with the lever machines in New York State.
 
Footnote: Brazilians wonder why Americans don’t use the Brazilian system.  The company that makes these machines was acquired by Deibold (a US firm)–so adopting these electronic voting machines in the US would not be difficult. 

JE comments:  ”Keypunch operator”–there’s an obsolete profession!  We can add it to the list that includes ice man, phrenologist, or, if you live in Michigan, “auto worker” (alas).

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: Gone the Way of the Slide Rule (George Krajcsik, US)

On slide rules, George Krajcsik writes:

Our esteemed editor’s question at the end of Randy Black’s note (25 August) hit a chord in me.  
 
I actually own two slide rules, which I used in college in the late fifties and still know how to use them.  One is a pocket-size (6 inch) Charvoz model Aristo, made in Germany, the other is a 13-inch Graphoplex (it is a thing of beauty) model Brevete, made in France.  I like both not so much for their functionality and accuracy (a slide rule is only as accurate as its user) as for their sheer beauty.  I keep one next to my PC–just in case (ha, ha).
 
Of things that were part of our past, but now gone: signet rings and wax seals on letters.  I own a close relative of that, but don’t use now, which is a “chop” that I used to sign my students’ papers when I taught in China. (Chop is a seal with one’s name in Chinese characters carved out of soft stone and pushed into a red ink-pad, or rather a red rubbery glob that functions as an ink-pad.)  Almost all Chinese drawings and paintings (or documents) have a chop mark.   
 
In my 35 year-old aircraft I have instruments which are that old or older that I rely on each time I fly:  the turn-and-bank indicator that would have been familiar to Lindbergh and have not changed in the last 50 or more years; an ADF (automatic direction finder) radio; two VOR navigation radios–they go back to WWII.  A LORAN (long range navigation) radio that harks back to the ’40s.  But at the same time I have a most up-to-date GPS navigation system in the cock-pit that can take me anywhere on the North American continent.

Aviation maps and approach plates I receive on line and print out as I need them.  No more carrying briefcase full of paper when embarking on a trip.  I must also mention that now new general aviation aircraft and, of course, all commercial and military aircraft have “glass-panel,” consisting of a primary flight display and a multifunction display.  On these glass panels one has access to much more information than one could get from so called “steam gauges.” 
 
I also have have a neat collection of vinyl records and a functioning record player (in addition to 3 CD players) which I listen to occasionally.  A Beethoven Bicentennial collection and a complete Ring cycle among them, of which I cannot part with, although I already gave away a great number of them.

JE comments:  While enamored of technology, WAISers are also a sentimental lot.  A number of responses have come in to Randy Black’s “whatever happened to…” posting of 25 August.

A word on vinyl records:  they’re still very much alive.  ”Scratching” DJs use them for public performances, and the technology is seen as retro-chic among the younger crowd.
 

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For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

Technology: Gone the Way of the Top Hat… (Randy Black, US)

Randy Black writes:

Regarding John Eipper’s comments about the extinction of wrist watches and top hats (see Clyde McMorrow’s post of 25 August), I propose that we explore the industries that we have seen come and then go extinct in our lifetimes. Assuming that some among us were born prior to 1930 and others as late as the 1970s, what is missing from our lives that was integral in the past but is now gone?

Nominations:

For starters, we have seen the Polaroid camera invented, become an unique and important part of our lives and then disappear from the globe. I won a Polaroid camera on a national quiz show in 1969. I used it for years. I still have it and a few rolls of film that I’m saving as a gift when our daughter is grown–it will be more of a curiosity really. I’m almost 64; she’s almost 9 and just started 3rd grade yesterday. This year, all of her grades will be delivered via email and viewable online. No more report cards on index-quality paper for parents to sign and return.

I have a sack of 35mm color film resting in a plastic bag in my freezer that will likely never be shot. Why I’m saving it I have no clue. For those who don’t know, keeping film frozen extends the shelf life, but for what?  Most of us are now all digital when it comes to photography. My daughter will never know 8-track tape players or vinyl records. She’s never seen a record player. She’s familiar with cassettes but on our vacation last week, she was all DVDs and flash/memory sticks.

For that matter, there is only one lab in the USA that continues to process Kodachrome, I am told. Who knows what 620 mm or sheet film even looks like? We have seen manual and electric typewriters go the way of the horse and buggy and winding wrist watches–barely useful and only a curiosity. When is the last time you had your film processed and prints made at the local drug store?

Cathode ray televisions are now officially extinct in the manufacturing arena.

How many of us once depended upon the American Automobile Association (AAA) for road maps (trip tics) for cross-country travel? Now we use Google Maps to chart our trips and our color printers for the print outs. We just returned from Colorado and used Google Maps for each segment. Google even shows street-level photos of specific intersections where you must turn from one highway to another!

When is the last time any of us even thought about using a pay telephone? We saw a Greyhound Bus in New Mexico last week. One bus in 2000 miles over nine days.

We saw one cowboy on a horse herding cattle in southern Colorado but saw two cowboys herding cows from helicopters along the way. The 70 year-old cowboy who took my wife and daughter riding in the national park near Mancos, Colorado took calls on his Blackberry during the ride. And while I’m confident that he would have never gotten lost, if he had, his phone’s global positioning system (GPS) would have gotten him and my family back to civilization.

Celluloid x-rays are pretty much extinct, if my recent trip to the dentist is any indication. Where they once made you wait while they processed the film, now it’s digital and appears on the nearby laptop screen almost as quickly as the dental assistant clicks her button. But that’s good because there’s no more chemicals dumped into the water system.

How many among us continue to have old fashioned “land” lines for telephone service? A recent ABC story indicates that more than 20 percent of households in the US are exclusively cell phone families. It won’t be long before there will be more homes with cell phone service only and no landline. Only six years ago, the number of cell phone only homes was three percent.

Due to email’s growth in popularity, I would imagine that many among us will live long enough to see the complete demise of the US Postal Service. Many of us will live to see the demise of elections that take place in local schools, churches and government buildings–and that will be replaced with online voting as is already the case in several states for more than a decade.

Who among us still owns a slide rule? Are books in print on the way out? Ask any college student.

Who has purchased a complete edition of Encyclopedia Britannica in the past decade? I’m betting that no one in WAIS has done so.

Industries that you may not want to own stock in: slide rule manufacturers, Britannica, Polaroid, Kodak, courier services (replaced by fax and email), AAA, cigarette makers, film processors, newspaper publishers.

How many more industries have come and gone, or will be gone in the coming years?

JE comments:  Lots to think about!  We have no telephone land line, and my two 35-mm Nikons haven’t been used in half a decade.  (One of them is 30 years old.)  I still hold on to them, however, as they are exquisite equipment and those newfangled digital cameras are just appliances–gadgets basically.

A question for WAISdom:  how many can actually use a slide rule?  My late father, a chemical engineer, was a SR virtuoso.  My sister, trained a generation later in the same profession, has never had to pick one up.

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on Twitter; China Travel Plans (Ed Jajko, US)

In response to Charles Ridley’s announcement (18 May) of his upcoming July trip to China, Ed Jajko writes:

Apropos of China and Twitter, there is the Chinese expression–here in the Yale romanization–hen jou mei jyan, which translates nicely as “long time no see.”

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on Twitter; China Travel Plans (Charles Ridley, US)

Charles Ridley writes:

I must add to Ed Jajko’s quotation (17 May) with the scholar’s war cry: “Cited Source; Thank Same.”

For the purpose of reference, I received my Chinese visa today and will be dropping down on the soil of China in July.

JE comments: Godspeed to Charles Ridley. I hope we’ll get a China report or two from him during his stay. I have just finalized my plans for Europe during the same month. We’ll be flying to Berlin on July 14th, spending two days touring the German capital (heeding JFK’s plea 46 years late), and then driving to Poland for a couple of weeks (scheduled stops on the way to Lublin: Poznan and Lodz). Any Berlin suggestions from the WAIS multitudes?

I like Charles’s suggestion for scholarly citation. My preference? The even briefer “ibid.”

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on Twitter (George Krajcsik, US)

George Krajcsik writes:

A small addition to Ed Jajko’s “twitter” comment of 17 May:

A concise and erudite battle report from the skipper of a US destroyer after engagement with a Japanese submarine: “Sighted sub, sank same” is a gem of a twitter. It has alliteration, just like Caesar’s “Veni, vidi, vici.”

JE comments: Conquerors can afford to be (t)witty and brief in their reports; failure requires much lengthier explanations! General Sherman also had a twitterworthy quip or two, such as this one to Lincoln: “I intend to make Georgia howl.” No alliteration here, but very effective–and who hasn’t thought the same when delayed at the Atlanta airport?

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on Twitter (Edward Jajko, US)

Ed Jajko responds to A. J. Cave’s post of 16 May:

Regarding Twitter: As it says in Ecclesiastes 1:9, “En kol hadash tahat ha-shemesh”–There is nothing new under the sun. My vote for the earliest “tweet” in history goes to Julius Caesar, with his “Veni vidi vici.” And for a magnificently concise, witty, and erudite “tweet” that without doubt outshines the banalities transmitted these days, I would nominate the report of Sir Charles James Napier, on his conquest of the Indian province of Sind (now Pakistan) in 1843: “Peccavi.”

JE comments: How about the Edenic tweet, “Madam, I’m Adam,” also reportedly the world’s first palindrome? What? Eve and Adam didn’t know English? Next they’ll be telling me that there was no Internet in Paradise!

(Translation: Peccavi: I have sinned [Sind]. Ed Jajko is correct: we’d never see such erudite punning these days.)

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

Technology: on Twitter (A. J. Cave, US; ex-Iran)

On May 14th, JE asked: Can a “Twittering Obama” be far behind? Is there already a Twittering Obama? Speaking of which, shall we discuss Twitter? As an average middle-aged guy, I confess I still don’t understand what Twitter is. More to the point, I understand the what, I just don’t grasp the why.

A.J. Cave responds:

Yes, President Obama tweets, or more accurately used to since 2007 and stopped once sworn into the office. Here is a link: http://twitter.com/BarackObama

So what is Twitter? Twitter is a VC-funded 3-year old high tech start-up company based in San Francisco (2006). http://twitter.com/

Twitter is a free service–a cross between blogging, texting and social-networking in realtime. All you need to start using it is a username or an email address and password, similar to Wikipedia. Once you sign up, you can look for friends and family, colleagues, celebrities, politicians, etc., and if they tweet, you can sign up to receive their tweets. Others can also sign up to receive tweets from you. There is a good video about Tweeting on Twitter’s homepage.

Just like any other new technology, majority of people who signed up and started tweeting where techno geeks and early adopters like me. I tried it for a while in 2006 and then lost interest. At the time it was strictly web-based, but now you can access it using your mobile device as well. In those days, it was mostly used to answer “What are you doing?” questions. But just like any other techno-tool, its usage has been broadened.

