The Prodigal Son in the Key of F

I love words. Their sound and their texture, their look and their feel.

I love words well selected, well used and well arranged. The following piece is one of the best applications of the literary device of alliteration that I've ever come across.

Years ago, I had the privilege of hearing the late Rev. John Garlock recite the piece live. The piece was originally written by Rev. Garlock and Gwen Jones in the 1940s (see p. 10 of A/G Heritage, Fall 1990). It has been copied and reproduced countless times since without attribution. The theme is one of the most famous Bible stories, the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15: 11-32). Here it is, the Prodigal Son in the key of F:

Melody in F

Feeling footloose and frisky, a featherbrained fellow forced his fond father to fork over the farthings. He flew far to foreign fields and frittered his fortune, feasting fabulously with faithless friends.

Finally facing famine and fleeced by his fellows-in-folly, he found himself a feed flinger in a filthy farmyard. Fairly famishing, he fain would have filled his frame with foraged food from the fodder fragments. "Fooey, my father’s flunkies fare far fancier," the frazzled fugitive fumed feverishly, frankly facing facts.

Frustrated by failure and filled with foreboding, he fled forthwith to his family. Falling at his father’s feet, he floundered forlornly, "Father, I have flunked and fruitlessly forfeited family favor . . ." But the faithful father, forestalling further flinching, frantically flagged the flunkies to fetch forth the finest fatling and fix a feast.

The fugitive’s faultfinding frater frowned on the fickle forgiveness of former folderol. His fury flashed but fussing was futile. The far-sighted father figured, "Such filial fidelity is fine, but what forbids fervent festivity-for the fugitive is found! Unfurl the flags. With fanfares flaring, let fun and frolic freely flow. Former failure is forgotten, folly forsaken. Forgiveness forms the foundation for future fortitude."

Progress depends on retentiveness

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

This quotation, and numerous variations of it, has attained extraordinary ubiquity and immortality in the world of quotations.

But who first said it? And where?

The answer to the first question is George Santayana (1863-1952), the eminent Spanish American thinker.

The answer to the second (in context) is as follows.

Excerpt from: Chapter XII ("Flux and Constancy in Human Nature"), Volume One ("Reason in Common Sense") of The Life of Reason; or, The Phases of Human Progress (five volumes), 1905-1906
Author: George Santayana
Source: Project Gutenberg
Stable URL: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15000/15000-h/vol1.html

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in whom instinct has learned nothing from experience. In a second stage men are docile to events, plastic to new habits and suggestions, yet able to graft them on original instincts, which they thus bring to fuller satisfaction. This is the plane of manhood and true progress. Last comes a stage when retentiveness is exhausted and all that happens is at once forgotten; a vain, because unpractical, repetition of the past takes the place of plasticity and fertile readaptation. In a moving world readaptation is the price of longevity. The hard shell, far from protecting the vital principle, condemns it to die down slowly and be gradually chilled; immortality in such a case must have been secured earlier, by giving birth to a generation plastic to the contemporary world and able to retain its lessons. Thus old age is as forgetful as youth, and more incorrigible; it displays the same inattentiveness to conditions; its memory becomes self-repeating and degenerates into an instinctive reaction, like a bird's chirp.

Not all readaptation, however, is progress, for ideal identity must not be lost. The Latin language did not progress when it passed into Italian. It died. Its amiable heirs may console us for its departure, but do not remove the fact that their parent is extinct. So every individual, nation, and religion has its limit of adaptation; so long as the increment it receives is digestible, so long as the organisation already attained is extended and elaborated without being surrendered, growth goes on; but when the foundation itself shifts, when what is gained at the periphery is lost at the centre, the flux appears again and progress is not real. Thus a succession of generations or languages or religions constitutes no progress unless some ideal present at the beginning is transmitted to the end and reaches a better expression there; without this stability at the core no common standard exists and all comparison of value with value must be external and arbitrary. Retentiveness, we must repeat, is the condition of progress.

The Power of One

Alex Dalmady is a 48-year-old Venezuelan independent financial analyst based in Florida. By his own account, Mr. Dalmady got a call from his friend Roberto in October 2008 asking for help with his investment portfolio, a substantial part of which consisted of CDs (Certificates of Deposit) at Stanford International Bank (SIB), an offshore bank based in St. John's, Antigua.

