British Prince Harry Defending Country in Afghanistan

Hello all,

I just stumbled on this story from the BBC in which it has been leaked that Prince Harry of Wales, the third in line to the British throne, is now serving his country in Afghanistan.   I had mixed feelings when I read the story.  First, I have to respect the young man for stepping it up for his country.  All too often, we hear of politicians that back wars as much as possible, only to send their kids to good colleges, far away from the death and destruction.  While the Prince isn’t exactly on the front lines, he is in Afganistan, and fighting is still going on there.  He was supposed to go to Iraq last year, but never went for security reasons.

While I don’t think it’s wise for anyone to fight right now that doesn’t have to, you have to respect the guy.  Harry said that  he felt “normal for once” and that he wanted to keep a low profile in case people went gunning for him, because he didn’t want to “put the other guys in danger”.

I’ve never been one of those people that pays attention to celebrities, especially royalty that are born into their celebrity status, but I thought this story was worth mentioning.  Also, the subject of journalist integrity was mentioned.  While the UK press had agreed before the news broke to keep this info under wraps, other news groups that were not named broke the news.  This could add fuel to the enemy’s fire.  In any event, I thought this was a cool story.  Check it out.

On Fleck, Descartes, and the general destruction of personal opinions

Hello everyone,

This blog will deal with the Ludwig Fleck reading. I had all kinds of problems with it. My first question is why anyone bothered to translate it. After reading it, I am sure that many other German works probably fell through the cracks as it were, and never saw the light of day in English.  Germany was going through an incredible scholarly revolution between 1850 and 1930 or so. Many advances were made in every academic discipline you can think of. This included, for example the application of the “scientific method” to fields such as history which were never deemed very scientific in the past. As our reading indicates, these developments spread over to other disciplines, including biology and medicine, and any other related field.

Essentially Fleck sets out to show that facts are not eternal truths but rather social constructs that are borne out of social developments and “thought collectives”. As his title indicates, “facts” have beginnings and developments, and never really “stop” as it were. We simply learn more about them, and thus add to the cannon, sometimes wiping away the old, and sometimes just building upon it.

I feel that the sociological thrust of the work is obvious, as it was written not too far after sociology was founded. Emile Durkheim, the founder of sociology, and one of his students, was quoted a few times. The problem I have with this is that Fleck takes a more of a sociological position than he does a scientific one. One problem with sociology is that it is inherently biased. The discipline was borne out of a period of great social upheaval. Sociology starts with the premise that what conditions are currently in place are bad or wrong or immoral, and need to be changed. Most other disciplines are far more objective, and wish to simply understand the nature of the thing or idea under consideration.

Fleck mentions how early perceptions of “syphilis” (as syphilis as we know it today was not actually a disease, but really came to describe several) were either religiously-based, or mystical in origin.  Fleck reports that many religious people of the day simply described the affliction of syphilis as a punishment for the sin of fornication.  While this explanation is obviously simplified, I find that non-religious people look down on religious ones for their morality, and that it is this same morality which largely keeps the religious people safe from such afflictions. Abstinence can be criticized for many things, but it does one thing sufficiently well: it keeps the observer safe from all but congenital sexually transmitted diseases.  While this may not have been part of the scope of Fleck’s argument, it bears mentioning.

Another problem I see is that these developments are not taken within their perspective historical context.  This is probably because Fleck blames history for many of the misrepresentations that we see today.  I think his assessment oversimplifies the discipline of history and that a thorough student of history would be well aware of Fleck’s criticisms, and would know that disciplines, thoughts, and facts develop over time.  This is simply the nature of the scientific process.  Facts are determined based on observations that can be made under the given circumstances.  Then, as the methods of observations improve and the tools of the trade improve likewise, more progress can be made.  The problem Fleck would have with my description is that people are inherently biased for many reasons, and that their observations cannot be trusted.  Or, he may say that while the new observations may in their essence be carried out properly, the reliance on old facts and lead to new experiments being spurious.  If we applied this sort of thinking to every discipline, we would never “know” anything.