The tweets are not private and anyone can follow anyone, depending on interest. Now and then I do tweet, just to do a quick survey and get immediate results. For example, if 100 people follow my tweets, I can ask them: “What is the buzz about the new Star Trek movie?” or “Angels & Demons or Star Trek?” and get immediate response. Or, I can ask: “What do you think of Pontiff’s visit to Israel?” You can ask anything and get a response in a matter of seconds. Or you can just post and inform: “NC Tar Heels just won March Madness!” It is the “I want to know/tell you this right now” or “just-in-time information” one-to-many model. As such, I think it is a very powerful tool and its potential has not been fully unlocked yet.

Mapping Twitter to WAIS, JE could sign up and then WAISers, depending on interest, can sign up too and follow JE’s tweets. For example, he can tweet: “Stanford email is down again!” or when traveling: “Greetings from here or there,” or whatever (brief) information/alerts that have a time urgency and all the WAISers who have signed up, can get those tweets. By the same token, JE and other WAISers can also follow each other’s tweets, depending on interest. Twitter does collect individually identifiable information on Twitterers and sells is to interested parties, who could use it for whatever purpose–mostly marketing and advertising, trying to sell stuff to Twitterers. That is why Google has been interested to acquire Twitter. But Twitter folks are taking their chances that Twitter is worth a lot more than Google has been offering.

I personally do not like services that collect personal information on me and use it for commercial purposes without my consent and I am not alone in this. So, I don’t know how Twitter will resolve this issue, other than making their model opt-in, which makes them a lot less attractive to marketeers and as a result less to potential buyers or in IPO.

New York Times has done a good job of covering Twitter and a search could turn up a number of other articles that could be of interest.

Here is a link to an article in New York Times that gives a quick overview of Twitter.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/twitter/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=twitter&st=Search

And this video from the same article shows a demo: http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/02/12/technology/personaltech/1194837757843/twitter.html

An interesting use of Twitter was in early April of this year where Facebook and Twitter were used to gather thousands of people to protest against the Communist leadership in Moldova. I think we will probably see Twitter used more for this type of political activities in the future.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/world/europe/08moldova.html?scp=3&sq=moldova&st=cse

JE comments: Following the Moldovan model, Twitter would be an ideal tool for political protests and activism of all sorts. I’m going to watch the videos A. J. recommends. Shall WAIS incorporate a Twitter function? That’s a question for deeper thought.

Grammatically, why is the verb “to tweet” instead of “to twit”? I guess the answer is in the question.

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on Outlawing Hate Websites (John Heelan, UK)

John Heelan writes:

Philosophical discussions about freedom of speech are like discussing the desirability of “motherhood and apple pie.” Of course, everybody wants it, but when push comes to shove how many would really be prepared to follow Evelyn Beatrice Hall’s dictum (not Voltaire’s), “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”?

Revolutions generally stem from social and economic oppression, of which lack of freedom of speech is only a part. As soon as the “new rulers” get into power, similar clamps are put on those who revolted to achieve that freedom. Realistically there is no real chance of freedom of speech. It is curtailed by libel laws, security legislation of various kinds, contractual obligations, and social mores and practices. Libel lawyers would take to the streets if real freedom of speech became widespread!

JE comments: Here in the US, libel lawyers would stay off the streets; they’d place ads on the back of phone books. (Are the days of the increasingly irrelevant phone book numbered, however?)

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on Outlawing Hate Websites (Robert Gibbs, US)

Robert Gibbs writes:

I have been reading with interest our comments regarding free speech, respect for the First Amendment, especially as regards hate speech and web sites. Speaking for myself I find it very disturbing that so many are so willing to impose censorship on what has been defined (by whom?) as unenlightened speech. While one has a right to speech, there is no right not to be offended.

It is part and parcel of free speech, either it is or it is not. If one finds it offensive so be it. Argue against it or ignore it. If you find something offensive, ignore it, do not listen, do not buy the newspaper, etc. There is an on/off switch on all radios and TVs that I have seen, no one is forced to buy a newspaper, or go to a “hate website.” In short you do not have to see or hear offensive speech.

In my life I have had this right somewhat curtailed and this was voluntary on my part. But I have had to defend the right of others to burn the flag, produce “art” by submerging a crucifix in urine, and a dung-covered Madonna–produced with public funds no less, and countless other offensives to my profession, my nation, my personal belief system. But it is free speech. I can ignore it and protest the expenditure of public money, but I cannot stop it. Free speech for some is not free speech no matter how enlightened it is or is not, it really is a matter of all or nothing. Yes, there are libel laws and the “shouting fire in the theater” laws but these are all in the context of free speech.

Finally, who is to say what is “enlightened speech” and what is not? Recently we had discussions on religion, some of which I found extremely offensive and personal attacks on the personal belief systems of not just myself and WAISers but I dare say a majority of the planet. I voiced my objections to our editor even suggesting the possibility of some form of censorship but thought better of the idea. People are allowed to think as they will and say so. If it offends so be it.

JE comments: It’s great to receive a post from WAISer Robert Gibbs (not to be confused with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs). Bob and I carry on an occasional, and always enjoyable, correspondence off-Forum, but he doesn’t write for the WAIS multitudes often enough. Veteran WAISers recall him as an expert on Central Asia. Bob: are there any developments in the former Soviet “-Stans” we should be aware of?

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on Outlawing Hate Websites; on Abortion (Randy Black, US)

Randy Black writes:

I’ve followed the pro-life v. pro-women’s right to choose issue for decades. The opinions within WAIS are pretty similar to the arguments that have been bandied about during all of my adult life. When I was a young reporter for a major daily newspaper in Dallas in the 1970s, I had the opportunity to interview the famous feminist Gloria Steinem. I was not particularly excited about meeting her and expected trouble, which I got. Just because the paper sent me, a male writer, to the interview, she attacked me just for being there and male.

Nonetheless, I got my story and an education in rational thought. When I raised the question of the right to an abortion, Steinem replied, “When men can get pregnant, the unrestricted right to abortion will quickly become a birthright.” I had not thought of it that way prior to that day and told her that I had to agree with her premise. Her message was clear: It is only men who write laws that govern women’s bodies. If the laws were written by a group of elected representatives that was made up of equal shares of men and women, such a law might have validity.

In my opinion, the right to abortion topic is a religious one. Declaring that a religious issue is to be regulated nationally and globally by laws written by (mostly) men is just plain wrong. If a church, in this case, mostly the Roman Catholics and a few Southern Baptists groups, want to regulate abortion within their church, more power to them. But let them keep their regulations within their church. Don’t try to force others to follow their religious interpretations of the Bible. The Pope is the laughing stock of the world for several reasons. More recently, his public position to an African audience that the use of condoms promotes the spread of HIV-AIDS comes to mind. Shame on his narrow, ignorant position.

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on Outlawing Hate Websites; on Abortion (Cameron Sawyer, Russia)

Massoud Malek asked on 31 March:

Should we remove compassion…from our heart for the sake of saving a fetus which will become a human being in the future?

Cameron Sawyer responds:

The phrase “. . . which will become a human being in the future” begs the question. Massoud’s argument assumes as a given that a fetus is not a human being. But that is exactly what is in dispute. So Massoud’s argument doesn’t at all even address the real controversy. He is, as if, arguing with someone who accepts that the fetus is not a human being, but maliciously refuses to feel any compassion for the pregnant woman. That’s what lawyers call a “straw man”–an easy opponent in debate, who does not actually exist.

Real pro-lifers–I am not one of them, but unlike Massoud I listen to them–argue that human life begins at conception, and thus the human being, who happens to be in fetus form, gets at that point the right not to be killed just because being killed would help the mother to avoid remembering having been raped. To support that argument, they show that the fetus has a beating heart and brain waves at a very early stage, and indeed feels pain. They argue that no normal person would ever argue that a new-born baby could be killed by its mother, just because the baby is a burden to her, or because it reminds her of how she was raped.

These are powerful arguments, which cannot be countered by mere shouting. The only thing really we can say is that the fetus up to some stage is really not a person as we think of a person, and that the mother has overriding rights for some time. We can’t prove this, as it is a matter of moral feeling only when a person is a person (society makes this kind of judgement all the time), but we can try to persuade.

In my opinion, there is no argument, which has any integrity at all, that a mother may be forbidden to abort a fetus at some stage of development, with an exception for cases of rape and incest. If abortion is allowed in cases of rape and incest at some stage of development, it must be allowed in all other cases, also–who is to judge the reasons a mother may have for wanting to have an abortion? There may be terrible consequences from having an unwanted child apart from rape and incest. The only logical basis we have for forbidding abortion is the personhood of the fetus, in my view.

Concerning the Internet: thank God it is almost impossible to censor it, for technical reasons. For this reason by itself, the Internet has made a massive contribution to human freedom. One of the view bright spots in the picture of the world today . The existence of pornography and hate on the Internet is a very, very small price to pay for this essential human liberty.

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on Outlawing Hate Websites and Abortion (John Heelan, UK)

Massoud Malek wrote on 31 March:

Respect for life, compassion for others, truth, and freedom are four pillars of any faith or any harmonious society… Either you are pro-life or not. Should the society or a religious faith force a woman who was impregnated by a violent rapist, to keep the fetus in her womb for nine months and then force her go through the extreme pain of a childbirth?… Should we remove compassion for her from our heart for the sake of saving a fetus which will become a human being in the future?… The freedom of a living person is million times more valuable than a future life based on the slavery of a mother.

John Heelan responds:

Previously I have stated my position on abortion, i.e. that I am against elective abortion, unless such pregnancy threatens the life, health or mental stability of the mother, or if the foetus is severely malformed to the extent that it is not likely to survive the perinatal period.

Massoud’s argument conflates the justification for all abortions with heart-rending depictions of the outcomes of rape. Even the rape case is flawed.

His argument for the abortion of a child conceived by rape depends on the comparison the value of life of the mother with that of the foetus. In turn, that argument depends on the conclusion that the foetus itself has no element of life separate from that of the mother. That conclusion is unproven.

It is true that the foetus is not viable separated from the mother until a few weeks before birth. However, until that time the foetus lives parasitically within the mother from being conceived. Most religions believe that life starts with conception, the point at which sperm and egg meet. Science is divided on the subject depending on the definition of “life” used. “Life” has yet to be clearly identified and defined; “not dead” is imprecise.

Until that time, in my opinion, the foetus has an equal right to “life” as its mother, other than in probable health dangers outlined above. Thus, to my mind, elective abortions for cosmetic, life-style and other non-health reasons should be avoided by proper use of contraceptive methods. Conflating the arguments for debatable elective cosmetic abortion with those for post-rape abortion is specious.

(This discussion is obviously also linked to the “Afterlife” discussed in WAIS earlier that also depended on one’s belief in whether “life” existed separate from the physical body.)

