Month: January 2003

  • From ridicule to the ridiculous

    The war on drugs was weird enough because it was a war on plants, which I found
    quite odd. But the whole concept of a war on terror is absurd. How can you declare
    war on an abstract, on a notion?
    Mark Thomas (Source: Big Issue, December 2-8 2002)

    Comedy can be an incisive instrument to reveal the truth. Good satire can be
    the most telling and effective form of critique, while in recent years The
    Simpsons     has probably been the most consistently insightful work of social
    observation in any media.

    It is not surprising then that comedy has become one of the most potent modes
    of political commentary and polemic. In Britain, for example, comedians such
    as Ben Elton in the eighties and Rory Bremner and Mark Steel in the present
    day have been praised as the most effective critics of the politicians of their
    time. Michael Moore in the US and Mark Thomas in the UK have also pioneered
    a new hybrid of investigative journalism and comedy. The blend has proved to
    be extremely popular. Most notably, Moore’s book Stupid White Men was
    a huge bestseller in 2002.

    The comedian’s skills, however, do not always lend themselves to the kind of
    subtle analysis good political commentary often requires. The problem is that
    the political comedian is the master of ridicule. But it is easy to forget that
    what has been made to look ridiculous may not in fact be ridiculous.

    Take Mark Thomas’s swipes at the war on drugs and the war on terror. Not bad
    gags, I would say. But do they add up to serious criticisms of either? Hardly.
    Consider the war on drugs first. The joke works because it makes us imagine
    an armed struggle in which the enemy is a plant, and this absurdity makes us
    laugh. But, of course, the joke is asking us to imagine what is clearly not
    the case. No one involved in the war on drugs thinks they are going into battle
    with plants. In fact, they probably don’t even think that they’re engaged in
    a war in the conventional sense at all. The term itself is merely a kind of
    metaphor or shorthand for a policy of working to eliminate the supply and use
    of drugs.

    What the joke does is takes the phrase ‘war on drugs’, interprets it in a deliberately
    over-literal way, and then shows how, on that interpretation, such a war is
    ridiculous. But this is a far cry from having shown that the war on drugs itself
    is ridiculous. In fact, the joke cannot do this because it doesn’t even begin
    to address what the war on drugs is really about. However, comedy is in the
    timing, and gags, unlike careful arguments, follow each other quickly. It is
    easy in our laughter to think that it is the war on drugs which we are finding
    ridiculous, not a clever joke we are finding funny.

    The line about the war on terror follows the same logic. Of course the war
    on terror is not a war waged by the armies of America against hordes of abstract
    concepts. It is a war against terrorists and supporters of terrorism.

    At best, the gags may show there is something unfortunate about talking about
    wars on drugs and terrors, since in neither case is a conventional war being
    waged. But even this is a criticism of descriptions and not the projects they
    describe. And by missing the point they actually take us away from considering
    the genuinely problematic aspects of both these so-called wars.

    If all this sounds like taking comedy too seriously then it should be remembered
    that the comedians themselves take their political objectives very seriously.
    And they are very articulate and persuasive spokespeople for their causes. Often
    their work is excellent, and the jokes hit upon uncomfortable truths. Both Michael
    Moore and Mark Thomas in particular have produced some searching and disturbing
    work. But both ridicule more than is actually ridiculous and in the process
    they can divert our attention from the real issues and make us laugh at no more
    than straw men. Comedy can reveal the truth, but it can also make us miss it.

  • How Does He Know?

    ‘But if you begin to think about it you can start to feel like the ashamed schoolchild who has just been caught drawing smutty pictures.’

  • Eat the Dog

    Very witty quiz on ethics in the Guardian.

  • Rashomon at the White House

    We all know history is written by the victors. It’s also worth remembering that it’s written by a lot of other unreliable witnesses besides. By participants, loyalists, traitors, friends, enemies, people with various kinds of axe to grind, people who were paying only selective attention (and who ever pays anything else?). Which is not to say that it’s all a fairy tale, that no history is more accurate than any other so there’s no need to be careful with the evidence or the conclusions we draw from it. It’s only to point out how tricky it all is. This story in the Guardian is a good example. Tony Blair and the people around him are quite sure they have influenced George Bush to enlist the U.N. in the conflict with Iraq. They talk of a crucial meeting between Bush and Blair at Camp David in September last year. But then the Guardian story points out that other people don’t seem to see it quite that way. Bob Woodward seldom mentions Blair in his book Bush at War. There, it is at a dinner with Colin Powell in August that Bush becomes persuaded of the merits of the UN. Perhaps Woodward has it right and the Blair people are deluding themselves. But then again…

    But the fact that Mr Powell plays such a heroic, single-handed role may have something to do with the fact that Mr Woodward depended greatly on the secretary’s version of events for his book. Mr Blair was not interviewed.

