Reading

Currently reading:

• The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction: 21st Annual Collection (2008) edited by Gardner Dozois
  
• The Letter of Marque (1988) (#12 in the Aubrey/Maturin series) by Patrick O'Brian
  
• The Invisible Boy (2002) by Sally Gardner (Bedtime for the boys)
  

Recently finished:

• Curious Minds: How a Child Becomes a Scientist (2004) edited by John Brockman

• Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is Another Way for Africa (2009) by Dambisa Moyo
• Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) by A. A. Milne (Bedtime for the boys)
  

10 Pillars of Economic Freedom

The global financial tsunami continues to pummel the superstructure of economic freedom. But as long as its infrastructure remains firm, economic freedom should be able to weather the storm.

Here are my personal picks for 10 pillars of economic freedom in the realm of ideas:

1. The Wealth of Nations (1776) by Adam Smith
   
   • Full title: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
     
2. The End of Economic Man (1939) by Peter F. Drucker
   
   • Drucker's first book, begun in 1933 a few weeks after Hitler came to power and published in 1939.
     
   • Winston Churchill's review of The End of Economic Man published in The Times Literary Supplement on 27 May 1939
     
3. The Road to Serfdom (1944) by F. A. Hayek
   
   • Condensed Reader’s Digest version
   • The Road to Serfdom in Cartoons
     
4. Economics in One Lesson (1946) by Henry Hazlitt
   
5. Human Action (1949) by Ludwig von Mises
6. Capitalism and Freedom (1962) by Milton Friedman
   
7. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966) by Ayn Rand and others
   
8. Equality, the Third World, and Economic Delusion (1981) by Peter Bauer
   
9. Basic Economics (2007, 3rd ed.) by Thomas Sowell
10. The Economist (1843-Present)
    

Honourable mention:

• I, Pencil (1958) by Leonard Read
  

See also: 10 Demolition Balls of Economic Destruction

A monstrous success

Parents of young children must regularly make the pilgrimage to the cinema to see the latest and greatest animated movie that's on release.

Mostly, it's dreary fare for the adults. The only compensation being the delight and amusement it seems to give to the children. Occasionally, the movie rises above the dreary. And on even rarer occasions, it soars towards the sublime.

This past weekend, seeing the inauspiciously titled Monsters vs. Aliens by DreamWorks Animation was one of those very rare occasions.

The movie works superbly well for both adults and children. It has a sharp witty script and some wonderful characters. I loved Hugh Laurie's nerdy Dr. Cockroach PhD, Rainn Wilson as the villainous alien Gallaxhar, and Kiefer Sutherland as General W.R. Monger (a play on "warmonger"). Sutherland's voice, incidentally, was unrecogniseable--astonishing given how much of it we've heard in 24, but I guess that's what makes the man a great actor. The movie is full of action and great one-liners, like when the President of the United States (brilliantly played by Stephen Colbert) tells the situation room: "Boys, set the terror level at code brown, 'cause I need to change my pants."

Oh, and it was made in Digital 3D, which makes it an even more fascinating experience. The technology behind 3D movies is pretty fascinating too.

See it.

John Hope Franklin (1915-2009)

Using one's skills to influence public policy seemed to be a satisfactory middle ground between an ivory tower posture of isolation and disengagement and a posture of passionate advocacy that too often deserted the canons of scholarship.

- John Hope Franklin

The historian John Hope Franklin (2 January 1915-25 March 2009) was a towering figure both physically and intellectually.

He was named after the great early 20th century African American educator and political activist John Hope.

John Hope Franklin, the grandson of a slave, went on to achieve numerous distinctions, any one of which would have represented a significant accomplishment for a single lifetime: he revolutionised the study of American history; he became a best-selling author of serious and scholarly books (his 1947 classic From Slavery to Freedom has sold over four million copies and counting, and is in its 8th edition); he made major contributions to the civil rights movement in the United States, such as conducting scholarly research for Thurgood Marshall and the rest of the legal team that successfully argued the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education (1954); he had a long and distinguished academic career in which he earned the respect, admiration and affection of his peers and students; he participated in many major studies and panels, including chairing President Bill Clinton's 1997 One America: The President's Initiative on Race; he won many accolades, including over 130 (!) honorary degrees and multiple awards and prizes; and, most importantly perhaps, he personally embodied the hope of his name for better tomorrows not only for Americans of every complexion, but for everyone around the world. The latter is a remarkable achievement given that historians are by definition concerned with the past.

