On Niall Ferguson

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Empire Guy said...

I was once having a discussion with a friend and colleague (both of us do, or have done, academic work on empires) about Ferguson's "American Empire" stuff, and he pointed out that Ferguson's an interesting scholar. Why? Well, if you ask British imperial historians about his work, they'll say its rubbish but they hear his stuff on economic history is pretty good. When you ask economic historians about Ferguson's work in their area, they'll say its not so good but they've heard positive things about his World War I book. If you ask military historians about his World War I book, they dismiss it but mention that people seem to like his book on the Rothschilds. Not sure if all of these criticisms are right (his stuff on American Empire is rubbish, though), but I think it might capture an essential truth about Ferguson's ability to maintain his reputation despite mostly contributing shoddy arguments to the public sphere.

Reply                                                                                   August 11, 2009 at 01:15 PM

Grumpy

A diary on dailykos has the bright idea "#CallThemDaesh". One of the reasons not to call ISIS ISIL or ISIS is because of the word "Islamic". "....it blurs the lines between Islam, Muslims and Islamists".
Then, in the comments, when someone posts "we should bomb those animals", there is a conversation about how we should never forget that Daesh is made of human beings too.

My response (with minor corrections)

Hilarious!
There is this thread down there in which they try to argue that we must never forget that Daesh is made up of humans.  But the whole “call them Daesh” movement is to make us forget that they are Islamic.  It is very hard to know what liberals want one to remember and what they want one to forget.

I’ll also note that Daily Kos liberals have no problem in calling the Indian RSS Hindu, instead of just using the name “RSS”.  They’re welcome to dislike the Indian Prime Minister Modi and his political party, the BJP; but would they show the same consideration in not terming them “Hindu” as they are trying to not term ISIS “Muslim” or “Islamic”?

For that matter, would they stop talking about the “Christian Right” in America? After all, they are not Christian, right, right?

Of course not, they’d never do so.  They’re Daily Kos Liberals, a mirror reflection of the brain-dead Tea Party.  Sunday morning we’re going to hear from Egberto Willies about whether liberals live in a bubble.  The answer is a resounding Yes!

Rangoli 2015

Previous years.

The meaning of "smart"

neuroguy on dailykos, in an article that argues that Dr. Ben Carson is not smart, gives this description of  smart that I want to preserve:

“Smart” is a multifaceted cognitive feature composed of excellent analytical skills, possession of an extensive knowledge base that is easily and frequently augmented, possession of a good memory, and being readily curious about the world and willing, even eager, to reject previously accepted notions in the face of new data. Being smart includes having the ability to analyze new data for validity and, thinking creatively, draw new insights from existing common knowledge.

November 10, 2015 - likely a big day for computer science

As R.J. Lipton narrates:

László Babai is one of the world experts on complexity theory, especially related to groups and graphs. He also recently won the 2015 ACM Knuth Prize, for which we congratulate him.
Today we wish to discuss a new result that he has announced that will place graph isomorphism almost in polynomial time.

More exactly László shows that Graph Isomorphism is in Quasipolynomial Time: that is time of the form

for some constant . Polynomial time is the case when , but any is a huge improvement over the previous best result.

Luca Trevisan already has made a post on this result, and Scott Aaronson likewise. Luca further promises to be in Chicago next Tuesday when László gives his talk on the result......

Ben Carson's pyramids

Prof. Paul Krugman has a post on his blog about Ben Carson's idea that the ancient Egyptian pyramids were built to store grain.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/pyramid-schemes-and-overderp-dot-com/

My couple of comments:

In this era, as a practical matter, no one can be elected to President of the United States without giving public allegiance to some of these ideas: that the Red Sea parted to let people through, that a virgin birth occurred, that a dead man was resurrected - none of these events comply with the laws of nature as we understand them.

Yet, only the idea that may violate engineering sense, architectural sense, even common sense, but NOT the laws of nature, that the pyramids might have been used for grain storage, is held up for criticism and ridicule.

