Conrad Black on Gregg & Company (TVO)

Conrad Black on Alan Gregg (TVO, 18 September 2011)

     Last night (17 September 2011) I watched Alan Gregg's interview with Conrad Black. It was recorded some time before Black returned to prison. It left me with mixed impressions. There is no question that Black is a very intelligent man, and accustomed to deference. He interrupted Gregg several times, which Gregg tolerated with good grace. Watching such a program, we have to remember that it is edited: which camera angles to show is decided after the taping, the display of facial expressions is the director's decision, and we don't see or hear a continuous, uninterrupted flow of conversation, because the interview has to fit into the 30 minute time frame. On the other hand, it is impossible to fake the connection between interviewee and guest that is Gregg's strength. This time, Gregg seemed to be more on his guard than Black.
    Clearly, Black is still outraged at what was done to him. He blames both the "prosecutorial culture" of the US justice system and the "corporate governance zealots" for his woes, apparently convinced that in Canada or Britain there would have either been no charges brought against him, or else he would have been acquitted. He refuses to accept any guilt or culpability for actions that many people could and did consider as unethical at least, and possibly criminal at worst. He knows that many other people don't accept his principles, but he's convinced they're wrong and he's right. This kind of moral and ethical absolutism is either disingenuous, or else Black has not yet achieved the level of humility that he claimed at the end of the interview, when Gregg asked him how his experiences have changed him. On the other hand, I believe Black when he says he had been unaware of how what he calls "sociological conditions" result in injustice. He seems to have made a good impression on his fellow inmates, 36 of whom took the trouble to write letters of support when he appealed his sentence. Whether his insights into how poverty is a systemic effect of mercantile capitalism will prompt him to advocate for economic or political changes remains to be seen.
     There is a good deal of truth to Black's observations about how the US justice system is focussed on convictions. Prosecutors are for the most part elected. Incumbents run on their record of successful convictions, and challengers win by promising to be even harsher. The result is an incarceration rate six to fourteen times that of any developed country. As Black points out, it is unlikely that Americans are six to fourteen times more inclined to crime than other people. But it's a bit of a jump from that to agreeing that Black's own case is one of wrongful conviction.
     Black's expressions were interesting. When he listened to a question, he showed a stony and somewhat hostile face: he seemed to be assessing whether the question was a trap, or whether he could safely answer its substance. When answering, his face was more mobile, but he never showed the kind of spontaneous enthusiasm that many of Gregg's guests have shown when they talked of principles they upheld. The only time I thought I saw genuine emotion was when Black referred to the graduates of the GED program in which he tutored fellow inmates in English. He seemed to be embarrassed that he was moved by the event, and his high praise for how the Florida Bureau of Prisons handled it seemed to me to be an attempt to hide his emotions. By praising them, he could distance himself from what he himself felt as he witnessed it.
     That's when, on reflection, I realised that Black is a very private person. His vocabulary is abstract, his sentences well formed, often with multiple dependencies, and when he referred to himself, the tone was as dryly factual as he could make it. Even his outrage was couched in terms of an abstract attack on the US justice system, and an expression of hope that others, who might not have the resources he had, would find his account of use. It's as if he were thinking about himself in the third person, with only the exigencies of English grammar requiring him to use "I".
     Overall, the interview seemed to me a carefully constructed performance. Black is a skilled actor. I doubt he would do someone else's script as well as he does his own, however.

Update 2020 08 25: President Trump pardoned Conrad Black on May 19, 2019, following assiduous fundament osculation by Black, who praised Trump's astounding superior qualities during the 2016 election, and has become ever more separated from objective reality since then.