His life is a testament to the power of moral and intellectual courage. It also exemplifies the power of ideas and intellectual endeavour and discourse as a means for changing the world for the better. Despite the incidence of some pain and one or two controversies, the overwhelming themes of John Hope Franklin's life are about triumph over adversity, the power of hard work and persistence, and, yes, hope. Perhaps nothing symbolises this more powerfully than the state of the United States when John Hope Franklin was born and when he died 94 years later. In 1915, he was born into an America with numerous Jim Crow laws and frequent lynchings of African American men. In 2009, he died having witnessed a man of African descent ascend to the Presidency of the United States earlier that year.

Hope indeed.

See also:

• A poignant personal tribute by one of his colleagues, Stan Katz of Princeton.
  
• The beautifully written obituary in this week's Economist, although I take issue with the characterisation of John Hope Franklin as merely a "historian of America's blacks". He was a historian of America, but I shan't quibble.
• Duke University's online memorial site.

Ayer v. Tyson

Yes, that Ayer and that Tyson.

I suppose the outcome of this encounter has to be adjudged a technical knockout for Ayer:

It was at another party, given a later later in the year by the highly fashionable clothes designer, Fernando Sanchez, that he had a widely reported encounter. Ayer had always had an ability to pick up unlikely people and at yet another party had befriended Sanchez. Ayer was now standing near the entrance to the great white living-room of Sanchez’s West 57th Street apartment, chatting to a group of young models and designers, when a woman rushed in saying that a friend was being assaulted in a bedroom. Ayer went to investigate and found Mike Tyson forcing himself on a young south London model called Naomi Campbell, then just beginning her career. Ayer warned Tyson to desist. Tyson: “Do you know who the fuck I am? I’m the heavyweight champion of the world”. Ayer stood his ground. “And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic. We are both pre-eminent in our field; I suggest that we talk about this like rational men.” Ayer and Tyson began to talk. Naomi Campbell slipped out.

Excerpt from p. 344 of A.J. Ayer: A Life, By Ben Rogers, Grove Press, 2002.

Unintended Consequences

Decisions involves two things: making choices and dealing with the resulting consequences. Choiceless decisions and consequenceless decisions are no decisions at all. The intentions of the decisions are secondary; the actual consequences are primary.

The circumstances of, and reaction to, the recent resignation letter by a senior executive from AIG, which was published as an op-ed piece in the New York Times, illustrate the dangers of the woolly thinking involved in linking choices only to intentions and not to consequences.

The letter generated a huge response from readers, most of it negative, some of it even to the point of being scurrilous.

The policy of vilifying and demonising everyone that works in the financial services sector is bound to have the severe and unintended consequence of driving away many talented people from the sector. Which will ultimately be harmful to everyone's interests.

Globalisation and its Malcontents

The protests around the ongoing G20 summit have turned violent.

The protesters appear to be from many disparate groups with many disparate (desperate?) aims. Some just seem intent on causing mayhem, destruction, and worse.

What are we to make of it all?

It's unfortunate, but characteristic, that such protests always produce a lot of heat but very little light.

Even more unfortunate is the fact that some of these protest groups, these anti-something groups, never let the facts get in the way of their good stories. No matter how off-base those stories might be.

Take the anti-capitalist strain.

Despite the fact that free market principles have been responsible for the creation of more wealth, and the concomitant alleviation of more poverty, than any other economic system, the anti-capitalists continue to insist that it must be "abolished" or "reformed". The fact that all the substitutes and modifications on offer have been tried before and failed every time appears to be of little concern to the anti-capitalists. The fact that China, communist China itself, has shifted towards free market principles and prospered as a result is little more than an inconvenient fact that is conveniently ignored.