That is the true absurdity.

Someone asked:

One day we'll elect a fundamentalist atheist to office. Will you be happy then?

My reply:

Well, when does a belief go from being religious, and so beyond most criticism, and into being absurd or superstitious?

Ms Sonia Faleiro, who writes columns for the New York Times, on twitter was ridiculing an Indian leader who believes that the ancients had high technology, since lost, and rediscovered only in modern times. I agree that such a belief is not supportable by any evidence, and is thus rendered absurd; but I wondered what the basis for ridiculing this religious belief was. I realized, the only reason was that it is not a Christian belief.
When I pointed out to Ms Faleiro: "Tho ancients having technology lost till modern times is a bit more rational than parting of Red Sea or man rising from dead", she promptly blocked me from following her tweets.

Why is Christian or Jewish superstition privileged over every other superstition? I have a much higher regard for Professor Krugman and want to alert him to the absurdity that he is participating in.

 You see, there is this touchstone (perhaps it is - is it mentioned in the Bible?) that makes an idea "religious" and so beyond scrutiny in a political campaign, or else something that deals with reality, and so it is supposed to be handled with normal logic, science and commonsense.   So, for example, that old Hindu stories mention flying machines and weapons that seem like nuclear weapons cannot be the basis for someone's religious belief that these things existed - it is not mentioned in the Bible, and so it must be deemed absurd.  Likewise with Ben Carson's theory about the pyramids. 

This is what "secularism" means in practice, whatever the pious words are about separation of Church and State and so on.  The underlying social contract in America is that certain beliefs are not to be held up to scrutiny.  The conflict with Islam is because Islam has a different set of beliefs that are not be held up to scrutiny, and there is no agreement on that.  Hindus are a dismissable minority in the US; and the secularization project proceeds apace in India, courtesy the Cambridge-Oxford set, the Marxists and the other Leftists, and the worldwide evangelist movements. 

De-Macaulayization - 9

Mani Shankar Aiyar is a politician of the Indian National Congress.  He is a bit in the news these days for hobnobbing with Pervez Musharraf, even just after Musharraf has admitted to sponsoring terrorism in India.  Journalist Dhiren Bhagat, in his book "The Contemporary Conservative" (1990) claimed that in 1962, when India was in a war with China, Aiyar, then at Cambridge in the UK, and the secretary of the Cambridge unit of the Communist Party, collected funds for the Chinese soldiers.  Supposedly Aiyar's influential family intervened to not let this anti-national activity interfere with his career.  Aiyar is a Sonia Gandhi loyalist, and in 2000 got into a drunken altercation with a Samajwadi Party leader, Amar Singh, for his successful opposition to Sonia Gandhi becoming Prime Minister of India.

This above is relevant because that is where the disgusting Macaulayite attitude comes through.
Reproducing some of the interview here, and highlighting the relevant portion.

What was the provocation for the brawl at Satish Gujral's party?

In spite of being greatly provoked, I kept my cool for a very long time. The party was in honour of H.K. Dua, press advisor to the Prime Minister and a good friend of mine, who'd recently got married. Practically everybody who matters was there. Mani came up to me absolutely drunk and charged: `You are a racist. You prevented Sonia Gandhi from becoming the Prime Minister only because she's a foreigner.' I kept quiet.

Did you think it wasn't worth countering? Or was it because you did stall her premiership?

I did not prevent her from becoming the PM. It was the collective decision of Samajwadi Party MPs and MLAs under Mulayam Singh's leadership. As a spokesperson it was my duty to articulate the party's view.

Surely that wasn't provocation enough?