 

Math: Pyramids, Prisms, and Infinity

   I like math, because you can formulate questions that you know can be answered, even if you haven't always enough knowledge to answer them yourself.
   For example:  Take a tetrahedron, a pyramid of three triangles on a triangular base. If all four triangles are the same, then it's a regular tetrahedron, the smallest of the five regular solids. Like the other solids, you can, within limits, change the proportions of its faces in some way. You can increase the height of the triangles that make up the sides of the pyramid. How much? As much as you like.
   Now here’s the question: What happens when the height is infinite? Well, that depends on how you define “infinite” in this context. If by “infinite height” you mean “without limit”, then the tetrahedron becomes a pyramid of infinite height. As the height of the triangular sides increases, the pyramid becomes more and more like a prism of triangular cross-section. That is, the edges become closer and closer to being parallel. We can say that the difference between three edges that converge on a point (the apex of the pyramid) and three edges that are parallel becomes smaller and smaller. This difference approaches zero. “At the limit” it is zero: then the pyramid has become a triangular prism.
   Does it make sense to talk about a limit here, when we are talking about a pyramid of infinite height? Yes, on the same grounds that the differential calculus uses the concept of a limit. But this question, and its answer, are beyond my ability to explicate or justify. The best I can do is to notice that stretching the pyramid towards an infinite height is the same as rotating each edge about a point (the corner) so that they become parallel.  So the pyramid “eventually” morphs into a prism. That “eventually” is “at the limit”, when the difference between converging and parallel edges has become zero. It corresponds to a pyramid of infinite height. This implies that prisms as we conceive of them (of finite height)  are sections of infinitely high pyramids.
   I don’t know whether the above line of thought is mathematically acceptable. Maybe I’m mixing two branches of math illegitimately. But it feels right. So I’ll state my conclusion as a theorem:
   “A finite prism of N sides is a section of an infinitely high pyramid of N sides.”

Fred Moves

After much badgering and whinging, Fred has got his way: he's moved to the book case, so he can view not only the living room but also something of the outside world. For the moment, he's content. How long this odd state will last is anyone's guess. Even Fred doesn't know.

Politics 1

It's too bad: many of the people whom I chatted with recently think the election won't change anything. Some said they wouldn't vote. Then of course their opinion will be a self-fulfilling prohecy.

It seems the only time Canadians take politics seriously is election time. And even then, too many Canadfians have a cynical attitude. This cynicism is just right for any parrty that wants to hi-jack our government. All they need to do is ensure that all their supporters come out to vote, while stoking the cynicism of the people who are not of their party, knowing that the more cynicsim there is, the less likely it is that those others will vote.

Book Review: Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (Pagels)

 

     Pagels, Elaine Adam, Eve , and the Serpent (1988) 22 years old, yet still relevant. Pagels recounts the early history of the Church in terms of Genesis 1-4, and the evolving interpretations of these still crucial chapters of the Bible. Initially, the Gospel was understood as proclaiming the liberty of human beings, a liberty that not only enabled but required autonomous moral choice, instead of unthinking acceptance of social mores, one's place in society, and subjection to the ruling authority. That is how Paul's claim that Jesus' sacrifice fulfilled the Law was understood. There was no Fall; Genesis recounted Adam and Eve's choice as an affirmation of free will, and incidentally as an example of what not to choose, not as the sin that condemned us all.
     After Constantine made Christianity the State religion, the story was reinterpreted as describing the origin of sin. More than that: the story demonstrated that human beings after Adam are incapable of freely choosing to act morally. Human nature was corrupted; humans no longer had free will. Augustine was instrumental in this change in doctrine (his Confession shows why: he was a sex addict, and believed his experience of uncontrollable lust was universal.) The doctrine of original sin and corrupted human nature seems to be almost entirely Augustine's invention. Why it should have had such a profound and long-lasting influence is IMO clear: it justified the exercise of coercive power, political and ecclesiastical. If human beings were tainted from birth, were incapable of choosing the right path, then coercion was necessary to keep them from acting on their evil impulses. Not to impose the rule of law would be an dereliction of the ruler's duty. The question of how the ruler escaped the taint and was capable of making ethical choices for his subjects seems not to have occurred to Augustine and his followers.
     The Protestant Reformation did not change this gloomy view of human nature; if anything, it reinforced it. The doctrine of original sin is central to Luther's teaching that only faith can reconcile you to God, and furthermore that faith is a gift. One of the first things I learned was that "I cannot by my own reason or strength come to Jesus." (Significantly enough, Luther was an Augustinian monk.) The dissenting churches' leaders reserved to themselves the same power to demand assent to their doctrines as did the Roman church. Thoreau's famous opening sentence of Civil Disobedience is a direct descendant of Augustine's view. But Thoreau's essay implies that human nature could change, that we are capable of working our way towards an ethical and moral autonomy that will reduce and perhaps eventually eliminate the need for secular government.
     Pagels knows that her work could be used to justify some claim to re-establish an original or "pure" Christianity. (Indeed, many sects have justified such claims by reference to just this same knowledge.) She carefully explains as much of the diversity of opinion, teaching, and practice as she can, and in an epilogue explicitly warns against believing that a single, pure, and unadulterated version of Christian belief is possible. I agree. More: I think that knowing about the early history of the church should make us wary of claiming exclusive or special grace, and should make us willing to accept testimony that differs from our own experience. Augustine's narcissistic argument for his doctrines is a bad model. Not that I'm expecting any such reformation of Christian (or other) belief any time soon. People seem to have great difficulty accepting that other people may be so different that they seem like alien beings. Scipio said Nullam humanum mihi alienum puto, I deem nothing human alien to me. A saying we should take to heart.
     Pagels writes well. She has a knack for explication, for the arrangement of facts to clarify her analysis. Her book is thoroughly researched, with numerous notes in every paragraph referring the reader to original works (and translations), as well as other scholars' discussions. Recommended for anyone who wants to know more about the history of the church. ****