And it's almost always a bad sign when a group is defined more by what it's against than by what it's for.

What are all these anti-something groups actually for?

The true answer is profoundly disturbing.

Look who's back

Tiger Woods won his first tournament after coming back from reconstructive knee surgery and an eight-month absence from the professional golf circuit.

The Curious Case of the Snooping Dragon

Dr. Shishir Nagaraja and Professor Ross Anderson of the Security Group at Cambridge University's Computer Laboratory document a new type of electronic surveillance attack that they call social malware. The attack involves a combination of social phishing and malware (Trojans, to be precise) The target was the the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama (OHHDL) in Dharamsala, Northern India. Researchers from Canada followed up by hacking into one of the attackers' servers, something the Cambridge team could not do due to the UK's Computer Misuse Act of 1990. In this report, hot off the virtual press (29 March 2009), the Canadian researchers identify and expose the large-scale cyber espionage network behind the attack. They assign it the name GhostNet.

Notes:

1. This case illustrates, once again, that information and network security is a game of cat and mouse. Or dragon and mouse in this instance.
   
2. Professor Ross Anderson is the author of the technically excellent, yet highly readable text Security Engineering - A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems (2nd edition, 2008).
3. Coincidentally, the Dalai Lama has been in the news in this part of the world, where he was recently denied a visa to visit South Africa. This was as a result of "representations" made to the South African government by the Chinese government-allegedly. So perhaps not so coincidental after all.
   

The problem of knowledge

The leaders of the G20 (actually the G19 plus the EU) are due to meet in London this week. The agenda of the summit centres on the global financial crisis.

A global economy is an enormously complex real-time, self-adaptive communications and control system which works with a variety of signals: data, information, knowledge, wisdom. Or at least, it's supposed to be.

What happens when you try to substitute one type of signal for another in such a system? For example, if you substitute data with knowledge, or the reverse?

Consider, first of all, that the quartet of signal types (data, information, knowledge and wisdom) form a hierarchy: from simplest to most complex; from the most common to the most rare; from the immediate to the ultimate; from the most accessible to the least accessible; from the possessive to the characteristic; from present-focused to future-focused; from the impersonal to the personal; from the material to the spiritual; from input to output; from having to being; from news to views; from the dispersed to the concentrated.

Signal substitution will hinder the operation of the system.

Can the G20 leaders solve the economic crisis?

Based on the stated aims of the summit, the answer must be no because the aims appear to be a classic case of signal substitution.

The reason is what we might call the problem of knowledge. Will the G20 leaders have sufficient and timely knowledge about the financial crisis to solve it? No, on both counts. The knowledge they, or any one person or group of persons, possesses about all the relevant issues is limited. And even the knowledge they have may out of date. The well-known lag effects in economics will only be exacerbated with increased government intervention.

The biggest danger is that the G20 summit will introduce rules and regulations that will harm and hinder the operation of the global economy.

Note: See also Friedrich von Hayek's essay on The Use of Knowledge in Society (1945).

JFK on TJ

On 29 April 1962, President John F. Kennedy hosted a White House dinner honouring Nobel Prize winners. In his remarks, he mentioned that great polymathic genius, Thomas Jefferson:

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

"The People"

It's interesting to observe how contemporary political leaders use the phrase "The People".

It is used to justify all sorts of things: "The People" demand this; "The People" want that; "The People" must have this; this must be done in the interests of "The People". And so it goes on. And on. And on. And on.

Who and where are these "People" exactly?

Curiously this is never mentioned.

Perhaps this is because "The People" almost always refers to only some, even just a few, of the people, including the political leader himself.

Surely this phrase should only be used when it genuinely refers to the real common interests of all the people. The phrase has become somewhat debased since it was first used in its proper sense in perhaps the greatest preamble of all great preambles:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The Bright Interior

Thinking about yesterday's Earth Hour, I remembered this (click here for the full-size version):

It's an animated movie created by some researchers at Google showing how the geographical distribution of requests to google.com changed throughout the day on 14 August 2003. (To what end? Details here if you're interested.)

