Thursday, February 4, 2010
Reading List: The World Crisis
- Churchill, Winston S. The World Crisis. London: Penguin, [1923–1931, 2005] 2007. ISBN 978-0-141-44205-1.
- Churchill's history of the Great War (what we now call World War I) was published in five volumes between 1923 and 1931. The present volume is an abridgement of the first four volumes, which appeared simultaneously with the fifth volume of the complete work. This abridged edition was prepared by Churchill himself; it is not a cut and paste job by an editor. Volume Four and this abridgement end with the collapse of Germany and the armistice—the aftermath of the war and the peace negotiations covered in Volume Five of the full history are not included here. When this work began to appear in 1923, the smart set in London quipped, “Winston's written a book about himself and called it The World Crisis”. There's a lot of truth in that: this is something somewhere between a history and memoir of a politician in wartime. Description of the disastrous attempts to break the stalemate of trench warfare in 1915 barely occupies a chapter, while the Dardanelles Campaign, of which Churchill was seen as the most vehement advocate, and for which he was blamed after its tragic failure, makes up almost a quarter of the 850 page book. If you're looking for a dispassionate history of World War I, this is not the book to read: it was written too close to the events of the war, before the dire consequences of the peace came to pass, and by a figure motivated as much to defend his own actions as to provide a historical narrative. That said, it does provide an insight into how Churchill's experiences in the war forged the character which would cause Britain to turn to him when war came again. It also goes a long way to explaining precisely why Churchill's warnings were ignored in the 1930s. This book is, in large part, a recital of disaster after disaster in which Churchill played a part, coupled with an explanation of why, in each successive case, it wasn't his fault. Whether or not you accept his excuses and justifications for his actions, it's pretty easy to understand how politicians and the public in the interwar period could look upon Churchill as somebody who, when given authority, produced calamity. It was not just that others were blind to the threat, but rather than Churchill's record made him a seriously flawed messenger on an occasion where his message was absolutely correct. At this epoch, Churchill was already an excellent writer and delivers some soaring prose on occasions, but he has not yet become the past master of the English language on display in The Second World War (which won the Nobel Prize for Literature when it really meant something). There are numerous tables, charts, and maps which illustrate the circumstances of the war. Americans who hold to the common view that “The Yanks came to France and won the war for the Allies” may be offended by Churchill's speaking of them only in passing. He considers their effect on the actual campaigns of 1918 as mostly psychological: reinforcing French and British morale and confronting Germany with an adversary with unlimited resources. Perhaps the greatest lesson to be drawn from this work is that of the initial part, which covers the darkening situation between 1911 and the outbreak of war in 1914. What is stunning, as sketched by a person involved in the events of that period, is just how trivial the proximate causes of the war were compared to the apocalyptic bloodbath which ensued. It is as if the crowned heads, diplomats, and politicians had no idea of the stakes involved, and indeed they did not—all expected the war to be short and decisive, none anticipating the consequences of the superiority conferred on the defence by the machine gun, entrenchments, and barbed wire. After the outbreak of war and its freezing into a trench war stalemate in the winter of 1914, for three years the Allies believed their “offensives”, which squandered millions of lives for transitory and insignificant gains of territory, were conducting a war of attrition against Germany. In fact, due to the supremacy of the defender, Allied losses always exceeded those of the Germans, often by a factor of two to one (and even more for officers). Further, German losses were never greater than the number of new conscripts in each year of the war up to 1918, so in fact this “war of attrition” weakened the Allies every year it continued. You'd expect intelligence services to figure out such a fundamental point, but it appears the “by the book” military mentality dismissed such evidence and continued to hurl a generation of their countrymen into the storm of steel. This is a period piece: read it not as a history of the war but rather to experience the events of the time as Churchill saw them, and to appreciate how they made him the wartime leader he was to be when, once again, the lights went out all over Europe. A U.S. edition is available.
Posted at
23:34
Friday, January 29, 2010
Barack Headroom II: Me-mix of the State of the Union address
Download MP3 audio file
Posted at
22:15
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Reading List: The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
- Bryson, Bill. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. London: Black Swan, 2007. ISBN 978-0-552-77254-9.
