COGITO!

Now that the triumph of Barak Obama at the polls is a little more than a week behind us, I have sufficiently come down from the adrenaline high of the election to think clearly about what this could mean for the United States and the world.  Consider that my state of mind is not just swimming in the mellow euphoria of being on the winning side, but is tempered by knowing that the avatars of intellectual chaos that make up the Bush Administration are still in power and still have plenty of opportunities to inflict considerable damage on our nation.

Benjamin Franklin; Founding Father, world-class scientist, revolutionary, and intellectual troublemaker.

Let’s face it; even at the best of times the American people do not really value intellect and intelligence and facts.  There are plenty of other countries that do better than we do at such things.  We do get it right often enough that in spite of our long and persistent tradition of anti-intellectualism, know-nothingism, surplus fear, fundamentalism of all stripes, and mindless authoritarianism, American retain a core of ingenuity and fearless intellectual inquiry.  I think we have Benjamin Franklin to thank for some of this; as the preeminent scientist of his age, he and others like him among the Founding Fathers did what they could to make sure that the new republic would be safe for the thinker who chose to do so in the midst of pressures to conform to what non-thinkers where thinking.

It is easy to say that Bush and his inner circle are the problem, but that would be premature.  They are simply the outward manifestation of a larger, deeper problem.  They have exacerbated this problem, it is true.  They have deliberately and systematically tried to re-cast American government to incorporate the unthinking, ignorant ideologue at the expense of the scholar, the honest researcher,  the scientist.  They have suceeded to the point where someone who does not even know that Africa is a continent can not only be a state governor, but be seriously considered as Vice President of the United States.

Like many others who prize reason and fact over rhetoric and authoritarianism, I am hopeful that a self-made constitutional scholar, Senator, and now President-Elect can begin the long, hard task of purging the sands of ignorance and ideology from the machinery of government.  This task has been begun to a large degree by citizen journalists, scientists, independent scholars, and activists.  They have shown that when the means are available (the Internet, in this case), facts can carry weight.  Even a well-funded propaganda campaign will start to unravel if the facts are published loudly and long enough. Printer and author Franklin would have approved.

Blind ideology and blunt authoritarianism are clearly the greatest threats to sane, responsible government.  The next generation’s task will be to undo what the proponents of abusive government have constructed and contain its proponents until their intellectual pathology can burn itself out.

In the summer of 1873, naturalist and early evolution advocate Thomas Huxley wrote a remarkable letter to his wife in which he reflected on his future career.  Among other things, he made the following observation:

History has continued to bear out Huxley’s observation; seen over the long term, traditional authority does not endure, although it tries to assert itself in many ways, even by means of violence. This does not absolve those citizens of the Real World from the obligation for vigilance, nor from the need to counter and resist those who would undo the freedoms of mind and heart with the time-worn tools of ignorance and fear. Time is on our side, the moreso if we are willing to expand this pocket of sanity that will form in the White House this coming January.

¹Life and Letters of Huxley, vol. I, pp. 427-428, as cited in Apes, Angels, & Victorians. The STory of Darwin, Huxley, and Evolution, 2nd edition by William Irvine, (New York: Time Incorporated), 1955, p. 342.

My spouse Denise is an enthusiastic and skilled nature photographer.  She does not do this for a living (although she probably could), but out of the pleasure it gives her to catch bits and pieces of the real world in her pictures.  So, last month she was walking up to one of her usual haunts, a pair of recharge ponds near Penatencia Creek in eastern San Jose, when she spotted a couple of boys trying to shoo a large, dark bird out of a gated enclosure.  She went over to investigate.  The boys had found a young double-crested cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus) that had somehow gotten lost and were trying to persuade it to move towards the nearby ponds.

Denise started helping them and as they worked to guide the wayward bird to the water, it became clear that it was weak and probably in need of food.  So the kids went off to try and find it something to eat and Denise continued working it to the ponds.  When she the the bird got there, it made no effort to fly away. We learned later from the wildlife rescue people that because of the arrangement of their legs, cormorants can only take off from water, not land.  Moreover, this one could swim, but was frankly too weak to fly.  So it just stood next to Denise and kind of followed her around. A couple of other kids were there and asked, “Is that your bird?”

The young, lost, and malnourished double-crested cormorant swimming along the edge of the recharge pond near Penetencia Creek, San Jose, CA. Photo by Denise Greaves.

“No,” replied Denise, “it’s lost and probably starving.  It needs help.” At about this time, my cell phone rang and Denise apprised me of the situation, and asked me what I thought she should do.  I offered to call around and find some wildlife rescue center that could take the bird.  After a few calls, I found one that was probably less than a half a mile from her location.  I also offered to come back and pick up a blanket and cat carrier we could use to transport it.

A call to the wildlife rescue center confirmed that they could take the cormorant, and I drove home to pick up the items we’d need to get it there.