I think that Rene Descartes, almost 300 years before Fleck, had similar ideas, but went about implementing them differently.  He says in 1650, in his Meditations on First Philosophy,”I first realized how numerous were the false opinions that in my youth I had taken to be true, and thus how doubtful were all those that I had subsequently built upon them…Yet to bring this about I will not need to show that all my opinions are false, which is perhaps something I could never accomplish.  But reason now persuades me  that I should withhold my assent no less carefully from opinions that are not completely indubitable that I would from those that are patently false.  For this reason, it will suffice for the rejection of all these opinions, if I find in each of them some reason for doubt.”

You could argue that what Descartes is doing is different because he is not conducting experiments, but rather is setting up a foundation for a philosophical work.  We see often in Fleck’s book, however, that experiments rarely come out as intended.  That Wasserman Reaction that he so thoroughly explained, was really a murky development.  Perhaps a sound philosophical foundation needs to be put in place regarding what constitutes “fact” or “truth” before we begin razing what we know already with new information, extracted from “scientific” testing that may be proven utterly worthless later.

Blogging in the Airforce

Hello everyone,

I just read an article on Wired.com’s website called “Airforce Blocks Access to Many Blogs“. The author interviewed some officers to see what their perspective was on the matter. It was overwhelmingly negative. Opponents of the move said that it’s better to let the soldiers know what’s going on in the world. Other opponents said that the policy is inconsistent, and that major news sites such as the New York Times’ site can be viewed. Also, critics felt that blocking access to blogs that were written by airforce men actually hurt their own cause, as the force is in need of all sorts of new equipment, but has been marginalized as late.

All while reading this, I had a feeling that there was more to the story: security. This was even more obvious to me when Wired’s Noah Shachtman keep showing quotes such as, “our studies show that most people don’t use blogs for new or information,” by a high-ranking military official. This quote here misses the point entirely. While that military man or woman definitely said this, I doubt he or she believed it.

The legendary Chinese general and philosopher, Sun Tzu, 2500 years ago, probably said it best: “All warfare is based on deception.”

Do you think these servicemen are being entirely forthcoming with why they are blocking access to blogging sites? I don’t think so, but they don’t have to be. Security is paramount above all else in this state of war, and these servicemen and servicewomen are just taking circuitous paths to achieve that goal.

I am disappointed with the Wired writer that was seemingly unable to read between the lines, and see what was really going on.

In defense of intelligence

Hello everyone,

I have talked recently about what I call the “growing power” of the online community.  We have seen that this new development can be great for many reasons.  More information is now available than ever before.  Also, people that may have been marginalized by society now have a voice.  Also, we no longer have to rely on what the mainstream media would report to us.  While this is all well and good most of the time, the other side of the coin has reared its ugly head: people with uninformed or unintelligent opinions now feel the need to voice them.  It’s great that people have a voice; however I feel that there need to be consequences as well.  Just as I have criticized the Fox News Channel and the New York Post in previous posts, I feel that there need to be consequences for people that proffer ignorant and simple-minded opinions.

I will say this and say it clearly: Just because someone has an opinion doesn’t necessary make it valid.  Now, please don’t misunderstand me.  I’m not saying that people don’t have the right to voice their opinions (that wouldn’t make any sense as I am using this platform to voice my own.)  What I am saying is that people need to present compelling arguments in support of their opinions.  I feel that people, armed with the power of the internet, feel that they can say whatever they wish about whatever they wish and that’s okay, because it’s their opinion.  This kind of backwardness needs to stop.  Opinions should be based on evidence.  If I say, for example,  that the War in Iraq was a bad idea, I had better explain why, or refrain from speaking about it.