The activity on the map is highly correlated with economic prosperity, education, enlightenment and energy. The interior of the African continent is one of the darkest regions.

An equivalent map for Earth Hour, with light intensity corresponding to switched off (or non-existent!) lights, would show the interior of the African continent as one of the brightest regions.

Absurd or what?

Zamunda: A cautionary tale

Zamunda is the imaginary African kingdom in the Eddie Murphy classic Coming to America. In February 2003, I wrote a short story about leadership in African countries. Claimer: The events and characters in the story ARE based on actual events and characters from Zambian history. To give some context: About a year earlier, in January 2002, Levy Mwanawasa became President of Zambia after 10 years of increasingly corrupt rule by his predecessor. He had been handpicked by the incumbent. The questions that were in the minds of all Zambians at the time were whether President Mwanawasa would be his own man and just what kind of President he was going to be. As things turned out, he proved to be a pretty good one, a saint of a President indeed by African standards. The title I gave the story back in 2003 was Ali Baba and The Forty Thieves, a title somewhat lacking in subtelty and tact it seems now six years on! The story is allegorical. See if you can spot the good old British Empire; Zambia's first President, the freedom fighter Kenneth Kaunda; Zambia's second President, the wily Fredrick Chiluba; and Zambia's third President, the late, great Mwanawasa. The story seems to suggest that it's all cyclical and that progress is only illusory. Such was my pessimistic, and yes perhaps even cynical, view at the time. I hope I was wrong.

Anyhow, here it is, the complete and unexpurgated original text:

Once upon a time, in the land of Zamunda, there were multitudes of chiefdoms: lots and lots of chiefdoms, some small, some big, some isolated, some integrated, trading, warring, intermingling, living chiefdoms. And so they had gone on, century after century. And so it seemed they would continue into perpetuity.

But one day a group of itinerant bandits, forty in number, happened upon the sleepy land of Zamunda. They were led by Zaafira, a fierce and crafty woman, who had earned the nickname 'Bandit Queen'. Zaafira and her men raided the Zamundans continually and robbed them of untold quantities of golden grudas. They stowed their spoils in an immense secret cavern on the periphery of Zamunda.

On one particular occasion as Khalil, a poor Zamundan (indeed all Zamunda had become impoverished), was foraging for food in remote parts, he saw the bandits approaching on horses laden with sacks of grudas. Having concealed himself, Khalil saw Zaafira stop at a certain spot and say: "Open, Maize-ame!" Immediately the door of the secret cavern flew open and the Bandit Queen and her men hid their treasure inside. Once the bandits emerged from the cavern, Zaafira sealed the entrance of the cavern with the magical words: "Shut, Maize-ame!" And the bandits rode off.

When it was safe, Khalil approached the secret cavern and tried the magic words. Once again the cavern door opened and Khalil was able to carry off many grudas. In keeping with the meaning of his name ('friend'), Khalil shared the wealth he retrieved from the secret cavern with all the people of Zamunda. Khalil shared the secret of the wealth with key Zamundan leaders. Eventually, the Zamundans regained their wealth and their pride and they were able to chase away the bandits.

As the years went by Zamundans forgot their past woes, as it seemed their former idyllic existence had been restored. In the course of time, however, they were to face the usual adversities that visit any society. And by this time, Khalil and almost all Zamundan leaders, had forgotten the magical words to open the secret cavern. They tried "Open, Rice-ame!" and "Open, Wheat-ame!" and all manner of grains, except maize. Meanwhile, the Zamundans grew increasingly restless and, once again, came to know poverty. Almost all Zamundan leaders had forgotten the magic words, save for one, that is: Ali Baba. It was he that came to the rescue of all Zamunda. Or so it seemed at the time.

Ali Baba kept the magic words to open the secret cavern all to himself. Once he had ensconced himself at the helm of Zamunda, he formed a group of what he called the forty operatives to extort what few grudas the Zamundans still had. For the first time in its history, Zamunda became a single chiefdom.