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on Outlawing Hate Websites (Tim Brown, US)

Tim Brown responds to Massoud Malek’s post of 31 March:

A slippery discourse on a slippery subject.

At most an infinitesimal fraction of unwanted pregnancies are the result of rapes. The argument could as easily be stated from the opposite extreme. Does Mr. Malek believe that a woman who is full term, healthy and has a decent job has the right to kill a perfectly healthy baby as it comes out of her womb because she couldn’t be bothered in the beginning to use birth control and now doesn’t want the inconvenience of a baby disturbing her lifestyle so she can go out and make another one? And as to the argument that for many women raising a baby costs too much and is too hard, if it’s valid before a child is born why isn’t this argument valid after their birth? That’s when the costs and work kick in, not while the baby is still in the womb. So why shouldn’t a women be able to have her children killed any time before they turn 18, when she can legally toss them out of the house?

And, since normally there is a man present at the conception, why doesn’t he also have a say in any of this? For that matter, when the woman is still living at home being supported by her parents, why shouldn’t they have the right to be consulted, at least when they’re the ones that are going to have to support the baby as well. Or do only pregnant women, not even their mothers, have rights?

The truth for me is that neither Mr. Malek’s deliberately extreme statement of the problem nor the one I state above are representative of the vast majority of cases. Arguing from the extreme rarely is.

People choke and die on fish bones. Should fish be outlawed? Auto accidents kill, so what about banning cars? And on and on.

My own impression is that in most cases pregnancies that result in abortions are not the result of forcible rapes, incest or the pending death of the mother. They’re the result of not using, or not bothering to use, readily available birth control at conception to avoid an unwanted pregnancy. I have a copy somewhere of the Soweto Times (South Africa) with its lead headline being: “Condoms no! We women want sperm not rubber!” Not exactly an advertisement for abortion when they got their wish.

But then I have four children, eight grandchildren and two great grandsons, so I suppose I’m prejudiced.

JE comments: It’s great to hear from long-lost WAISer Tim Brown after more than a year. (And no, this is not April Fool’s; this really is Tim Brown!) Veteran WAISers recall Tim as an expert on Central America, and I did hear from him off-Forum a couple of times during my recent travels to Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Among other things, I recall that Tim wrote to correct my assertion that frigid, windy Santa Elena/Monteverde must be the coldest place in Costa Rica–this honor belongs to the Cerro de la Muerte. Not a very appealing name for a tourist brochure! Welcome back to WAIS, Tim; we’ve missed you.

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on Outlawing Hate Websites (Roy Domenico, US)

Roy Domenico responds to Massoud Malek’s post of 31 March:

Just a couple of thoughts on recent posts regarding censorship. So much depends on language! For my modern Europe class we’re currently reading 1984–I think it was a good choice this semester. Again and again it rings so true. I agree with practically all of what Massoud Malek wrote, except one thing bothered me–a few words that changed the thrust of his message:

“Should the society deprive the baby the love of the biological mother and hide the truth…”

It is a line which makes the statements that follow all reasonable. But what if we took “… the love of the biological mother…” and changed it to “…life.”–what then? Does anyone disagree that this, too, is a consequence of abortion?

More on language: Outlawing hate sites. I would first ask “why?” What would it accomplish? I believe there was plenty of hate even before the Internet. Would Hitler have been avoided if Weimar had laws against hate speech? A personal insight: My current project deals with Italian cultural politics in the two decades after WWII. The Christian Democrats–who held power throughout the entire period–tried to censor film and literature to the incessant (and usually understandable) gripes of the lay and the Marxist parties. Nevertheless, the same groups protested in the street and demanded censorship on the release of The Desert Fox–the story of Irwin Rommel–which they felt was insufficiently anti-Third Reich.

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on Outlawing Hate Websites (Massoud Malek, US; ex-Iran)

On 24 March, Michael Veck wrote:

Note that government censorship is a very slippery slope. First, we hear pious talk about outlawing pornography, gambling sites, etc. and then “hate” sites, eventually anti-abortion sites are also targeted, and so it goes ad infinitum…

Massoud Malek responds:

Respect for life, compassion for others, truth, and freedom are four pillars of any faith or any harmonious society.

On respect for life:

Either you are pro-life or not. Should the society or a religious faith force a woman who was impregnated by a violent rapist, to keep the fetus in her womb for nine months and then force her go through the extreme pain of a childbirth?

On compassion for others:

The most attractive aspect of Christianity is compassion for others. Every morning sickness would remind the pregnant rape victim of the most traumatic episode of her life. The childbirth would not only produce physical pain but also emotional one. It would remind her the moment when the rapist took complete control of her body. Should we remove compassion for her from our heart for the sake of saving a fetus which will become a human being in the future?

On truth:

The opponents of pro-choice argue that the mother could give the baby for adoption after the birth. Should the society deprive the baby the love of the biological mother and hide the truth from the baby about the way his or her life was created? It is a sin to lie, period. Every human being is entitled to the truth about his or her origin.

Finally on freedom:

Should the society take control of the rape victim’s body and deny her any freedom concerning her biological condition? It is wrong to treat a woman as a slave.

In 2007, for every 1,000 persons age 1 or older, one person was reported to be raped; so over 300,000 people, mostly women, reported having been raped in the United States of America alone. If one out of ten rape victims become pregnant and if the law of land is conceived by the anti-abortion law makers, in fifty years the world will have a large number of men, women, and children classified as rape babies, a population conceived solely by terror, hatred, violent acts, slavery, and lies.

Michael Veck, with his various posts in this Forum, proved to us that he is a defender of freedom. I also cherish freedom; I left the country of my birth to live in the land of the First Amendment. Therefore I will be extremely happy, if they remove all the anti-abortion sites from the World Wide Web. The freedom of a living person is million times more valuable than a future life based on the slavery of a mother.

P.S. I will also be very happy if they outlaw all the hate sites, specially those sites that defend the reprint of the cartoon, depicting the religious leader of over one billion people as as a violent terrorist.

JE comments: A technical question for the floor: how do you “outlaw” a website? Michael Veck wrote about the Australian model of assessing heavy fines on those who visit a proscribed site. I am as pro-choice as Massoud Malek (and, I presume, as Michael Veck). But as an Internet-based “WAIS Guy” I don’t want to see governments getting involved in monitoring and controlling its citizenry’s web activity, unless it is truly a matter of public safety.

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on the Icebox (Charles Ridley, US)

On innovations both high- and low-tech, Charles Ridley reminisces:

We have all seen marvelous advances of technology in our lifetimes. I will never forget the day in my childhood (bearing in mind that I was born in 1933) when the horse-drawn ice cart was replaced by a motor-drawn vehicle. And a few years after that, almost everyone had electric refrigerators and the ice business fell into decline. Utterly amazing!

JE comments: Simply put, the iceman don’t cometh. Next in line for the ash-heap of technological history: the video rental store. First VHS, then DVD, and soon everyone will be ordering films on demand (or via Netflix). Blockbuster Video in the US is reportedly on the verge of bankruptcy. There are a couple of closed video stores around here.

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on Telephone Party Lines (Steve Torok, Thailand)

Steve Torok writes:

Our phone in 1941 in Godollo (Hungary) when my father bought our house was Mariabesnyo 4! You talk about four digit numbers: at the crank-up switchboard I am certain they had fewer than two dozen customers. Later, in 1951, under Russian occupation, the Castle of Godollo became Russian Headquarters, and we had the doubtful distinction that our number, by that time Godollo 400, differed by only one number from the HQ number (401).

Along the same lines, I do not know how many WAISers are aware that after the war Europe had a new phone system, but that the old phone system was available for NATO internal use? Teaching for NATO I could phone all over Europe for free, using it, as long as I knew the access codes. Probably every spy on both sides sometimes listened in. But, then, that was part of the game! This was in the 1980-81 academic year, when I was lecturing on Financial and Managerial Accounting and Financial Management for NATO officers wanting an MSBA from Boston University before they retired after 20 years of service, run under contract for NATO by Boston University.

JE comments: 400-401: Were there any frantic calls for Russian HQ misdirected to the Torok home?

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on Telephone Party Lines (Miles Seeley, US)

WAISers are in a party (line) mood! Miles Seeley writes:

In the 1950s I stayed at a ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming between overseas tours. There was a party line (4 parties) and operators who we knew listened in, so you always had an audience. I was dating a young woman who lived in town, and I remember being very careful about what I said when we were on the phone. If somebody cursed, or a conversation got even a little bit steamy, it was all over town the next day. Jackson Hole was a very small town with unpaved streets and a population predominantly of cattle ranchers and those providing support to the ranches–quite a difference from the fancy resort town it is today. My parents built a summer place outside Jackson, and I came back from one tour to find dial phones and private lines. It was a big deal, and many elderly women were crushed by having their primary source of entertainment disappear.

JE comments: Is WAIS itself a party line? Except now the entire world (800 or more visitors per day, from Argentina to Vietnam) can eavesdrop on our conversations!

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on Telephone Party Lines (Randy Black, US)

Randy Black responds to the 5 March post of Gene Franklin and the 6 March post of John Heelan:

While we are taking our stroll down memory lane regarding phone party lines, I am reminded that my great-grandfather had a party line in Ft. Worth, Texas in the late 1940s as did my aunt who lived in East Texas in the mid-1950s. My grandparents had a number that I recall to this day. In 1951, when I was six, their number was Walnut 4338. One day when I was taking a bath at their house, I noted that the name of the plumbing company that had installed their bathtub had their name and phone number engraved on the chrome drain. Their phone number had only a four digit number with no prefix.

When I asked my grandmother about it, she told me the story about phones from when her home was built and that the numbers had only four digits and were party lines at that. She had worked as a phone company operator for Ma Bell (Southwest Bell Telephone Company) in the early part of the last century, and had to resign when she married my grandfather in 1912. In those days, no one on the all-female telephone operator staff was allowed to be married. She actually married my grandfather and hid the marriage for half a year before finally getting tired of the phone company investigators making surprise visits to her rooming house trying to catch girls who were “cheating” by being married.

She then added that they bought their first house on Ryan Place Drive in Ft. Worth (aka Cowtown) in 1933 at the height of the Great Depression and had taken out a $3,000 mortgage to buy their two-story, two-bedroom, one-bath home with detached garage, and which backed up to the railroad tracks. My grandfather, a bookkeeper for the Katy Railroad, was so eaten up by the “high” mortgage rate that after six months of payments, he went down to the bank and, using his life savings, paid off the mortgage. Two and one half percent is the “high” mortgage rate that sticks in my mind.

Grandpa always was a frugal, sensible man.

Jumping to Russia, my wife and her parents lived in Omsk when we met in 1993. It was only in early 1994 that they were able to get a private phone line installed in their flat–after being on the waiting list for 22 years!

On the Katy, the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad was incorporated May 23, 1870. In its earliest days the MKT was commonly referred to as “the K-T”, which was its stock exchange symbol; this common designation soon evolved into “the Katy”. – from Wikipedia.

