date:20021013




Charles Jannuzi wrote:
 
The science report
 is that sad sick pretense of an exercise in c/v
 building that pretends we can.


The basis both of SCIENCE (deified -- as at Sceptical Inquiere) and of
SCIENCE (demonized -- as with Carl  too many others) -- is the Platonic
argument that a mathematician is not a mathematician when he/she is
making a mistake. Both (Carl  Sceptical Inquirer) are pitching religous
woo-woo and can't tell us much about the actual world.

Carrol

Query: planned obsolescence

2002-10-13 Thread topp8564


Hi all,

Could anyone help me out with early references to planned obsolescence, 
specially in the auto industry? When did the debate on this erupt? Did it ever? 
What is some good reading?

What prompted me to think about this was this passage from noted New Guinean 
anthropologist Peter Lawrence, speaking of the difficulties of modernizing New 
Guinea:

 it is an economy lacking profit motif and emphasising annual subsistence, it 
tends to be a stationary , changeless economy. There is no incentive to improve 
old techniques of production, or to find new ones or new goods and resources. 
Hence there are no forces internalised within the system to create change. In 
contrast to our own  in which the 1967 motor car is presumably faster, safer, 
more comfortable and more prestigious than its 1966 predecessor  the native 
economy goes on, year in and year out, in the same old way, affected only by 
climatic conditions, abundance of fish and game, and the size of the work force 
available. (Lawrence 1967:36)

I thought the example of the car was particularly amusing, given the 
'irrational exhuberance' of building Buicks with speed-holes, chrome widgets, 
fins, etc... Ironically, Lawrence was mounting an argument regarding the 
exhuberant hopes of cargo cultists; but his example is the zenith of our own 
fetishism...

Thiago

PS. Is this too off-topic? I'm trying to get my pen-l legs...



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Re: Re: Re: What is science

2002-10-13 Thread Carl Remick


From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED]

... Both (Carl  Sceptical Inquirer) are pitching religous
woo-woo and can't tell us much about the actual world.

Carrol

Woo-woo it may be, but it is of a decidedly irreligious nature.  Know then 
thyself, presume not God to scan, what?  The proper study of mankind is man.

Carl




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campus anti-war movements

Title: campus anti-war movements

Seeds of Protest Growing on College Campuses
By TAMAR LEWIN
New York TIMES/Oct. 12, 2002

BOSTON, Oct. 10 - Mike McLinn never showed the faintest interest in political protest, but he has plunged headfirst into the effort to prevent an American attack against Iraq.

On Tuesday night, Mr. McLinn, a senior at Northeastern University, went to a planning meeting for a citywide demonstration on Nov. 3. Wednesday night, he went to the Boston Mobilization office, where two dozen students from Boston University and Boston College talked about the No War, No Way Walk for Peace on Oct. 20. Mr. McLinn, a computer studies major, has also been meeting with other campus groups to explore joint actions.

The only thing I ever did on campus was run the outdoors club, which is about having fun, Mr. McLinn said. But this is about saving lives. We're talking about attacking Iraq, attacking first, which is something this country's never done before. We're turning into an imperialist power. So for the first time, I made the decision to act on my angst.

As the threat of military action against Iraq looms, students across the country are talking about the possibility of war. The first stirrings of an antiwar movement are emerging, even as a few conservative students who support the president are starting to organize.

We've made a board with all these pins on it, showing where there have been demonstrations or teach-ins, or where there are things planned, and we have more than 135 campuses in 35 states, said Martha Honey of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, who has been helping organize student protests against military action. It's growing exponentially, each day.

The movement against an attack on Iraq is still brand new, and most of the student actions have been small, attracting 100 people on one campus, 300 on another. It remains to be seen whether a powerful antiwar movement will emerge in the absence of a draft or, for that matter, a war.

Then, too, in the aftermath of Sept. 11, many Americans, of every age, support tough action to prevent terrorism. According to a New York Times/CBS News Poll released this week, most Americans under 30 share the rest of the nation's views of the president's policies - they are generally supportive. But younger Americans are the most opposed to a pre-emptive strike, and most likely to think that a war between the United States and Iraq would spread to other countries in the Middle East.

As recently as two months ago, on many campuses, only a handful of Muslim students and foreign policy professors were thinking about Iraq. But since late September, more than 10,000 faculty members at universities across the country have signed an online letter opposing an invasion, posted on the Web site www.noiraqattack.org. Students from anti-globalization groups and humanitarian groups are now forming antiwar coalitions with peace groups, Muslim student associations and others.

My group, Stop the War!, is working with Amnesty International, the Greens, the Student Labor Action Coalition, the Muslim students, all kinds of groups, said Josh Healey, a University of Wisconsin freshman who helped organize a teach-in Tuesday and a rally Wednesday. When I was handing out leaflets, all kinds of people were saying, like: `Thanks a lot. We don't want to go to war about Iraq, but we didn't know what to do.'

The speed of the antiwar mobilization has struck some longtime college presidents. Students are engaging very, very quickly with Iraq, said Nancy Dye, the president of Oberlin College. This morning I was struck by a very large sign on top of an academic building, saying, `Say No to War in Iraq.' A new student organization has gotten itself together, and I don't even know if they have a name yet. There wasn't anything like this during the first gulf war, when I was president at Vassar.

But such activity is not seen everywhere: So far, people seem to be worrying more about the economy and the sniper, said Stephen Trachtenberg, the president of George Washington University. You talk to undergrads and they don't have any memory of Vietnam. Activism is something their parents tell them about.

At many campuses, support for military action against Iraq has been muted or nonexistent. But that, too, may be changing. Late last month, Joe Fairbanks founded the Stanford College Republicans to give conservative students at his mostly liberal campus a place to voice support for the Bush policies. The group, with 200 members, is now planning a teach-in.

