Summer Fun

I spent a summer in Montanna, not too long ago, but long enough for me to have gotten two degrees in the meantime. My friends and I were working on a ranch and the owner gave us this to think about one evening:

Let A = B.

It follows that Asquared = Bsquared

Also Asquared - AB = Asquared - Bsquared.

Rearranged: A x (A-B) = (A+B) x (A-B).

Dividing each side by the common term we get

A = A+B which is rearranged (via substitution from the original statement) A=A+A= 2A

1=2

I thought it was a neat trick, which it is. But there is good list of them here. Have fun.

Paradox Reporting Watch

Many writers like to use the word "paradox". Rarely do they actually show a paradox when they use the word. For instance, a reporter might say, "Early in his career, Lance Armstrong was an uninspired bicycle rider. Paradoxically it was his winning his fight against cancer that drove him to his greatest successes."

Finding inspiration in beating a disease is not paradox. While being slightly ironic or incongruous, it is explainable.

Paradox is found in a self contradictory or false proposition like: there is an exception to everything. Or it can be contained in a contradictory or absurd statement that expresses truth like: God is omnipotent, so he should be able to create a rock so heavy that he can't lift it.

Opinion Unreliable

In the January 3rd Economist, Lexington writes of the passing of Samuel Huntington who he (she?) describes as
"a lifelong Democrat, a representative of that dying breed, the hard-headed cold war liberal."

I'm not sure what to make of this statement. Characteristically Lexington does not quite identify why being "hard-headed" (reality-based?) is in short supply among liberals, or what is meant by by the term "liberal". Is this the classic economic liberal, or or is it used in the British sense or is it the popular American sense (conservative verses liberal). I'm not sure, but I think it has something to do with optimism.

Maybe it is the reference to the cold war that is the important qualifier here. If the war ended in about 1989, time should be taking its toll (as in this case it has).

Lexington makes the point that Huntington's opposition of the neoconservatives is, somewhat contradictory, that a mix of "liberalism with a pessimism rooted in a conservative reading of history" is vital. In other words, free markets do not go hand in hand with democracy and that culture and institutions have an important role to play. The ideas contained in "the End of History" were wrong. Of course they were. Everyone knows that neoconservatism is simply wishful thinking (and I think there is many a damaged psyche at its core).

This is good as far as it goes. But Lexington goes on to criticize Huntington's work, "The Clash of Civilizations", as having glossed over the fact that much of the 20th century involved conflict within civilizations.

So what? The larger truth is that history, and culture, remains relevant. Huntington, who believed that immigration and multiculturalism threatened America's Anglo-Saxon based culture, and that Western Civilization was bound to be in conflict with the Muslim World, may have ignored other significant "clashes". But he certainly was not distracted by the fuzzy notion that increased democratization and the end of the cold war would unleash an unprecedented era of peace. We all know democracy is often just an expensive cover word for something far less idealistic.

If culture is relevant, Lexington does a bad job with his counter-examples. For instance he gives one example of the universal appeal of the "American model" as the Chinese business elite's interest in Silicon Valley rather than "in their Confucian past". But here Lexington loses track of just what it admired about Huntington. Putting aside the quibble over what exactly Silicon Valley represents about the "American model" (over-hyped technology, market dominance, unearned wealth, unaffordable home prices?) I doubt China's interest is egalitarian and there is little sense that the Chinese, who still refer to non-Chinese as barbarians, look to America for advice on how to govern their people or create popularly accountable institutions or regulate their economy.

If China's admiration does not extend beyond an admiration of our avarice, it may just be a reflection of theirs. Greed, after all, is a universal value. One that may have much to do with liberal economics and republican democracy but which is, as we all know, a necessary but not sufficient precondition. Lexington charges Huntington with excessive pessimism, but I don't see that agreeing with Huntington necessitates succumbing to pessimism. History may simply "be", but learning from it is possible. But you need much more than wishful thinking.

Coldest Water?

Went for a New Years swim at Venice beach. There was the annual Penguin race and I just missed placing in the top three. It was the shortest swim I've competed in all year (yuk) and I clocked in at 3:20. Funny, though, the water seemed much colder to me. I was talking on the beach with a couple of spectators and, although I've recently swum for much longer in the ocean, my words were very slurred. The NOAA data for Santa Monica puts the water temperature at just under 57 degrees (56.7).

That's about as cold as it gets here in this City of Angels.

Funny. But the water did not feel over-cold and I suspect reckon I could have stayed in much longer with negligible additional effect. And I probably normally slur, or at least would have slurred, but it is rare that anyone joins me at the beach this time of the year. Normally, the first time I talk with anyone as I get out of the water is about 20 minutes later, after I shower and put on warm clothes, and hike up a small hill to order a cup of coffee. And then the thing I notice most is the constant chill to my body, usually accompanied to some extent by a shiver, which I did not have yesterday.