JE comments: My Houstonian sister lives a few miles on the “Katy Freeway” (I-10) from Katy, Texas. I never knew the origin of the name. About 15 miles from here we have Novi, Michigan, which was originally Station No. VI on the railroad. Prof. Hilton was fascinated with the etymology of names, both human and geographic.

(Re: today’s subject line: it’s funny to head a discussion on the telephone party line as “technology,” but I guess it is! No one said “technology” has to be high-tech. Next up: Technology: on Levers and Pointed Sticks.)

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: Wikipedia, Education and Plagiarism (Istvan Simon, US)

Istvan Simon responds to Brian Blodgett’s 21 and 22 February posts on Wikipedia:

I think the scenario painted by Brian is unrealistic and with a probability of occurring of nearly zero. I do not think that Brian took into consideration what really happens on Wikipedia.

The issue with Wikipedia is not that anyone can modify it. Those that think that this is a problem do not understand Wikipedia or how it works. And it works marvelously well, and produces very high quality accurate information, quickly and efficiently.

The model for Wikipedia is Open Source software. That too anyone can modify, and contribute to, and yet it has produced high quality software, with much fewer mistakes and bugs than commercial software. It is free of charge, and it is produced by volunteers. So how can it beat commercial software produced by software engineers that are paid 100s of thousands of dollars per year in salary? The answer is parallelism and motivation.

In an Open Source project the number of people collaborating on the project is many times the number of people in a focused industry effort. Furthermore, the project is structured in such a way, that these people can all co-exist without the kind of close-coupled collaboration that happens in industry. There is someone who is responsible for the whole project, and the project is divided in parts. Builds are done daily or even more frequently. That means that bug fixes are incorporated into the final product much faster than happens in industry. The product changes versions much more frequently, and it is gradually improved at a faster rate. Problems are also fixed and found faster. Why? because thousands of eyes monitor the evolution of the software and constantly improve its quality. If software can be produced this way, why not something much less sensitive to the introduction of errors like Encyclopedia articles?

Wikipedia works on a similar model. Though everyone can modify Wikipedia that does not mean that their changes will survive scrutiny. So if a malicious person vandalizes Wikipedia (Brian’s scenario), it will be discovered by someone interested within minutes, perhaps seconds, and immediately corrected. Once such a modification is detected, editors will take steps that it does not reoccur. So Wikipedia has a built-in mechanism that will self-correct errors, and it will be done quickly, by the experts that are interested in the project. It is as simple as that. And it works.

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on Gmail and Open Letters (Randy Black, US)

Randy Black writes:

I have followed the WAIS discussions regarding the proliferation of email, chats and so forth with great interest (see, among others, A. J. Cave’s post of 19 February ). As an adventurer and explorer who had one of the first dozen email accounts in Omsk, Russia, population 1.2 million in 1993, email was literally my lifeline to the “outside” world for news and information. Where we today routinely send messages that are megabytes in size, in Omsk 16 years ago, I paid kopeks for kilobytes, and my fees were only the equivalent of about two US dollars per month.

Today , the global email service providers are invaluable to more people than anyone ever imagined. On the topic of security and investigation methods that John Heelan (20 Feb .) apparently objects to, I pose the question:

How would John propose that the global police agencies effectively monitor terrorist organizations otherwise?

There are well-known cases of terrorist groups in England, Spain, the Middle East and elsewhere who rely on the Internet email systems to plan and execute their crimes.

One well-known group was caught by not even sending emails per se, but by putting email messages in their own in-boxes and sharing their passwords with the other members of their organization. Thereafter, the bad guys simply had to sign on and read the messages without ever having to actually “send” anything along the Internet channels where it might be captured or monitored.

Think about that: One only has to establish a fake email account on Google’s Gmail (it takes about ten minutes and can be accomplished in an Internet café or using an Internet-capable cell phone, write and save an email, get the passwords to others via disposable cell phones that one can buy in millions of retail stores, make one call, divulge one password and voilá.

We are speaking of the national security of many nations that various groups would love to overthrow or at the least, cause deaths to many thousands of people, whether in the UK, Israel, France, Spain and elsewhere.

The deviousness of the various terrorist groups is amazing. Think about it: You don’t even have to send an email that might be intercepted. You only have to write an email, store it in your own in-box as a draft and let others sign on and read it. With the near total anonymity that Google, Yahoo and other providers offer, what are our options as they relate to our own safety?

An interesting study at Dartmouth College was published five years ago and although dated, is quite interesting: http://www.ists.dartmouth.edu/library/164.pdf
JE comments: Isn’t saving a draft on a Gmail (or Yahoo or Hotmail) account tantamount to sending it? To be sure, the message remains in-house within one company, but transmission still takes place over the airwaves. The terrorists Randy Black refers to, after all, were caught.

Great to hear from you, Randy. I trust all is well.

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: Wikipedia, Education and Plagiarism (Brian Blodgett, US)

re: Technology: Wikipedia and Education (A. J. Cave, US)

Brian Blodgett wrote on 21 February:

I would welcome others’ opinions of Wikipedia as a contributor to education other than what many people in academia feel is a site that provides invalid information to the masses who know no better.

A. J. Cave responds:

I love military history and a military historian is a man after my own heart. So, here is what I think:

Wikipedia has only been around since 2001, not even ten years old, and it has an amazing treasure chest of information. It is missing an article on WAIS, but that can be easily rectified. [Certainly!--JE.]

It took me no more than 10 minutes to do the changes that John wanted on Prof. Hilton’s Wikipedia page, and the new page was live the instant I hit the “save changes” button. First I read the history page. The article was created in March of 2007. In October of 2008 the article had been removed from the “Death from cancer” category. Most changes to the page were minor edits and fixes (typos, etc.). Nothing controversial. No vandalism. Then I made the changes and wrote 3 small notes explaining the 3 changes I had made and indicating that these were not minor changes (according to Wiki rules). So, an editor might have a look and check it out if necessary. Changes are not controversial and I can’t see anyone objecting to it. I added the page to my “watch list” so the next time I log into my account, if there are any new changes to the page, there will be a list and I can go check it out. I signed my name to the changes I had made and left. I checked again today and the changes were holding. If an editor objects to one of the changes, then I’ll fix it.

If the page was in an encyclopedia, this would not have been possible. Not in ten minutes anyway.

Now just like any democracy, Wikipedia is a work in progress. But we are growing up and getting better at it. So, while there are lots of flaws, there are also lots of people who are trying to fix the flaws. Everything is Wikipedia is supposed to be verifiable, which means it comes from somewhere else. There shouldn’t be anything that no one has seen before. So, whatever your expertise, when you are reading an article and see something that doesn’t ring a bell, you can either immediately fix the flaw yourself by clicking on “edit this page,” make the changes and leave or raise the issue on the “discussion” page–all anonymously. Chances are that somebody like me is watching that page, and when you make your change, I’ll go and have a look. If lots of people care about a particular topic, then the new changes are discussed and either modified or removed or left as is. It is up to you to return and see what has been done by the community. If the article is locked (a lock symbol on the upper right hand corner), then you can’t edit the page yourself. You suggest the change on the “discussion” page and the community decides.

So, the content is somehow verified but it is not validated, like in an academic process. But most people who are contributing to Wikipedia are pretty smart and educated and mostly unbiased. So, as I said before: proceed with caution. Check the history.

There is a term I heard from one of the editors who had called some people “Googwik scientists,” meaning people whose scholarship was limited to using Google and Wikipedia. I think it is a good term. Nobody can become some sort a scholar just using Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a friendly giant database of information. It is open 24×7 and never closes. Sometimes there are technical glitches and the servers go down, but over the years the reliability has increased. It is a technical wonder to be able to serve so many eyeballs around the clock. It reminds me of one of those McDonald’s signs that used to say: “100,000,000 hamburgers served.”

So here is its value to education: it is free, accessible and global. Living in San Francisco, I have access to just about any book through the library system. So, unless I take a fancy to see some extremely rare manuscripts, I usually can get any book anywhere from 3 days to 3 weeks. But there are so many places on earth that they don’t have such great libraries with so many books. All some students have is a phone connection and a computer. So, that is why Wikipedia is so popular. If I need some information 3 a.m. in the morning when I can’t sleep, I just look for it in Wikipedia or search for it. I usually find something that can point me in the right direction. Sometimes, I don’t even have to turn on my laptop. I can use the browser in my Blackberry to do a search and read the results.

I think it is actually not very hard to fix the “wiki” problem at universities. It should become mandatory for students to print out the corresponding Wikipedia pages and attach them to their papers. That should take care of the Googwiks.

I also have no objection to students citing a Wikipedia as one of the sources and use Wikipedia quotes. Why not? How else would you find out what your students are reading and think it is valid. I think actually it is the best way to bring some top expertise into Wikipedia. When you see information in your students’ research papers coming from Wikipedia that are not correct for whatever reason, they should march right back to their computers and engage with the Wikipedians and negotiate and fix the flaw and their final grade should depend on how they can persuade others to their cause.

Or how about making Wikipedia an assignment in itself? Let each of your 1,000+ students pick a relevant article in Wikipedia, go through it with a fine-tooth comb and propose fixes and improvements and then once vetted with their professors, they can work on the Wikipedia article. They would all probably think it is a cool assignment and their works contribute to a cleaner global knowledge base.

I think I forgot to mention that all the “mirror” Wikipedia sites in various languages are not exactly duplicate mirror sites of the main English Wikipedia site. They all have cultural and national variations, with the local knowledge. It is too bad that right now that “local” knowledge is not brought back into the main English website.

Wikipedia provides a mountain of information; however, it does not offer any particular insight. It is just another tool, just like pens and calculators and laptops. It is up to those who use Wikipedia to use it well.

So while Wikipedia can point you in the direction of Thucydides, one of the finest ancient military historians in my view, only reading the History of the Peloponnesian War makes your heart beat faster and your toes freeze up when following the Spartan Brasidas, stopping for a meal and then hurrying along… approaching the bridge of Amphipolis in a stormy and snowing night.

JE comments: I like A. J. Cave’s proposed assignment very much. Students indeed would find it relevant, even “cool,” that their research project is going to have an impact on global knowledge.

Brian Blodgett has written again on this topic; his post will follow.

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on Wikipedia (Martin Storey, Australia)

Martin Storey responds to A. J. Cave’s post of 20 February:

I’m glad that by the time I read this email, less than 12 hours after it was sent, all the corrections JE suggested / requested for the Ronald Hilton article had been made. Wikipedia is great!

JE comments: Great to hear from you, Martin! I hope you can send us a personal update in the near future. How is the global recession playing out in Western Australia, with its emphasis on the mining and petroleum sectors?