We knew that military action was likely soon, and wanted to give students who supported it some way to show that to the rest of the students. Military action has become the only way to solve this problem, said Mr. Fairbanks, a sophomore at Stanford University.

At the University of Texas too, conservatives are planning political actions.

The Campus Coalition for Peace and Justice has had a couple of

Re: campus anti-war movements




 Devine, James wrote:
 
 Seeds of Protest Growing on College Campuses
 By TAMAR LEWIN
 New York TIMES/Oct. 12, 2002
 
  [CLIP]
 We knew that military action was likely soon, and wanted to give
 students who supported it some way to show that to the rest of the
 students. Military action has become the only way to solve this
 problem, said Mr. Fairbanks, a sophomore at Stanford University.
[CLIP]

This pro-war statement contains implicitly but not explicitly the
primary assumption that an anti-war movement must confront: the
assumption that there exists a problem to be solved. There is no
problem. Nothing needs to be done. (Note: Slogan's such as Give Peace a
Chance in effect _accept_ the premise of the warmakers. Give peace a
chance to do _what_?)

 
 Building an antiwar movement when students are not threatened by the
 draft is not easy. It may be particularly difficult in a generation
 that has little experience with political protest.

We have discussed this before. I personally am convinced (on the basis
of my own experience in the movement against the Vietnam War) that the
draft (or fear etc to it) had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with
that movement. (Anyone who enters an anti-war movement to stay out of
the draft is being foolish and not much use to that movement. We had a
much more intelligent way of draft-dodging during the Korean War: We
joined the Air Force or Navy -- or even the army, since volunteers had a
bit more choice what happened to them.)

Resisting the draft (burning draft cards, dumping shit on draft board
records -- as one father of draft-age sons did in Wisconsin) were
_tactics_ of the anti-war movement, NOT reflective of a goal of avoiding
the draft but of the goal of stopping a stupid fucking war for quite
other reasons. We helped people who did want to get out of the military.
(I helped a sailor desert to Sweden.) But most of those we helped
weren't themselves in the anti-war movement -- except objectively by
desiring and accepting our help.) The person who more or less started
SDS at ISU was a six-year marine veteran. The person who was central to
the second growth of SDS when the first group graduated or drifted away
was an Air-Force veteran.
 
 Campus activism at Penn is a bit frustrating because it seems like
 most people agree with us, said Dan Fishback, a University of
 Pennsylvania senior. I'll talk about the various reasons we shouldn't
 go to war, and they'll be, like, `Yeah, I'm totally with you.' But
 they're not, because they're not involved. They're so used to feeling
 helpless that it doesn't occur to them to be outraged.

I want to pursue this later, and perhaps on lbo-talk rather than here. I
(and a few others) have been arguing for as long as these lists have
existed that a movement grows by talking to those who already agree with
it, and various people have been more or less deliberately and vulgarly
misconstruing this as our wanting only to talk with true-believers in
the corner.

Carrol

Iraq's nukes?


http://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n20/domb01_.html [full]

So here we go again. In October 1991, following the Gulf War, early
inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) under Security
Council Resolution 687 revealed that Iraq had a clandestine uranium
enrichment programme based on the novel method of electromagnetic
separation. This did not involve equipment normally used in nuclear power
programmes and so had evaded detection. There were two sites involved in the
process, Tuwaitha and Tarmiyah, but only about a kilo of uranium had been
enriched by just a few per cent. At the time I estimated that it would take
four or five years for Iraq to enrich sufficient uranium for a weapon.* This
timescale is confirmed in the report just published by the International
Institute of Strategic Studies.

In the years that followed, the IAEA acquired increasingly precise knowledge
of Iraq's nuclear activities, especially after the defection in 1995 of
Saddam's son-in-law Hussein Kamel, who was responsible for the project. Iraq
had obtained two complete gas centrifuges from German sources by the time it
invaded Kuwait, and was hoping to copy them to produce its own. It also had
substantial amounts of highly enriched uranium (HEU) supplied by France and
the USSR. Before leaving Iraq in 1998, the IAEA had destroyed the Tuwaitha
and Tarmiyah sites with all their equipment, removed the German centrifuges
and the HEU, and destroyed most of the other sites working on the nuclear
programme, such as al-Atheer, where the warhead design and construction were
being carried out. In the absence of clear evidence that it has been able to
rebuild these facilities despite stringent UN sanctions, one can only
conclude that as far as nuclear weapons are concerned, Iraq is much less of
a threat now than it was in 1991.

Tony Blair and George W. Bush do not want us to think like this. Khidhir
Hamza is the source of many of the headlines claiming that Iraq is on the
verge of (or already has) a nuclear weapon capability. The Guardian reported
on 1 August that Iraq would have nuclear weapons by 2005, quoting testimony
by Hamza to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. On 16 September, the
Times, following an interview with Hamza, produced the headline: 'Iraq will
have nuclear bomb in months.' In the Sunday Mirror of 22 September Hamza
himself wrote: 'I believe Saddam now has the capability to put a nuclear
warhead on a missile . . . sending in UN inspectors now is useless.'

Khidhir Hamza is a Shia from Diwaniyah in southern Iraq. In the 1960s he
studied physics at MIT and Florida State. He helped develop the Iraqi Atomic
Energy Commission in the 1970s, working in the reactor programme, and moved
to the weapons programme proper in 1980, ending up as a general in the
Special Security Forces involved in the warhead project. Unlike many of his
senior physicist colleagues he avoided imprisonment, and unlike many of his
senior Security Force and Baath Party colleagues he avoided execution. He
managed to transfer from the weapons programme to al-Mansour University in
Baghdad just before the Gulf War, and in 1994 slipped away to a small
university in Libya. He even managed, with insider information, to make a
lot of money on the Baghdad stock exchange. In 1995, after several spurned
attempts, he persuaded the CIA to take him in, and to arrange for his family
to be transported to the United States.