I’ve been thinking of how to present this argument for some time.  Every time someone I talk to presents an opinion on something based on false or incomplete information, I get very irritated.  Sometimes, people present opinions that are just stupid.  Just some of these opinions have been leveled against my now favorite blogger, N’Gai Croal.

While Mr. Croal no doubt is fully capable of defending himself, I feel the need to bring up this problem to our class.  On his Level Up blog, Croal put a link to a recent internet forum called “N’Gai Internet Superstar“, in which people criticized the journalist for his intelligent use of the English language.  On the forum, he is called “pretentious”, “arrogant”, and “smug”. One forum post said that, ” he’s a journalist. Journalists aren’t supposed to use big words.”  Another post said (inaccurately) that, “that at there is a sweet spot to the grade level of your writing, once you go above this you come across as arrogant and condescending.”

The concept that people aren’t grasping is that Croal is writing to another, more sophisticated audience.  If you don’t get it, it’s not his fault.  Think of it this way.  Imagine a young man wants to go to college, and fails out.  While that could have happened for a number of reasons, it would be foolish to blame the college.  He either wasn’t diligent enough, didn’t have the funds, or wasn’t smart enough.  The college should not be at fault for having a high standard.  The college is in place, like Croal, to educate and inform.

You could apply this logic to reading in general.  If you can’t learn to read, it is not the fault of the language.  A person can’t say (you could, but it wouldn’t make sense) that the reason he or she can’t learn to read because the language was constructed in a manner that is too complex.  It is your own fault you can’t or don’t or won’t learn to read.  No one likes to hear that failure at something may be a fault of their own.

I find Croal to be well-informed, highly articulate, and a real wordsmith.  He presents information that I find to be relevant, and takes great care to construct well-reasoned arguments.  I am someone that falls into his audience, and never feel stupid for not understanding his work.  He stands in contrast to many in the enthusiast press that write about videogames as well, and who are enthusiasts first, and journalists second.

If you’re interested, here is an interview with Croal that I read recently that explains some of his motivations.

US Military Men in Okinawa Act Dishonorably

A recent article by the BBC reports that US servicemen and servicewomen and their families will be forced to observe a curfew and a period of “reflection”.  A Marine was recently arrested for allegedly raping a 14 year old Japanese girl.  The Marine denies this charge.  The BBC reports that this is not the first time that a Japanese girl was raped by American soldiers.  In 1995, a 12 year old girl was gang raped by several servicemen.  You can read the BBC article here.

Aside from finding the act reprehensible in the highest degree, I also find this troubling.  This sort of thing is not endemic to American serviceman, and can be seen all over the world.  When I was in Osnabruck, Germany the first time, in 2005, I was approached by two drunk natives that wanted to pick a fight with me.  I was drunk too, and in light of being outnumbered, I wanted no part of the altercation.  Though my German is terrible, I was able to deduce that they thought I was a British soldier and that they thought i was a “piece of shit” or something like that.  When I talked to my German friends about this they explained that the UK maintains a small military presence in the area since WWII and that they are known for causing all manner of commotion.  The young Germans saw me as an opportunity to get some revenge.  Thankfully, it never came to that.

I think it’s unfortunate that this sort of behavior goes on and makes the majority of servicemen that are perfectly honorable, brave, and courteous, look bad. And to the guys in Japan–they should know how fricken lucky they are.  They could just as easily be sent to Kosovo, Afghanistan, or Iraq.

Kudos to all the good servicemen that are defending our country bravely.

Communities of Practice–May the Force be with You

From Yoda, in The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

“For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.”

Just as the concept of The Force in Star Wars is a bit murky and at times hard to pinpoint, I think Yoda explained it best, and with the best clarity a little green man that likes to say his sentences backward would do.  Here is a quote from Ettiene Wenger’s Community of Practice in which he tries to explain the relationship between an individual and a larger group.