Meanwhile, back at the pond, one young man had a fishing pole and asked if the bird ate fish.  Denise responded that it did, and the young man offered to try and catch some fish for it.  Denise assented, but told him that I would be arriving in about a half hour to take the bird away.  He made her promise not to leave without telling him, and told her where he would be fishing.  The kids who had offered to find some food for the bird meanwhile returned with a loaf of white bread, which the bird kind of picked  at unenthusiastically.

Approximately 30 minutes later, I showed up.  I walked from the parking area toward the ponds, and there was Denise, with the young cormorant standing beside her.  It almost looked like a pet, and I could see why onlookers thought it was hers.  It was easy to wrap up the cormorant in the small blanket I had brought and put it into the cat carrier.  We were ready to leave, but Denise had a promise to keep, and went to find the kid with the fishing pole.  He was as good as his word; when they returned, he was carrying a bucket with four small fish (about three or four inches long).  I got the cormorant back out and we put the fish in front of it.  They were slicked down with relish in the space of about eight seconds.  I don’t know the identity of that young man, but I’m guessing he did a lot to help that bird’s chances of survival with that snack.

Another shot of our wayward cormorant friend before we took it to the wildlife rescue center. Photo by Denise Greaves.

Checking the bird into the wildlife center was fairly routine.  We were warned that not all animals make it, and in such cases they were humanely euthanized.  We nodded and  said we understood.  They gave us a case number so we could check the bird’s progress.

It turned out well.  The bird regained its strength on a diet of smelt and on 01 September, was released back into the wild.

What impressed both Denise and myself about this episode was the willingness of the local kids to help.  Although they were kind of new at this and unfamiliar with avian life forms, they were ready to do what they could to save this animal.  It was a very affirming experience.  It demonstrated that there are people among the next generation who do care about the natural  world.

Here’s an interesting piece that was sent to me just one day after the last post (hat tip: Lee Erickson):

“Major Discovery” From MIT Primed to Unleash Solar Revolution

Thursday 31 July 2008

by: Anne Trafton, MIT News

Scientists mimic essence of plants’ energy storage system. In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn’t shine.

Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today’s announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Read full story is here:

http://www.truthout.org/article/major-discovery-from-mit-primed- unleash-solar-revolution

The system apparently uses a kind of electrolysis to separate hydrogen and oxygen in a common molecule of h20, which of course has been known for years. But this system seems to be far more efficient.

It is a commonly-held truism that technology is “neutral” and that it is the use we put it to that makes it good or bad. This ignores the reality that some technology is more accessible than others. Consider the printing press. A. J. Liebling’s famous quote from The New Yorker that “Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one” makes point. I might also add, “owns a press and and has a large distribution network”, but you get the idea. Let us also consider the technology of large-scale irrigation. Originally developed in Mesopotamia, this technique demanded large, complex networks of canals to move the water to where it was needed. These canals, cut in the rich aluvium laid down by the Tigris and Euphrates, needed constant upkeep by gangs of workers. Managing this system required the development of the world’s first complex bureaucracies.

And here we come to a point once made by technology critic Jerry Mander: technology is not neutral, he argues, because certain technologies favor certain kinds of political structures. We’re not talking liberal versus conservative here, but political structures that are highly centralized versus more distributed, smaller, and local. Centralized bureaucracies demand enough concentrated power to impose their will on the areas they control. This holds for both large-scale irrigation and newspaper or publishing house printing presses.

In the case of presses, however, recent history shows what can happen when a once centralizing technology becomes available to more people. In the mid-80’s the Macintosh first made “desktop publishing” possible, even though it was more a case of “desktop typesetting and layout” might have been a better name for it. The “publishing” part was in place thanks to the Xerox machine, but it allowed anyone with a desktop computer and a laser printer to produce documents that looked professionally typeset–once some of the basic understanding of page design found its way into the general population.

This minor revolution continued with the development of blogs, podcasts, internet radio, text messaging, peer-to-peer file transfer, print-on-demand books, and related technologies. The result is that people with good ideas (or at least popular ones) can now compete at least on a small scale with big media and big publishing. Not everyone is happy about this, perhaps because it is now harder for large media outlets to push bad journalism on their audience. This is not to say that they don’t still generate industrial quantities of BS, it’s just not as easy for them to get away with it and the declining market share for newspapers and major news networks is due at least in part to this downward migration of the technology to publish. But the less obvious effect of this is that political power that attends the control of information is redistributing itself. I see various efforts by major suppliers of internet access to compromise net neutrality or lawsuits or legislation brought by people in power and aimed at curtailing the free speech of bloggers as an attempt to stem this hemmoraging of clout.

If you are at all web savvy, most of the above constitutes a review. The theme of the redistribution of political power driven by downwardly migrating technology is, I will argue, starting to manifest itself in other technical arenas. I will further argue that this is a very, very good thing.