[snip]

Re: Re: RE: Western Rationality

2002-10-13 Thread joanna bujes


At 03:47 AM 10/12/2002 +, you wrote:
The sheer complexity of modern technologies requires that RD be a team 
effort; no one individual acting alone can supply the expertise needed to 
advance the state of the art.  If you have a team effort, you need 
administrators to coordinate efforts, allocate resources, etc.

You need administrative/coordinating functions; but these don't necessarily 
have to become the domain of professional administrators. On the whole, 
workers are much savvier about how to coordinate/administrate their work 
than administrators. At least, i find this to be so in the software business.

Joanna

Re: Query: planned obsolescence

2002-10-13 Thread Michael Perelman


In one famous study, published in the conservative Journal of Political Economy,
three prominent economists, Franklin Fisher, Zvi Griliches, and Carl Kaysen,
estimated that more than 25 percent of the selling price of a car came from the
cost of model changes that were unrelated to performance (1962).
Fisher, Franklin M., Zvi Griliches, and Carl Kaysen. 1962. The Costs of Automobile
Changes Since 1949. Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 70, No. 5 (October): pp.
433-51.

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: what is science?


In part Doyle wrote:

We're talking about Neuro-networks not
intuition.  
Whatever intuition is
supposed to be in popular imagination it is 
pointless to go on about
intuition when we have better ways to talk about 
what is going in someone's
mind. 

Problem is, we still have no adequate logic for
modelling what is going on in someone's mind.
Still, Peirce makes an admirable attempt to get
beyond 'mere intuition' that escapes the nets of
deduction and induction with his term 'abduction'
or 'abductive logic'. It's well worth reading.

Charles Jannuzi



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Re: Western Rationality



--- joanna bujes [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
 At 03:47 AM 10/12/2002 +, you wrote:
 The sheer complexity of modern technologies
 requires that RD be a team 
 effort; no one individual acting alone can
 supply the expertise needed to 
 advance the state of the art.  If you have a
 team effort, you need 
 administrators to coordinate efforts, allocate
 resources, etc.
 
 You need administrative/coordinating functions;
 but these don't necessarily 
 have to become the domain of professional
 administrators. On the whole, 
 workers are much savvier about how to
 coordinate/administrate their work 
 than administrators. At least, i find this to
 be so in the software business.
 
 Joanna
 

It's the same in the military, where senior
enlisted really make the administrative,
managerial officers look good (or bad, as on one
ship where, after the officers accused NCOs and
lower enlisted , wrongly, of sabotaging
equipment--the problem was missed maintenance
intervals that officers supervised and faulty
equipment--the enlisted decided not to find any
Soviet subs for a while). 

I suspect it is true everywhere. I do see how the
Japanese companies integrate assembly line with
office work--for example, office workers
participating in quality control circles at the
factory next to the office building. But in the
new new economy, most Americans say about the
Japanese: they work hard and are still good at
making things. But Americans are a separate class
meant to control the world, right? (I guess that
managerial obliviousness equals moral certitude.)

C. Jannuzi

   


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RE: Query: planned obsolescence

2002-10-13 Thread Bill Rosenberg


Vance Packard wrote about such things for the general reader, beginning
in the 1950's. One, The Waste Makers, was specifically about planned
obsolescence I think.

See also http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/sbeder/columns/engcol8.html by
Sharon Beder, from the perspective of ethical engineering, for a short
article on planned obsolescence that mentions Packard and earlier
references.

Bill

 -Original Message-
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
 Sent: Monday, 14 October 2002 4:22 am
 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Subject: [PEN-L:31317] Query: planned obsolescence
 
 Hi all,
 
 Could anyone help me out with early references to planned
obsolescence,
 specially in the auto industry? When did the debate on this erupt? Did
it
 ever?
 What is some good reading?
 
 What prompted me to think about this was this passage from noted New
 Guinean
 anthropologist Peter Lawrence, speaking of the difficulties of
modernizing
 New
 Guinea:
 
 ... it is an economy lacking profit motif and emphasising annual
 subsistence, it
 tends to be a stationary , changeless economy. There is no incentive
to
 improve
 old techniques of production, or to find new ones or new goods and
 resources.
 Hence there are no forces internalised within the system to create
change.
 In
 contrast to our own - in which the 1967 motor car is presumably
faster,
 safer,
 more comfortable and more prestigious than its 1966 predecessor - the
 native
 economy goes on, year in and year out, in the same old way, affected
only
 by
 climatic conditions, abundance of fish and game, and the size of the
work
 force
 available. (Lawrence 1967:36)
 
 I thought the example of the car was particularly amusing, given the
 'irrational exhuberance' of building Buicks with speed-holes, chrome
 widgets,
 fins, etc... Ironically, Lawrence was mounting an argument regarding
the
 exhuberant hopes of cargo cultists; but his example is the zenith of
our
 own
 fetishism...
 
 Thiago
 
 PS. Is this too off-topic? I'm trying to get my pen-l legs...
 
 
 
 -
 This mail sent through IMP: www-mail.usyd.edu.au

biological wmd


Meat producer recalls 27.4 million pounds of deli products
Sunday, October 13, 2002 Posted: 5:38 PM EDT (2138 GMT)


PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (AP) -- Wampler Foods recalled all cooked deli
products made since May at a suburban plant and halted production because
the meat is possibly contaminated with listeria, authorities said Sunday.

The recall of about 27.4 million pounds of meat is the largest in USDA
history. It follows an Oct. 9 recall of 295,000 pounds of turkey and chicken
products at the plant in Franconia, Pennsylvania.

The company voluntarily expanded the recall to all cooked deli products made
from May 1 through Oct. 11 and halted production Saturday at the facility
about 25 miles north of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania after receiving test
results of samples taken from floor drains.