“I will use the concept of identity to focus on the person without assuming the individual self as a point of departure.  Building an identity consists of negotiating the meaning of our experience of membership in social communities…The resulting perspective is neither individualist nor abstractly institutional or social.  It does justice to the lived experiece of identity while recognizing its social character– it is the social, the cultural, the historical with a human face.”  huh?  I don’t know if the Force is strong with this one.

Communities of Practice, by Ettienne Wenger, starts off with a really intriguing premise: Learning is a social enterprise, and divorcing learning from socialization has been highly detrimental to everyone involved.  Wenger also argues that a great deal of learning takes place in social settings, through practice.  Then he explains his framework for what communities are, and how important practice is in creating a community.  Wenger then tells a long, drawn out story about Ariel, a claims processor for a large insurance company.  By explaining how Ariel, a mid-level claims processor fit into the larger milieu of the company, a clear example of what Wenger called a “Community of Practice” emerged.   Communities of Practice are groups of people that belong to a certain community that are bound by common characteristics.  Wenger explains that some communities will likely cross over into other communities, but the important fact to remember how all of these aspects of peoples’ social lives fit in together.  The book is full of Venn diagrams that (attempt to) show these relationships.

I found the book to be strangely structured and found it even more strange that the author told people to skip certain sections if they didn’t think the more in-depth information to be pertinent.  I’ve never read a book that told people not to read it.  If I wrote a book, I’d like to think that at least I found it worthwhile at worst, and that some people would find the whole book worthwhile at best.   After we read Ariel’s story that drummed pretty clearly into our minds what a COP (community of practice) is, Wenger goes on to explain that this is not the only kind of community of practice and that there are many other kinds of communities of practice.  The author says then names a bunch of groups that may or may not fall into the category of COP.  I found this construction boring and highly frustrating.  In essence, the author says, this is my theory for how to interpret interactions between people, then here’s an example of such a community, then says that what a constitutes a community isn’t important and a hard and fast rule on what constitutes these groups is not the purpose of this story.  Huh?

I probably would have gotten more out of the reading if I skipped the Vignettes and just read Wenger’s theories.  Considering that I live in the real world, and have a rudimentary understanding of how human relations work, I think it’s safe to say that I could have constructed examples of COP that are both more clear and less confusing that what the author did.  I think the book really fell flat on its promise: to explain how learning can take place more effectively via social interactions than by traditional means.

The second half of the book talks about how a community of practice can influence the development of an individual’s identity.  Most of this I thought was kind of obvious.  The more an individual participates within a group, the more he or she will feel a part of it.  Examples: nationality, linguistic heritage, race, neighborhood, industry, office.  After 9 chapters, Wenger gives a summary.  Then he explains that once this framework is established, the rest of the book can be understood.  What If I don’t buy the first 3/4 of the book?  Without that foundation in place, I cannot believe the last part.  The chapter with the information that I was most interested in, was the last.  Chapter 12, on Education, largely lived up to the promise in the introduction, but I had to dredge through the rest of the book to get there.  There’s an old saying, “eat the fish, but leave the bones.”

the importance of information

In our class, Writing for Electronic Communities, we discuss many aspects of the process of writing for said communities. We discuss Communication Theory, we learn new techniques for making the internet a sharper tool for our work, and we write for that community that we’re learning so much about. This post talks about one big affect of the power of the online community.

I’m going to return to a theme that I mentioned in an earlier post, namely, the power of the online community. As a student and as someone that often disagrees with many positions held by people that belong to mainstream society, I am happy that people like myself are able to discuss the news in an intelligent manner and on our own terms.

I am also quite pleased that when the mainstream media decides to take a sensationalist story and run with it, there are now people there to take them to task over the misinformation.

Here’s the title of the newspaper article under discussion.  Now this is heart-breaking, serious information that needs to be handled with the highest level of respect and consideration.  After this event, 6 people are dead, 16 are wounded, and countless others have been traumatized.  This story demands a mature, respectful investigation.  I question whether this headline gives the story the respect it deserves.