-
What could be better than growing up in the United States in the
1950s? Well, perhaps being a kid with super powers
as the American dream reached its apogee and before the madness
started! In this book, humorist, travel writer, and
science populariser extraordinaire Bill Bryson
provides a memoir of his childhood (and, to a lesser extent,
coming of age) in Des Moines, Iowa in the 1950s and '60s. It is
a thoroughly engaging and charming narrative which, if you
were a kid there, then will bring back a flood of fond memories
(as well as some acutely painful ones) and if you weren't, to
appreciate, as the author closes the book, “What a wonderful
world it was. We won't see its like again, I'm afraid.”
The 1950s were the golden age of comic books, and whilst shopping
at the local supermarket, Bryson's mother would drop him in the
(unsupervised) Kiddie Corral where he and other offspring could
indulge for free to their heart's content. It's only natural
a red-blooded Iowan boy would discover himself to be a
superhero, The Thunderbolt Kid, endowed with ThunderVision, which
enabled his withering gaze to vapourise morons. Regrettably,
the power seemed to lack permanence, and the morons so dispersed
into particles of the luminiferous æther had a tedious way of
reassembling themselves and further vexing our hero and his
long-suffering schoolmates. But still, more work for
The Thunderbolt Kid!
This was a magic time in the United States—when prosperity not
only returned after depression and war, but exploded to such an extent
that mean family income more than doubled in the 1950s while most
women still remained at home raising their families. What had
been considered luxuries just a few years before: refrigerators
and freezers, cars and even second cars, single family homes, air conditioning,
television, all became commonplace (although kids would still gather
in the yard of the neighbourhood plutocrat to squint through his
window at the wonder of colour TV and chuckle at why he paid so
much for it).
Although the transformation of the U.S. from an agrarian society
to a predominantly urban and industrial nation was well underway,
most families were no more than one generation removed from the
land, and Bryson recounts his visits to his grandparents' farm
which recall what was lost and gained as that pillar of American
society went into eclipse.
There are relatively few factual errors, but from time to time Bryson's
narrative swallows counterfactual left-wing conventional
wisdom about the Fifties. For example, writing about
atomic bomb testing:
Altogether between 1946 and 1962, the United States detonated just over a thousand nuclear warheads, including some three hundred in the open air, hurling numberless tons of radioactive dust into the atmosphere. The USSR, China, Britain, and France detonated scores more.
Sigh…where do we start? Well, the obvious subtext is that U.S. started the arms race and that other nuclear powers responded in a feeble manner. In fact, the U.S. conducted a total of 1030 nuclear tests, with a total of 215 detonated in the atmosphere, including all tests up until testing was suspended in 1992, with the balance conducted underground with no release of radioactivity. The Soviet Union (USSR) did, indeed, conduct “scores” of tests, to be precise 35.75 score with a total of 715 tests, with 219 in the atmosphere—more than the U.S.—including Tsar Bomba, with a yield of 50 megatons. “Scores” indeed—surely the arms race was entirely at the instigation of the U.S. If you've grown up in he U.S. in the 1950s or wished you did, you'll want to read this book. I had totally forgotten the radioactive toilets you had to pay to use but kids could wiggle under the door to bask in their actinic glare, the glories of automobiles you could understand piece by piece and were your ticket to exploring a broad continent where every town, every city was completely different: not just another configuration of the same franchises and strip malls (and yet recall how exciting it was when they first arrived: “We're finally part of the great national adventure!”) The 1950s, when privation gave way to prosperity, yet Leviathan had not yet supplanted family, community, and civil society, it was utopia to be a kid (although, having been there, then, I'd have deemed it boring, but if I'd been confined inside as present-day embryonic taxpayers in safetyland are I'd have probably blown things up. Oh wait—Willoughby already did that, twelve hours too early!). If you grew up in the '50s, enjoy spending a few pleasant hours back there; if you're a parent of the baby boomers, exult in the childhood and opportunities you entrusted to them. And if you're a parent of a child in this constrained century? Seek to give your child the unbounded opportunities and unsupervised freedom to explore the world which Bryson and this humble scribbler experienced as we grew up. Vapourising morons with ThunderVision—we need you more than ever, Thunderbolt Kid! A U.S. edition is available.