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on Wikipedia (Cameron Sawyer, Russia)

Cameron Sawyer responds to A. J. Cave’s post of 20 February:

We did discuss Wikipedia in the “spring of our youth”–and a Google search filtered to the WAIS subdomain will turn up those old disussions in a twinkle. Is Wikipedia a democracy? That we didn’t discuss, but if it is, then it is a powerful argument in favor of democracy. Like democracy, Wikipedia is full of flaws and banality. But it is the single best knowledge resource known to mankind, the place where much of the human race turns first for a good overview of any given subject, as a perfect starting point for further research. As a synthesis of massive collective knowledge, the articles are often of astonishingly high quality. Usually this is the case. When I read Wikipedia articles on (the few) subjecs where I do know nearly all of the primary sources, I am usually amazed.

If some percentage of Wikipedia articles are defective, even if the average quality of Wikipedia articles is lower than the best scholarly sources (and I am not sure about that; but just suppose), nevertheless the access time is a few orders of magnitude faster than more traditional sources. That means that within one person’s given attention span, it is possible to survey immense landscapes of knowledge.

Wikipedia also makes it possible–do other WAISers use it like this?–to check critically one’s prejudices. Did it really take until 1952 for the stock market to get back up to its 1929 peak, or did I imagine that? Is it really true that every single country which adopted a flat tax experienced a surge in tax revenue? Didn’t Persia once rule Azerbaijan? Before I take such a categorical position, I’d better check. Wikipedia makes it possible to double check Everything you think you know, in a twinkle of the eye.

Wikipedia is fundamentally different from traditional sources. I think a lot of people who criticize it do so by evaluating it as something it is not. It is not a font of immaculate truth, or even a collection of 12 million* (!) perfect, peer-reviewed scholarly articles. It should not be used in exactly the same way as we us traditional sources, and should certainly not be cited as authority. But used correctly, it is the single best conduit of knowledge known to mankind–so far. Whatever it is worth in monetary terms, it’s not enough.

For Wikipedia on Wikipedia, see the worthwhile article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia

* The Encylopedia Britannica , in comparison, has only several tens of thousands. Nevertheless, the Encyclopedia Britannica has pride of place in my library; in fact three complete sets, including a third edition (facsimile reproduction) from the 18th century; a ninth edition (original and crumbling); and an early (from the Micropaedia and Macropaedia days) 15th edition. Unlike Wikipedia, Britannica has a particular, consistent editorial point of view, which is its strength and the same time its weakness.

JE comments: Even the metaWikipedia article cited by Cameron above is surprisingly balanced and not self-aggrandizing in the least. Paradoxically, Wikipedia gains credibility by acknowledging its weaknesses. (On another topic, I didn’t know that parts of the site are blocked in the People’s Republic of China. WAISer thoughts/comments/insight on this?)

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: Wikipedia and Education (Brian Blodgett, US)

Brian Blodgett responds to A. J. Cave’s post of 20 February:

As a current professor of history and military history, as well as the
Director of the Undergraduate History and Military program at a
university where every month my professors have over 1,000 students
writing research papers, Wikipedia has turned into a site that we will
not allow students to quote from or use as a source–something that
many want to do. In fact some students try to lift an entire Wiki from
the site and submit it as their own work. Other departments in the
University have the same policy, and I know other universities do as well.

The primary problem with Wikipedia is that while some of the material is
valid, much of it remains invalidated. When any person in the world can
enter information into a site and another can change it the next hour,
and both can enter incorrect information (as JE points out about Mary
Bowie Hilton and WAR ), it simply cannot be viewed as a valid source of
information. I need not elaborate further on this, but I would welcome
others’ opinions of Wikipedia as a contributor to education other than
what many people in academia feel is a site that provides invalid
information to the masses who know no better.

JE comments: I don’t allow my students to cite Wikipedia as an authority, but I encourage them to use it as a first step for researching a new topic (this is something they’re going to do anyway). Often a Wikipedia article provides good bibliographical sources, which can become a research project’s second step.

One positive thing: it would seem impossible to plagiarize from Wikipedia without getting caught.

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on Wikipedia (A. J. Cave, US; ex-Iran)

re: Technology: on Wikipedia (Jordi Molins Coronado, Spain)

When commenting A. J. Cave’s post of 19 February, John Eipper asked: “what is it that motivates people to surf endlessly [on Wikipedia] for Wiki-errors, weasel-words and sloppy citation, when they do so anonymously and receive no compensation?”

Jordi Molins Coronado responds:

There is a huge mass of highly educated people, who devote much of their free time to some specialized subject, but whose skills in this subject are untapped by society. Probably some centuries ago, the overall population was so ignorant that an elite was needed to rule and govern. However, the successes of mass education, and at the same time the rise of technology, which has empowered us to no end, having most human knowledge at our fingertips, has changed the world as we understand it. Elites are not necessary anymore. Or even better, those who believe themselves to be elite are probably no more clever than the average of those educated masses. In fact, it has been found in several human experiments that the average opinion of uneducated people tends to be more accurate than the single forecast of an expert.

In my personal experience, forums on the Internet are the best way to get relevant information for any subject that one can think of, and surprisingly, there are always highly educated people in those subjects, willing to help. I am a fan of forums, much more than blogs, and I spend quite a lot of my free time reading them.

However, our public institutions and government are designed in a top-down structure: an elite is chosen, and those decide what to do, with no or little feedback from “outside”.

A possible idea to overcome those ancient government structures could be e-government: elected politicians (from the federal government up to the smallest local governments) should post their policy proposals in written form in a forum, and a set of politically elected technicians should start refining those proposals, discussing them in writing, where any citizen could read and understand them, and even post counterproposals. Lobbies should have a representation there, and they could defend their interests, but never behind closed doors, but using clear arguments that could be understood and discussed among other arguments. The politician responsible to take a final decision with respect to those proposals should be bound to understand all the important points discussed, and bound to take the best decision up to his best knowledge. A rational explanation should follow any decision, in written, following the arguments used in the preceding discussions, and only those arguments. Voters could understand those explanations, which would allow them to have a better understanding of the real values of each politician, and vote in the next election accordingly.

In fact, this process would be very similar to the political process followed in most Western countries, but with the difference that with the e-government proposal there would be millions of eyes scrutinizing up to the smallest detail, and no “I believe this is the best solution, but it is too complex for you to understand” would be accepted. The walls between government and society would be demolished, and possibly we would be closer to the Athens concept of direct democracy.

JE comments:  For the notion of Wikipedia as true democracy, stay tuned for A. J. Cave’s post (forthcoming).

So poly sci junkies:  what do you think of e-government?

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on Gmail and Open Letters (John Heelan, UK)

A. J. Cave wrote 19 February:

As far as I know, Google has resisted providing information about Gmail account holders to various governments (except in China), even though they collect the IP addresses and other information that can uniquely identify an email account (holder).  But I think all the email providers do pass emails through filters for security reasons and suspend email accounts that seem to engage in suspicious activities.  I also think that probably all public email providers provide whatever information that is demanded by law enforcement agencies, when asked through proper legal channels. 

John Heelan responds:

For decades, much of my professional life was consumed applying computer methods to the relecoms industry.   As such, I suggest that A.A.Cave needs to read up on Project Echelon and the demands Homeland Security makes on all US ISPs and  holders of databases  whether or not those databases are domestic or foreign.  Thus database contents of non-US countries outsourcing their IT work to US companies, are liable to be demanded by US Homeland Security authorities, even though the branch of the US company resides in the host country.

The UK is becoming even more draconian.  This week legislation is being considered that forces ISPs to maintain databases of all telecommunications– originating number, receiving number, time/date stamp ( content?) for several years.  Ironically, most of this information– other than content– is already held for billing purposes. 

The question one needs to ask is just who constructs and operates those databases?  The better telecom billing systems originate from the US and Israel, both of whom have strong intelligence reasons for attempting to detect potential threats contained in the world’s telecoms messages and calls.  They are thus, overtly or covertly, able to inspect much of the world’s telecoms messages and calls.

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on Gmail and Open Letters (Miles Seeley, US)

Miles Seeley responds to A. J. Cave’s post of 19 February:

One of the best reasons to be a WAIS member is that we can gain knowledge of societies and cultures other than our own. I have had this interest for more than 60 years, and one of the ways I find insight is through fiction. Many WAISers in academia will not agree, I am sure, but I often find my understanding deepened and broadened by fiction (Prof. Hilton and I had some lively exchanges on this).

I bring this up now as an opening to recommend two mysteries by James Church (a pseudonym for the author, who had decades of experience in Asia). They are entitled A Corpse in the Koryo amd Hidden Moon , both set in North Korea and featuring Inspector O of the Ministry of Security. I spent tours of duty in Korea and Japan working to gain intelliegence on North Korea (with scant success). I worked very closely and had as close friends a number of North Korean refugees, who began my education about Korea. Still, North Korea was a closed society in the worst sense, a dictatorship with all the controls of a Stalinist or Maoist nation.

These two books offer what I believe is an outstanding look into that society, using a story of murder and corruption as a vehicle. I have read perhaps forty or more novelists writing about their countries, and rarely have I both enjoyed and learned from books a good as these. Given North Korea’s position as a nuclear nation, maybe we should all learn more about the country and its people.

Obviously, I enjoy good writing, and I wish to express my appreciation for the postings of A.J. Cave, who writes beautifully.

JE comments:  Agreed.  I have a new  piece in my inbox from A. J.  It’s on my second-favorite Internet resource , Wikipedia.  I’ll post it later today.

And thank you, Miles, for the book recommendations.  I’m sure I’m not the only WAISer who knows next to nothing about N. Korea, probably the world’s most hermetic nation.

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on Gmail and Open Letters (A. J. Cave, US; ex-Iran)

Technology: The Pentagon’s “Big Dog” Robot (Richard Hancock, US)

Richard Hancock writes:

I saw a three-line notice in the Wall Street Journal on the Pentagon’s “Big Dog” robot. I googled The Pentagon’s Big Dog Robot and viewed a spooky video clip of this robot, which weighs 220 lbs. and can carry a 340-lb. load. Moving with a dog-like gait, it clambered over obstacles, loped like a dog, leaped high and when kicked by a man, recovered from falling in the manner of a live dog. It walked through snow, slipped on ice but did not fall. It looked like a huge insect.

The WSJ said that after about 10 more generations of development, it would become a viable and useful robot. I can see many uses for it on the field of battle as well as with civilian occupations. For example, it could replace pack-horses in any place that they are still used. During the period when the U.S. supported the Taliban against the Russians, more than 20,000 Tennessee pack mules were exported to Afghanistan.