We want consumers to be aware of the recall because of the potential for
foodborne illness, said Dr. Garry L. McKee, the Agriculture Department's
Food Safety and Inspection Service administrator. Diners may also wish to
ask if their meals contain the recalled products.

The national recall is the largest in the history of the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, inspection service spokesman Steven Cohen said.

Each package being recalled bears the plant number P-1351 inside the USDA
mark of inspection and a production date. Wampler officials said the recall
didn't include fresh turkeys and that it should have no effect on the
holiday season.

The discovery was the result of a scientific investigation into the cause of
illnesses, deaths and miscarriages in the Northeast from the listeria
strain, the federal agency said.

No Wampler's products have been linked to that outbreak, said David Van
Hoose, Wampler's chief executive officer.

At least 120 illnesses and 20 deaths were caused by listeria in eight
Northeast states since last summer. The genetic strain that caused those
illnesses is different than the strain found at the plant, officials said.

We don't have any scientific evidence at this point that there is a
connection, but our analysis of sampling in that plant is not complete,
Cohen said.

The deli products were sold to consumers in retail groceries, delicatessens
and food service distributors under the Wampler Foods and select private
labels. Company officials said consumers who had cooked meats produced
during the recall period should return the meats to where they were
purchased.

Listeria can cause high fever, severe headache, neck stiffness and nausea,
according to the USDA. It can be fatal in young children, the elderly and
people with weak immune systems and can cause miscarriages and stillbirths.

Van Hoose said plant workers will receive training and the plant will be
cleaned before production resumes.

The meat being recalled makes up roughly 6 percent of the company's total
turkey production, he said. The company, part of Pilgrim's Pride
Corporation, based in Pittsburgh, Texas, did not say how much revenue it
would lose as a result of the shutdown.

Consumers with questions can call the company at toll-free at 877-260-7110
or the USDA Meat and Poultry hotline at 800-535-4555.

RE: Re: campus anti-war movements

2002-10-13 Thread Max B. Sawicky


FWIW I happen to agree that the draft was not the central
factor.  Pure self-interest would not necessarily dictate
spending time in anti-war activism, since the relationship
between one's individual contribution and one's chances of
getting drafted were small.  As a personal observation, there
was no obvious link between those at risk of being drafted
and those who were active.  We didn't sit around saying, gee
I've got this low number I better pass out some leaflets.
And of course there were all the women involved, who had
zero chance of being drafted.  Of course there were vets
involved too.  They weren't worried about being drafted either.

If there is an invasion that bogs down and/or entails a
steady, non-trivial stream of U.S. casualties, there will
without question be an anti-war movement.  We need to be ready.

mbs


We have discussed this before. I personally am convinced (on the basis
of my own experience in the movement against the Vietnam War) that the
draft (or fear etc to it) had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with
that movement. (Anyone who enters an anti-war movement to stay out of
the draft is being foolish and not much use to that movement. We had a
much more intelligent way of draft-dodging during the Korean War: We
joined the Air Force or Navy -- or even the army, since volunteers had a
bit more choice what happened to them.) . . .

Re: campus anti-war movements



--- Max B. Sawicky [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
 FWIW I happen to agree that the draft was not
 the central
 factor.  Pure self-interest would not
 necessarily dictate
 spending time in anti-war activism, since the
 relationship
 between one's individual contribution and one's
 chances of
 getting drafted were small.  As a personal
 observation, there
 was no obvious link between those at risk of
 being drafted
 and those who were active.  We didn't sit
 around saying, gee
 I've got this low number I better pass out some
 leaflets.
 And of course there were all the women
 involved, who had
 zero chance of being drafted.  Of course there
 were vets
 involved too.  They weren't worried about being
 drafted either.
 
 If there is an invasion that bogs down and/or
 entails a
 steady, non-trivial stream of U.S. casualties,
 there will
 without question be an anti-war movement.  We
 need to be ready.

For those of us who came of age in the mid to
late 70s, it's often hard to reconcile all those
news and movie images of hippies taking on the
powers that be and all those ex-hippies who
became the powers that be. It's also interesting
that I can pretty much tell someone's political
and social conservatism (with 'leftish liberal'
being the start of the conservative spectrum)from
whether or not they like much of the alternative
music of the late 70s and early 80s. The
ex-hippies are largely into corporate rock--and
largely created it, like Richard Branson and
Virgin.

C. Jannuzi

 

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RE: campus anti-war movements

Title: RE: campus anti-war movements

[CLIP]
We knew that military action was likely soon, and wanted to give
students who supported it some way to show that to the rest of the
students. Military action has become the only way to solve this
problem, said Mr. Fairbanks, a sophomore at Stanford University.
[CLIP]

Carrol:
This pro-war statement contains implicitly but not explicitly the
primary assumption that an anti-war movement must confront: the
assumption that there exists a problem to be solved. There is no
problem. Nothing needs to be done. (Note: Slogan's such as Give Peace a
Chance in effect _accept_ the premise of the warmakers. Give peace a
chance to do _what_?)

To clarify (as I see it):
My wife said something about needing someone better in power to solve the Iraq problem. Said I: Bush _created_ the Iraq problem.

Building an antiwar movement when students are not threatened by the
draft is not easy. It may be particularly difficult in a generation
that has little experience with political protest.

Carrol:
We have discussed this before. I personally am convinced (on the basis
of my own experience in the movement against the Vietnam War) that the
draft (or fear etc to it) had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with
that movement. (Anyone who enters an anti-war movement to stay out of
the draft is being foolish and not much use to that movement. We had a
much more intelligent way of draft-dodging during the Korean War: We
joined the Air Force or Navy -- or even the army, since volunteers had a
bit more choice what happened to them.)...