    Ah. Woodward doesn’t have a god’s-eye view either, does he. The account he gives does depend on which people he talks to. Naturally. And we’re all the heroes of our own stories, aren’t we. No doubt if Woodward talked to Powell’s cook and Blair’s driver, they would play a more central role than anyone suspects. A conversation in the car, mind-altering spices in the paella. It all adds up.

  • Positive Discrimination

    Not quotas but targets; European human rights laws; poverty and privilege. Difficult questions without clear answers.

  • Confusion for Future Historians

    Powell thinks it’s Powell who tames the President, Blair thinks it’s Blair. So history is written.

  • Yes But How Does it Work?

    Even evidence is not enough, in the absence of a theory, Michael Shermer explains.

  • When is a degree not a degree?

    Are some university degrees more equal than others?

  • University Press Publisher as Deity

    The Boston Globe interviews an editor at Harvard University Press.

  • A Scientific Controversy In Progress

    The Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty, a branch of the Danish Research Agency, issued a report on January 7, 2003 that Bjørn Lomborg’s book The Skeptical Environmentalist was ‘dishonest science’. The seventeen page report explaining their reasoning provides a fascinating case study in the workings of science: it’s a small education in itself.

    One thing it teaches (in case we didn’t know) is how difficult and complicated such questions are. There is no eureka moment, no Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot pacing the hearthrug while he explains how All was Revealed, no conclusive proof. There is only a huge and complex variety of evidence and the hard slog of interpreting it, there is only probability and ‘if…then’ and statistics. There is the need for caution, and alertness, and remembering to notice all the implications.

    Another lesson is the reminder it gives of how difficult, though necessary, it is for non-experts to form opinions on such subjects. We are forced to trust authority and rely on experts. Even scientists have to do that outside their own fields, and the rest of us have to do it across the board. The lucid explanations of the reasoning behind the report offer some training in how to think about such subjects.

    It remains very difficult, of course, for an outsider to judge such questions, and yet as citizens and as polluting, consuming, devouring beings, we have to. The report seems to make a good case that Lomborg simplifies complex issues, omits secondary literature that doesn’t support his case, relies on optimistic views of future trends, and misrepresents the arguments of environmentalists he disagrees with.

    One bizarre argument in attempted support of Lomborg from Tech Central Station is strangely reminiscent of the self-defense offered by the editors of Social Text after they published Alan Sokal’s satire of Postmodernism under the mistaken idea that he meant it literally.

    Along comes an associate professor of statistics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus – a man who does not present himself as a natural scientist and who has written a popular book, not a peer-reviewed article – to challenge their assumptions.

    Very well, he is not a natural scientist. Does that mean he gets a free pass? Why shouldn’t others who are natural scientists point out where he gets the science wrong? He may not claim to be a natural scientist but he is writing about natural science, so why should he escape peer review? Even a popular book ought to be accurate, one would think. I daresay Alan Sokal would agree.

    External Resources

    • Grist is Skeptical
      Excellent feature by Grist magazine, with links to comments by E.O. Wilson, Stephen Schneider, Norman Myers and others.
    • Guardian Story on Report
      The Guardian on the report of the Danish committee, which found that Lomborg didn’t comprehend the science, rather than intending to mislead.
    • The Guardian Reviews Lomborg
      Chris Lavers urges caution in judging Lomborg’s use of statistics: ‘overarching averages can obscure a lot of important detail.’
    • A Letter
      A reply to Bjørn Lomborg in Scientific American.
    • Another SciAm Article
      More skepticism toward skeptical environmentalist.
    • Article on the Skeptical Environmentalist
      Scientific American article in January 2002 on The Skeptical Environmentalist.
    • Danish Ministry Overturns Decision
      Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation has repudiated findings by Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty that Bjørn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist was ‘objectively dishonest.’
    • Lomborg Replies to his Critics
      Bjørn Lomborg answers his doubters in Scientific American.
    • More Correspondence on Lomborg
      Several letters about Lomborg’s Skeptical Environmentalist in Scientific American.
    • Reply to Rebuttal
      More correspondence in Scientific American.
    • Ten Items for Environmental Educators to Know
      A critique by the World Resources Institute and World Wildlife Fund of Bjørn Lomborg’s controversial book.
    • UCS on Lomborg
      The Union of Concerned Scientists looks at The Skeptical Environmentalist. Includes comments from E.O. Wilson, Peter Gleick, Jerry Mahlman and others.
    • Wilson on Biodiversity
      E.O. Wilson’s book The Future of Life explains the importance of biodiversity, and why optimism about species loss, whether from Rush Limbaugh or Bjørn Lomborg, is a mistake.
    • Wilson on Lomborg on Extinction
      E.O. Wilson demolishes Lomborg’s optimism about species extinction.