But let’s move outside the realm of information technology for a moment. Other technologies are moving downward and spreading out. For example:

Microcontrollers. These are computers on a single chip, nestled on a small circuit board. “So what?” you may ask. These computers are relatively inexpensive, easy to program, and can be tasked to perform all kinds of tasks, both simple and complex. They can twinkle an array of LEDs in a piece of clothing in a pleasing pattern, or they can govern the behavior of a system of machinery or coordinate the acquisition of data from a suite of sensors hanging from a home-made high-altitude balloon. Microcontrollers have been around for some time, but they have not always been the most approachable of technologies. Now companies like Arduino are making it possible for just about anyone to start playing with these things. The Maker community has embraced microcontrollers and done some remarkable things with them.

Grid Beam. This is not so much a product as a way of thinking about small-scale engineering and prototyping. It involves the use of components that resemble the pieces of an Erector Set, which means you can construct a bewildering array of items and, if need be, change the design on the fly. Grid beam can be used to build furniture, storage units, vehicles, frames for machinery, support alternative energy projects… just about damn near anything. (Disclosure: I recently wrote a review of a new book on this subject How to Build With Grid Beam, soon to appear in The Citizen Scientist). The significance is that this system makes it extremely easy for one inventor to convey a design to another by just sending a few photographs. This makes it possible for a design to quickly make its way to a large number of people.

Grid beam is also very inexpensive because you can disassemble old projects and reuse the components to build something new. This factor alone makes grid beam a key element of what might be called “desktop engineering.”

3D Printers or “Fabbers”. These are machines that are just like a printer, except they lay down layer after layer of material and gradually build up small objects in three dimensions. These objects can be anything renderable in plastic (metal is still too complex and expensive for small scale operations, but stay tuned), based on a computer file giving the dimensions and features. It is possible, in other words, to undertake a limited form on “desktop manufacturing”. There are open source versions of this technology out there now; for about $500 you can get the pieces needed to build one of these things in your garage or basement. At the very simplest form, you get a packet of plastic parts and a CD-ROM with some software. You take a computer, load the software, print out the instructions for building the machine out of scrap bits of whatever plus the specialized plastic parts. And once your machine is working, the first thing you do is have it make two more sets of those specialized plastic parts. One to use as spares for your machine, and another to give to a friend along with a copy of the CD. In a very real sense, this is a machine that can kinda, sorta make copies of itself.

Taken to a higher level, this technology could revolutionize much of our culture. On-site fabrication at the home or neighborhood level removes the need for shipping anything that could be made on a fabber. It allows users to spread ideas for new devices and products in ways that used to be limited to things like freeware or shareware. And speaking of software, we can’t conclude this list without mentioning:

Linux: Actually, I’m using Linux as a catch-all phrase for open-source software in general. Although Linux has not quite toppled the towers of Microsoft as some had expected (or hoped), it is a viable alternative to the stodgy, exasperating, crudeness that is Windows (does it show that I prefer Macs?). Linux is a powerful, robust, and FREE operating system with software that can do just about anything, and it has spawned an unimaginable plethora of applications and ideas. The open-source model is finding its way into all kinds of endeavors, from Wikipedia to “open source warfare” (for another time, perhaps). It’s an effective, though unlikely, model that is changing the world.

And all of these technologies (among many others I could probably name), they are flattening hierarchical political structures.

Will massive, top-down political structures go away entirely? No, I doubt it. There will always be those who need that kind of Grand Pooh-Bah presence in their lives. But they will no longer be the only option. Small scale, healthier, saner communities can grow up around these softer, smarter, more exact and humane technologies.

Now that the “family values” wing in California has proposed a ballot initiative (Proposition Eight) for a constitutional amendment to prevent families consisting of gay couples, I thought this would be a good time to examine the alleged religious underpinnings of their anti-gay stance. What follows is an attempt to apply the tools of reason and modern biblical scholarship to the question of the Bible and homosexuality. I have no illusions that everyone who supports Prop. 8 will find this persuasive; one cannot be reasoned out of a position that one was not reasoned into in the first place. But some of the more thoughtful supporters might, I hope, reconsider after reading this.

If you are someone who has committed to live by Judeo-Christian holy writ, then it is mandatory that you know what the Bible says. More than that, you have the obligation to understand the historical and cultural context of what you read, lest you mistake the expediencies of an ancient time and place and state of mind for the transcendent values for which the Bible is justly renowned.

An objective reader will also understand that the scriptures do not speak with a consistent voice, nor do the component books always agree with each other or even within themselves. This is why a conscientious reader of scripture must strive to understand not only the words, but the larger thematic thrust of the scriptures. There are several implicit and explicit ethical and moral threads that wind their way through the text. Taken together, they constitute an imperative for justice and concord by which the believer regards the improvement of the human condition as an act of worship.

If you are not someone who lives their life by the Bible, then what follows will at best be an academic exercise. But I invite you to read what follows if only to get a glimpse into the legal mind of ancient Judaism.

Homosexuality in the Scriptures:

There is remarkably little said about this subject in the Bible. There are two verses in the Pauline epistles, and the Old Testament, upon which the New Testament passages rely.