Mani didn't stop at that. He called me an opportunist, a political weather cock. I countered: I was with Mulayam and I'm still with him. It's you who, when denied a Congress seat, went over to Mamata and when she spurned you, you came back, calling her names. Mani shot back: `You are a broker of industrialists, you are Ambani's dog.' Without losing my shirt, I replied: Fine, as far as the Ambanis are concerned you people are virgins. Your party has not taken a single penny from them. As for proximity with industrialists the Congress has been in close touch with many of them. I told him: Yeh tu nahi, sharaab bol raha hai. To which Mani replied: `Mera dil aur dimaag bol raha hai'. Continuing in the same vein I said: Mote Mani Shankar, sharaab ke nashe mein dhhut tera sara shareer dol raha hai.

He was not offended?

He just wanted to provoke me, and when I didn't get provoked, he said, `What sort of a Thakur are you?' He just wanted to pick up a fight.

Why would he do that?

So that he could go back and tell Soniaji, I fixed Amar Singh, I'm the only one who could do it, and thus ensure a berth in the Congress Working Committee. I told Mani, I know your gameplan. I'm not going to help you get into Soniaji's charmed circle. To which he said, `You are under-estimating my clout with her, I write all her speeches. I did it for Rajiv.' Sure, how can anybody forget those infamous lines, `Mein VP Singh ki naani yaad karadoonga. God help the leader and the party which has a speech writer like you, I replied. He gave a maa ki gali. I said politely, but firmly, I can also abuse your mother, but I won't stoop so low. For god's sake don't provoke the beast in me.

But he did? 

He was irrepressible... He said, `We belong to the Oxford and Cambridge set... your leader can't even articulate himself in English... Oh that bloody Mulayam -- he looks just like me. It could be because my father visited UP at some point. Why don't you check with Mulayam's mother'. This was crossing all limits. I grabbed him by the neck and did what I had to do.

You beat him up?
I did much less than what he deserved.

You said that knowing his gameplan you refused to get provoked. Why did you get provoked?
Mulayam Singh is very close to my heart. He is my leader. I'm sorry about what I did. I don't think it was right.

So you regret what you did?
I don't. I'm human, I'm not an angel. I got provoked when he talked about my leader's mother in such a derogatory manner. As a member of civil society I'm ashamed.

Mani Shankar Aiyar also termed Prime Minister Narendra Modi a chaiwala (tea vendor) not deserving to be Prime Minister.   Whenever the era of elitists like Aiyar is over will not be too soon.

PS: Perhaps I should point out that the stuff about English came fairly late in Aiyar's escalating insults.

India's new metros

Metropolitan railway is undergoing a bit of a building boom in India, and you can follow it from The Metro Rail Guy's blog.

E.g., Kochi.

A sample photograph:

A view of Muttom station’s concourse level – Photo Copyright: Kochi Metro Rail

Fall

Balu makes Derrida intelligible

An Indian View on Derrida and Post-modernists

The fate of the Bison?

Aravindan Neelakandan has a long essay from which I excerpt this:

For Native Americans the buffalo was a sacred resource to be utilized according to human need. For many tribes, the animal is sacred because in their sacred lore the buffalo and humans share a common mythological origin. The nomadic lives of the Native American tribes centered round the sacred bison. Though they did consume the meat of the bison they never slaughtered them wanton and venerated it as a ‘sacred animal’.

If in India cow veneration was deemed uneconomical burden for the Indian farmer, in United States extermination of the sacred bison, was essential for the agricultural settling of native Indians. United States Interior Secretary Columbus Delano wrote in 1872 that he would not be sad for the ‘disappearance’ of the bison as he regarded it as a means of ‘hastening their (Native Americans’) sense of dependence upon the products of the soil and their own labors’. But the real reason was no civilizational altruism but aim for political subjugation as US Representative James Throckmorton would reveal in 1876:

There is no question that, so long as there are millions of buffaloes in the West, the Indians cannot be controlled, even by the strong arm of the Government. I believe it would be a great step forward in the civilization of the Indians and the preservation of peace on the border if there was not a buffalo in existence.

