Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize

I do not usually comment on current political events in these pages, but last week I received an email invitation to congratulate Barack Obama on his Nobel Peace Prize. As I have commented on an earlier Nobel Peace Prize (see my entry of 14 October 2007 "Should the IPCC receive the Nobel Peace Prize?") I feel justified to react publicly to this insult to my intelligence. I do that by comparing the timelines of the Vietnam War (a war that also sparked a Nobel Peace Prize) and of the war in Afghanistan. What is a Nobel Peace Prize worth if the wars intensify? Evidently the prize has lost all credibility and value (except its monetary value, of course).

The emphasis on Australia is for some local friends. How long should Australia wait before it withdraws its troops this time?

1961		John F. Kennedy becomes president, 2,000 US troops in Vietnam	2001		George W. Bush becomes president, special forces are sent into Afghanistan after arial bombing campaign
1963	First coordinated protests in London and Australia	Lyndon B. Johnson becomes president, says that "the purpose in Vietnam is to prevent the success of aggression."	2003		5,500 foreign troops in Afghanistan
1964	Student marches in US cities	16,500 US troops in Vietnam
1965	First large anti-war marches in the US, first sabotaging of military aircraft in Canada	The war is extended into Cambodia and Laos 200,000 US troops in Vietnam	2005		George W. Bush is re-elected president, declares that "the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq will be remembered as great turning points in the story of freedom."
1966	Public opinion moves from support to rejection of the war
			2008	Public opinion in Europe and Australia moves from support to rejection of the war, first large anti-war demonstrations in Europe
1969	Millions take a day off in the US to demonstrate against the war	Richard Nixon becomes president, promises "peace with honour" and an end to the war	2009	First news reports of protest demonstrations in Australia	Barack Obama becomes president, says that the previous administration "has overextended our military", sends an additional 15,000 troops, authorizes the bombing of targets in Pakistan, receives the Nobel Prize 100,500 foreign troops in Afghanistan (66,000 US, 34,500 NATO)
1970	First and only nationwide student strike in the US closes universities in protest against the war	US troops start incursions into Cambodia Kissinger pushes for intense bombing of Cambodia	2010	???	US may start incursions into Pakistan (?) US may raise foreign troop level to over 120,000 (?)
1971	More than 12,000 demonstrators arrested in Washington	Australia and New Zealand withdraw their troops	2011	???	???
1973		Kissinger receives the Nobel Prize US troops withdraw from Vietnam, the USA increase military aid	2013	???	??? becomes president, promises to ???
1974		Gerald Ford becomes president, is forced to phase out aid by 1976	2014	???	???
1975		The fall of Saigon ends the war	2015	???	???
Final cost: 3 - 4 million Vietnamese and 1.5 - 2 million Laotians and Cambodians killed, 58,159 US soldiers dead			Cost to date (October 2009): over 12,000 civilians killed (about 40% by anti-goverment forces, 60% by foreign troops), 1,435 foreign soldiers dead

Neo-fascism, the Soviet Union, Islam and all that

Today I received an email from a John Weeks in Texas:

"Sir: Thank you for your lecture series/book. It is the most humorous garbage I have read in many years. Monty Python could not have done better! I didn't know it was possible for someone to twist history so much to make their neo-fascist beliefs seem logical. The material on the Soviet Union and Islam are priceless. What a hoot!
Thank you, John Weeks, Texas, USA"

I emailed back and asked his permission to post his email on my blog, and he replied:

"Sir: You may post this on your blog under one condition: you must refer to me as one of those ignorant Americans who have caused all the world's problems.
Take care, John Weeks"

So let us note that I dutifully made the required reference but that it was John Weeks who said it and not me.

The email raises a few interesting questions. It is not often that I am called a neo-fascist. The usual understanding of neo-fascism is that it is a political movement and associated ideology that developed after the end of World War II, revives significant elements of fascism and expresses admiration for fascist governments of the past. I don't think that I have to go into great detail to make the case that nowhere in my material do I express admiration for Hitler, Mussolini or any other fascist leader. So the epithet neo-fascist cannot be applied to me.

It appears that John Weeks was careless in his use of words. Maybe he meant to use fascist and give it a bit more emphasis? After all, the word fascist is used and misused in many different contexts – there are ecofascists, vegefascists, fashion fascists, animal rights fascists and many more. Used in that way the word becomes utterly meaningless, as George Orwell already observed in 1944:

"It would seem that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox hunting, bullfighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else." (George Orwell: What is Fascism? Tribune, 1944.)

It would seem that people who use the word fascist without much thought use it as a derogatory term and nothing else. This has become more and more fashionable lately, a trend that I find disturbing. As a German with a good education I am aware of the history of my country of birth and citizenship, and it always stings me when someone uses a word associated with the greatest atrocity of world history for such trivia as fashion.

So, John Weeks, call me an ignoramus, an ideologue, a witless moron, or whatever takes your fancy, but don't call me a fascist or neo-fascist.