COLLEGE KILLER CRAZY FOR VIOLENT VID GAME

Last Thursday, February 14th, at 3:00, Steven Kazmierczak, a 27-year old graduate student at the University of Indiana, killed 5 students, injured 16 others, and killed himself. The New York Post seems to attribute the videogame Counterstrike, as the main impetus to this tragedy. The New York Post reported, in its headline, that, “The man who gunned down five people and wounded 16 in an Illinois classroom rampage was a loner who preferred studying to partying and was obsessed with an ultra-violent video game, dormitory mates said yesterday.” The story will go on to mention that the young man had recently stopped taking his anti-depressant medication, that many of his classmates said that the young man seemed somewhat strange and withdrawn, and that he had a history of erratic behavior. The article also mentions that most of the young man’s Counterstrike playing took place in 2003 and 2004 and that it was a common dormroom activity shared by several students. you may read the article in its entirety, here .

Anyone that has read Carl Hausman’s Decision Making in Journalism can tell you that there are many ethical considerations to be mindful of when writing any story, especially one that recounts a tragedy like this. While there are many factors that seemingly converged to create the situation that emerged, it seems that the NY Post took the easy road, and misled its audience in an attempt to get people to read the article. Recent reports say that over 1700 articles have been written on this story, but just 2 have mentioned the game. If this is true (and I admittedly haven’t read them all), then it seems that the news reporting community did not see the videogame as a crucial factor in the shooting rampage. That cannot be ascertained until some sort of investigation is done. Even then, it is possible that we won’t know what caused Kazmierczak to act in the manner he did.

While people in this class would undoubtedly have seen right through the logic of this article, and would have likely rejected it outright, this sort of critical thinking should not need to be practiced when reading a newspaper. while most people would agree that the NY Post is a third or maybe a fourth-rate paper, it still has a large readership, and needs to be criticized when it presents misleading information. In the past, the newspaper, television, radio station, or magazine had the last work. Today, the online community has the last word. Beware, would-be peddlers of misinformation– your days are numbered.

Important Event at Rowan on Tuesday

On Tuesday, the Rowan community will be privileged to have Dr. Sergei Krushchev, the son of former Soviet Union Chairman Nikita Krushchev, give a talk.  This is significant as S. Krushchev is highly knowledgeable about a great many things, including the Cold War and the Russian Space program.  The Rowan website article about the speech also says that Krushchev actually worked on the space program between 1958 and 1968.  He is most certainly a cultural artifact, and is privy to all sorts of interesting information, if you’re into that sort of thing.

I think that this is an extremely relevant cultural event and decided to take off work tomorrow to see the talk.  While I felt bad about not working, and not making money, for a historian like myself, this is truly a momentous occasion.  As cheesy as that may sound, I think it’s true.

Most people have at least an idea of what the Cold War was.  I will not bore any readers here with that.  Instead, I will just make note of one extremely relevant concept:  the Cold War nearly saw the end of human civilization as we know it.  According to former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, we were extremely close to nuclear war with the Soviet Union in the 1960s.  In light of this, I feel that it is the responsibility of all intelligent people to pay attention to anything that has an association with that near disastarous event.  The more we know about the past, the better equipped we will be to avoid its mistakes.  While that Mistake didn’t happen, it was damn close to becoming a reality.

The talk is at 3:30 at Boyd Recital Hall at Wilson Hall.

Be there (if you can) or Be square (if you can be there and choose not to)

mcluhan

  The class was charged this week with reading about 200 pages from Understanding Me, a series of interviews and lectures with the original eminem.  Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian born–Cambridge trained literary scholar-turned New Media giant.  His observations regarding the new “electric” forms of media such as television and the internet were really prophetic in nature.  Using the example of his own children, that grew up mostly in the 1950s, McLuhan noticed the incredible technological gap that began occurring.  He noticed the young peoples’ affinity for technology, and the relative ease in which they manage to grasp its uses.  McLuhan felt that, in light of these technological–and by extension–social transformations– that traditional classrooms would be doomed to obsolescence unless they change.  While I found that revolutionary idea a bit overstated, McLuhan makes many insightful observations, especially considering the did the bulk of his research in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.  In one interview or lecture, McLuhan states that science fiction is really behind the curve, and that the near future of technology will make the trappings of that literary form a reality or obsolete.