Posted at
01:32
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Reading List: The Persian Night
- Taheri, Amir. The Persian Night. New York: Encounter Books, 2009. ISBN 978-1-59403-240-0.
-
With Iran continuing its march toward nuclear weapons
and long range missiles unimpeded by an increasingly
feckless West, while simultaneously domestic discontent
over the tyranny of the mullahs, economic stagnation,
and stolen elections are erupting into bloody violence on
the streets of major cities, this book provides a timely
look at the history, institutions, personalities, and
strategy of what the author dubs the “triple
oxymoron”: the Islamic Republic of Iran which,
he argues, espouses a bizarre flavour of Islam which is not
only a heretical anathema to the Sunni majority, but also
at variance with the mainstream Shiite beliefs which
predominated in Iran prior to Khomeini's takeover; anything but a
republic in any usual sense of the word; and motivated by
a global messianic vision decoupled from the traditional
interests of Iran as a nation state.
Khomeini's success in wresting control away from the ailing
Shah without a protracted revolutionary struggle was made
possible by support from “useful idiots” mostly
on the political left, who saw Khomeini's appeal to the
rural population as essential to gaining power and planned
to shove him aside afterward. Khomeini, however, once in
power, proved far more ruthless than his coalition partners,
summarily putting to death all who opposed him, including
many mullahs who dissented from his eccentric version of
Islam.
Iran is often described as a theocracy, but apart from the
fact that the all-powerful Supreme Guide is nominally a
religious figure, the organisation of the government and
distribution of power are very much along the lines of
a fascist state. In fact, there is almost a perfect parallel
between the institutions of Nazi Germany and those of Iran.
In Germany, Hitler created duplicate party and state centres of power
throughout the government and economy
and arranged them in such a way as to ensure that decisions
could not be made without his personal adjudication of turf
battles between the two. In Iran, there are the revolutionary
institutions and those of the state, operating side by side,
often with conflicting agendas, with only the Supreme Guide
empowered to resolve disputes. Just as Hitler set up the SS
as an armed counterpoise to the Wehrmacht, Khomeini created
the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as the revolution's
independent armed branch to parallel the state's armed forces.
Thus, the author stresses, in dealing with Iran, it is essential
to be sure whether you're engaging the revolution or
the nation state: over the history of the Islamic Republic,
power has shifted back and forth between the two sets of
institutions, and with it Iran's interaction with other players
on the world stage. Iran as a nation state generally strives
to become a regional superpower: in effect, re-establishing the
Persian Empire from the Mediterranean to the Caspian Sea through
vassal regimes. To that end it seeks weapons, allies, and
economic influence in a fairly conventional manner. Iran the
Islamic revolutionary movement, on the other hand, works to
establish global Islamic rule and the return of the Twelfth
Imam: an Islamic Second Coming which Khomeini's acolytes
fervently believe is imminent. Because they brook no deviation
from their creed, they consider Sunni Moslems, even the strict
Wahabi sect of Saudi Arabia, as enemies which must be compelled
to submit to Khomeini's brand of Islam.
Iran's troubled relationship with the United States cannot be
understood without grasping the distinction between state and
revolution. To the revolution, the U.S. is the Great Satan
spewing foul corruption around the world, which good Muslims
should curse, chanting “death to America” before
every sura of the Koran. Iran the nation state, on the other
hand, only wants Washington to stay out of its way as it
becomes a regional power which, after all, was pretty much the
state of affairs under the Shah, with the U.S. his predominant
arms supplier. But the U.S. could never adopt such a strategy
as long as the revolution has a hand in policy, nor will Iran's
neighbours, terrified of its regional ambitions, encourage
the U.S. to keep their hands off.
There is a great deal of conventional wisdom about Iran which
is dead wrong, and this book dispels much of it. The supposed
“CIA coup” against
Mosaddegh
in 1953, for which two U.S. presidents have since apologised,
proves to have been nothing of the sort (although the
CIA did, on occasion, claim credit for it as an example of a
rare success amidst
decades of blundering), with the U.S. largely supporting the
nationalisation of the Iranian oil fields against fierce opposition
from Britain. But cluelessness about Iran has never been in
short supply among U.S. politicians. Speaking at the
World Economic Forum, Bill Clinton said:
Iran today is, in a sense, the only country where progressive ideas enjoy a vast constituency. It is there that the ideas I subscribe to are defended by a majority.