  • Dishonesty or at Least Incomprehension

    Danish panel says Lomborg did not comprehend the science in his cheerful environmental book.

  • What Ivory Tower?

    Education and politics are and should be intimately connected.

  • Case Study in Scientific Disagreement

    The Danish panel says Political Scientist Lomborg, ‘strangely for a statistician’, uses the word ‘plausible’ often without attaching any probability to it. And there is more…

  • Wide Awake

    Speaking of Fresh Air…there was an interesting display of Pathetically Reduced Expectations on that show a few days ago. The political ‘commentator’ David Frum was on to talk about the year he spent as a speechwriter in the Bush White House. He has an unctuous, soft, childishly enthusiastic voice, and he kept getting in a flutter of excitment and admiration at things that were not worth getting in a flutter about. It was all too depressingly reminiscent of what we used to hear about the Reagan White House, when people would tell anecdotes that proved the President was actually conscious and awake as if they proved how brilliant and perspicacious he was. One example in particular struck me by its naive glee. Frum assured us that the President pays close attention to what his speechwriters actually write, and he has (oh boy!) a big marking pen with which he scribbles in the margins (gosh, really?). In one speech someone wrote ‘I saw it with my own eyes,’ and our dazzlingly clever Chief Executive wrote next to that: ‘duh’. Wow! Is that impressive or what?

    Frum also confirmed something I’ve long suspected, which is that the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’ have been outlawed in the American language. It is, as I thought, official. The boss of the speechwriters has a lot of rules for what can and cannot be said, and among those rules is one that outlaws the word ‘parents’. It has to be ‘moms’ and ‘dads’. Because…what? The word ‘parent’ is too long? Too high-falutin’? Too elitist? No, I know, don’t bother to explain. It’s not cozy enough, not cloying enough, not sentimental and intrusive and folksy enough. Duh.

  • What Would Jesus Drive?

    I do like to see a good roundhouse attack like this one in The New Republic, on that contemporary American plague, the Sport Utility Vehicle. I only wish there were more of them (and that they did any good). There was an auto industry reporter on Fresh Air a few days ago, and it was a pathetic series of missed opportunities as Terri Gross let the guy rhapsodize about the wonders of the SUV without bothering to point out the obvious drawbacks. For instance he sang a little aria to the joy of being so high up off the road and able to look over the other traffic. Well yes, and SUV drivers are so high up that they are also able to look over pedestrians, look over them so completely that they often don’t see them at all. I wonder how many times I’ve been walking innocently down the sidewalk and been nearly flattened by someone hurtling out of a parking lot in a giant SUV without noticing any pesky pedestrians.

    But I hadn’t realized I was being impious in thinking this way. The New Republic article says Washington Post auto industry reporter Warren Brown ‘deliriously proclaimed that the Hummer is what Jesus would drive. Its size and its profligacy are justified, Brown said, because “if you are a missionary like some of my friends,” you could use a Hummer “to bring loads of food and medical supplies” to the poor.’ Of course! That’s what all those people high up over the walkers and talking on their cell phones are doing–shlepping food and meds to the poor! I knew that! ‘In the beginning was the Durango, and the Durango was with God, and…’

  • Where Are the Young People With Nose Studs?

    Should the National Theatre be required to attract yoof?

  • ‘Scientific dishonesty’?

    A Danish political scientist is rebuked for optimistic book on environmental issues.

  • Apples and Oranges

    This is an interesting and uncomfortable story. The American Association of University Professors is about to publish a study which shows that Affirmative Action policies at US colleges and universities have failed to close the gap between whites on the one hand and blacks and Hispanics on the other.

    The article will highlight admissions policies that give special consideration to the children of alumni and donors to colleges; prepaid-tuition plans, which benefit only those parents who can afford to save money for college; and the current movement among many public colleges to tighten admissions standards and end remedial programs, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education.

    Surely that sentence skates rapidly over the difficult issues inherent in the subject. Surely there are two very separate problems that the article plans to highlight. Special consideration for alumni would indeed seem to give an advantage – an arguably unfair and arbitrary advantage – to people whose parents went to universities in the past, which will naturally be white people. But what of this movement to tighten admissions standards? Is that unfair and arbitrary in the same sense? Is it unfair and arbitrary at all? Is it inherent in the education process? Perhaps the study addresses these issues. Perhaps it is simply impartially listing the causes of the gap. But a newspaper story’s grouping all such factors in one sentence, without reference to the differences among them, could create a false impression.

  • ‘Cultural Difference’ and its Discontents

    Brian Barry’s Culture and Equality: An Egalitarian Critique of Multiculturalism was short-listed for the British Academy prize, which rewards academic excellence combined with accessibility to the general reader.

  • Study on Affirmative Action in US Higher Education

    Study blames admissions policies that favor children of alumni, and the movement to tighten admissions standards, for failure to narrow racial gap.