Book Review: Rocannon's World (Leguin)

Leguin U. Rocannon's World (1966) A story very much of its time, with light-speed ships, FTL robots, and a slew of humanoid aliens, some of whom are telepaths. A rebel force attacks the anthropological team on an unnamed planet. Rocannon, the sole survivor, enlists the Angyar, a warrior people, to help him find the rebel base, where he use the "ansible", an FTL communications device, to call in the robot bombs that will destroy the rebels. By the time the League force arrives, he's dead, but the planet has been named for him. That's the plot, and simple enough it is, just the kind that John Campbell liked to publish in Analog Magazine. But Leguin makes of this simple material a complex and nuanced story of the varieties of human experience.
     There's a frame: a visit by one of the Angyar many years earlier to retrieve a necklace, which ended up in a museum on another planet. When she returns, only a few days older subjectively, it's many "objective years" later, her husband is dead, her daughter a grown woman. Rocannon eventually receives the necklace from that daughter, and finally gives it to the Angyar woman with whom he spends his last years.
     What keeps us reading is Leguin's skill at advancing the plot: she tells the story as a quest, which allows for all kinds of surprises, hair's breadth escapes, and so on. It also allows for revelation of both the planet itself as a beautiful and varied ecology and topography, and of the cultures of the several tribes and nations. Through Rocannon we get "our" p.o.v., that is, that of an experienced reader of SF.
    The Angyar are somewhat Norse, their serfs the Olgyior (of the same species) are presented as rather too loyal to be believe. The Gdemiar, a species of troglodyte, recall H. G. Wells's Molochs, the Fiia (a telepathic/empathic species descended from the same species as the Gdemiar) recall the Eloi. A devolved species of predatory bird-like humanoids round out the catalogue. Leguin has the knack of making them real, and their interactions plausible. The book could have been more complexly plotted (and bigger), which would give even more scope for character and cultural nuances, but it is a finished work as is. It's an early work, and it seems to me like a trial run of the themes and motifs that would occupy Leguin in her later, mature works. Very good of its kind. ***

Book Review: The Case for God (Armstrong)

Armstrong, Karen The Case for God (2009) Armstrong's summary book about the history of theology, in which she argues that the West has lost its theological bearings. Science and religion have become antagonists because people think they speak about and to the same human problems and questions. Myth is no longer understood as a story that both expresses and creates meaning. Belief has become mere assent to some proposition, and such assent is seen as foolish at best and evil at worst when it is given without reasonable grounds. We have forgotten how to think symbolically, and so have forgotten that religion is not a matter of speech, but of action.