Lest this be deemed a slip of the tongue due to intoxication by the heady Alpine air of Davos, a few days later on U.S. television he doubled down with:[Iran is] the only one with elections, including the United States, including Israel, including you name it, where the liberals, or the progressives, have won two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote in six elections…. In every single election, the guys I identify with got two-thirds to 70 percent of the vote. There is no other country in the world I can say that about, certainly not my own.
I suppose if the U.S. had such an overwhelming “progressive” majority, it too would adopt “liberal” policies such as hanging homosexuals from cranes until they suffocate and stoning rape victims to death. But perhaps Clinton was thinking of Iran's customs of polygamy and “temporary marriage”. Iran is a great nation which has been a major force on the world stage since antiquity, with a deep cultural heritage and vigorous population who, in exile from poor governance in the homeland, have risen to the top of demanding professions all around the world. Today (as well as much of the last century) Iran is saddled with a regime which squanders its patrimony on a messianic dream which runs the very real risk of igniting a catastrophic conflict in the Middle East. The author argues that the only viable option is regime change, and that all actions taken by other powers should have this as the ultimate goal. Does that mean going to war with Iran? Of course not—the very fact that the people of Iran are already pushing back against the mullahs is evidence they perceive how illegitimate and destructive the present regime is. It may even make sense to engage with institutions of the Iranian state, which will be the enduring foundation of the nation after the mullahs are sent packing, but it it essential that the Iranian people be sent the message that the forces of civilisation are on their side against those who oppress them, and to use the communication tools of this new century (Which country has the most bloggers? The U.S. Number two? Iran.) to bypass the repressive regime and directly address the people who are its victims. Hey, I spent two weeks in Iran a decade ago and didn't pick up more than a tiny fraction of the insight available here. Events in Iran are soon to become a focus of world attention to an extent they haven't been for the last three decades. Read this book to understand how Iran figures in the contemporary Great Game, and how revolutionary change may soon confront the Islamic Republic.
Posted at
00:36
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Reading List: The Character of Nations
- Codevilla, Angelo. The Character of Nations. New York: Basic Books, [1997] 2009. ISBN 978-0-465-02800-9.
- As George Will famously observed, “statecraft is soulcraft”. This book, drawing on examples from antiquity to the present day, and from cultures all around the world, explores how the character, culture, and morals of a people shape the political institutions they create and how, in turn, those institutions cause the character of those living under them to evolve over time. This feedback loop provides important insights into the rise and fall of nations and empires, and is acutely important in an age where the all-encompassing administrative state appears triumphant in developed nations at the very time it reduces its citizens to subservient, ovine subjects who seek advancement not through productive work but by seeking favours from those in power, which in turn imperils the wealth creation upon which the state preys. This has, of course, been the state of affairs in the vast majority of human societies over the long span of human history but, as the author notes, for most of that history the intrusiveness of authority upon the autonomy of the individual was limited by constraints on transportation, communication, and organisation, so the scope of effective control of even the most despotic ruler rarely extended far beyond the seat of power. The framers of the U.S. Constitution were deeply concerned whether self-government of any form could function on a scale beyond that of a city-state: there were no historical precedents for such a polity enduring beyond a generation or two. Thomas Jefferson and others who believed such a government could be established and survive in America based their optimism on the character of the American people: their independence, self-reliance, morality grounded in deep religious convictions, strong families, and willingness to take up arms to defend their liberty would guide them in building a government which would reflect and promote those foundations. Indeed, for a century and a half, despite a disastrous Civil War and innumerable challenges and crises, the character of the U.S. continued to embody that present at the founding, and millions of immigrants from cultures fundamentally different from those of the founders were readily assimilated into an ever-evolving culture which nonetheless preserved its essential character. For much of American history, people in the U.S. were citizens in the classic sense of the word: participants in self-government, mostly at a local level, and in turn accepting the governance of their fellow citizens; living lives centred around family, faith, and work, with public affairs rarely intruding directly into their lives, yet willing to come to the defence of the nation with their very lives when it was threatened. How quaint that all seems today. Statecraft is soulcraft, and the author illustrates with numerous examples spanning millennia how even the best-intentioned changes in the relationship of the individual to the state can, over a generation or two, fundamentally and often irreversibly alter the relationship between government and the governed, transforming the character of the nation—the nature of its population, into