One day Ali Baba yawned and realised he had grown quite bored of ruling Zamunda and decided he wanted to become a professional philosopher. He would have liked to install one of his sons as chief in his place, but, alas, they had inherited all of his brains (which is to say very little) and none of his cunning. And so, Ali Baba appointed the aptly named Mustafa ('chosen') instead, shared with him the magic words, and embarked on his philosophical career.

Mustafa, unfortunately for Ali Baba, turned out to have ideas of his own. He wished, in order to consolidate his own position, to be sole possessor of the knowledge of the magic words, and had Ali Baba discredited and thrown into a lunatic asylum for the rest of his days. Mustafa continued his reign until, in his turn, he played Ali Baba to his own Mustafa.

And that, according to legend, accounts for the cyclical history of Zamunda and the poverty we now find ourselves in. My son, it's late. Go to sleep. Get some rest. Mustafa's workhouse awaits us in the morning...

Is Science simply a matter of opinion?

Humanity is confronted with a number of issues whose solutions rest on the answers to scientific questions.

Take just two topical examples: one from the science of climatology and the other from the science of economics.

First, climatology. The issue here is what has come to be known as climate change. Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN panel of scientists and other experts, shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change." In fact, there is currently a global campaign (Earth Hour) to switch off all the lights for one hour this coming Saturday 28 March 2009 at 20:30 local time all over the planet. The purpose is to highlight climate change. There's only one problem: There are other scientists and experts who question the scientific validity of climate change. Who is right? Is it all simply a matter of "everyone is entitled to their own opinion"?

Second example: economics. Noting (and ignoring for now) the view that economics is not a science at all, how is that some economists say "fiscal stimulation" is the only way to solve the global economic crisis whilst other economists say that it will lead to economic disaster. Who is right and who is wrong?

The basic premise of all scientific inquiry is that a natural or artificial phenomenon or system, be it the global climate or the global economy, exhibits order and is capable of being objectively and rationally explained and understood. Understanding forms the basis of prediction, design and control. Science, in its proper sense, cannot simply be a subjective matter. If it is, it ceases to be science.

The first and most important thing to realise on these important scientific issues is that two equal and opposite answers to the same question cannot both be right. Fully accepting this fact naturally leads to the next steps: ascertaining the criteria for assessing truth or falsehood; applying the criteria; embracing the truth and rejecting falsehood.

Truth be told

What is the most incisive and truthful international news programme on TV today?

You have three goes.

OK, first one:

Answer: _________

Nope.

Have another go:

Answer: _________

Sorry, wrong again.

OK, last try:

Answer: _________

Let me put you out of your misery.

It's The Daily Show.

You mean The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, that Daily Show?

Yip, the very same. Besides the US Edition which airs Monday to Thursday on Comedy Central, there is an international Global Edition which airs at weekends on CNN.

But isn't that a comedy show?

Yes, well, actually it's a particular kind of comedy show, it's satirical.

But still, how can that be a news programme, let alone an incisive and truthful one?

Satire has always been more about telling the truth than about making jokes. It has a very long history dating at least as far back as the Ancient Greeks (with Aristophanes being the foremost exponent). Many others have followed in the satirical tradition: Swift, Twain, Mencken, Orwell, Soyinka,...and Stewart.

Any other good examples of such shows?

The BBC's Have I Got News For You is extremely good. It's less scripted and more improvisational though. And it has a two-team quiz format.

Quantitative Euphemising

The English word euphemism is derived from the Greek word euphemismos. The Greek word has three parts: the prefix eu-, which means "well" or "good"; the root pheme, which means "speaking" (or literally "a voice from heaven, a prophetic voice"); and the suffix -ismos, which is used to turn a root verb into a noun and means "the practice, characteristic behaviour or quality, state, or theory of" (and hence vegetarianism, optimism, senilism, and Capitalism respectively). Therefore the word literally means "the practice (or belief) of speaking well or good of". To the Ancient Greeks it meant "speaking words of good omen" or "using auspicious words instead of inauspicious ones".