Mr. Dalmady visited SIB's website, downloaded the bank's financial statements and analysed them. He then presented his unequivocal conclusion to his friend: "Roberto, take your money out YESTERDAY." And this Roberto proceeded to do, somewhat slowly, but he was out by December 2008.

However, Mr. Dalmady's curiosity had been piqued and he kept on investigating SIB (all from his desk in Florida and using the limitless power of the Internet-Yay!). In January 2009, he sat down and wrote up his findings in an article that was published in the January 2009 issue of the monthly newsletter of VenEconomia (VenEconomy in English), a leading Venezuelan economic and financial publisher.

The article was entitled "Duck Tales". An English version is posted here.

Why "Duck Tales"? Well, here's the synopsis of the article:

One does not have to be a detective, or even a financial expert, to spot financial institutions that may prove insolvent, or worse, with the passage of time. As the saying goes, if it looks like a duck, if it waddles like a duck and if it quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.

Mr. Dalmady tells his tale in a witty and entertaining style. Unfortunately, the moral of the tale is not quite so amusing. SIB appeared to be a "duck", a massive financial fraud.

And so it has proved to be.

Mr. Dalmady's article ignited the blogosphere when it was posted on Miguel Octavio's blog on 9 February 2009. From there, the story was picked up by the mainstream media and the rest is very recent financial history. U. S. federal authorities (and no doubt other authorities elsewhere) are now investigating SIB and its flamboyant owner, R. Allen Stanford, Knight Commander of the Most Distinguished Order of the Nation (Antigua and Barbuda), World Finance's 2008 Man of the Year, and Forbes List billionaire (Forbes also has an in-depth profile of Mr. Stanford and features him in its Secrets Of The Self-Made series).

All this, the result of one single individual, Mr. Dalmady, applying his own mind to the facts that everybody else was seeing, but missing the significance of.

Truly, the Power of One.

U and I

(The title of this post is borrowed from the title of Nicholson Baker's deliciously quirky book on his literary obsession with John Updike.)

John Updike died last week.

He was one of the most skillful craftsmen (or is it craftspersons in these politically correct times?) of the English Language. One of my personal favourites certainly, right up there with Joseph Conrad, V. S. Naipaul, and G. H. Hardy.

He was a remarkably versatile writer: fiction and non-fiction; prose and poetry; art criticism and literary criticism; short stories and novels; plays and plays-on-words; a humourist and a "serious" writer; journalist and essayist; children's books and adults' books; and on and on it goes. He even tried his hand at an African novel (The Coup, 1978) and, post-9/11, a terrorism novel (Terrorist, 2006). Oh, and he was a cartoonist too.

He was also a remarkably prolific writer: literally hundreds of pieces for The New Yorker alone; almost 30 novels; and much, much else besides.

One of the tests of great writing for me is simply this: Does it live on in the mind long after it's been read?

Does Updike's writing pass this simple test?

Let me answer obliquely by reference to a personal reading experience of mine of a few years ago. It was The Oxford Book of Short Stories (1981) edited by V. S. Pritchett, himself one of the finest exponents of the short story form. The book contains masterpieces by a veritable who's who of the greats of literature in English: Hawthorne, Poe, Twain, Conrad, Kipling, Maugham, Joyce, Lawrence, Faulkner, Hemingway, Pritchett (no false modesty here), Narayan, Welty, Lessing, and others. But for me, the story that really stood out then and still stands out now was the very last one in the anthology: Lifeguard by John Updike, which was first published in 1961 in The New Yorker. Out of all those outstanding stories, it is Updike's story, as short and plotless and apparently ephemeral as it is, that has left the deepest impression on my mind. If you're not a subscriber to The New Yorker, there's a bootleg version of Lifeguard here.

A word about the name Updike. It's an Americanised version of the Dutch name Op de Dijk.

The Encyclopedia of African Politics

I wrote the first version of the following satirical piece in July 2005. Over three and a half years later, I see it's still very relevant and very topical. It was also published last week on the blog of my friend and Stanford research fellow Chanda Chisala (The African Radical Capitalist!) and on Zambia Online.

The Encyclopedia of African Politics is the definitive guide to modern African politics. Some sample entries are reproduced below.

2000 US Presidential Election: Ironically enough, a landmark event in African politics. Powerful reason to justify any "lapses" in the democratic electoral process. (A typical statement would be: "There is no perfect democracy in this world. Even the 2000 US Presidential Election was flawed.")