This is looking at matters in an overly individualistic way, with too much emphasis on rational decision-making (something I expect from economists, not from Carrol). The fact is that almost everyone knew someone who was threatened by the draft, so that there was _sociological_ effect of creating a general unease about the war, especially as the casualties mounted. As the war became seen by more and more as unwinnable (especially after Tet in 1968), this unease became opposition. When Nixon got rid of the draft, it undermined the visceral unease and feal that had shored up the movement.

Jim

Re: Re: campus anti-war movements



- Original Message -
From: Charles Jannuzi [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 For those of us who came of age in the mid to
 late 70s, it's often hard to reconcile all those
 news and movie images of hippies taking on the
 powers that be and all those ex-hippies who
 became the powers that be. It's also interesting
 that I can pretty much tell someone's political
 and social conservatism (with 'leftish liberal'
 being the start of the conservative spectrum)from
 whether or not they like much of the alternative
 music of the late 70s and early 80s. The
 ex-hippies are largely into corporate rock--and
 largely created it, like Richard Branson and
 Virgin.

 C. Jannuzi


=

Where do fans of Henry Purcell and Frank Zappa fit in your political
taxonomy? :-)

Ian

Re: RE: Re: campus anti-war movements




Max B. Sawicky wrote:
 
 
 If there is an invasion that bogs down and/or entails a
 steady, non-trivial stream of U.S. casualties, there will
 without question be an anti-war movement.  We need to be ready.
 

We need to be ready: And that is the whole point of all the
(fruitless) time spent doggedly organizing year after year, decade after
decade, when no one is paying much attention. Also, of course, no one
ever knows in advance when someone out there is suddenly going to start
paying attention.

Carrol

Re: Re: Re: campus anti-war movements


--- Ian Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 - Original Message -
 From: Charles Jannuzi [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
  For those of us who came of age in the mid to
  late 70s, it's often hard to reconcile all
 those
  news and movie images of hippies taking on
 the
  powers that be and all those ex-hippies who
  became the powers that be. It's also
 interesting
  that I can pretty much tell someone's
 political
  and social conservatism (with 'leftish
 liberal'
  being the start of the conservative
 spectrum)from
  whether or not they like much of the
 alternative
  music of the late 70s and early 80s. The
  ex-hippies are largely into corporate
 rock--and
  largely created it, like Richard Branson and
  Virgin.
 
  C. Jannuzi
 
 
 =
 
 Where do fans of Henry Purcell and Frank Zappa
 fit in your political
 taxonomy? :-)
 
 Ian

Zappa: hippie. Capt. Beefheart: understood the
disinherited of the 70s. Henry Purcell: he sure
ain't Henry Rollins, but anyone who could set
Dryden to music deserves some credit for trying.

CJ


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Re: campus anti-war movements



--- Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 
 Max B. Sawicky wrote:
  
  
  If there is an invasion that bogs down and/or
 entails a
  steady, non-trivial stream of U.S.
 casualties, there will
  without question be an anti-war movement.  We
 need to be ready.
  
 
 We need to be ready: And that is the whole
 point of all the
 (fruitless) time spent doggedly organizing year
 after year, decade after
 decade, when no one is paying much attention.
 Also, of course, no one
 ever knows in advance when someone out there is
 suddenly going to start
 paying attention.
 
 Carrol

 You would have to hope that Americans would get
tired of the US's ability to drop bombs, because 
heavy casualties--or even a steady stream-- on
the ground just aren't going to happen. 

OTOH, the second wave of terrorist attacks is
probably beginning. 

It's speculation to wonder whether or not the
shootings in the DC area are 'terrorism'. It was
interesting that a supposed cell in Oregon was
doing concerted target practice with rifles. I'm
more inclined to think of a 'patriot', a 'true
son of liberty' gone all haywire, like the
anthrax terror. It is striking that no one can
really profile the perps, since unlike most
brazen shooters, he or they doesn't or do not
want to be caught soon. 

The Bali (a largely Hindu part of mostly Muslim
Indonesia) bombing fits with the idea of some
sort of second wave that has been planned. 

So the point is: if acts of terror continue, will
the American people see Bush's 'war against
terrorism' as largely phony and that the war
against Hussein as largely a distraction that has
nothing whatsoever to do with the stopping
terror? It would be going too far to hope most
would see it itself as state-sponsored terrorism.

C. Jannuzi   


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RE: Western Rationality

Title: RE: [PEN-L:31300] Western Rationality

I wrote:if enlightenment comes only from within, then there's no way to
convince anyone else of the validity of your enlightenment. It's like those religious people who say you have to Believe to understand. Well, I don't believe, so I'll just put your religion on the shelf next to astrology.

Carl writes: The crowning irony is that belief in science *is* a religion, in effect if not design. Lay people usually aren't competent to decide whether scientists have provided adequate proof for their arguments, and they're almost invariably unable to make reasoned assessments of disputes between scientists. For most people, scientific pronouncements aren't at all illuminating but are as arbitary, opaque and mystifying as priestly decrees of ancient times.

This seems to be a willful misunderstanding of what I have said. But no matter.

I would agree that science _can be_ a religion. That's what I and many others call scientism. It is rejected by progressive scientists such as Richard Lewontin and others I've mentioned.

The fact is that lay people can become competent to deal with scientists. To think that they can't do so is to accept the scientistic belief that science is a religion. One of the things that the old social-democratic, socialist, and communist movements did was to educate working people so that they could deal with scientists in a more egalitarian way.

Further, scientific pronouncements can be opaque, but scientists can and should try to make them in lay language (as with the movement to make lawyers do so).

There's been a (perhaps minor insufficient) change that indicates what could happen in the future. It used to be that medical doctors acted as if they were minor gods, ignoring the wishes, questions, and emotions of the patients. Nowadays, more and more, at least in the U.S., the relationship between MDs and patients is more equal, with more two-way conversation. Medical schools are training MDs to accept this and be able to do it. Unfortunately, the HMOs encourage the opposite. But we can't take negative results as inevitable.