something very different which will, in turn, summon forth a different kind of government. To be specific, and to cite the case most common in the the last century, there is a pernicious positive feedback loop which is set into motion by the enactment of even the most apparently benign social welfare programs. Each program creates a dependent client class, whose political goals naturally become to increase their benefits at the expense of the productive classes taxed to fund them. The dependent classes become reliable voting blocs for politicians who support the programs that benefit them, which motivates those politicians to expand benefits and thus grow the dependent classes. Eventually, indeed almost inevitably, the society moves toward a tipping point where net taxpayers are outvoted by tax eaters, after which the business of the society is no longer creation of wealth but rather a zero sum competition for the proceeds of redistribution by the state. Note that the client classes in a mature redistributive state go far beyond the “poor, weak, and infirm” the politicians who promote such programs purport to champion. They include defence contractors, financial institutions dependent upon government loan guarantees and bailouts, nationalised companies, subsidised industries and commodity producers, public employee unions, well-connected lobbying and law firms, and the swarm of parasites that darken the sky above any legislature which expends the public patrimony at its sole discretion, and of course the relatives and supporters of the politicians and bureaucrats dispensing favours from the public purse. The author distinguishes “the nation” (the people who live in a country), “the regime” (its governing institutions), and “the establishment” (the ruling class, including politicians but also media, academia, and opinion makers). When these three bodies are largely aligned, the character of the nation will be reflected in its institutions and those institutions will reinforce that character. In many circumstances, for example despotic societies, there has never been an alignment and this has often been considered the natural order of things: rulers and ruled. It is the rarest of exceptions when this triple alignment occurs, and the sad lesson of history is that even when it does, it is likely to be a transient phenomenon: we are doomed! This is, indeed, a deeply pessimistic view of the political landscape, perhaps better read on the beach in mid-summer than by the abbreviated and wan daylight of a northern hemisphere winter solstice. The author examines in detail how seventy years of communist rule transformed the character of the Soviet population in such a manner that the emergence of the authoritarian Russian gangster state was a near-inevitable consequence. Perhaps had double-domed “defence intellectuals” read this book when it was originally published in 1997 (the present edition is revised and updated based upon subsequent events), ill-conceived attempts at “nation building” might have been avoided and many lives and vast treasure not squandered in such futile endeavours.
Posted at
15:23
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Tom Swift and His Aerial Warship Now Online
The eighteenth installment in the Tom Swift adventures, Tom Swift and His Aerial Warship, is now posted in the Tom Swift and His Pocket Library collection. As usual, HTML, PDF, PDA eReader, and plain ASCII text editions suitable for reading off- or online are available. In this installment of the Tom Swift saga, published in 1915, war has erupted in Europe, and our intrepid inventor, concerned with maintaining the technological deterrent of an under-armed and isolationist “Uncle Sam”, has taken upon himself the task of constructing “on spec” a six hundred foot long airship equipped with four inch recoil-compensated guns, precision-targeted bombs, and rapid-fire defensive arms. One might say, from an after-the-innocence post-war perspective, that Tom had anticipated the inevitable involvement of his nation in the European conflict or, perhaps, that he'd been one of the first to twig to the fact that becoming a “merchant of death” was the way to riches in the “progressive” war-socialism state soon to supplant the individualist entrepreneurial society which nurtured him and he came to exemplify. But nefarious “foreign spies” covet Tom's dreadnought of the clouds, and an implausible coalition of French, German, Russian, and British malefactors (hey, aren't these guys fighting one another?) conspire to destroy Tom's invention and, failing at that, hijack it for their own evil ends. But all ends well, thanks (uncharacteristically for a Tom Swift novel) not due to the ingenuity and pluck of the protagonist, but to a bolt from the blue. Because there were a number of scanning artefacts and typographical errors in the source document, I subjected it to a careful proofreading. Consequently, I believe this text has fewer errors than other novels initially posted in this series. Prove me wrong! Send your corrections with the feedback form, and please cite the context of any changes you submit. This book brings the Tom Swift saga from its inception in 1910 through 1915 for a total of eighteen books. While the first novels in the series came fast and furious, starting in 1912 one book per year was published. Seven public domain Tom Swift novels remain, and I'll continue to add them to this collection at the rate of one or two a year. There are a total of forty adventures in the original Tom Swift series, but those published between 1923 and 1941 will not enter the public domain until 95 years after their copyright date (assuming the law isn't changed before then), so none of these can be posted before 2019.Posted at
02:56
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Reading List: Memorial Day
- Flynn, Vince. Memorial Day. New York: Pocket Books, 2004. ISBN 978-0-7434-5398-1.