Aid: Classically defined by the economist Peter Bauer as "A process by which the poor in rich countries subsidise the rich in poor countries." In more recent times, it has proved a very useful tool for enhancing the public profiles and private purses of aging Irish rock stars.

Bribes: Inappropriate inducements, financial or otherwise, given or received by one's political enemies. Or indeed, by one's political cronies if they break the 11th Commandment ("Thou shalt not get caught"). Not to be confused with consultancy fees, which are entirely legitimate emoluments for politically facilitating transactions of various kinds.

Connectocracy: Literally "rule or government by connections". In this political system, the key skill is "social networking" and the key knowledge is technical know-who.

Democracy: Government of the people, by my people, for my people. (Replace the phrase "my people" with "me" as required.)

Due Process: The process by which predetermined outcomes are reached. Most frequently applied in crucial court cases and elections.

Freedom of Speech: The fundamental right of citizens and the media to praise the government of the day.

Good governance: A geopolitical term, frequently used by the most powerful governments in the world in relation to uncooperative African governments. Cooperative governments, even with exactly the same behaviour, are automatically exempted from this phrase.

Law of Rule: Mirror image of the more widely known Rule of Law. Closely related to the Logic of Power and Government of Men, not Laws, the antitheses of the Power of Logic and Government of Laws, not Men, respectively.

Life President: Member of a predatory dinosaur species that has achieved immortality and divinity. Was thought to be extinct until quite recently, when several live specimens were discovered in various parts of the continent.

Nelson Mandela: Mythical African leader who, according to legend, served only one term in office and had such deeply-held idealistic beliefs that he was willing to die for them. It is said that Mandela emerged from decades of imprisonment with enormous dignity and magnanimity. Notable historians of Africa are unanimous in the view that Mandela never existed and was probably fabricated to tarnish the image of the African political classes.

Opposition Party: Dissident group of disgruntled individuals from the ruling party. Highly volatile. Known to frequently remerge with the ruling elite under the right conditions or in the presence of a suitable catalyst (see Bribes).

Personal Domestic Product (PDP): A distant relative of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Very distant. All the wealth in the country becomes the personal property of the ruler to do with as he pleases (it's always a "he").

Third Person Syndrome: Tendency of African leaders to talk about themselves in the third person. Indicative of megalomania.

Remembrance of John Archibald Wheeler by Daniel Holz

One of the best pieces of writing I read this year was a short remembrance of the great American theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler (9 July 1911-13 April 2008). It was written by Daniel Holz, a theoretical physicist who was mentored by Wheeler as an undergraduate physics student.

The writing is simple, elegant, sincere. It uses a few classic literary tools to great effect. The title is one simple, evocative word: Goodbye.

Commentary on Keynes' General Theory, part 2: Book I (Introduction): Chapter 1 (The General Theory)

Book I : Introduction

• Chapter 1: The General Theory
• Chapter 2: The Postulates of the Classical Economics
• Chapter 3: The Principle of Effective Demand

Chapter 1 ("The General Theory") is extremely short (a single page), so we can quote it in full:

I have called this book the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, placing the emphasis on the prefix general. The object of such a title is to contrast the character of my arguments and conclusions with those of the classical¹ theory of the subject, upon which I was brought up and which dominates the economic thought, both practical and theoretical, of the governing and academic classes of this generation, as it has for a hundred years past. I shall argue that the postulates of the classical theory are applicable to a special case only and not to the general case, the situation which it assumes being a limiting point of the possible positions of equilibrium. Moreover, the characteristics of the special case assumed by the classical theory happen not to be those of the economic society in which we actually live, with the result that its teaching is misleading and disastrous if we attempt to apply it to the facts of experience.

Footnotes (in the original text)

1. “The classical economists” was a name invented by Marx to cover Ricardo and James Mill and their predecessors, that is to say for the founders of the theory which culminated in the Ricardian economics. I have become accustomed, perhaps perpetrating a solecism, to include in “the classical school” the followers of Ricardo, those, that is to say, who adopted and perfected the theory of the Ricardian economics, including (for example) J. S. Mill, Marshall, Edgeworth and Prof. Pigou.

We make the following two comments:

• The "general" in The General Theory serves to contrast Keynes' theory with what he calls the classical theory. According to Keynes, the classical theory is only applicable to a special case and not to the general case.
• Keynes argues that the characteristics of the special case assumed by the classical theory are not applicable to the prevailing economic situation (circa the 1935).