For recreational purposes, it could be used to haul in the kill of hunters and as a replacement for llamas which bear burdens for hikers. It would be much less destructive of terrain and much less intrusive than the currently used all-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles. Your tax dollars at work.
–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: LEDs and the Future of Lighting (Steve Torok, Thailand)

Steve Torok responds to Massoud Malek’s post of 1 February:

My ophthalmologist just advised me and my wife not to use energy efficient fluorescent lights at home, since these are bad for our eyes and cause headaches if we read too much (which we do!) . How about LED? Wouldn’t health effects be more important than energy efficiency? I love the warm glow of a fireplace, though I do not read by it, and have missed it for years here in the harsh light of the tropical day. By the way, all of Asia seems to be covered by haze this time of the year; is it nature’s automatic evolution?

JE comments: The grass is always greener on the other side of our climactically changing planet, but I would gladly trade my fireplace for Steve Torok’s tropical sunshine/haze–at least for the remaining six weeks of winter. (Thanks, Punxsutawney Phil!)

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

Technology: LEDs and the Future of Lighting (Massoud Malek, US; ex-Iran)

Massoud Malek writes:

Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) are already used in computers, mobile phones, traffic lights, flashlights, and architectural lighting. They are several times more energy efficient than standard light-bulbs. LEDs produce twice as much light as a regular 60-watt bulb and burn for over 50,000 hours; and they’re much harder to break. LEDs will eventually replace standard incandescent bulbs as well as fluorescent and sodium vapor lights. The Department of Energy estimates LED lighting could reduce U.S. energy consumption for lighting by 29 percent by 2025.

Because of their structure and material, much of the light in standard LEDs becomes trapped, reducing the brightness of the light and making them unsuitable as the main lighting source in the home. A team of researchers at the University of Glasgow is using a technique called Nano-imprint lithography to directly imprint the holes, imperceptible to the human eye, onto billions of LEDs, allowing more of the light to escape.

Meanwhile the Cambridge University-based Centre for Gallium Nitride has developed a new way of making LEDs that could see household lighting bills reduced by up to 75% within five years. Gallium Nitride (GaN) emits brilliant light but uses very little electricity. It can burn for 100,000 hours on average; it only needs replacing after 60 years.

The white light they give off is a cold light because it contains lots of blue. The question is whether people will accept this kind of light in their living room. Researchers are aiming for white light that looks like sunshine; the white will not only look warmer, but could also be useful for people with Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Ultraviolet LEDs also have the potential to revolutionize water quality in the developing world. A high-energy form of ultraviolet light known as deep-UV kills bacteria and viruses without the need for chemicals. It’s especially exciting from a third-world perspective because LEDs could run off solar power or even by some sort of clockwork mechanism. This would bring water purification to people in remote areas.

LED Christmas light bulbs are already commercially available. A Christmas tree lighting string having 50 standard incandescent bulbs lights has a 20 watt electrical load. However a lighting string containing the same number of LED bulbs lights, the same size lamps, and the same length size of wire only requires 2 watts. This is a 90% energy reduction for the same light output. Thanks to LEDs, the Christmas lightings in my neighborhood looked much more pleasing than the previous years.

Have you notice that there are fewer trucks blocking traffic as they replace the incandescent bulbs that constantly burn out? The next time you are stopped at a traffic light, notice how each light now consists of groups of individual glowing green, red, and yellow LEDs.

Sources:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9777070/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7131358.stm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090129090218.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080109083914.htm

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/yago110.html

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

Technology: Direct Fuel Injection Engines Challenge Hybrids (Richard Hancock, US)

Richard Hancock writes:

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal of Jan. 14 by Matthew Dolan, the internal combustion engine has a new lease on life with the development of direct fuel injection engines. These new engines can achieve higher performance with as much as 20% increase in fuel efficiency. They take highly pressurized fuel and thrust it directly into the chamber of each cylinder. The old engines mix fuel with air before reaching the combustion chamber.

Both Ford and GM expect to sell cars powered by these new engines this year and next year. Derrick Kuzak, VP of Product Development for Ford, states that cars with this new engine are a better value than a hybrid or a diesel. Assuming that gas sells at $3/gal. or less, the extra cost of owning this vehicle could be saved in 12 to 18 months, while the hybrid will take five-to-seven years and a diesel as long as a decade. Next year, GM plans to equip 10% of its global production with these new engines.

GM is also trying to develop an engine using a technology called homogeneous-charge compression-ignition, or HCCI, which will save as much as 30% in fuel. Sam Winegartner, GM’s executive director engineering, said “HCCI would be the next logical extension of improving the gas engine. HCCI is likely to hit the market within the next ten years.”

These new engines will be produced without the hefty incentives, including tax breaks, that are provided for the hybrid or battery-powered car. Without these incentives, the cost of these cars will be prohibitively high for the buying public.

Richard Hancock comments: I think that every American would like to see a time when we are independent of foreign oil, but I believe the above story on new and improved internal combustion engines offers a more practical solution than turning to use other sources of fuel. I don’t see natural gas as a primary fuel for autos. This would require us to install natural gas delivery systems on a nation-wide basis and equip our autos to use this fuel. It goes without saying that we must also continue the search for more domestic petroleum reserves. I say let natural gas and atomic energy generate our electricity and we can run our cars with gasoline using these improved engines.

I have ridden in a Prius and I was pleased with its performance. However, I think that this is a car for affluent owners. I don’t see many ordinary Americans that have the wherewithal to purchase these vehicles. Gasoline-powered vehicles still offer the cheapest, unsubsidized transportation.

JE comments: Next week I plan to visit the North American International Auto Show in Detroit–as of January 2008, a WAIS tradition. Given the present desperation of the US auto industry, this year promises much less hype and hoopla than last. There are a number of no-shows at the ‘09 show–Nissan, for example, as well as Rolls-Royce and Ferrari. I guess that means no new Ferrari for me!

–

For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

Technology: Corporations, Innovation and Sustainability (Martin Packard, US)

Martin Packard writes:

We had two 20-year birthday parties in the Valley this week. Gordon Biersch,
that I inadvertently attended, and San Disk. One was a social innovation and
the other a technical innovation.

My interest in noting these events is related to my theme, innovation and
sustainability, and they demonstrate a corollary, the importance of
corporations.

Modern corporations are the principal means that innovations are sustained
within society. Modern cooperations bear little, if any, relation to
Marx’s views.

It has been through legal innovations that the corporate organization has been
sustained. WAISer David Westbrook has written about the development of
laws in his elegant book *Between Citizen and State*. Additional
corollaries are that innovation is by youth, not top down, and that
innovation takes time, hence the importance of social stability.

For those interested, please read about Gordon Biersch from the July
13 edition of the San Jose *Mercury News* at:

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_9868218

and San Disk in the same edition at:

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_9868280?source=email

I personally had not noticed San Disk until the advent of the USB
drives, but had been to Gordon Biersch 20 years ago, inspired by the
innovative concept of the local brew kettles. This was my only visit
until last week, where I observed that the brew kettles are still
there but resting quietly.

JE comments: Gordon Biersch is a Silicon Valley microbrewery. Now,
at 20 years of age, GB is almost old enough to legally drink its own
product!

With both GB and San Disk, we are reminded of the adage, Small is
Beautiful. Congratulations to both corporations as they enter into their third decade of existence.

– For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: Desalination and its Costs (Henry Levin, US)

Henry Levin writes:

The article from *Technology Review* (forwarded by John Heelan on 1
July) made two points. Energy costs were 40 percent and the ability
to reduce the energy component of desalinization had reached a point
where it was unlikely to decrease much beyond that. The experts who
work in that industry with whom I have spoken use the figure of 50
percent for the energy costs. The energy requirements of large
desalinization plants also require their own tremendous
infrastructure, so massive investments will be needed to supply the
electric power. Nuclear power still has its own problems. Read *El
Pais* for today–July 2–about two incidents in Tarragona and two in
Valencia, just in the last two days. When all of the costs of nuclear
are taken into account, they are still not cheaper than more
conventional sources.

Given these facts on the ground, I am surprised at Cameron Sawyer’s
contention (1 July) and would like to see the sources to which he
refers to share them with my engineer friends here in Catalunya.

JE comments: The *El Pais* article mentioned by Henry Levin can be
accessed at:

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/sociedad/incidentes/nucleares/72/horas/elpepisoc/20080702elpepisoc_3/Tes

The article contains a photograph of an ominous-looking nuclear
cooling tower (just like in the *Simpsons*). The facility is
ironically located at Asc�–in Spanish, “qu� asco” is a common
expression of disgust or repugnance.

– For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on the QWERTY Keyboard; RH as Typist (Cameron Sawyer, Russia)

Cameron Sawyer responds to Harry Papasotiriou’s post of 18 March:

I am able to parallel-process many tasks; I am able to interpret
synchronously, for example, listening and talking simultaneously. But I
cannot listen to music and do any other thing (without ceasing to hear
the music); certainly reading and writing are things I do in as much
silence as I can find. I don’t really understand how Harry does it.

JE comments: Some of us can listen to Bach while we write and think; others cannot. I am in the Cameron Sawyer group here. With beautiful music like Bach (although I’m more partial towards Chopin and Debussy, but that’s another discussion), I find I can do one of two things: listen to the music with my “whole brain,” or turn it off in order to read and write. Or get into the car, blast something louder (I’m very fond of early ’80s New Wave), and turn my brain off altogether!

– For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on the QWERTY Keyboard; RH as Typist (John Heelan, UK)

JE commented (see Harry Papasotiriou’s post of 18 March): I must
write in total silence. This puts me at odds with the majority of my
students, whom I often see at their computers wearing iPod headphones.

John Heelan replies:

Don’t knock it! Many, many years ago when I was involved in education
and training, I ran a series of casual preliminary experiments aimed
at subsequently testing a potential hypothesis on the link between
music and data retention, not under stringent enough conditions
to rate as “scientific,” but nevertheless perhaps indicative of
“further work needed.”

The experiment used student volunteers in a residential course
setting. Having got them relaxed prior to the experiment (good food,
wine and some relaxation techniques seemed to work well)…

Stage One was to issue the subjects with a list of some thirty of the
more unusual dishes than appear on French dinner menus, together with
a list of translations into English (the student were mainly monoglot
British and American). Stage Two was to remove both lists, read out
the French words for the students to write down their memory of the
translation. No feedback was given at that time.

Stage Three randomly divided the students into control and experiment
sets and the two lists reissued. This time, the experiment group
worked to a musical background (largo, at about 60 beats per minute),
the control group in silence.

Both groups were then immediately retested separately–the experiment
group with background music still playing, the control group in
silence. The difference in retentions displayed by the two groups in
this primitive experiment was surprising. The experiment group scored
somewhere in the 70-90% retention range, the control group within the
30-50% retention range, little different from its achievement in the
original test. No feedback was given at this time.

Even more interesting was Stage Four, when they were tested again some
12 hours later under the same conditions. The retention rate of the
experiment group dropped only a few points, while that of the control
group dropped dramatically to 10-20%, suggesting there might be some
link between ability to retain information and listening to music.
(Perhaps WAIS psychologists and educationalists might comment on any
genuine research investigating such left-brain/right-brain musical
influences.)