Historian Carl Becker made this argument many years ago, as I recall, in his essay The Heavenly City of 18th Century Philosophers -- i.e., that the Enlightenment has not proved very enlightening. Sure, people enjoy all the material benefits that modern technology produces, but they don't have a clue how this technology actually works; it might as well

be magic. This remains very much the age of belief, not the age of reason.

Carl, you seem to consistently merge science in general with science as practiced in the Enlightenment/Modernist way. But the Enlightenment only had a false claim to rationality. It was progressive in the fight against feudal obscurantism, but this aspect of Enlightenment thinking has become irrelevant as feudalism has gone away.

Sabri clarifies this point:To me, reason is that power of the mind to understand the world, and as such, it is universal to us all. And logic is that method of reasoning that is employed by all in our planet, more or less, also universally.

right.

On the other hand, (western) rationality is that human behaviour, possibly emerged in Europe some centuries ago, which attemps to impose a complete order on an infinite dimensional set, that is, a continuum, that I call life. Life as a continuum can at best be a partially ordered, if that, at least, to my experience. Hence, western rationality, as a form of human behaviour, is unreasonable and, therefore, illogical. It is like trying to order Paul Desmond's Take Five and Dede Efendi's Rast Kar-i

Natik in some way. Although they are both musical monuments, at least, to my liking, they don't belong to the same equivalence set, and hence, there is no way to compare one against the other.

It is a mistake, as the Enlightenment and Carl do, to equate the one-size-fits-all Tayloristic science of the Enlightenment, with rationality.

Lewontin and Levins (in their DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST) argue against the Enlightenment version of science. They see the world as heterogeneous, involving a large number of parts that are interconnected as part of a whole that feeds back to affect the character of the parts, and as dynamic. The Enlightenment science is akin to dissection: in this view, we can only understand an organism by cutting it up into bits -- killing it. This destroys the dynamism and the holism. Enlightenment science also attempts to get rid of real-world heterogeneity, escaping into abstraction.

Re: Re: Re: Re: campus anti-war movements



- Original Message -
From: Charles Jannuzi [EMAIL PROTECTED]

  Where do fans of Henry Purcell and Frank Zappa
  fit in your political
  taxonomy? :-)
 
  Ian

 Zappa: hippie. Capt. Beefheart: understood the
 disinherited of the 70s. Henry Purcell: he sure
 ain't Henry Rollins, but anyone who could set
 Dryden to music deserves some credit for trying.

 CJ

===

And here I thought FZ was just making wiseass comments about people who
spout ridiculous notions and do stupid things..Then again, trying to
infer another's political inclinations from the kinds of music they like
always seemed silly to me

Ian

RE: Western Rationality

Title: RE: Western Rationality

[By mistake, I sent this before I was finished. Please reply to this one.]

I wrote:if enlightenment comes only from within, then there's no way
to
convince anyone else of the validity of your enlightenment. It's like
those religious people who say you have to Believe to understand.
Well, I don't believe, so I'll just put your religion on the shelf next
to astrology.

Carl writes: The crowning irony is that belief in science *is* a
religion, in effect if not design. Lay people usually aren't competent
to decide whether scientists have provided adequate proof for their
arguments, and they're almost invariably unable to make reasoned
assessments of disputes between scientists. For most people, scientific
pronouncements aren't at all illuminating but are as arbitary, opaque
and mystifying as priestly decrees of ancient times.

This seems to be a willful misunderstanding of what I have said. But no
matter.

I would agree that science _can be_ a religion. That's what I and many
others call scientism. It is rejected by progressive scientists such
as Richard Lewontin and others I've mentioned.

The fact is that lay people can become competent to deal with
scientists. To think that they can't do so is to accept the scientistic
belief that science is a religion. One of the things that the old
social-democratic, socialist, and communist movements did was to educate
working people so that they could deal with scientists in a more
egalitarian way.

Further, scientific pronouncements can be opaque, but scientists can and
should try to make them in lay language (as with the movement to make
lawyers do so).

There's been a (perhaps minor insufficient) change that indicates what
could happen in the future. It used to be that medical doctors acted as
if they were minor gods, ignoring the wishes, questions, and emotions of
the patients. Nowadays, more and more, at least in the U.S., the
relationship between MDs and patients is more equal, with more two-way
conversation. Medical schools are training MDs to accept this and be
able to do it. Unfortunately, the HMOs encourage the opposite. But we
can't take negative results as inevitable.

Historian Carl Becker made this argument many years ago, as I recall,
in his essay The Heavenly City of 18th Century Philosophers -- i.e.,
that the Enlightenment has not proved very enlightening. Sure, people
enjoy all the material benefits that modern technology produces, but
they don't have a clue how this technology actually works; it might as
well be magic. This remains very much the age of belief, not the age of
reason.

Carl, you seem to consistently merge science in general with science
as practiced in the Enlightenment/Modernist way. But the Enlightenment
only had a false claim to rationality. It was progressive in the fight
against feudal obscurantism, but this aspect of Enlightenment thinking
has become irrelevant as feudalism has gone away.

Sabri clarifies this point:To me, reason is that power of the mind to
understand the world, and as such, it is universal to us all. And logic
is that method of reasoning that is employed by all in our planet, more
or less, also universally.

right.

On the other hand, (western) rationality is that human behaviour,
possibly emerged in Europe some centuries ago, which attemps to impose a
complete order on an infinite dimensional set, that is, a continuum,
that I call life. Life as a continuum can at best be a partially
ordered, if that, at least, to my experience. Hence, western
rationality, as a form of human behaviour, is unreasonable and,
therefore, illogical. It is like trying to order Paul Desmond's Take
Five and Dede Efendi's Rast Kar-i Natik in some way. Although they are both musical monuments, at least, to my liking, they don't belong to the same equivalence set, and hence, there is no way to compare one against the other.