Three questions must be borne in mind constantly as we go through The General Theory:

• Does Keynes accurately describe the alternative, or indeed alternatives, to his General Theory?
• Do the postulates of the alternative, be it the so-called classical theory or some other alternative, indeed apply only to a special case?
• Do the characteristics of the alternative differ from those of the prevailing economy (circa 1935, OR circa 2008 for that matter)?

At all times we must closely examine the premisses and basic assumptions of both Keynes' theory and other alternatives.

A final comment. It's not clear to me what Keynes means when he says: "I shall argue that the postulates of the classical theory are applicable to a special case only and not to the general case, the situation which it assumes being a limiting point of the possible positions of equilibrium." Specifically the second part of the sentence: "...the situation which it assumes being a limiting point of the possible positions of equilibrium." What is "it": The "classical theory"? The "special case"? Or the "general case"? And what is "a limiting point of the possible positions of equilibrium"? Presumably this will be clarified as we read on. We shall see. We shall certainly come back to this sentence.

Commentary on Keynes' General Theory, part 1

On 13 December 1935, exactly 73 years ago to the day, John Maynard Keynes completed the preface to what was to become one of the most controversial and influential books of the 20th Century: The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.

Judging by the revival of interest in Keynesian economics that has come in the wake of the recent (and ongoing) global economic crisis, Keynes' General Theory looks set to become one of the most controversial and influential books of the 21st Century as well.

In his preface, Keynes notes that although his book "is chiefly addressed to [his] fellow economists", he "hope[s] that it will be intelligible to others."

This, then, marks the beginning of a detailed commentary on Keynes' General Theory by an interested non-economist.

Why undertake such a task?

There are three reasons.

First, the growing influence of The General Theory on current global economic policy. It is vital that we, economists and non-economists alike, have a clear understanding of Keynes' ideas. And more importantly, their implications.

Second, to the best of my knowledge, there is no such commentary available online.

And third, because you're worth it.

OK, that third reason is just some debris from the world of global cosmetics advertising that floated into my mind after I typed "And third". But it sounds good and three's a good number, so it stays.

The book consists of six main sections, or books as Keynes calls them:

Book I : Introduction

• Chapter 1: The General Theory
• Chapter 2: The Postulates of the Classical Economics
• Chapter 3: The Principle of Effective Demand
  

Book II: Definition and Ideas

• Chapter 4: The Choice of Units
• Chapter 5: Expectation as Determining Output and Employment
• Chapter 6: The Definition of Income, Saving and Investment
  Appendix on User Cost
• Chapter 7: The Meaning of Saving and Investment Further Considered

Book III: The Propensity to Consume

• Chapter 8: The Propensity to Consume: I. The Objective Factors
• Chapter 9: The Propensity to Consume: II. The Subjective Factors
• Chapter 10: The Marginal Propensity to Consume and the Multiplier

Book IV: The Inducement to Invest

• Chapter 11: The Marginal Efficiency of Capital
• Chapter 12: The State of Long-term Expectation
• Chapter 13: The General Theory of the Rate of Interest
• Chapter 14: The Classical Theory of the Rate of Interest
  Appendix on the Rate of Interest in Marshall’s Principles of Economics, Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy and elsewhere
• Chapter 15: The Psychological and Business Incentives to Liquidity
• Chapter 16: Sundry Observations on the Nature of Capital
• Chapter 17: The Essential Properties of Interest and Money
• Chapter 18: The General Theory of Employment Re-stated

Book V: Money-Wages and Prices

• Chapter 19: Changes in Money-Wages
  Appendix on Prof. Pigou's Theory of Unemployment
• Chapter 20: The Employment Function
• Chapter 21: The Theory of Prices

Book VI: Short Notes Suggested by the General Theory

• Chapter 22: Notes on the Trade Cycle
• Chapter 23: Notes on Merchantilism, the Usury Laws, Stamped Money and Theories of Under-consumption
• Chapter 24: Concluding Notes on the Social Philosophy towards which the General Theory might lead

The entire book is available online here.

So much for introductory remarks.

Let's proceed to the Preface which begins as follows:

This book is chiefly addressed to my fellow economists. I hope that it will be intelligible to others. But its main purpose is to deal with difficult questions of theory, and only in the second place with the applications of this theory to practice. For if orthodox economics is at fault, the error is to be found not in the superstructure, which has been erected with great care for logical consistency, but in a lack of clearness and of generality in the premisses. Thus I cannot achieve my object of persuading economists to re-examine critically certain of their basic assumptions except by a highly abstract argument and also by much controversy.