- In this, the fifth novel in the Mitch Rapp (warning—the article at this link contains minor spoilers) series the author returns from the more introspective view of the conflicting loyalties and priorities of the CIA's most effective loose cannon in previous novels to pen a rip-roaring edge-of-the-seat thriller which will keep you turning pages until the very last. I packed this as an “airplane book” and devoured the whole 574 page brick in less than 48 hours after I opened it on the train to the airport. Flynn is a grand master of the “just one more chapter before I go to sleep” thriller, and this is the most compelling of his novels I've read to date. Without giving away any more than the back cover blurb, the premise is a nuclear terrorist attack on Washington, and the details of the detection of such a threat and the response to it are so precise that a U.S. government inquiry was launched into how Flynn got his information (answer—he has lots of fans in the alphabet soup agencies within a megaton or so of the Reflecting Pool). While the earlier novels in the Mitch Rapp chronicle are best read in order, you can pick this one up and enjoy it stand-alone: sure, you'll miss some of the nuances of the backgrounds and interactions among the characters, but the focus here is on crisis, mystery, taking expedient action to prevent a catastrophic outcome, and the tension between those committed to defending their nation and those committed to protecting the liberties which make that nation worthy of being defended. As with most novels in which nuclear terrorism figures, I have some quibbles with the details, but I'm not going to natter upon them within a spoiler warning block because they made absolutely no difference to my enjoyment of this yarn. This is a thriller by a master of the genre at the height of his powers, which has not been dated in any way by the passing of years since its publication. Enjoy!
Posted at
02:32
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Reading List: A Brilliant Darkness
- Magueijo, João. A Brilliant Darkness. New York: Basic Books, 2009. ISBN 978-0-465-00903-9.
-
Ettore Majorana
is one of the most enigmatic figures in twentieth century
physics. The son of a wealthy Sicilian family and a domineering
mother, he was a mathematical prodigy who, while studying
for a doctorate in engineering, was recruited to join
Enrico Fermi's laboratory: the
“Via
Panisperna boys”. (Can't read that without
seeing “panspermia”?
Me neither.) Majorana switched to physics, and received his
doctorate at the age of 22.
At Fermi's lab, he almost immediately became known as the
person who could quickly solve intractable mathematical problems
others struggled with for weeks. He also acquired a reputation
for working on whatever interested him, declining to collaborate
with others. Further, he would often investigate a topic
to his own satisfaction, speak of his conclusions to his
colleagues, but never get around to writing a formal
article for publication—he seemed almost totally
motivated by satisfying his own intellectual curiosity and
not at all by receiving credit for his work. This infuriated
his fiercely competitive boss Fermi, who saw his institute
scooped on multiple occasions by others who independently
discovered and published work Majorana had done and
left to languish in his desk drawer or discarded as being
“too obvious to publish”. Still, Fermi regarded
Majorana as one of those wild talents who appear upon rare
occasions in the history of science. He said,
There are many categories of scientists, people of second and third rank, who do their best, but do not go very far. There are also people of first class, who make great discoveries, which are of capital importance for the development of science. But then there are the geniuses, like Galileo and Newton. Well, Ettore was one of these.