McLuhan spoke about how a whole book’s information would one day be compressed into a very small space, and argues that soon, entire libraries will become portable.  While researchers have not yet archived the sum of all human knowledge as of yet, I don’t think that this reality is very far away.   If the educated reader were given no context, it would be easy to believe that McLuhan was speaking of the 1980s–and that this new technology was right around the corner.  The fact that most of this research was compiled 30 to 40 years before it came to fruition is really quite remarkable.

Regarding the technology gap that was alluded to earlier, McLuhan has much to say.  He compared the teens of the 1960s to the young people of the 1920s in the way that the new technology displaced the youth from the people that grew up just a generation before.  When radio emerged on the seen in the 1920s, it was seen as a cutting off point of sorts, and the people that grew up during this time were far removed from the generation before.  McLuhan argues that the generation gap between this generation and young people of the 1960s was even more thorough.

the main difference that television made in the 1960s according to McLuhan, was participation.  While in times past, the audience of an author served just to passively absorb information (though most educators would disagree that reading is in any way a passive endeavor), the new generation, thanks to television, was now made to feel as part of an integral part of what was going on in the world.  McLuhan began to compare the youth of this time period, at least in the US, Canada, and the UK as becoming more like Asian young people, meditative, serious, and reflective.  While most of us would not have made the same comparison in the same way as McLuhan, it is difficult to deny this consideration.

While it is possible to critique some of McLuhan’s assessments, especially, considering that some of the things he talked about may fall into the fields of psychology or sociology fields, it is important to give him credit for the pioneer that he was.  While McLuhan did not seem to like being called a prophet in his day, he certainly was in some respects.

observations on learning

i found aspects of the communities of practice reading to be quite enjoyable. i also found it kind of dry and a little incomprehensible, but then again, i had the flu, and most of what i’ve read the last five days has sounded the same. from the outset, i really liked the premise of the book, namely, that learning does not come strictly from a book or a classroom, but can also come through socialization. the author, etienne wenger seems to take the conventional classroom method to task when he says essentially that it’s no surprise that young people find school and learning boring. those are strong words from an academic writing a book that was published for cambridge university press.

far be it from cheating, wenger also discusses how people can learn effectively through group camaraderie. the example he uses, of a claims processor for a large health insurance firm was a perfect example to convey his somewhat abstract theory. while wenger showed first, that many claims processors don’t understand why certain procedures need to be done a certain way, he does show how the community is mutually beneficial to helping the group negotiate the tasks they have been assigned successfully. another telling example is how most people, when interviewed by the author, felt that their training, ie: a conventional, “by the book” process, felt under-prepared to begin their work. instead, they felt that it was more important to get out there, and just do the work. this example supported wenger’s thesis that social groups, can sometimes allow people to assimilate information more effectively than more conventional means.

i see a parallel between wenger’s framework and my own workplace.  at my job, we have developed what i believe is a community of practice as well.  though some of us compete for better shifts at my job, we also help each other out.  if someone has a question about a menu item, or is busy, and needs something brought to a table for them, oftentimes we’ll try to help the other person out if at all possible.  a more concrete example, perhaps, can be seen in a situation that happened today.  a good friend of mine had a series of three bad tables that had racked up a bill of over $200, but had tipped her just $8.  most of us felt bad about that, so another server began collecting money for the unfortunate server, and gave it to her to try to even out the night.  if we hadn’t been sympathetic or if we didn’t feel some sense of camaraderie, it is unlikely that we would have pitched in to help our friend.