In contemporary English, a euphemism has come to mean an indirect, opaque or convoluted word or phrase that is deliberately used in place of a more direct, clear and simple one. The motives for using euphemisms vary from the benign (the desire to avoid being unnecessarily offensive or harsh) to the malign (the desire to conceal, mislead or deceive). Describing the death of someone's loved one as "passing away" or "passing on" is on the benign side. Describing the relationship between donor nations and recipient nations as an "equal partnership" on the other end of the spectrum.

The global financial crisis has thrown up a first class example of a world class euphemism.

When President Robert Mugabe and the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe print money it is called, well, printing money. When Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the Governor of the Bank of England print money, or President Barack Obama and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve print money, it is called quantitative easing.

In the beginning was the web...

This month is the 20th anniversary of the invention of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN. The good folks are CERN have created a (what else?) website to commemorate the event, with some fascinating content including a copy of Berners-Lee's original proposal. Mike Sendall, Berners-Lee's supervisor at the time, wrote on the cover "Vague but exciting" and added at the end "And now?".

"And now?" indeed.

The story of the web is a story of a web, a web of unlikely connections. It's interesting that the web was invented by a British physicist working as a software engineer at a particle physics lab that straddles the border of France (an EU country) and Switzerland (a non-EU country). Of course, it helps to have great tools (thanks Steve Jobs) and great collaborators.

How the Web Was Born: The Story of the World Wide Web (2000, OUP) by James Gillies and Robert Cailliau is probably still the best book ever written on the early history of the web.

Lessons from the end of the earth

The island at the end of the earth.

That is what "Madagascar" means apparently. This stunning photograph shot in 1967 for National Geographic probably shows us why.

Madagascar, a large tropical island off the south-east coast of Africa with over 20 million inhabitants, has been in the news this year for all the wrong reasons. All the wrong, and sadly all too familiar, reasons that keep recurring in both space and time across the continent of Africa.

It has been argued by some that Africa's biggest problem is one of image and that the 24-hour news channels do not reflect the reality on the ground. There's something to be said for that I suppose: I remember asking John, a friend from Belfast, what it was like living in The Troubles (this was before Tony Blair came along with the Good Friday Agreement). "Surprisingly normal," he said, and went on to explain how, most of the time, they just went about their day to day lives without incident.

And yet, and yet. Just how "normal" could life have been in Northern Island with its segregated communities, thousands of British troops on the streets, and hundreds of active paramilitary freedom fighters or terrorists (depending on which side you supported)? The truth is the people of Northern Island had probably grown accustomed to living with the abnormal. So much so that the abnormal had become normal.

And so it probably is in much of Africa today. We have become so accustomed to living with the abnormal that it has become normal. Or rather, the abnormal has remained abnormal and we have become ab-normalised.

Recent events in Madagascar have been tragic and farcical in almost equal measure: a 59-year old duly elected president ousted from power by a 34-year old former DJ who cannot constitutionally become head of state anyway because he's below the stipulated minimum age (40); a supine military aiding and abetting the theft of state power; a pliable judiciary endorsing it; and the restless, mindless, pitiless mood for "change" by the fickle mob. Yes they could, and yes they did: the hapless and helpless incumbent president stepping down after more than 100 civilian deaths and before the many more that were sure to follow if he had dared to resist the inevitable.

Why do such things keep happening in Africa?

Perhaps we're asking the wrong question about the wrong place. Why doesn't this sort of thing happen outside Africa, in Europe say? This casts rather a different light on the matter altogether. For we know that such things were once just as frequent and just as widespread in Europe.

Once.

But not any more.

Why?

Price versus Value

More wisdom from Warren Buffet's latest annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders:

[T]he market value of the bonds and stocks that we continue to hold suffered a significant decline along with the general market. This does not bother Charlie [Munger] and me. Indeed, we enjoy such price declines if we have funds available to increase our positions. Long ago, Ben Graham taught me that “Price is what you pay; value is what you get.” Whether we’re talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.
[Emphasis added]

Perhaps the U.S. and British governments should take heed as they buy up so-called toxic assets. The cure may literally end up being worse than the disease.