In 1933, Majorana visited Werner Heisenberg in Leipzig and quickly became a close friend of this physicist who was, in most personal traits, his polar opposite. Afterward, he returned to Rome and flip-flopped from his extroversion in the company of Heisenberg to the life of a recluse, rarely leaving his bedroom in the family mansion for almost four years. Then something happened, and he jumped into the competition for the position of full professor at the University of Naples, bypassing the requirement for an examination due to his “exceptional merit”. He emerged from his reclusion, accepted the position, and launched into his teaching career, albeit giving lectures at a level which his students often found bewildering. Then, on March 26th, 1938, he boarded a ship in Palermo Sicily bound for Naples and was never seen again. Before his departure he had posted enigmatic letters to his employer and family, sent a telegram, and left a further letter in his hotel room which some interpreted as suicide notes, but which forensic scientists who have read thousands of suicide notes say resemble none they've ever seen (but then, would a note by a Galileo or Newton read like that of the run of the mill suicide?). This event set in motion investigation and speculation which continues to this very day. Majorana was said to have withdrawn a large sum of money from his bank a few days before: is this plausible for one bent on self-annihilation (we'll get back to that infra)? Based on his recent interest in religion and reports of his having approached religious communities to join them, members of his family spent a year following up reports that he'd joined a monastery; despite “sightings”, none of these leads panned out. Years later, multiple credible sources with nothing apparently to gain reported that Majorana had been seen on numerous occasions in Argentina, and, abandoning physics (which he had said “was on the wrong path” before his disappearance), pursued a career as an engineer. This only scratches the surface of the legends which have grown up around Majorana. His disappearance, occurring after nuclear fission had already been produced in Fermi's laboratory, but none of the “boys” had yet realised what they'd seen, spawns speculation that Majorana, as he often did, figured it out, worked out the implications, spoke of it to someone, and was kidnapped by the Germans (maybe he mentioned it to his friend Heisenberg), the Americans, or the Soviets. There is an Italian comic book in which Majorana is abducted by Americans, spirited off to Los Alamos to work on the Manhattan Project, only to be abducted again (to his great relief) by aliens in a flying saucer. Nobody knows—this is just one of the many mysteries bearing the name Majorana. Today, Majorana is best known for his work on the neutrino. He responded to Paul Dirac's theory of the neutrino (which he believed unnecessarily complicated and unphysical) with his own, in which, as opposed to there being neutrinos and antineutrinos, the neutrino is its own antiparticle and hence neutrinos of the same flavour can annihilate one another. At the time these theories were proposed the neutrino had not been detected, nor would it be for twenty years. When the existence of the neutrino was confirmed (although few doubted its existence by the time Reines and Cowan detected it in 1956), few believed it would ever be possible to distinguish the Dirac and Majorana theories of the neutrino, because that particle was almost universally believed to be massless. But then the “scientific consensus” isn't always the way to bet.Starting with solar neutrino experiments in the 1960s, and continuing to the present day, it became clear that neutrinos did have mass, albeit very little compared to the electron. This meant that the distinction between the Dirac and Majorana theories of the neutrino was accessible to experiment, and could, at least in principle, be resolved. “At least in principle”: what a clarion call to the bleeding edge experimentalist! If the neutrino is a Majorana particle, as opposed to a Dirac particle, then neutrinoless double beta decay should occur, and we'll know whether Majorana's model, proposed more than seven decades ago, was correct. I wish there'd been more discussion of the open controversy over experiments which claim a 6σ signal for neutrinoless double beta decay in 76Ge, but then one doesn't want to date one's book with matters actively disputed.
To the book: this may be the first exemplar of a new genre I'll dub “gonzo scientific biography”. Like the “new journalism” of the 1960s and '70s, this is as much about the author as the subject; the author figures as a central character in the narrative, whether transcribing his queries in pidgin Italian to the Majorana family:“Signora wifed a brother of Ettore, Luciano?”
Besides humourously trampling on the language of Dante, the author employs profanity as a superlative as do so many “new journalists”. I find this unseemly in a scientific biography of an ascetic, deeply-conflicted individual who spent most of his short life in a search for the truth and, if he erred, erred always on the side of propriety, self-denial, and commitment to dignity of all people. Should you read this? Well, if you've come this far, of course you should! This is an excellent, albeit flawed, biography of a singular, albeit flawed, genius whose intellectual legacy motivates massive experiments conducted deep underground and in the seas today. Suppose a neutrinoless double beta decay experiment should confirm the Majorana theory? Should he receive the Nobel prize for it? On the merits, absolutely: many physics Nobels have been awarded for far less, and let's not talk about the “soft Nobels”. But under the rules a Nobel prize can't be awarded posthumously. Which then compels one to ask, “Is Ettore dead?” Well, sure, that's the way to bet: he was born in 1906 and while many people have lived longer, most don't. But how you can you be certain? I'd say, should an experiment for neutrinoless double beta decay prove conclusive, award him the prize and see if he shows up to accept it. Then we'll all know for sure. Heck, if he did, it'd probably make Drudge.