The Old Testament and Leviticus 18

The first thing that should be mentioned is that homosexuality in toto is not prohibited in the Old Testament. Lesbianism is mentioned nowhere and is not specifically prohibited anywhere. If the people of the Old Testament were anything like people of every other time and place, lesbianism would have been practiced by some percentage of the women. But nowhere does the Old Testament say anything against it (or for it, for that matter).

The key section to unlocking the Old Testament’s attitude toward homosexuality is in Leviticus 18 (Leviticus 20 also repeats these items, but what applies to 18 is also true of 20 for purposes of this discussion).

Who is the audience for Leviticus 18? This chapter is part of a series of laws that were addressed specifically to those Israelites (verse 2, “Say to the people of Israel, I am the LORD your God.) living in their new promised land of Canaan, although verse 26 expands the scope of the chapter to cover all inhabitants of Canaan, Israelite and otherwise.

The reason for the commandments given in this chapter, are laid out in the closing verses (RSV):

In other words, the land itself was holy and was susceptible to defilement. It responded to defilement by ejecting the inhabitants who defiled it. This is a very important point. The verses also specify that this was why the previous inhabitants had been removed as the Israelites arrived. The laws found in this chapter are intended to prevent desecrating this particular piece of ground, the land of Canaan.

Sex and the Mosaic Law

This main feature of this chapter is a long list of forbidden sexual or marital unions that Israelites may not engage in. This is because they are with close relatives or in-laws, with the exception of verse 20, which prohibits sexual relations with “your neighbor’s wife,” i.e., adultery. At the end of this long list comes another shorter set of prohibitions (vs. 21-23) against male homosexuality, sacrifice of children to Molech, and beastiality.

There are a few basic concerns that are consistently behind Old Testament attitudes regarding sex.

1. Procreation. In ancient times, with its high infant mortality rates and generally short lifespans the ability to grow your population was the ability to survive. Barrenness literally meant the end of your family. Children literally were the future.

2. Concord within the family unit. Since it was common for extended families to live in close proximity, sexual activity that crossed the internal boundaries could threaten that concord and rupture the clan. Many commentators on Leviticus 18 believe that this was one of the main motivations for the prohibitions in this chapter.

3. The loss of “seed”. The Mosaic law was unusual from a modern perspective because it included ritual purity laws designed to propagate certain beliefs among the people. One of the strongest was to enforce the symbolism of life triumphant over death or loss of “life force.” Any male who spilled “seed,” intentionally or not, became impure and had to ritually wash himself, as the loss of seed was seen as the loss of “life.” Likewise the menstrual blood of women was seen as a similar loss of life, which is why menstruating women were impure.

Bear in mind that “impurity” did not carry the same stigma as “sin.” Impurity was ritually removed, but sin, in addition to expiatory ritual, demanded repentance on the part of the sinner.

This explains the prohibition of sex between a man and a menstruating women. It would probably also have been applied to male homosexuality. The silence of the Old Testament on lesbianism now becomes clear; since there is no spilling of blood or semen, there is no reason to prohibit it.

However, it is not enough to just stop at this point. We need to remember the context in which these prohibitions are given. A closer examination of the prohibition against male homosexuality reveals other aspects that call into question the prevailing interpretation of this verse. Context is everything.

First, remember that these rules were for people living in Canaan to prevent them from offending the holiness of the land. So unless you were/are a homosexual male living in Palestine, this verse very specifically does not apply to you.

But let’s take a closer look at 22 verse itself:

“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”

If you consult the original Hebrew text (both Lev. 18 and 20), the phrase used for “lying as with a woman” is a specific idiom: mishkeve ‘ishah, which only refers to illicit heterosexual relations. This is an important item. If male homosexuality is intrinsically forbidden, why compare it to illicit heterosexual unions? What kinds of forbidden heterosexual unions might the text be using to qualify male homosexual union?

The context of this verse is a long list of forbidden heterosexual (except for verse 22) unions that have one thing in common; except for the injunction against adultery, they are between close relatives. So, father may not have sex with a daughter or granddaughter, nor an aunt with a nephew. Clearly this verse is intended to supplement the rest of that list, and thus proscribes male homosexual acts between close relatives. So let us review. The Old Testament only prohibits homosexual acts if the following are true:

• The partners are male
• The act is taking place within the borders of the land of Canaan
• The partners are sufficiently consanguineous as to fall within the list of prohibited relations specified in Leviticus 18.

That excludes virtually all of the world’s homosexuals, and certainly all of the homosexuals in California.

What is an “Abomination”?

There still remains the meaning of the last clause of verse 22: “it is an abomination.” What is an “abomination”? Most readers of the English translations skip past this word, but they don’t realize that in the Hebrew text this word (to’evah) has a very specific and technical meaning in Leviticus. It is used to denote acts that are found in the practices and rituals of foreign religious cults, particularly those of the Canaanites of biblical times, which were forbidden by Israelite religion. That being the case, in today’s world, the circumstances that marked male homosexuality as to’evah no longer exist and therefore do not apply.