We must note the following points:

• Whilst The General Theory is addressed primarily to economists, Keynes hopes that it will be intelligible to non-economists.
• The primary purpose of The General Theory is to deal with difficult theoretical issues and only secondarily with applications of this theory to practice.
• Keynes argues that the fault of orthodox economics (circa 1935) arises from its erroneous premisses and two characteristics of these premisses or basic assumptions in particular: their lack of clarity and generality.

Keynes ends his Preface much as he begins it:

The composition of this book has been for the author a long struggle of escape, and so must the reading of it be for most readers if the author’s assault upon them is to be successful,— a struggle of escape from habitual modes of thought and expression. The ideas which are here expressed so laboriously are extremely simple and should be obvious. The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.

We note that, according to Keynes: "The ideas which are here expressed so laboriously are extremely simple and should be obvious. The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones". This suggests that, if anything, the non-economist may be better placed than the economist to judge The Classical Theory and its alternatives on their own merits, unencumbered by any professional prejudices.

Experience and inexperience

Question: What is the greatest strength of an experienced person?
Answer: Experience.

Question: What is the greatest weakness of an experienced person?
Answer: Experience.

Question: What is the greatest weakness of an inexperienced person?
Answer: Inexperience.

Question: What is the greatest strength of an inexperienced person?
Answer: Inexperience.

Not Even Wrong

No account of [Wolfgang] Pauli and his attitude to people would be complete without mention of his critical remarks, for which he was known and sometimes feared throughout the world of physics. He not merely did not spare the other person's feelings but he often deliberately selected the sensitive spot.

No doubt many of the stories of this kind circulated about him are apocryphal, but the examples below come from reliable sources or from conversations at which the writer was present. The oldest of the famous remarks dates back to the Munich days, when Pauli was a brilliant but unknown research student, and at a crowded colloquium meeting Einstein,who was visiting, made a comment in the discussion. Young Pauli rose at the back of the hall and said: 'You know, what Mr Einstein said is not so stupid', a remark characteristic for his lack of respect for authority but not yet of the bite which came later with his greater assurance.

N. Kemmer reports a more characteristic remark. 'I do not mind, Mr X, if you think slowly, but I do object when you publish more quickly than you think.'

When L. Landau, after a long argument in Zurich, pleaded for an admission that not everything he had said was complete nonsense, Pauli replied,'Oh, no. Far from it. What you said was so confused that one could not tell whether it was nonsense or not.'

When a charming colleague whose papers had not impressed Pauli had given him directions how to find a certain place in a strange town and enquired the next day whether Pauli had found the place, he said, 'Oh, yes. You express yourself quite intelligibly when you don't talk about physics.'
Quite recently, a friend showed him the paper of a young physicist which he suspected was not of great value but on which he wanted Pauli's views. Pauli remarked sadly, 'It is not even wrong.'
People have tried to attribute these sharp remarks to Pauli's impatience with slipshod reasoning and wishful thinking. There is no doubt that he was using them as a tool to drive home valid and often constructive criticism, but equally often they were so remote from any specific point in the argument that it is doubtful whether this is the full story. He himself once said to the writer, 'Many people have sensitive corns and the only possible way of living with them is to step on these corns often enough until they get used to it', but that remark, too, probably oversimplifies the problem.

The remarkable thing is that, although the victims often felt hurt at the time, none of then ever bore a grudge for long. It is a tribute to his greatness as a physicist and as a man, and to his understanding of other people, that all who knew him, who all must at one time or another have been exposed to remarks of this sort, had as much affection for him as they had respect for his knowledge, his judgement and his integrity.

Excerpt from:
Wolfgang Ernst Pauli. 1900-1958
Author(s): R. E. Peierls
Source: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, Vol. 5, (Feb., 1960), pp. 175-192
Published by: The Royal Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/769285

Great Excerptations

This marks the launch of a new series, not of Great Quotations, but rather, of Great Excerptations.

Let me explain by way of example.

Who said first said "The best way to predict the future is to create it"?

Well, depending on whose word you accept, it was Peter F. Drucker; or Alan Kay; or even Jason Kaufmann (whoever that is).