As I said, my experiments (about 30 over two years) were not rigorous
enough to be “science” but interesting enough that I never
subsequently complained when my children had music blaring as they did
they homework (however, I did speculate that it was unlikely that
invigilators would allow heavy metal rock music to play during
examinations)!

JE comments: “Invigilator” must have common usage in the UK, but not here–I had to look it up! We in the US say “proctor.” An “invigilator” has the ring of a futuristic film thriller: “Beware of the Invigilator!”

– For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on the QWERTY Keyboard; RH as Typist (Harry Papasotiriou, Greece)

David Pike wrote on 17 March, that “Ronald Hilton would often say that once he
retired (retired?) he would devote his life to Bach.”

Harry Papasotiriou responds:

This really endears Ronald Hilton to me even more than before. J.S.
Bach has been the most constant musical companion of my life. I have
often been attracted to other classics, as well as to various strands
of modern music, but I always seem to return back to Bach.

There are times when I confront particularly difficult intellectual issues,
and then only Bach seems appropriate. All other music seems inadequate when
one confronts timeless, fundamental questions. I have Bach’s entire
collected works–155 CD’s–though it is mainly his piano and organ
work that I keep returning to. The book that I am currently finishing,
on *Lines and Cycles in International Politics*, was written with Bach
as a musical companion.

JE comments: A wonderful tribute to Bach, and to Professor Hilton.
Our ever-faithful correspondent in Athens, Harry Papasotiriou,
recently changed his home e-mail provider, and for a short while he
wasn’t receiving WAIS posts. It is great to have Harry back.

I am impressed that Bach has served as background music to Harry’s
latest scholarly work, which I look forward to reading soon. I am
much more easily distracted and must write in total silence. This
puts me at odds with the majority of my students, many of whom I see
at their computers wearing iPod headphones.

– For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on the QWERTY Keyboard; RH as Typist (David Pike, France)

David Pike writes:

This information is for the future biographer of our founding
President Ronald Hilton.

I often watched him, in his office on Alvarado Row or in his home,
while he typed. He was the original hunt-and-pecker, but he went
incredibly fast. He viewed my own classical style with curiosity, but
he never even considered changing his own. I always thought it strange
for the serious violinist that he was. His brother, who never left the
UK, played piano. Together they gave concerts inside UK prisons.
Ronald Hilton would often say that once he retired (retired?) he would
devote his life to Bach. Then along came WAIS.

JE comments: David Pike collaborated with Prof. Hilton on a number of
projects, and I would speculate that he knew RH better than did any
other WAISer. RH gave violin concerts in prisons? Did he ever write
about this for WAIS? I hope David Pike will share many more anecdotes
with us; we would all be grateful.

– For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on the QWERTY Keyboard (Henry Levin, US)

Henry Levin writes:

Paul David, an economic historian at Stanford, wrote a very famous
paper on the history and economics of the QWERTY keyboard system. (A
brief version is attached.) It is an illustration of how a
technological path is established, but not on the basis of the best
approach from a scientific or technological view.

JE comments: Thanks to Henry Levin, we now have access to the
definitive word on the raison d’etre of QWERTY. I have learned from
Paul David’s 1985 study that the top row of keys were so arranged to
permit someone demonstrating the system to produce “typewriter” using
only that row. Fascinating history.

– For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

PaulDavid.pdf

re: Technology: on the QWERTY Keyboard (Ross Rogers, Jr., US)

On the topic of the QWERTY keyboard, Ross Rogers, Jr. writes:

Touch typing, which I learned in High School, was the most important
subject for me. I learned to type on machines without the letters on the
keys. And then the teacher would hold the papers up to the light to
see if we had erased our mistakes.

Touch typing should be a must today, before kids are turned loose
on computers as play things and hunt-and-peck typing. Accuracy and
typing speed would improve.

I miss my old (American-made) mechanical portable, but not carbon paper.

JE comments: Just this week I sent my first-ever “text” message
using a regular cell phone keypad. (I was replying to a message I had
received.) It’s a whole new skill, very frustrating, and it took me
ten minutes to send one sentence. I shall henceforth avoid “texting”
at every opportunity. I (like Ross Rogers, Jr.) criticize the sloppy
typing of today’s youth, but they admittedly can “text” with lighting
speed–I often see them doing so in class, under their desk, while
pretending to soak up my glowing erudition.

– For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on the QWERTY Keyboard (Gene Franklin, US)

Gene Franklin writes:

Two quick comments on this topic: On the QWERTY keyboard layout, the
most often used letters in English were placed for the left hand with
the idea that that would slow down the typing and avoid the jams. I
recall making many such jams, even so, on the old Underwood Standards
used in my high school typing class.

As for the linotype (see Mike Bonnie’s post of 15 March), I’ve heard
that when the operator made a mistake and wanted to quickly type a
full line to be rejected, he ran a finger down the first two lines of
the keyboard and produced the line ETAOIN SHRDLU which, sometimes, he
failed to reject and this strange line showed up in the text. I’ve
read it myself sometimes in the past.

JE comments: Etaoin Shrdlu sounds like it could be a credible name
for someone from Georgia (the former Soviet Republic, not the Peach
State)…

– For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on the QWERTY Keyboard (Mike Bonnie, US)

Daryl DeBell wrote on 15 March: In the 1930s, when I took typing in
high school, they had typewriters, Remingtons I believe, that had the
letters on a thin band of metal that looped up to the “letter,” and
down on the other side. Half the letters were on one side and the
other half on the other.

Mike Bonnie replies:

Perhaps this is the keyboard layout Daryl recalls? My earliest
recollection of a keyboard was one that sat aboard a Linotype machine
at the local technical college, Western Wisconsin Technical Institute
in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. As you can see in the image provided by
Wikipedia, the key layout was quite different from today’s QWERTY.
It’s easy to recall the machine’s fault in occasionally and
unpredictably spitting out bits of molten lead.

The Linotype: As the name implies, the Linotype is a machine that
produces a solid “line of type.” Introduced about 1886, it was used
for generations by newspapers and general printers. It is a one-man
machine: the operator sits in front with the copy to be set at the top
of the keyboard. Having adjusted the machine for the required point
size and line length, the metal heated to the correct
temperature–about 550 degrees Fahrenheit–he commences setting.

http://www.woodsidepress.com/LINOTYPE.HTML

The ClavierLinotype image:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:ClavierLinotype_20041006-163300.jpg

JE comments: The Argentine writer Elias Castelnuovo, about whom I
wrote my PhD dissertation, worked for years as a linotypist. This was
the proletarian intellectual’s profession par excellence: it was a
blue-collar job that nonetheless perfectly positioned the writer in the
writing and publishing industries. Castelnuovo supposedly composed a
number of his books directly on the linotype machine. Do I correctly recall that Maxim Gorky worked for a while as a linotypist as well?

– For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on the QWERTY Keyboard (Daryl DeBell, US)

On the history of the QWERTY keyboard, Daryl DeBell writes:

In the 1930s, when I took typing in high school, they had typewriters,
Remingtons I believe, that had the letters on a thin band of metal
that looped up to the “letter,” and down on the other side. Half the
letters were on one side and the other half on the other. I never
typed more than forty words per minute, so I never got “ahead of
myself,” but I did sometimes manage to have one letter get trapped
inside the other, so the qwerty system didn’t always work even for a
slow typist.

JE comments: I may have been one of the last generations to learn
typing on a manual machine–in Mrs. Behringer’s “business skills”
class in the late 1970s. I can still recall her endless mantra: “F,
J,” “F, J.” I have seen Mrs. B. several times in the ensuing years, and have told her that touch-typing was the most valuable thing I learned in high school. It really was.

– For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

re: Technology: on the QWERTY Keyboard (Harry Guilbeau, US)

On 13 March, Jordi Molins Coronado brought up the history of the
QWERTY arrangement of a modern keyboard. JE asked how and why this
came to be. Harry Guilbeau responds:

I have some information about the history of the QWERTY keyboard. When
I started with IBM in the early 1960s, the factory trainer told us how
this arrangement was chosen over others.

The problem was not with the typist but the type bars clashing. When
two type bars that are close together are struck rapidly, there is a
good chance of the bars clashing and jamming. So, the designers chose
to place the most commonly used letters away from each other to
minimize this jamming. They also added a number between each set of
three letters to space these out.

This type of bar problem no longer exists, but we are still stuck with
the less efficient QWERTY keyboard, probably for the same reason that
we have not switched to the metric system.

JE comments: Ah, tradition… I still must modestly confess that I
am lightning-fast with the ol’ QWERTY arrangement. It gives all nine
digits a good workout, as well–not a bad thing for a mediocre pianist
such as myself. The left thumb, however, remains ever idle.

– For information about the World Association of International Studies
(WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its
homepage by simply double-clicking on: http://wais.stanford.edu/

John Eipper, Editor-in-Chief, Adrian College, MI 49221 USA

Academia Signs Up to Track Down Dissent (Ross Rogers, Jrt., US)

Ross Rogers, Jr, sends this issue of Truthout (10/17/06):
Sentimental Education: Academia Signs Up to Track Down Dissent. By Chris Floyd,

Why is the United States government spending millions of dollars to track down critics of George W. Bush in the press? And why have major American universities agreed to put this technology of tyranny into the state’s hands? At the most basic level, of course, both questions are easily answered: 1) Power. 2) Money. The Bush administration wants to be able to root out - and counteract - any dissenting noises that might put a crimp in its ongoing crusade for “full spectrum dominance” of global affairs, while the august institutions of higher learning involved - the universities of Cornell, Pittsburgh and Utah - crave the federal green that keeps them in clover. But beyond these grubby realities, there are many other disturbing aspects of this new program - which is itself only part of a much broader penetration of American academia by the Department of Homeland Security.

As with so many of the Bush measures that have quietly stripped away America’s liberties, this one too is beginning with a whimper, not a bang: a modest $2.4 Department of Homeland Security million grant to develop “sentiment analysis” software that will allow the government’s “security organs” to sift millions of articles for “negative opinions of the United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas,” as the New York Times reported earlier this month. Such negative opinions must be caught and catalogued because they could pose “potential threats to the nation,” security apparatchiks told the Times.

This hydra-headed snooping program is based on “information extraction,” which, as a chipper PR piece from Cornell tells us, is a process by which “computers scan text to find meaning in natural language,” rather than the rigid literalism ordinarily demanded by silicon cogitators. Under the gentle tutelage of Homeland Security, the universities “will use machine-learning algorithms to give computers examples of text expressing both fact and opinion and teach them to tell the difference,” says the Cornell blurb.At this point, the ancient and ever-pertinent question of Pontius Pilate comes to mind: “What is truth?” Of course, Pilate, being a devotee of what George W. Bush likes to call “the path of action,” gave the answer to his philosophical inquiry in brute physical form: truth is whatever the empire says it is - so take this Galilean rabble-rouser out and crucify him already. In like manner, it will certainly be the government “security organs” who ultimately determine the criteria for what is fact and what is opinion - and whether the latter is positive or negative, perhaps even a candidate for the Bush-Pilate “path.”