Two Other Reasons to Prohibit Homosexuality

Some interpreters of the Bible claim that homosexuality cannot be permitted because it runs contrary to the commandment to “Be fruitful and multiply”. The problem with this argument is that “be fruitful and multiply” is not, and never has been a commandment. The text is very clear that “God blessed them and said…” and thus the injunction is a blessing, not a commandment. This usage appears consistently in every occurrence of the phrase “be fruitful and multiply” found in Genesis (See 1:22,28; 8:17; 9:1,7; 35:9,11).

This is only fair, upon reflection. If “being fruitful” was a commandment, one must explain the prayers of Sarah, Rachel, and other barren women in the Old Testament asking God to let them get pregnant? Why would God command fruitfulness when conception and pregnancy are clearly his prerogative?

The second reason for prohibiting homosexuality is its alleged role in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. This also stems from a misconception, namely that the sin of Sodom was homosexuality (hence “sodomy”). But the Bible itself in Ezekiel 16:49 clearly states that the sin of Sodom was to neglect the poor and the needy. Nothing in that verse or those adjoining it can be construed to mean that Sodom was destroyed because of homosexuality.

One must read the story of the destruction of Sodom in parallel with the story of the Levite’s Concubine in Judges 19 ff. In this brutal tale a Levite and his concubine were offered hospitality and lodging in the Benjaminite town of Gibeah, and, as at Sodom, the men of the city gathered round and attempted to intimidate the host offering shelter to the travelers by threatening homosexual rape of the guest. However, in this case the Levite sent out his concubine to satiate the mob, who then raped her through the night until she died.

In both cases the men of both cities not only violated the institutions of hospitality that were considered inviolate throughout the Mediterranean basin, they used the threat of homosexual gang rape as an instrument of intimidation and violence. In both cases, the perpetrators were deemed worthy of extermination and, in the case of the tribe of Benjamin, this was partially accomplished. The violation of the canons of hospitality was often considered cause for divine retribution and even extermination, and there are numerous examples from across the Near Eastern and Classical worlds.

A proper explanation of this phenomenon is beyond the scope of this treatment, but most modern scholars agree that the destruction of Sodom was believed to have been due to their violation of the institutions of hospitality rather than for homosexual behavior.

Homosexuality and the New Testament

The only verses that mention homosexuality in the New Testament are in the Epistular literature: 1 Corinthians 6:9 and Romans 1:26-27. Jesus makes no mention of it. Paul mentions it in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, which, incidentally, also includes the only reference to lesbianism in the entire scriptural corpus.

But there are reasons why we must not automatically accept Paul’s statement as a blanket prohibition of homosexuality. It is generally acknowledged that in these verses Paul is reliant on Mosaic law and, as we have seen, Mosaic law does not prohibit all homosexuality except under the narrow constraints specified. It should be noted here that Paul is not a reliable interpreter of Old Testament law. Many studies have been written about how even his representation of “accepted” Jewish interpretations of Mosaic Law are often flawed, and therefore one must use Paul with caution in this context. The fact that he isolates himself by proscribing lesbianism when both the Old Testament and the words of Jesus are completely silent on the issue is a strong indication that he is injecting his own feelings into the matter or drawing upon extra-biblical tradition.

Conclusion:

The Old Testament does not prohibit homosexuality except between closely-related males living in the land of Canaan, and because of its presence in the rituals of rival Canaanite religious cults. Lesbianism is not mentioned and therefore cannot be considered proscribed by the Old Testament. The New Testament denounced homosexuality, but only in two of the Epistles of Paul in which he is mistakenly applying Jewish law. The Gospels and all the other canonical Christian books are silent on the matter.

A Note on Sources:
The scriptures cited here were either my own translation from the Hebrew or the Revised Standard Version (RSV).

This excursus draws heavily on the Anchor Bible commentary on Leviticus written by one of my professors of Biblical Hebrew at UC Berkeley, Rabbi Jacob Milgrom. See Leviticus 17-22 A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Vol. 3A, Doubleday, 2000.

I want to acknowledge my gratitude to Prof. Milgrom for the privilege of reading Leviticus with him in his Advanced Biblical Hebrew Seminar at Berkeley, and for the invaluable training I received from him. Any errors herein are strictly my own.

Let’s be honest; very few people read this blog (or would cop to reading it), and even fewer leave comments. So it was with some surprise that I saw a comment awaiting moderation on my recent post about the need for accrediting think tanks. I was even more surprised to see a long-detailed missive by one Frank von Hippel, defending David Albright against the charges made against him in Scott Ritter’s article upon which I drew as an example.