This mis-attribution of quotations is quite widespread on the Web. Perhaps the most famous instance of mis-attribution involves the following passage:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are
powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens
us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does
not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other
people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children
do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not
just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we
unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated
from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Sound familiar? Yes, of course it does. That's an excerpt from Nelson Mandela's 1994 inaugural speech, isn't it? Actually, it isn't, according to no lesser an authority than the Nelson Mandela Foundation. It's from Marianne Williamson's book A Return to Love.

So, the basic idea of Great Excerptations is to provide Great Quotations with fully traceable details of their original sources.

Re: What did you learn at work today?

It's become something of a ritual this year: Whenever I pick up my son from school, I ask him "So, what did you learn at school today?"

And he'll answer and then ask a question of his own:

"And what about you dad? What did you learn at work today?"

That's a fascinating question, is it not? What did you learn at work today?

Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008)

Three colossi towered over the science fiction landscape of my early youth: Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke. On 19 March 2008, the third and last of that mighty triumvirate, Arthur C. Clarke, passed from the scene. (Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov having exited right and left in 1988 and 1992, respectively.)

Although Asimov was my favourite, I think there's a very good chance that it will be Clarke whose influence will last the longest.

Here are five strong reasons why:

1. Writing. This includes both his fiction and his non-fiction. In my view, Clarke was at his best in the short form. Many of his short stories, novellas and essays are classics. In response to a challenge from Wired to write a story in just six words (a la Hemingway's "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."), Clarke submitted a ten word story which he refused to trim. Nonetheless, it was a classic: "God said, 'Cancel Program GENESIS.' The universe ceased to exist."
   
   
2. Geostationary satellites. Clarke wrote the original paper outlining the principles of geostationary satellite communications in 1945. Without this seminal contribution from Clarke, global communications in all its forms (television, Internet, telephony, etc.) would not be what it is today. A geostationary orbit is also known as a Clarke orbit, in his honour.
   
   
3. Clarke's Three Laws of Prediction.
   I. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
   
   II. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
   
   III. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
   
   
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey. Critics and fans frequently choose this 1968 film as among "the best" of all time, although this appraisal is by no means unanimous. What is beyond dispute is that 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of the most influential films in cinematic history. Clarke co-wrote the screenplay with Stanley Kubrick. It was based on Clarke's short story The Sentinel (1948). Clarke cited this collaboration in his CV under under "Occupation" as follows: Writing “2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY” with Stanley Kubrick, 1964-68. 1964-68! Not surprising perhaps, given the perfectionism for which Kubrick was famed.
   
   
5. A profound sense of wonder and possibility. The term "sense of wonder" is often used to describe the purpose and effect of science fiction. And like the term "science fiction" itself, it has no universally agreed definition. Arthur C. Clarke had a very acute sense of wonder, and with it of possibility. It's both: wonder and possibility. How else could you describe a man whose many conceptual innovations include a space elevator?
   

Jeff Greenwald interviewed Clarke in 1993 for Wired. He recalls that at the end of that interview he asked Clarke what he wanted his epitaph to be. According to the transcript, this is Clarke said:

Oh, yes. I've often quoted it: "He never grew up; but he never stopped growing."

Fitting.

Verbial Pursuit

The title should properly have been "verbal pursuit". But that doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it?

I was talking to a friend yesterday and deployed that storied and clichéd clincher, The First Law of Holing: When you're in a hole, stop digging. His response was as fresh as it was unanswerable: "And have you ever heard of the The First Law of Mining? When you're in a mine, keep digging." Touché; a mine is essentially a hole, after all. That one's right up there with the Unstoppable Force and the Immovable Object.

OK. Same guy. Later (or earlier, I forget) on in the conversation. My turn to be creative. I serendipitously (how's that for an unwieldy word?) rediscover the pun: a punch of salt. Rediscover because evidently lots of people got there before I did, including the scriptwriter of Donnie Brasco. Oh well.

Re: Southern African Trivia

An interesting bit of Southern African trivia...

In June 1972, two students in the Master of Science programme at the MIT Sloan School of Management submitted a thesis entitled International Joint Venture with a Government Partner Case Study: Copper Mining in Zambia.

The second author was R. Anthony H. Aitken (don't ask). The first author was one Kofi A. Annan; yes, that Kofi A. Annan.

If you're interested, the good folks at MIT have made it and a selection of other MIT theses publicly available.

Will Money Solve Africa's Development Problems?