It is a mistake, as the Enlightenment and Carl do, to equate the
one-size-fits-all Tayloristic science of the Enlightenment, with
rationality.

Lewontin and Levins (in their DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST) argue against the
Enlightenment version of science. They see the world as heterogeneous,
involving a large number of parts that are interconnected as part of a
whole that feeds back to affect the character of the parts, and as
dynamic. The Enlightenment science is akin to dissection: in this
view, we can only understand an organism by cutting it up into bits --
killing it. This destroys the dynamism and the holism. Enlightenment
science also attempts to get rid of real-world heterogeneity, escaping
into abstraction.

In response to Sabri, Carl writes:Well put. The extreme selectivity in fact-finding that forms the basis of western rationality provides a very distorted picture of reality and tends to subjugate, not liberate, the human spirit.

I should reiterate that the reason why western rationality is in quotation marks is because it is not the same thing as

Re: RE: Western Rationality


RE: [PEN-L:31300] Western Rationality
- Original Message -
From: Devine, James

Lewontin and Levins (in their DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST) argue against the
Enlightenment version of science. They see the world as heterogeneous,
involving a large number of parts that are interconnected as part of a whole
that feeds back to affect the character of the parts, and as dynamic. The
Enlightenment science is akin to dissection: in this view, we can only
understand an organism by cutting it up into bits -- killing it. This
destroys the dynamism and the holism. Enlightenment science also attempts
to get rid of real-world heterogeneity, escaping into abstraction.

=

By the same token, anti-reductionism aside, the aggregation-holism issue in
ecology and physiology makes the problem of 'the aggregate production
function' look like kid stuff...Where/when to 'draw' those damn
boundaries!

Ian

Re: RE: campus anti-war movements




 Devine, James wrote:
 
   [CLIP]
 
 
 This is looking at matters in an overly individualistic way, with too
 much emphasis on rational decision-making (something I expect from
 economists, not from Carrol).

O.K. I'll have to buy this. As you suspect, that is the one form of
disagreement that makes me jump. :-)

A _very_ vague memory from a year or two previous to my getting upset
about the war. (As recent reseach have established, a lot of such
memories, even or especially when exceedingly sharp, are false.) I think
I heard on a CBS TV news report of early U.S. casualties in Vietnam.
(Probably in 1963 or so.) They were _regular army_ casualties, and my
recall is that I more or less thought something like, Well it's not too
bad if it's only regular army (i.e., non-draftees). No thought, at that
time, to the Vietnamese being slaughtered (though that wasn't mentioned
on the newscast either).

 The fact is that almost everyone knew
 someone who was threatened by the draft, so that there was
 _sociological_ effect of creating a general unease about the war,
 especially as the casualties mounted. As the war became seen by more
 and more as unwinnable (especially after Tet in 1968), this unease
 became opposition. When Nixon got rid of the draft, it undermined the
 visceral unease and feal that had shored up the movement.

O.K. But this is quite different, of course, from the frequent flippant
(or merely cynical)explanation of the draft as the source of anti-war
sentiment. This general unease even bears resemblance to what one
might call a sense of solidarity -- or at least, can be raised to that
level by further experience.

Here is a post from lbo that I think is relevant:

*

At 10:54 AM +0100 10/13/02, James Heartfield wrote:
Was the WEEK being too harsh when it reported that the 'The role of 
the protest [against the Iraq war on 28 September] is not to affect 
public policy, but to demonstrate the morally pure soul of the 
protestor.'? (29 September 2002)

Leading anti-globalisation protestor George Monbiot: 'There is 
little that those of us who oppose the coming war with Iraq can now 
do to prevent it ... Our role is now, perhaps, confined to the 
modest but necessary task of demonstrating the withdrawal of our 
consent' (8 October 2002).

It is sadly true that neither anti-war protests in the UK nor ones in 
the USA have the aim of regime change, bringing down the government 
that tramples upon the interests of workers.
-- 
Yoshie *

Those _first steps_ into activism often are partially describable as
demonstrating the morally pure soul of the protestor,' though a less
cynical description is probably more accurate. But once expressed in
action (and not just in a private affirmation of being more moral then
[whoever]), that intial response can take ever stronger more lasting
form, up to and including (as it did for quite a few of us in the '60s)
an aim of bringing down the government.

Carrol
 Jim

Re: Re: campus anti-war movements




Charles Jannuzi wrote:
 
 
 For those of us who came of age in the mid to
 late 70s, it's often hard to reconcile all those
 news and movie images of hippies taking on the
 powers that be and all those ex-hippies who
 became the powers that be.

At least consider the possibility (and this was, mostly, my experience
at the time) that there really was not all that much overlap between the
hippies and those who were taking on the powers that be. That might
explain part of the clash you feel. Of course some (many?) of the latter
(e.g., Gitlin) also became attached at least to the powers that be. But
that has not been all that uncommon, has it, in any period? Surely, at
least a few of the Seattle demonostrators are already enrolled in MBA
programs?

Carrol

Re: Re: Re: Re: campus anti-war movements




Charles Jannuzi wrote:
 
 but anyone who could set
 Dryden to music deserves some credit for trying.


Hey now -- Dryden wrote some pretty fucking good stuff.

Carrol

Re: Re: Re: campus anti-war movements

- Original Message -
From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Sunday, October 13, 2002 6:24 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:31340] Re: Re: campus anti-war movements

 Charles Jannuzi wrote:

  For those of us who came of age in the mid to
  late 70s, it's often hard to reconcile all those
  news and movie images of hippies taking on the
  powers that be and all those ex-hippies who
  became the powers that be.