Von Hippel, a Professor of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, goes to some lengths to dispute Ritter’s claims. For the record, I remain dubious as to Albright’s qualifications. Von Hibbel fails to refute Ritter’s claim that Albright has not only misrepresented himself as a “former IAEA inspector”, “He has never worked as a nuclear physicist on any program dedicated to the design and/or manufacture of nuclear weapons. He has never designed nuclear weapons and never conducted mathematical calculations in support of testing nuclear weapons, nor has he ever worked in a facility or with an organization dedicated to either.” That Albright has clearly been disingenuous in stating his qualifications is reason enough to regard his work and opinions with doubt, as well as the media outlets for whom he is a “go-to guy”.

But getting back to the comment itself, since so few people read Cogito! I must assume that this comment is the work of a damage control effort being done on Albright’s behalf. By googling random phrases in Von Hibbel’s apology for Albright, I found that this had been posted all over the web, particularly in blogs that had included recent discussion of Ritter’s article. Somebody looked all over the web for any post referencing Ritter’s article, and then posted Von Hibbel’s rebuttal.

Someone apparently has an interest in preserving Albright’s reputation. I see this as yet another example of the need for the kind of transparency that a robust accreditation process could deliver.

The June 26, 2008 issue of The Nation has a brilliant, ringing address by E. L. Doctorow to a joint meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society on the theme of “The Public Good: Knowledge as the Foundation for a Democratic Society.” The address was titled “The White Whale.” Anyone and everyone who values the a competent democracy should read this article, preferably several times.

Doctorow’s remarks are incredibly important, because they lay out in general, though articulate terms how not just our nation but civilization at large is under siege by forces of unreason. He draws particular attention to the phenomenon of the “knowledge denier” whether the subject at hand is the Holocaust or global climate change and then makes one of the best points I’ve seen in some time:

“Two things must be said about knowledge deniers. Their rationale is always political. And more often than not, they hold in their hand a sacred text for certification.”

I would only add to the line about the scared text “…that they probably haven’t read carefully and almost certainly don’t understand”, but that’s just me injecting one of my pet peeves.

Doctorow further points out that the misdeeds of the current President and his enablers constitutes a trend that can only lead to the abandonment of the Constitution and its supporting ideals as the foundation of the United States. In other words, that this distrust of reason and the embrace of non-empirical authoritarianism constitutes an existential threat.

If you are in any way a thinking person, enamored of the proposition that knowledge of facts is a good thing, read this article.

This is not to say that American ignorance and stupidity is new; this excellent article by Rick Shenkman “How Ignorant Are We?” shows that Americans have maintained a pretty constant level of stupidity for a long time.  But what seems to have changed is that parties who do not have our collective interests at heart have managed to harness the power of stupidity and ignorance into something militant and dangerous.  The Internet, contrary to its perceived purpose to bring about the Information Age, has become a conduit for much of this toxic work.  And we have not seen in the past this ignorance and blind intolerance aimed so deliberately at unmaking our best laws and political institutions.

As part of my day job at Henley-Putnam University I spend a lot of time on accreditation issues. I was deeply involved in working to secure both state approval from the California Bureau of Private, Postsecondary and Vocational Education (BPPVE) and national accreditation from the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC). So I understand something of the process of the regulation of educational institutions and the reasoning behind it.

Both state approval and national or regional accreditation is a way of certifying certain aspects of a school. The BPPVE worked under the auspices of the Department of Consumer Affairs, which seems odd until you realize that they are confirming that the student gets what they paid for when they enroll. Other colors and flavors of accreditation test the integrity of a school as a business, and both apply criteria of rigor and quality of instructional delivery to the curriculum. Everything gets looked at, examined, picked up and shaken, and after an exhaustive process, a school that meets the state criteria can call itself a “university”. Accreditation gives an extra layer of assurance that translates into the ability to access certain kinds of state and federal funding for students.

Academia itself, though far from perfect, aspires to a comparable degree of documentation and transparency in the production of good, scholarly work. Sources must be footnoted, opposing views given proper attention, reasoning and facts checked and re-checked before casting them into the arena of academic debate. And as a matter of practice, that debate follows certain rules that are usually adhered to.

But in recent decades a potent rival has sprung up to challenge the fiefdoms of academia in the intellectual landscape. That rival is the so-called “Think Tank”. These organizations exist ostensibly to do research, usually for a specific client, and usually for a fee. The people who work at think tanks range from world-class experts to ideological hacks, and therein lies the problem. This past week in an article by former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter (“The Nuclear Expert Who Never Was”) tells the sordid tale of one David Albright, founder of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) and go-to guy for many on the Right who are looking (yearning is more like it) for evidence that Iran will soon be able to turn us all into smoking pools of radioactive tar.

I won’t go into the details here; the article does a much better job of laying it all out. But the bottom line is that “nuclear expert” Albright is anything but. His work is shoddy and filled with inaccuracies, and a closer examination of his background reveals that he has nowhere near the expertise he claims in his extravagant resume.

The point I’m trying to make is that think tanks like ISIS and many others exist to spread what amounts to propaganda cloaked in an academic vestment of respectability. The bad ones brook no serious accountability; the funding behind a given study is hidden or not disclosed, which by itself should preclude serious consideration of that study. People working on research may or may not be political activists with no real expertise, or who can not or will not abide by accepted norms of proper scholarship and tenets of academic debate.