Courtesy of the John Templeton Foundation, eight brief essays in response to this important question. It's interesting to note that not a single contributor gives an unqualified yes. James Shikwati of the Inter Region Economic Network (IREN) and The African Executive magazine, one of two African contributors, says "No way".

The Hardy Buoys

What motivates research and innovation?

There are many highly respectable motives which may lead men to prosecute research, but three which are much more important than the rest. The first (without which the rest must come to nothing) is intellectual curiosity, desire to know the truth. Then, professional pride, anxiety to be satisfied with one's performance, the shame that overcomes any self-respecting craftsman when his work is unworthy of his talent. Finally, ambition, desire for reputation, and the position, even the power or money, which it brings.

-- G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology (1940) [Emphasis added]

A Mathematician's Apology is a gem, equally remarkable for its beauty and its brevity.

I would also recommend the seventh and last volume of Collected Papers of G. H. Hardy to the general reader. It comprises a wide selection of Hardy's non-technical papers and showcases his skill and elegance as a writer of English prose.

Towards the end of A Mathematician's Apology Hardy remarks, clinically, that "journalism is the only profession, outside academic life, in which I should have felt really confident of my chances". Hardy was not a man given to hyperbole, so we can safely take him at his word.

Some journalist.

The Power of Ideas

Most of the ideas in John Maynard Keynes' The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) have been thoroughly discredited, both in theory and in practice. (Notice he called it THE General Theory and not A General Theory. By contrast, Claude E. Shannon called his famous theory, which underlies all modern communications systems, A Mathematical Theory of Communication. The fields of information theory and communications engineering have since come to acknowledge that the Shannon theory is in fact THE Mathematical Theory of Communication.)

But one idea is still as fresh and as relevant and as important and as true as when Keynes expressed it at the close of that seminal work, namely, the potency and longevity of ideas themselves:

Is the fulfilment of these ideas a visionary hope? Have they insufficient roots in the motives which govern the evolution of political society? Are the interests which they will thwart stronger and more obvious than those which they will serve?

I do not attempt an answer in this place. It would need a volume of a different character from this one to indicate even in outline the practical measures in which they might be gradually clothed. But if the ideas are correct — an hypothesis on which the author himself must necessarily base what he writes — it would be a mistake, I predict, to dispute their potency over a period of time. At the present moment people are unusually expectant of a more fundamental diagnosis; more particularly ready to receive it; eager to try it out, if it should be even plausible. But apart from this contemporary mood, the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

Keynes' ideas have lived on. His are the ideas behind the IMF and the World Bank, institutions which, it is becoming increasingly clear, have lost an empire and are in search of a role. And there are many governments that are pursuing Keynesian policies, particularly in Africa, that have probably never heard of Keynes. Keynes words have proved remarkably prophetic:

Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

The price of freedom

It's not every day that you're somewhere technical and you come across something else: some humour, or knowledge, or wisdom, just something other than what you were expecting to find in that technical place. The effect is always surprising (pleasantly so) and refreshing (a welcome respite from the technical slog). Some of the finest exponents of this rare art are Andy Tanenbaum (for instance his book on Computer Networks manages to incorporate quite a bit of humour without sacrificing technical accuracy) and Donald Knuth (his technical prose is almost always exemplary in its erudition and elegance--most famously displayed in that cult computer science classic, The Art of Computer Programming, or TAOCP as it's known in the acronymophilic nerd community).

So you can imagine my shock, and delight, when I was in a technical place recently, a linuxy one as it happens, minding my own business, when all of a sudden I stumbled across wisdom:

The price of freedom is responsibility, but it's a bargain, because freedom is priceless. - Hugh Downs

Nobel Sentiments

The beginning of October is undoubtedly an extremely anxious time of the year for certain eminent scientists, writers, peacemakers and economists. For it is in October of every year that the winners of the Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Peace and Economics are announced.

The 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Albert Fert of France and Peter Grünberg of Germany for their discovery, in the late 1980s, of Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR), a phenomenon that has been exploited in the technological development of compact high-capacity hard disk drives (such as are used in the iPod). This development work was done by Stuart Parkin and his colleagues at IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California. Fert, Grünberg and Parkin have shared two major prizes for their work on GMR: the 1994 APS (American Physical Society) New Materials prize and the 1997 EPS (European Physical Society) Europhysics prize. One or two commentators are of the view that Parkin should have shared in Tuesday's Nobel prize. Others disagree; one even states that "Nobels are not given out for engineering, they are restricted to basic science".