     A good book, if somewhat overlong, and generally too academic in tone. Armstrong does, I think, hold some beliefs in the old sense of making/letting them form and transform her life, but this means she is unwilling to argue for or against a given creed. Rather she argues that we must remake our understanding of the creeds so that they become symbols, not descriptions. Faith is not assent to some verbal formulas, but the action of relating to and dealing with other people. To take this a step further: How you deal with other people is your faith. That's all there is to it.
     She does express disappointment and sometimes annoyance at the ways in which modern people of all creeds have made idols of their conceptions of God. She is a believer, but not a religionist. In the Epilogue she comes closest to a homiletic statement, and ends with a parable worth quoting in full:
     One day a Brahmin priest came across the Buddha sitting in contemplation under a tree and was astonished by his serene stillness and self discipline. The impression of immense strength channelled creatively into an extraordinary peace reminded him of a great tusker elephant. "Are you a god, sir?" the priest asked. "Are you an angel... or a spirit?" No, the Buddha replied. He explained that he had simply revealed a new potential in human nature. It was possible to live in a world of conflict and pain at peace and in harmony with one's fellow creatures. There was no point in merely believing it; you would discover its truth only if you practised his method, systematically cutting off egoism at the root. You would then live at the peak of your capacity, activate parts of the psyche that normally lie dormant, and become a fully enlightened human being. "Remember me," the Buddha told the curious priest, "as someone who is awake."
     Armstrong strives to make this insight alive for her readers, to bring them through the history of humans' encounters with God to a place where they are both awake and aware of their utter ignorance of God's nature. She tries to show that faith is an active verb. To the extent that readers can feel the reality of that search for awareness with knowledge, they will make sense of this book.
     Worth reading for many other reasons, too, such as a clear summary of the history of religions, and why Dawkins is partly right and mostly wrong in his atheism, because the God he denies is a mere idol. Thus Dawkins himself is an idolater, because, like the religionists he tries to cure of their superstition, he believes that the Bible is to be read literally, and so must be either true or false. But a myth is neither true nor false. A myth either makes meaning for the hearer, or it doesn't. It is either alive or dead. ***

Edited for style and clarity 2020-10-15/2021-10-05.

Fred has moved

Having become much too accustomed to his perch on the book case, Fred moved over to the right hand speaker next to the TV screen. He can now watch us watching TV. He knows the TV shows pretty well, since he had a good view of them from his former vantage point. I suspect his purpose is to gather data about our reactiosn to TV, which will aid him in fathoming the mysteries of human nature. His own owly nature he will keep carefully hidden. All we know so far is that owls are curious, and patient.

A picture

This is a locomotive leased by the Huron Central Railway, which operates the CPR's Sudbury-Sault Ste Marie line. The line was built when the Liberals were in power during the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. The Liberals didn't want to spend the money for an all-Canadian route. The line was to go south of Lake Superior via Sault Ste Marie. When MacDonald's Conservatives came back, they scotched that idea, and the north of Superior route was built. It's still one of the most spectacular railway lines in the world, but only freight trains use it now. The line through Blind River is in very bad shape, several levels of government are supposed to spend money to fix it up so that coiled steel can be shipped by rail rather than truck. The Feds are dragging their heels, perhaps because this part of Ontario is definitely not Conservative country.

Book Review: Mice in the Beer (Ward)

Ward, Norman Mice in the Beer (1960; reprint 1986) Western Producer of Regina, publisher of a magazine for farmers, occasionally reprints or publishes books of miscellaneous interest. Ward, a professor of political science, lived most of his working life in Saskatchewan, which I suspect is one reason this collection of occasional pieces was reprinted. He has a sly wit, very much like Leacock: he's a master of the offhand remark that contains a bomb. He won the Leacock Medal for Humour, and on the evidence here deserved it. His humour is gentler than Leacock's (whose reputation as a gentle satirist rests on superficial reading.) Ward's persona often plays straight man to "Uncle Bob", a surprisingly good-humoured curmudgeon whose musings often lead logically into absurdities. Like Davies' Marchbanks, there are few one-liners. The humour depends on the slow and careful construction of context. Here's an example:

A friend of mine who, more or less as a hobby, runs in elections as the standard-bearer for one of our more obscure political parties, confided in me recently that he was working on a new way to build up his party's fortunes. I'm not quite sure what his opinion is worth, for judging from the number of votes he polls on election day the post he holds in his organization can't be much higher than rank of corporal. But the years of wandering beyond the wilderness have given his views a twist not found among conventional politicians.