When your paycheck depends on you proving a certain position, it’s amazing how much sophistry and willful ignorance the mind can generate.

This is why I propose that no think tank can or should be considered a true research institution without some kind of accreditation designed specially for such institutions. The halcyon days of spaghetti scholarship (i.e., throw something at the wall and see if it sticks) need to give way to something more trustworthy.

What would such an accreditation process entail? I’m glad you asked.

1. Funding transparency. Who funds the think tank? Who are the major donors? Are there funds collected from blind trusts and front organizations? Does the institution fund research or sub-organizations or front groups? Were any special studies done for individual clients, and were those studies published with full disclosures and disclaimers about who paid for them? Until you know whose bread is being buttered by a particular think tank project, you have a huge unanswered question that centers directly on the question of the institutional objectivity of the think thank and its researchers and writers.

2. Qualifications of the Staff. Are the people who do the research and write the studies really experts? Do they have requisite academic degrees? If not, can they demonstrate by a sound publishing record that they do in fact know what they are talking about?

3. Publications Review. This one is a bit tricker to do in practice, but may be as vital as any of the rest. How often do the think tank’s publications cite their own publications? Do they use peer-reviewed journals or primary sources in their research? Are their papers or articles by their researchers found in leading publications in the field? Are their publications cited by other experts in the field (favorably, that is)?

That would be a good start. The question, of course, is who would do this, and the obvious answer is that it could be done by private organizations, like those that oversee national or regional accreditation for universities. Maybe then the less scrupulous of these propaganda mills would either clean up their acts, or go into marketing where they belong.

Some time ago I blogged on a system called PoIC, which stands for Piles of Index Cards, a system for creating a personal knowledge database by Hawk Sugano.  You can read more about it in the earlier entry, but the quick and dirty description is that PoIC is a nifty system for helping to organize your thoughts and ideas in a way that, when properly applied, creates a sort of self-sustaining aid for creativity and project management.  The system is a kind of repository for loose ideas, musings, brainstorms, rants, references, reading notes… anything that can fit on a 3×5 card.  The cards are filed chronologically, aided by a simple but effective timestamp that goes in the upper right corner of each one.  An equally simple set of four icons helps remind you what a given card is for (note, idea, citation, to-do).  Then, when a critical mass of cards is reached (Sugano recommends about 1,000 cards) you go through them and look for trends, themes, ideas that keep recurring.  Grouping these together can result in the basis for a project.

I’ve been using the system for about six months now, and I have decided that it is worth using long term, with a few caveats.  My PoIC has helped me draft out one paper I intend to publish in an intellectual journal, formed the grist for a couple of blog entries here, and helped organize my thinking on some long-term ideas I’ve been kicking around for some time now.

The biggest drawback to the system, in my opinion, is that one must use it regularly, even relentlessly.  It is easy for someone to think that just because some new tool makes something easier, you don’t need to do that something as often.  At least that’s what my inner sloth tells me.  In fact, a good tool will make you want to do something more often–and usually does.

But PoIC demands that you spend time with it.  You need to keep blank cards handy and use them.  Many years ago I got into the habit of doing a lot of thinking by writing in pocket notebooks I always carry with me.  PoIC can provide a good place to keep the ideas I’ve scribbled in those notebooks, so I’ve started adding PoIC timestamps to my notebook entries.  Later, when I’m reviewing my notebooks, I can transfer the ideas worth hanging on to (precious few) to PoIC cards.

That’s a partial solution.  The real challenge is to make the time to sit down on a regular basis and let the mind play, free associate, dream, and brainstorm.  Doing this solo isn’t hard, but doing it on a schedule take some getting used to.  I know, for instance, that quite a few professional writers have trained themselves to where they can sit down and, from nine to five, be creative.  It can be done, and probably should be if you are serious at all about any form of intellectual activity that demands creativity.  I’ll check in later with more on that question in a future installment.

Too bad most of my best ideas seem to come to me when I’m in the shower.

The San Francisco Bay Area is notorious for being full of people who have interesting ideas and, what’s more, are prone to act on them. Creativity is the lifeblood of the Bay Area not just in the sense that it provides jobs and income, but that it is something that seems to infuse the very matter that makes up this area. It’s hard to describe without slipping into some form of New Age mumbo-jumbo, and this mojo of brilliance is not uniformly distributed, to be sure. But if you are one of those unfortunate souls who experiences pain at the contemplation of a new idea, the Bay Area can be a frustrating place to live. And if you go anywhere near the San Mateo Fairgrounds when the Makers strut their stuff, your head will probably explode.

A bb-shooting scratchbuilt 1/144 scale model warship, opened to show its inside components.

This year’s fair was bigger and better than last year’s. Attendance was huge, and diverse. I was struck by how many parents brought kids along–probably a good idea to get young minds used to the culture of creativity and inventiveness. There were plenty of middle aged types, along with the young and restless in off-beat clothes and more than the usual number of tattoos.