John Weeks clearly does not like what I say about science and society in the Soviet Union and under Islam. It is difficult to say much about this without knowing what he finds objectionable. He may find it interesting to learn that some of the staunchest pillars of capitalism are turning towards Islamic practice. As Jeremy Harding reports in the London Review of Books, financial institutions based on the tenets of Islam have been barely affected by the debt crisis that triggered the Great Financial Crisis. Such esteemed institutions of capitalism as London's Lloyds TSB and HSBC and the German Deutsche Bank are now offering Sharia-compliant banking products to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. (Jeremy Harding: The money that prays. London Review of Books vol. 31 no. 8, pp. 6-10.) Maybe Islam is not such a hoot after all.

Text update complete

The minor update of the lecture text, announced on 10 October 2008, is now complete. (It was actually completed in February, but I forgot to mention this here.) To avoid major departures of the lecture text from the book edition any further amendments will not affect the lecture text itself but will take the form of blog entries.

Minor updates to the text of the lectures

Those who have seen the book version of the web site know that the book follows the text of the lectures. Nevertheless, some minor improvements in the presentation were made during the preparation of the book chapters. As a consequence the book presents some material in a clearer way, and some passages are easier to read in the book than on the web.

In the coming weeks I intend to remedy this and go through the text of the web lectures and associated material to bring them into alignment with the book version. Any changes will be very minor and not change the essence of the text. Amended lectures will be annotated with the date of the last update from now on.

Sonification of tides

To say that this post is relevant to the content of Science, civilization and society is stretching credibility, but it has some entertainment value and is related in some way to the discussion of tides in my blog "The tide predicter of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey" of 25 May. In that post I referred to a web page with an animation of Kelvin's Tide Predicter. The same page has a link to "Tidesounds", where tidal constituents are used to produce "musical scores." You can listen to some examples here: Miami harbour entrance, Daytona Beach, Florida, Cordova, Alaska.

The Tide Predicter page says that "the musical patterns were generated by Stephanie Mason at the University of Minnesota Geometry Center, who wrote C-code to generate predicted tides for these ports, and programmed a NeXT-MIDI interface to generate the corresponding soundtracks." You have to admit that the resulting sounds are more of educational/scientific than musical interest. I asked my son Sebastian, who studies music technology at the University of Adelaide, to produce a bit of sonification of some observational data from one of my field studies. He used data from an oceanographic data buoy that recorded (among other things) wind speed and direction, ocean current and temperature and conductivity at various depths in Thorny Passage near Port Lincoln, South Australia. Here is the result: Southern Ocean sounds.

Seb used the observed wind direction to set the rhythm and the battery voltage to control the loudness; he converted the conductivity at 2.5 m depth into marimba, the temperature at 2.5 m depth into soft organ and the salinity at 2.5 m depth (calculated from temperature and conductivity) into drums. As the water moves in and out through the Passage with the tide its salinity and temperature change slightly, so the up and down of the melody mirrors the tide. The variable speed of the rhythm is produced by the passage of atmospheric fronts that cause sudden changes in wind direction. It does make for more interesting music than just tidal heights from a tide table, don't you think?

You can find Seb's own blog here.

Science, Civilization and Society: the book is out

As announced earlier, the book version of "Science, Civilization and Society" is now available. It can be ordered by referencing the international book numbers

ISBN-10: 363906593X
ISBN-13: 9783639065930

It can also be ordered online from various sellers. Some are listed at the web site "World Civilizations"; just click on the title of this post. It may be worth comparing prices at other sellers - the steep price was set by the publisher, not by me. As of today the lowest price is only available in Europe, unfortunately.

Science, Civilizations and Society: the book

This entry supersedes the entry of last August (2007) that anounced the availability of Science, Civilization and Society in book form for pdf download. The pdf version has been withdrawn. It will be replaced by the printed version, to be published before September by VDM Verlag Dr. Müller. More details will be posted as they become available.

Science, Civilization and Society now in book form

The material for the lecture course Science, Civilization and Society is now available in book form. It can be downloaded from the website in PDF format.

The book is a condensed version of the lecture notes found on the website. As a book it cannot include the animations that are used on the website to explain physical principles. It also arranges the material in a somewhat different order. But it offers a good way to study the history of science and civilization and the interaction between them away from the computer.

NOTE: See the update of 29 July 2008.

Welcome!

After two years of teaching "Science, Civilization and Society" at Flinders University in South Australia and three years of web presence of the accompanying lecture notes it is time to give students and other users the opportunity to interact with me and others. So I open this blog for comments and discussion.

I have received the occasional comment and criticism via email in the past. I cannot publish the original emails here, because they were not sent to me with the understanding that they would become public. But I intend to summarize their essence and my responses tomorrow. Until then: Welcome, and let us start a constructive dialogue.

Matthias Tomczak
School of Chemistry, Physics and Earth Sciences
Flinders University of South Australia.