"Look," he said, "at Social Credit and all the other small parties. From the beginning they've been loaded to the gunwales with clergymen, school teachers, and other taxpayers of oppressive respectability. Their spokesmen are moral to point of morbidity, and nobody can guess how low they could sink if they got in power. And look at my outfit! How," he demanded, "can we expect to get our party off the ground if all the drinkers are Liberals and Conservatives?"

All in all, a good read. **-1/2

Book Review: The Loch Ness Story (Mitchell)

Mitchell, Nicholas The Loch Ness Story (1974) A “revised” edition published by Penguin, this book contains a typically credulous account of the creatures supposed to live in Loch Ness. In the 60s and 70s several people used the best available underwater technology they could afford in order to find Nessie, and of course came up empty. There’s no question IMO in that Nessie is a compound of hoax, wishful thinking, and carefully ambiguous publicity aimed at tourists. Tourist pamphlets from before the first world war do not mention Nessie, which I think is evidence enough that she’s a very recent “discovery”.

Mitchell’s tone is that of a believer: any possible fact turns into reality within a sentence or two. He makes snide remarks about the skeptics and critics, often identified with a shadowy scientific establishment of some sort, who have closed their minds against this most momentous discovery. I read about halfway through the book, by which time Mitchell is referring to Nessie as a prehistoric animal, possibly a saurian, that has somehow survived for millions of years. Notions such a minimum sustainable population, of geological and climatic changes that would reduce the odds of survival, etc, appear to be beyond him. Grainy photos, out of focus blobs in the middle of out of focus snapshots, eye-witness accounts of things seen in the gloaming or against a background of sun-glistering water (there’s a photo of one of these sightings) – all these are for him irrefutable evidence, not only that Nessie is real, but that (s)he’s a reptile of some sort.

A wonderful, often amusing, but finally tedious read, like so many of these books, it will merely confirm both the believer and the skeptic in their opposing beliefs. The pictures are the usual ones, often reprinted, and to my skeptical eye are utterly unconvincing. The fact that they are badly printed doesn’t help. **

Update 2020-03-03: The most recent research has found a great deal of eel DNA in the Loch. No trace of saurians. This BBC link is one of many you'll find if you search on "eel DNA on Loch Ness." The BBC uses the standard (faked) photos of Nessie.
 

Book Review: Remaking the World (Petroski)

Petroski, Henry Remaking the World (1999) Jon gave me this book for Christmas. Petroski wrote historical essays for American Scientist, a magazine that appears to carry on the original intent of Scientific American, which was much more focussed on technology (and even DIY) than the current version. His essays are very much like Gould’s, but the style is somewhat more neutral and pedestrian. I get little sense of Petroski’s personality, which is a pity, since his choice of subjects indicates a lively mind and wide range of interest.

His emphasis on the non-technical aspects of engineering is important. Most people lack scientific and technical insight (we need a word like “illiteracy” for this), which means that the context of engineering works is often incomplete. The yearning for quick fixes prompts politicians and their constituents to trust the technocrats too much (see the “heightening” of “security measures” at airports recently). On the other hand, nimbyism and paranoid Ludditism result in know-nothing rejection of economically viable and ecologically effective solutions (see the resistance to H1N1 vaccination.)

All in all, a good book, with useful nuggets of information here and there. For example, “bug” as a glitch or unexpected flaw in design predates computers. Petroski quotes a note in Edison’s diary, in which Edison refers to “Bugs – as such little faults and difficulties are called –”. I’ve suspected that the “insect in the electronic works” was a story a little too pat to be true, and am happy to have my suspicion confirmed. ***