The plunge in DNA sequencing costs

These pair of remarkable charts are from the US National Human Genome Research Institute:

The meaning and purpose of higher education

Balu's paper: "Rethinking a Humboldtian vision for the 21st century". (PDF file)

The teacher does not presuppose a pre-existent motivation in the student; in fact, s/he is indifferent to the multiple motives present among the students. The teacher provides a goal for the student, induces the student to search for truth, and instils in that student a capacity to reach that goal as well. The teacher does not merely provide ‘information’ for the student to choose and pick but actively participates in the learning process by convincing the student that pursuing the goal of seeking truth is the ultimate goal of higher education. Far from being a mere (pre)condition for learning, the teacher becomes an equal partner in the educational process of the student. Pedagogy, in this new Humboldtian vision, is not subordinated to psychology, but becomes as crucial to the learning process as the presence of the learner.

The student learns autonomously, but this autonomy is taught by the teacher and is acquired by the student at the end of a particular phase in the learning process. Through the active intervention of the teacher in the learning process, the student slowly acquires the ability to learn autonomously. Autonomy, then, is the end-product of higher education and not its presupposition. The teacher becomes an exemplar for the student to follow because the former embodies the unity of facts and values, namely, knowledge.

Consequently, the University does not merely become an institution that functions as a reservoir of information. It becomes that social institution which builds bonds between two generations.

If one accepts this as a mission of the University and the Teacher, then

Pedagogical innovations become interesting only to the extent they succeed in the goal of inculcating the value of searching for truth in the student.

IMO, that is the answer to MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses).

Global Climate Prospects

Vox has an article worth reading carefully: The math on staying below 2°C of global warming looks increasingly brutal.

With respect to India:

One possibility is that emission cuts would be divided equally among countries. The United States and Europe and China and India and Zimbabwe would all make proportionally similar sacrifices to stay below 2°C. When the dust settled, the average American would still emit more than the average Indian, but they'd each have made similar percentage cuts. The authors call this the "inertia" approach.

Another option would be to divvy up cuts so that every country has roughly the same level of per capita emissions. In this scenario, India's emissions are allowed to grow, while the US and Europe have to cut much more deeply. The authors call this the "equity" approach.

With that under your belt:

India would also have to make wrenching changes. On Twitter, Peters posted a graph comparing India's projected emissions under current policies (the purple line) with what'd be required under "inertia" or "equity" scenarios for staying below 2°C:

Given that India is currently planning to double coal production by 2020 as it lifts itself out of poverty, this looks incredibly unlikely.

Sanjaya Baru: India's Cultural Revolution

Sanjaya Baru points out:

The elections of May 2014 marked a turning point. After storming the Delhi Durbar, Narendra Modi chose to marginalise the Nehruvian elite rather than coopt them. The consequent Left-Right divide in India’s intellectual discourse is now out in the open. While Vajpayee sought to win over the ‘liberal centre’, Modi has pushed them away, allowing them to move closer to the Left. Modi seems to view his electoral victory as the beginning of the end of the dominance of the Nehruvian elite in India’s intellectual discourse.

That this intellectual regime change should impact so many institutions, ranging from an institute to train film and television talent to one aimed at promoting research in recent history, is a reflection of the enormity of the role of the Nehruvian State in shaping post-colonial intellectual discourse in India. In how many modern democracies does the government run a film and TV institute or a school for journalists? The Nehruvian State was involved in manufacturing not just scooters and bread but also culture. While other post-Nehruvian prime ministers began the process of getting the government out of the business of manufacturing scooters and bread, none of them, not even Modi, has tried to end governmental grip over cultural institutions.

It is not surprising that the first salvo against Modi’s attempted intellectual regime change in the Delhi Durbar should have come from none other than Jawaharlal Nehru’s own niece. Several generations of the Nehruvian elite and members of the Delhi Durbar are now up in arms. This will go on. In many institutions they may well be replaced by less accomplished people. Such is the nature of cultural revolutions.

We saw the lament of the displaced elite in Aatish Taseer's recent OpEd in the New York Times; and I expect we'll see much more ululation in the New York Times and the London Times and so on, as this elite draws on its international resources.  Maybe it will be their swan song.