For those of you who do not know what Maker Faire is, this is an event sponsored by Make magazine, a publication for people who like to play with technology in ways that often go against what is corporately correct. They gleefully modify products, void warranties, create add-ons, and basically give a collective finger to companies and cultures who insist that we play nice with technology and just let the faceless corporate engineers and marketing departments tell us what our tech should be, how much we should pay for it, and the hundred and one reasons why, even when our check has cleared, they insist that it isn’t really ours to play with, hack, modify, and break if we so choose. They also blow a group raspberry at the schoolmarms and Nervous Nellies among us that we not run with scissors, “do try this at home” or try anything that looks even remotely dangerous.

Imposing sculpture built from pieces of scrap.

What could one see at this year’s faire? Fighting robots. Radio controlled bb-shooting model warships that literally sink each other. Experimental aircraft. Laser harp. Chakratron. More robots. Computer controlled shop tools. Sign-ups for lessons on fabrication, milling, turning, welding. Kits and more kits. Hydroponics. Alternative energy. Bizzare bicycles. Rockets. Sculpture. Intentional communities. Home chemistry laboratories. Organic gardening. A working scale-model Babbage Difference Engine. Computer controlled everything. Solar powered everything. A pedal-powered bus. Steampunk. And did I mention the life-sized “Mousetrap” game? That works? And took thirteen years to build and weighs a total of 50,000 pounds?

For something this big, and this diverse, general impressions will have to suffice, but there are several take-away impressions to be had here. The wide streak of anti-corporate, anti-establishment anarchism has already been noted, but still merits further comment. For years I and others like me have lamented the decline of DIY as it applies to scientific subjects: chemistry sets died due to fears of litigation. DIY electronics declined, in my opinion, due to their inherent complexity, cheapness (if it breaks, just buy another) and terms of purchase and warranty that promise dire circumstances for “misusing” electronic products. Other things have probably contributed, particularly the whispering campaign against science and intellectual activity in general conducted largely by conservative ideologues in power.

Robert Bruce Thompson shows what can be done in a home chemistry laboratory, and how to make one.

Maker Faire or, more properly, the Maker culture (one is tempted to call it a “movement” except that it seems to have evolved beyond that), is a gleeful revolt against all that. It embodies a conviction that technology belongs to everyone who wants to learn its secrets and use them to make life at least more interesting. I would also point out that this is the culture who by its very nature knows how to decentralize many of the technologies that are less robust, more brittle, more susceptible to direct and indirect manipulation than we have wanted to believe by virtual of their centralization. Oil, information, electricity… these are problems of existential importance. But if you want to find comfort when contemplating peak oil or the like, take a walk through Maker Faire, and here you will see the kinds of thinking that could make a post-carbon world not just bearable, but thriving.

Tomato plants in a home-built hydroponics system.

This brings me to another observation, and that is the passion inherent in the maker community for what they do. You can see this passion partly in the balance of pragmatism and perfectionism that is required to do a good bit of making or a really sweet hack. But what struck me was the artistry of what gets done. From a historical perspective, this makes sense. Throughout history it has frequently been the artisans who push the limits of technology, whether it’s stone construction of a cathedral or creating the need for more advanced desktop computers to handle large image or video files. At Maker Faire there were metal sculptures that were imposing, striking, and frivolous. There were also dazzling but equally silly geometric forms made of sugar using a tabletop 3-D fabrication machine (last year, as I recall, they used cheese-whiz instead of sugar). And yet it grabs you; draws you in and enhances the sense of wonder at this new breed of Do-It-Yourselfer.

An engine running on renewable bio-fuel.

What we are seeing in the rise of the Maker community is the very common human urge to tinker and play and invent. But this time it has been enhanced by a confluence of new technologies that have never been available before. As certain kinds of technology in general grows more advanced, it becomes harder to contain and control. The Internet is an excellent case study. It is the most complex and sophisticated communications device ever created, and yet it is also virtually impossible to control what goes on there. It has proven very resistant to control and censorship for instance. This is partly because as one person remarked, the Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it. But it is also because it has created metasystems in the form of communities of activists, thinkers, learners, politicos, hobbyists, and cranks. These communities in turn exist in a kind of symbiosis with the Internet–at least to the extent that the Internet can be considered “biotic”, which is probably a discussion best left for another time.

What I find so intriguing about the Maker community is the way information is shared freely, almost aggressively. There is a sense of conviction that anyone can be a Maker in some fashion, and probably should. Today’s Maker has access to tools that were unimaginable only a few years ago. And I, for my part, intend to explore and acquire familiarity with as much of this new technology as my time or budget will allow. But the real achievement of the Maker culture is that they make more than wonderful, showy, brilliant, and sometimes even useful gizmos. They make communities. In an American society that is increasingly dull and banal, I expect this movement to continue to be a waxing ray of light.