 At least consider the possibility (and this was, mostly, my experience
 at the time) that there really was not all that much overlap between the
 hippies and those who were taking on the powers that be. That might
 explain part of the clash you feel. Of course some (many?) of the latter
 (e.g., Gitlin) also became attached at least to the powers that be. But
 that has not been all that uncommon, has it, in any period? Surely, at
 least a few of the Seattle demonostrators are already enrolled in MBA
 programs?

 Carrol

===

And some of them had MBA's some JD's some PhD's and some of them were
toddlers and parents

Ian

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: campus anti-war movements



--- Ian Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 - Original Message -
 From: Charles Jannuzi [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
   Where do fans of Henry Purcell and Frank
 Zappa
   fit in your political
   taxonomy? :-)
  
   Ian
 
  Zappa: hippie. Capt. Beefheart: understood
 the
  disinherited of the 70s. Henry Purcell: he
 sure
  ain't Henry Rollins, but anyone who could set
  Dryden to music deserves some credit for
 trying.
 
  CJ
 
 ===
 
 And here I thought FZ was just making wiseass
 comments about people who
 spout ridiculous notions and do stupid
 things..Then again, trying to
 infer another's political inclinations from the
 kinds of music they like
 always seemed silly to me
 
 Ian

Well I always was most influenced by Zappa's
goofy-assed turns as 'consultant' for newly
'democratic' governments of Eastern Europe. I
think a few friends and I had a discussion of his
music though. It went something like this: well,
at least with Capt. Beefheart, his incoherence is
funny. Still, the ardency of his fans always
impresses me. If only I could see what others
see...

CJ 


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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: campus anti-war movements



- Original Message - 
From: Charles Jannuzi [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 
 Well I always was most influenced by Zappa's
 goofy-assed turns as 'consultant' for newly
 'democratic' governments of Eastern Europe. I
 think a few friends and I had a discussion of his
 music though. It went something like this: well,
 at least with Capt. Beefheart, his incoherence is
 funny. Still, the ardency of his fans always
 impresses me. If only I could see what others
 see...
 
 CJ 
 
==

Or hear what they hear.:-)

Poodles, anyone?

Ian

Re: Re: Re: Re: campus anti-war movements




Ian Murray wrote:
 
 
 
 And some of them had MBA's some JD's some PhD's and some of them were
 toddlers and parents
 

That goes without saying. I had a Ph.D. before I participated in my
first demonstration!

Carrol

 Ian

Re: campus anti-war movements



--- Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 
 Charles Jannuzi wrote:
  
  but anyone who could set
  Dryden to music deserves some credit for
 trying.
 
 
 Hey now -- Dryden wrote some pretty fucking
 good stuff.
 
 Carrol

Oh come on, Paradise Lost in couplets? No,
actually Carrol, I quite enjoy Dryden. I love the
sort of in-group self-knowingness you need to tap
into to come to an understanding of Dryden, Pope
and Swift. If it's couplets, though, give me Pope
anyday.

CJ 


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EU CAP


UK retreats on farm pledge
Government likely to accept compromise CAP reform

Charlotte Denny, economics correspondent
Monday October 14, 2002
The Guardian

The government is preparing to back down from its demands for a radical
overhaul of the European Union's lavish farm subsidies in the face of
opposition  from France and Germany.

Despite Tony Blair's pledge that Britain will lead the drive to reform the
?40bn (£25bn) programme, Whitehall mandarins are discussing accepting a
Franco-German compromise that would postpone any changes to the common
agricultural policy until 2007 and preserve the controversial link between
subsidies and the amount each farmer produces.

The prime minister told delegates at the UN's conference on sustainable
development last month that the CAP's production subsidies were to blame for
the mountains of cheap food Europe dumps each year in the developing world,
ruining local farmers.

It can't continue, he said. We will continue as a country - Britain - to
head up the case for reform of the CAP.

Britain has expressed strong support for the shake-up of the CAP announced
by the European commission this year, which proposed giving farmers flat
payments instead of production subsidies.

But faced with a draft deal crafted in Paris this month by Germany's
chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, and France's president, Jacques Chirac,
Whitehall officials are preparing a climbdown ahead of a summit of European
leaders this month.

A secret Whitehall memo seen by the Guardian reveals that the government is
considering accepting the Franco-German deal, which would drop the
commission's goal of decoupling subsidies from production in return for a
pledge to cut the cost of the CAP from 2007.

The memo drawn up by David Hunter, a senior official at the department for
rural affairs, before the meeting between Mr Chirac and Mr Schröder,
stresses that Britain would want to see the colour of their money before
conceding. If a deal emerged which effectively dropped decoupling from the
mid-term review negotiations, we would clearly need to consult our ministers
before agreeing, the memo says. It would only be attractive to us if it
contained a very specific and bankable commitment by the French to
degressivity [cutting the overall budget] from 2007.

Development campaigners accused the government of putting its budgetary
concerns ahead of the welfare of billions of poor farmers. This is an
approach which makes a mockery of the prime minister's commitment to
reforming European agriculture in the interests of developing countries,
said Kevin Watkins, policy adviser at Oxfam.

France, the biggest beneficiary of the CAP, has spearheaded opposition to
the EC proposals. Supporters of reform are worried that Paris may have no
intention of carrying out its pledge to cut the programme's cost. With 10
new countries - many of them reliant on agriculture - set to join the EU in
2004, member states opposed to radical reform will be in a clear majority by
the time France is called on to honour its promise.

Re: Re: campus anti-war movements




Charles Jannuzi wrote:
 
 --- Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  If it's couplets, though, give me Pope
 anyday.
 

With that I certainly agree. But Dryden's _Aeneid_ is well worth
reading. (I've never read his _Adam Unparadis'd_. That's the sort of
thing one takes up _after_ completing a Ph.D., and within 6 months of
completing mine the Dominican Republic invasion outraged me, and since
then ;- it's been downhill all the way.

Carrol

Re: campus anti-war movements