“What age did signora owned at that time”
“But he was olded fifty years!”
“But in end he husbanded you.”
Posted at
01:47
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Reading List: Enemies Foreign and Domestic
- Bracken, Matthew. Enemies Foreign and Domestic. Orange Park, FL: Steelcutter Publishing, [2003] 2008. ISBN 978-0-9728310-1-7.
- This is one of those books, like John Ross's Unintended Consequences and Vince Flynn's Term Limits in which a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism committed by the Federal Government of the United States finally pushes liberty-loving citizens to exercise “their right, … their duty, to throw off such Government” even if doing so requires the tree of liberty to be refreshed “with the blood of patriots and tyrants”. In this novel a massacre at a football stadium which occurs under highly dubious circumstances serves as the pretext for a draconian ban on semiautomatic weapons, with immediate confiscation and harsh penalties for non-compliance. This is a step too far for a diverse collection of individuals who believe the Second Amendment to be the ultimate bastion against tyranny, and a government which abridges it to be illegitimate by that very act. Individually, they begin to take action, and what amounts to a low grade civil war begins to break out in the Tidewater region of Virgina, with government provocateurs from a rogue federal agency of jackbooted thugs (as opposed to the jackbooted thugs of other agencies which are “just following orders”) perpetrating their own atrocities, which are then used to justify even more restrictions on the individual right to bear arms, including a ban on telescopic sights (dubbed “sniper rifles”), transportation of weapons in automobiles, and random vehicle stop checkpoints searching for and confiscating firearms. As the situation spirals increasingly out of control, entrepreneurial jackbooted thugs exploit it to gain power and funding for themselves, and the individuals resisting them come into contact with one another and begin to put the pieces together and understand who is responsible and why a federal law enforcement agency is committing domestic terrorism. Then it's payback time. This novel is just superbly written. It contains a wealth of detail, all of it carefully researched and accurate. I only noted a couple of typos and factual goofs. The characters are complex, realistically flawed, and develop as the story unfolds. This is a thriller, not a political tract, and it will keep you turning the pages until the very end, while thinking about what you would do when liberty is on the line. Excerpts from the book are available online at the author's Web site.
Posted at
21:48
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Recipes: Jamaican Jerk Leftover Turkey with Pasta
As Thanksgiving approaches, it's time for this year's recipe. Having previous discussed cranberries and a quick and easy way to cook turkey, now let's move on to what is, for me, one of the best things about Thanksgiving: leftover turkey in the days that follow. Now, I like turkey sandwiches as much as anybody (try one sometime with the spiced cranberries mentioned above spread on the bread), but after a while you may find yourself yearning for some variety. Here's a spicy alternative which is simple to fix, quick, and sublimely tasty. This recipe is adapted from the Jerk Chicken and Pasta recipe posted by Terry Coonan, but modified in a variety of ways to make it simpler, better tasting (in my opinion), lower in calories, and suited to cold leftover turkey instead of freshly grilled chicken breasts.| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| Leftover turkey meat | 350 g |
| Tagliatelle or fettuccini pasta | 250 g |
| Olive oil | 2 Tbsp |
| Garlic purée | 1 Tbsp |
| Onion | 1/2 medium |
| Jerk paste | 1 Tbsp |
| Ground coriander | 1 Tbsp |
| Yoghurt | 180 g |
| Lime juice | 4 Tbsp (1 lime, juiced) |
| White wine | 1/4 cup |
| Chicken bouillon cube | 1 cube (10 g) |
| Corn starch or instant sauce thickener | 3 Tbsp |
| Sea salt | 1 tsp |
| Black pepper, fresh ground | 1 tsp |
| Water | 1/2 cup |
Posted at
00:47