The Indian Express has a rather different take; Yatish Yadav and Pratul Sharma write:

As intellectuals take a political stand against the Modi government, polarising the cultural establishment, the NDA refuses to rise to the bait.

But others are responding, e.g., as quoted by them:

Nayantara Sahgal received the award from the Prime Minister who had previously said that when a big tree falls, the earth shakes. She was ready to receive the award from him.

The Prime Minister in question was Congress's Rajiv Gandhi; and what he said was in response to the Congress-led anti-Sikh riots in Delhi that happened after his mother and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated. This is the kind of example that would have any objective observer reach the conclusion that selective outrage and politics go hand-in-hand.

India - lighting energy efficiency savings

By replacing incandescent and CFL bulbs with LEDs, in Puducherry and Andhra Pradesh, a government program has resulted in:

A staggering 68 lakh kilowatts of energy is saved every day. This includes a cut in 645 megawatts of power during peak hours, a 5,520-tonne drop in daily carbon emission and domestic savings of Rs 2.71 crore every day.

How?

The LED project is financed by consumers themselves through two plans. The first one is an 'onbill EMI' model under which consumers have to pay Rs 105 for an LED bulb across 10 months, which is added to the monthly power bill. The second plan allows the consumer to buy bulbs in one go — every consumer is entitled to four LED bulbs — by paying Rs 100 apiece. (The bulbs come with a three-year replacement warranty.)

LED bulbs actually cost Rs 300-350 apiece in the market — the government offers cheaper bulbs because it procures in bulk, around 7.5 crore bulbs so far. The government effort has already halved market prices from Rs 650-700 apiece a year ago.

For the project, LED lamps are procured at Rs 78 apiece. The additional Rs 27 that consumers must pay are due to the interest charges on financing, database maintenance and distribution cost.

(1 crore = 10 million.   The exchange rate today is 1 USD = 64.79 INR)

A nation stuck in high school

The Martian is a movie worth watching.  It is about the struggle for survival of an astronaut stranded on Mars.  The story is in the "hard" science fiction category, i.e., it mostly gets the science right, and the technology is not far from feasible.  If we don't blow ourselves up or pollute ourselves to death, we will be the spacefaring species whose first baby steps are depicted in this movie.  But will America be leading these steps?

This story about the movie, (and witnessing America's news shows and political debates) makes me think that high school is a traumatic experience for Americans, which very few outgrow.

• "15 Times The Martian Made Science Nerds Look Totally Bad-Ass"
• "But at its core, it's just a feel-good movie about science nerds."
• "This isn't your average Interstellar-like tear-jerker, after all; this is an all-out love letter to math. And chemistry. And physics. And botany. And again (and most importantly) nerds. Argue what you will about the scientific accuracy of each and every plot line (although chances are experts won't find too many moments to discredit), but The Martian officially makes it cool to be a nerd."

PS: Prof. Paul Krugman, in his blog:

Anyway, it’s quite sad that after all these years political coverage still treats the momentous issue of who will lead the world’s most powerful nation like a high school popularity contest.

Retd US Army Col. W.P. Lang on Syria

 Here:

What to do?-  I was asked today to state what I think should be done:
    * Accept the truth that we destroyed the Iraqi state and from that act of vandalism all present chaos in that country derives.
    * Don't do it again in Syria.
    * Stop saying that no "Assad cronies" can be in the government or head the government.  They ARE the government.  Assad himself is dispensable, but not the government of Syria.
    * Act like Russia, China and Iran matter as something other than rivals and adversaries.
    *  Ignore Erdogan's Turkey.  It is  a manifestation of the jihadi enemy.  They will deny us use of Incirlik and the other bases?  Fine, that would clarify the situation.  Move onto Syrian bases or the big, unused NATO built base north of Tripoli in Lebanon.
    * Ignore Saudi Arabia's wishes with regard to Syria.  They are jihadi supporters.
    *  Ignore Israel's wishes with regard to Syria.  Natanyahu's government is pursuing a mistaken and short sighted policy of eliminating coherent government in Syria for the purpose of crippling their Lebanese Hizbullah adversaries whom they think exist because of Syrian and Iranian help.  The Likud's imagined interest in Syria is not America's interest.
    * Accept Russian and Iranian co-belligerence in the war against the jihadis, ALL JIHADIS.
    * Fully coordinate operations, intelligence analysis sharing and logistics with the co-belligerent partners.
    * FIGHT THE JIHADIS, NOT THE SYRIAN GOVERNMENT.

