Aug 24, 2009

Jefferson vs. Hamilton: the debate persists

Had a serendipitous surprise on my morning commute today. I’m listening to the audiobook of The American Future, in which Simon Schama makes the point that yes, rebuilding societies after we’ve bombed them into submission actually IS the mission of the Army. Universally-admired Generals like Eisenhower and Marshall didn’t flinch at the idea, and they probably would’ve squinted and looked at you like you were an ugly, rude little thing if you’d suggested otherwise. These were men that knew how to get things running, as Simon says, ‘to build democracy.’ They were cut from the grey cloth of the West Point that founder Thomas Jefferson envisioned (I hadn’t known that little bit either; is there anything Jefferson didn’t do?), a place that would teach its students not just to efficiently and scientifically conduct war, but more importantly to wield those same skills to build the infrastructure and foundations of the new country.

The serendipitous part was that I was about a mile as the crow flies from Detroit’s Fort Wayne when it was mentioned in the book as an example of the sturdy work of Montgomery Meigs, one of the first and best examples of the Jeffersonian West Point engineers. If I hadn’t been running late, I would’ve sat in the parking structure to hear more about his years here, building a fort and barracks which still stand after almost 200 years. Meigs has captured my attention in the book, not least for his ‘establishment’ of Arlington National Cemetery, done out of spite toward his old commander, friend, and fellow early West Point grad Robert E. Lee. When he heard of what he believed was the odious betrayal of Lee accepting the position of General of the Army of Northern Virginia, Meigs suggested using the family mansion of Lee’s wife as a burial ground for the Union dead. The first men (soon to include Meigs’ son) were buried next to Mrs. Lee’s beloved rose bushes; ‘If they ever spend another night there,’ Meigs fumed, ‘they’ll sleep with the ghosts.’ It doesn’t get any more American Gothic.

But that’s a digression from saying that, yes, the military does need to be in the business of rebuilding that which we tear down. As I was listening to Schama, I remembered some of my own experiences with my fellow enlistees and this funny and smart TED Talk by Thomas Barnett, who proposes a new way of dealing with this problem: split the military into two wings, one for tearing down, the other for building up. Given the complexity of the overlapping missions of the military, I believe Jefferson would have been fine with it. Definitely give it a listen.




Side note: If you're a political history nerd, Schama also outlines the debate between Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton regarding the mission of the Army as well as the function of government. Its applicability to the current tropes of both parties (but especially modern conservatism) is profound.

Aug 14, 2009

#csfri

Let’s Celebrate Science Fridays.

I’m thinking we should borrow a little bit of each Twitter Friday to celebrate all the good in science and rationality. Nothing against Follow Fridays, but there’s room for another meme, or tweme, or whatever you want to call them, and what better one than humanity’s greatest accomplishment, the one subject that can unequivocally be identified as giving us a rational framework for understanding the world in which we live?

As for the day, why not Fridays and why not now? NPR has Science Friday, Australia’s National Science Week starts tomorrow, and we in the U.S. are being actively encouraged to devolve into shouting matches rather than rational discussions using facts on critical issues (which unfortunately isn't anything very new). Seems like a good day and time to me.

Let’s celebrate the big discoveries, the anonymous toilers, the ideas, and the underlying tenets of science every day, but on Fridays let's make it clear how much we're already tweeting about it.

#csfri

Aug 2, 2009

fotD34 + 1 video


They just set a record 329 balloons launched at one time in France, and in the video below the balloon above was visible. Disney is using it to launch the movie Up in Europe.

Aug 1, 2009

The Aquatic Ape

I was happy to see one of TED's new videos was Elaine Morgan discussing the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis this morning (I often watch the laptop to get me through putting away dishes). I stumbled across her book The Aquatic Ape years ago in the library, was so amazed I read it a few times, and wondered why in the world we hadn't heard more about this. At one point I tried to find it to buy, but it was out of print. Flash forward a decade and a half or so and here she is by video explaining why she thinks we don't hear more about it, and the book is available at Amazon.

Watch the video, though. I'm no evolutionary biologist, but I know a bit about it and it seems to be a very compelling argument, even if for nothing more than to synthesize our understanding, to add a branch to the whole story, fleshing it out.