I would offer three pieces of evidence to rebut the last point:

(1) Alfred Nobel's will states that this particular prize shall be awarded to "the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics." Discovery or invention. Clearly technological applications of scientific discoveries, that is to say inventions, are included. The will also says that all the prizes shall be awarded "to those who...shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind." Conferred the greatest benefit on mankind: that, it seems to me, emphasises the practical and the tangible. And nothing confers more practical and tangible benefits on mankind than engineering.

(2) The fact that Nobel Physics Prizes have been awarded for discoveries and their technological implementation in the past. For instance: Guglielmo Marconi and his co-laureate won in 1909 for "their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy"; the 1956 laureates (Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain) won "for their researches on semiconductors and their discovery of the transistor effect"; and the 2000 laureates won "for basic work on information and communication technology", including Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments "for his part in the invention of the integrated circuit". Wireless communications, transistors and ICs: it doesn't get more applied than that.

(3) The life and work of Alfred Nobel himself. He was the foremost engineer and technologist of his age. His fortune, the very fortune that pays for the prizes given in his name today, was built on his invention of dynamite, an engineering application if ever there was one. It seems most unlikely that he would have wished his own profession (engineering) to be excluded from the prize.

I would also note what I call the complementarity of theory and practice and the virtuous circularity of discovery and application: namely, that scientific discoveries and engineering applications frequently feed into and off each other in a virtuous circle of discoveries leading to applications which open up further discoveries which in turn spur more applications; and so forth. In fact, in the case of GMR this has already happened: GMR has opened up new areas of research and development in spintronics and TMR (Tunneling Magnetoresistance).

My conclusion is that the technological application of GMR is eligible for this prize. (For the record, I should add that I am an engineer myself and therefore would say that, wouldn't I?)

No, a far thornier problem is what David Politzer (Physics, 2004) highlighted in his intriguing Nobel lecture: The Dilemma of Attribution. Politzer and his co-laureates were awarded the prize for "for the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction", a ground-breaking discovery in theoretical physics. In their Nobel lectures, Politzer's co-laureates spoke about their scientific discovery. This is standard practice--virtually all laureates discuss the work for which they have won the prize. Politzer deviated from this tradition and instead discussed the process of the discovery in terms of all the different people (and there were many) that were involved, directly or indirectly, advertently or inadvertently. Modern research and development involves the contribution of numerous individuals; co-workers, collaborators and competitors among them. It is almost always a collaborative enterprise. Politzer's point is that Nobel Prize winning work, which can be only be attributed to a maximum of three individuals by the Nobel committee, frequently involves the contributions of many more individuals than that. Isaac Newton's remark in a letter he wrote to Robert Hooke about having been able to see further because he was standing on the shoulders of giants, comes to mind.Let's face it: Newton wasn't a modest man by any stretch of anyone's imagination, yet even he, towering genius that he was, acknowledged his debt to other scientists. (Note: It's been suggested that Newton was being sarcastic. This sounds plausible given what we know about Newton's personality and that Hooke was small in stature. Then again, perhaps he was genuinely referring to earlier giants like Copernicus and Galileo. But never mind: we shan't let the facts get in the way of a good quotation.)

Take the key papers in which this year's winners published their discovery of GMR: Fert's November 1988 paper had eight co-authors; Grünberg's March 1989 paper had three co-authors. Earlier on, I noted that GMR's development as a viable technology was achieved by Parkin and his colleagues at IBM Research. Evidently none of these scientists made these achievements on their own.

Another consideration is that, very often, the crucial insight or step that makes a discovery possible may come from totally different quarters altogether. Indeed, it may be down to sheer luck. Or, as it tends to be called in scientific circles, serendipity. Sir Alexander Fleming spoke of this aspect of his discovery of penicillin when he received his Nobel Prize (Physiology/Medicine, 1945). In other words, the product of scientific discovery is clear and simple enough, but in many cases the process and people involved in that discovery may not be quite so clear and simple.

On the other hand, we must acknowledge that no human panel of adjudicators can possibly have all the wisdom and omniscience required to appropriately evaluate and reward all the relevant contributors and contributions. As such, the Nobels are necessarily imperfect.

But my, what imperfection! The Nobels epitomise the best and boldest aspects of human endeavour and should be celebrated as such.

Congratulations Monsieur Fert and Herr Grünberg!