India's carbon dioxide emissions

Via BRF, an Economist article, and this graphic below.
A quote from the article:

India’s programme to subsidise the replacement of 400m cheap incandescent light bulbs with dearer LED ones would save 6,000 megawatts of installed capacity—equivalent to the entire electricity-generating capacity of Nigeria.

On free speech in India

Postscript at the start - it may be best to first read MEMRI's Tufail Ahmad - he captures the sentiment accurately: "India's Thought Cops are Angry with Modi".

-----

Let it also be absolutely clear that there is no justification for a lynching or a murder.  There are time-honored methods of protest available in India, such as the Gherao and the Dharna. There is no indication that the aggrieved tried these methods.

-----
In the New York Times, Ms. Sonia Faleiro makes the claim:

IN today’s India, secular liberals face a challenge: how to stay alive.

There is some truth to it;  Bangladeshi writer, Taslima Nasreen, who had taken asylum in India, fled to New York City earlier this year, after the government could not secure her against further Islamist threats emanating from Bangladesh.

Oh, sorry, wrong topic.

In the assassinations of 3 rationalists, the investigative agencies are making progress.  Just a couple of days before Ms. Faleiro's screed, the Hindu reported:

Documents seized from Samir Gaikwad — an accused under arrest in connection with the murder of social activist Govind Pansare — indicate a link to the murders of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar and noted scholar M.M. Kalburgi.

and

Mr. Gaikwad is a full-time member of extreme right wing Hindu organisation, Sanatan Sanstha, which has its headquarters in Goa’s Ramnathi village.

which is not exactly the center of the Indian universe.  Anyway, we have to wait and see if the agencies come up with enough to launch a prosecution.

Supposedly, the ruling party at the center not speaking about this is some kind of crime.  Anyway, in other worrisome news, no one is talking about 

IN today’s Uttar Pradesh, journalists face a challenge: how to stay alive.

A TV journalist was assassinated a couple of days ago; it was the third assassination in four months in Uttar Pradesh.  The motive for the killings seems clear, these journalists were touching on the government-mafia nexus.    But Uttar Pradesh is not ruled by a "right wing Hindu Nationalist Party" and so the journalists of the New York Times cannot spare two lines for their martyred colleagues in that state.

Oh, by the way, the Prime Minister has not publicly condemned these murders either, so no doubt, by Faleiro logic, he must be complicit in them.  Somehow.

Comment:  if Americans wanted to comment on, say, Hungary, there is not a lot of English press, and so what Krugman puts on his NYT blog may have to suffice; but with India there is available, on the web, free -- not behind paywalls -- the national English press; and yet Americans are happy to make categorical comments about India without bothering to even keep up with that press.  People who do so are to be shunned like the plague.

I'll contrast with the Pakistan watchers on BRF - the Pakistani English press is avidly consumed,  there are a few who follow the Urdu; and the Urdu broadcast media is also followed.    Some people also keep track of prominent Pakistanis on social media; and others follow Pakistani forums online (e.g., defense.pk).   Yet, opinion emanating from there, no matter how informed, is likely to be dismissed offhand.  Yet spout off about "the threat posed by India's Hindu nationalism" and sound both learned and liberal!  And for Americans, a master of foreign affairs; a globally conscious citizen of the world!!

As to Sonia Faleiro herself, she seems to be of the school that Hindus are superstitious, but the miracles of the Bible are true religion.