The academics will be trying out the Sentiment Analysis program (let’s call it SAP, for short) on four main clusters of articles from 2001-2002, the Times reports. These include: Bush’s famous declaration of an “axis of evil” threatening the world; the treatment of his Terror War captives in Guantanamo Bay; global warming; and the failed Bush-backed bid to topple Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez in a coup - all of them issues on which the Bush administration was at odds with much of the world, and large swathes of American opinion as well. Obviously, such issues are fertile fields for terrorist thought-crimes to be snagged and tagged by SAP.

For those with concerns about civil liberties, Cornell assures us that SAP will be limited strictly to foreign publications. Oh, really? Hands up out there, everyone who believes that this technology will not be used to ferret out “potential threats to the nation” arising in the Homeland press as well. After all, the Unitary Executive Decider-in-Chief has already decided that the nation’s iron-clad laws against warrantless surveillance of American citizens can be swept aside by his “inherent powers” if he decides it’s necessary. Why should he bother with any petty restrictions on a press-monitoring program? And wouldn’t dissension within the ranks of the volk itself actually be more threatening to government policy than the grumbling of malcontents overseas?

Then again, what is so sinister about the plan, exactly? Surely every government is eager to read its notices in the press, foreign and domestic. Surely the Bush administration already has a myriad of minions in the White House, the CIA, the NSA, the DIA and embassies around the world doing just that. True enough - and there’s the rub. For if they are already tracking and sifting media sentiment to a fare-thee-well, why do they need SAP’s $2.4 million software? Here we see the same principle that lies behind Bush’s illegal warrantless surveillance program. Long-established law - the FISA court - already provides Bush with the power to spy on anyone even remotely suspected of a connection to terrorism - and to do so immediately, without waiting a single instant or jumping through a single bureaucratic hoop to get the operation going. So who is he actually using his warrantless surveillance program against? It can’t be suspected terrorists; they are already covered by existing law. There are only two conclusions to be drawn from this strange state of affairs: 1) The Bush regime is using the program to spy on people other than suspected terrorists. 2) It is using the program to establish the principle that presidential power cannot be restrained by law in any area that the president arbitrarily designates a “matter of national security.” These conclusions are not mutually exclusive, of course.

Likewise, we must ask: who is the “Sentiment Analysis” program aimed at? It can’t be the major news and opinion drivers in the international and national media; these are already being monitored. And it hardly requires a deus ex machina to determine the political sentiment behind news stories and opinion pieces. Why then would you need multimillion-dollar computer whizbangery to tell you whether a story casts a favorable or critical light on Bush and his policies? And how could critical “sentiment” in the kinds of stories that Cornell, Pitt and Utah are examining in their tests pose any kind of “potential threat” to the nation? Again, there must be something else behind the program because, as with warrantless surveillance, it is clearly redundant on its face.

The key to this conundrum mostly likely lies in the envisioned scope of the program: “millions of articles” to be processed for “sentiment analysis.” This denotes a fishing expedition that goes far beyond the “publicly available material, primarily news reports and editorials from English-language newspapers worldwide” that Claire Cardie, Cornell’s lead researcher on SAP, says that her team will be using in developing the software. The target of such a scope cannot be simply the English-language foreign press, or the foreign press as a whole, or indeed, every newspaper in the world, from Pyongyang to Peoria. It must also be aimed at other modes of textual communication, in print and online.In fact, later in the PR blurb, Cardie rather gives the game away when, seeking to allay “fears about invasions of privacy” raised by the research, she notes that “the techniques would have to be changed considerably to work on documents like e-mails.” Yes; and an intercontinental ballistic missile is just a big, shiny, harmless rocket - until you load it with a nuclear weapon and fire it at somebody. No doubt Cardie is simply a dedicated scientist, focused on the technical problem at hand, and her naivetè on this point is genuine; but once you have built a platform that can churn through millions of pieces of text to uncover criticism and dissent - however the organs deign to define these concepts - then this technology can certainly be adapted to launch all-encompassing “sentiment analysis” against any form of written communication you please.

Nor is this program being developed in isolation. It is part of a larger Homeland Security push “to conduct research on advanced methods for information analysis and to develop computational technologies that contribute to securing the homeland,” as a DHS press release puts it, in announcing the formation of yet another university consortium. This group - led by Rutgers, and including the University of Southern California, the University of Illinois and, once again, Pitt - has pulled down a whopping $10.2 million to “identify common patterns from numerous sources of information” that “may be indicative of” - what else? - “potential threats to the nation.” This research program will draw on such areas as “knowledge representation, uncertainty quantification, high-performance computing architectures” - and our old friends, information extraction and natural language processing. It is in fact closely associated with the “sentiment analysis” work being done by the Cornell group - and note that the Rutgers consortium is designing its info-gobbling software to deal with “numerous sources” of information. Do we sense some synergy going on here?

The Cornell and Rutgers groups are two of four “University Affiliate Centers” thus far established by Homeland Security. All of the consortiums are geared toward the amassing, storing and analysis of unimaginably vast amounts of information, gathered relentlessly from a multitude of sources and formats. They are in turn just part of a still-larger panorama of “data mining” programs being developed - or already in use - by the security organs. These include the “Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement” (ADVISE) program, which can rip and read mountains of open source data - such as web sites and databases, as analyst Michael Hampton reports. Two Democratic Congressmen, David Obey of Wisconsin and Martin Slabo of Minnesota, have asked the General Accounting Office to investigate the program for possible intrusions on privacy rights, Hampton notes.

While Congressional concern for privacy is all well and good, we know that it means nothing to the Unitary Executive. Earlier this month, Bush used his “signing statement” magic wand to wave away a direct Congressional mandate for reports on whether Homeland Security is obeying privacy laws in compiling its secret “watch lists,” which increasingly control more and more aspects of American life, including “who gets on planes, who gets government jobs, who gets employed,” as Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told AP. Using the by-now ritualistic language of presidential dictatorship, Bush’s statement said he would ignore Congress’s direct order and delay, alter or simply quash the privacy reports as he saw fit.

You don’t need a machine-learning algorithm or $2.4 million worth of Ivy League software to connect the dots here. The Bush administration already has spyware devouring reams of private information in every direction. It is now paying top universities millions of dollars to refine this data into actionable intelligence - including the automated discernment and tracking of dissent against administration policies and criticism of the president. Bush has openly declared that he has no intention of obeying privacy laws - or any other laws safeguarding the Constitutional rights of American citizens - if he doesn’t want to.

And if that’s not sinister enough for you, consider this: on Tuesday George W. Bush signed the “Military Commissions Act,” which states that he can arbitrarily declare anyone - yes, American citizens included - an “unlawful enemy combatant” for any action that he arbitrarily decides constitutes “material support” to terrorists. He can imprison these “UECs” without charge or trial, for the duration of the “War on Terror,” which he and Dick Cheney have already assured us will not end “in our lifetime.” He can subject these captives to “strenuous interrogation techniques” that by any sane reckoning constitute torture - but this same Act allows Bush himself to determine what is legally torture and what is not, except in the most extreme cases, such as rape and deliberate murder.

A regime openly committed to wielding arbitrary power over the life and liberty of every person on earth is now equipping itself with intrusive technology beyond the wildest dreams of the most totalitarian states in history. And some of the nation’s most respected educational institutions - proud bastions of civilization and enlightenment - are helping them do it. It is simply impossible that such a system will not be mightily abused. And for all you SAP machines out there: that conclusion is a fact, not an opinion.

Chris Floyd is an American journalist. His work has appeared in print and online in venues all over the world, including The Nation, Counterpunch, Columbia Journalism Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Il Manifesto, the Moscow Times and many others. He is the author of Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium, and is co-founder and editor of the “Empire Burlesque” political blog. He can be reached at cfloyd72@gmail.com.

RH: Stanford’s motto is “The wind of freedom blows”, so presumably Stanford is unsympathetic to this activity. I am copying this to Chris Floyd to see if he has any information. If any Stanford or Hoover member has information, we would be grateful if it were e-mailed to us.

Ronald Hilton: For information about the World Association of International Studies (WAIS), and its online publication, the World Affairs Report, read its homepage by simply double-clicking on : http://wais.stanford.edu/

RE: COMPUTERS: A little on hard- and software (Tim Brown, US)

Randy Black writes: Tim Brown’s anecdote about a friend using his sledge hammer to dispatch his PC reminds me of a story about legendary pro golfer “thundering” Tommy Bolt, who was said to have gotten so mad during a tournament in the 1950s that he marched to the pond that he’d just hit two balls into. He turned to his caddy and one by one, broke his golf clubs over his knee and threw each one into the pond. He then turned to his caddy and grabbed the golf bag and tossed it into the pond and turned once again to the caddy, their eyes met and the caddy took off in the opposite direction on a dead run.rh.

RH: The epic of my Dell computer continues. The highly competent Jeff McMAhon, who has the keyboard, seems to have left town without solving the problem. Although i am a notoriously mild man, remember the adage about fearing the wrath of–Dell. beware !!!

Plan to attend the WAIS conference on “Critical World Issues ” at Stanford July 31-August 1, 2006. It will be a rare opportunity to meet other WAISers. Tell interested friends.

Ronald Hilton, Editor, 2006

WAISers: Jon Kofas

Jon Kofas, professor at Indiana University, Kokomo campus, sent me Thanksgiving greetings, which I greatly appreciated.. Intrigued by the name Kokomo,I sought clarification and found this: Founded in the 1840s, the community is named for a Miami Indian leader. Industrialization was spurred by the discovery of natural gas in 1886 and by the inventions of Elwood Haynes (1857-1925), who lived here. In 1894, Haynes designed one of the first successful gasoline-powered cars. It is now on display in the Smithsonian Institution. Haynes’s inventions included carburetors and mufflers. The city is also the site of Indiana University at Kokomo (1945).
Jon is retiring and will return to his native Greece, settling in a village on the south coast. It is common for immigrants to return to the nest where they were hatched, and in Jon’s case there must have been� desire to get away from Indiana winters.� This year, quite unusually, it has snowed in Athens, but Jon can count usually on balmy weather.� In Athens he should meet fellow WAISer Harry Papasotiriou, likewise a professor. They are both interested in modern history and politics.� They may disagree, but I am sure they will do so WAISly.� Because of his forthcoming repatriation, he has not sent me much to post recently, but I trust we will soon hear from him again.� He will keep his ear to the ground, and report to us on the political waves hitting the shores of Greece.

�Read the home page of the World Association of International Studies (WAIS) by simply double-clicking on:�� http://wais.stanford.edu/ Please inform us of any change of e-mail address.