December 2008 – Page 2 – artdiamondblog.com

James Burke (and Art Diamond) on the Importance of Serendipity

Source of book image: http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/_images/ISBNCovers/Covers_Enlarged/9780316116107_388X586.jpg

Like other James Burke books, The Pinball Effect is a good source of interesting and thought-provoking stories and examples, usually related to science and technology. One of his themes in the book is the importance of serendipity in making unanticipated connections.

My (and not Burkes’) musings on serendipity:

Serendipity might be an example of Hayek’s local knowledge, that the free market encourages the entrepreneur to take advantage of. Serendipity is an occurrence of one person in a particular time and place, with a mind prepared to be alert for it. As such it could not be planned by a central authority, and would usually be vetoed by a committee decision process. To maximally benefit from serendipity, we need a system that allows the motivated individual to pursue their discoveries.

Burke’s musings on serendipity:

(p. 3) In every case, the journeys presented here follow unexpected paths, because that’s how life happens. We strike out on a course only to find it altered by the action of another person, somewhere else in time and space. As a result, the world in which we live today is the end-product of millions of these kinds of serendipitous interactions, happening over thousands of years.

Source:
Burke, James. The Pinball Effect: How Renaissance Water Gardens Made the Carburetor Possible – and Other Journeys. Boston: Back Bay Books, 1997.

Why You Want Your Surgeon to Be a Disciple of Lister

The sources of new ideas are diverse. Sometimes, as below, even a newspaper article can provide inspiration.
The passage below also provides another example of the project oriented entrepreneur, who is motivated by a mission to get the job done.

(p. 60) In Lister’s early years, the mid-1800s, half of all amputation patients died from hospital fever; in some hospitals the rate was as high as 80 percent. Lister, like all surgeons, had little idea of how to improve the situation. Then he chanced on a newspaper article that caught his interest. It described how the residents of a local town, tired of the smell of their sewage, had begun treating it by pouring into their system something called German Creosote, a by-product of coal tar. Something in the creosote stopped the smell. Lister had heard about the work of Pasteur, and he made the same mental connection the French chemist had: The stink of sewage came from putrefaction, rotting organic matter; the stink of infected wounds also came from putrefaction; whatever stopped the putrefaction of sewage might also stop the putrefaction of infected wounds. So Lister decided to try coal-tar chemicals on his patients. And he found one that worked exceptionally well: carbolic acid, a solution of what today is called phenol. . . .
. . .
(p. 61) Lister’s insistence on stopping the transfer of bacteria in the operating room became absolute. Once when a visiting knighted physician from King’s College idly poked a forefinger into a patient’s incision during one of Lister’s operations, Lister flung him bodily from the room.

Source:
Hager, Thomas. The Demon under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor’s Heroic Search for the World’s First Miracle Drug. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007.
(Note: ellipses added.)

Rosenberg Spying Shows “United States Had (and Has) Real Enemies”

“DOOMED. In 1952, sympathizers gathered near the prison where the convicted spies awaited execution.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 6) You could choose to ignore, or somehow explain away, the Hitler-Stalin pact, or be wedded to the original Port Huron Statement instead of the “compromised second draft,” but if you seriously considered yourself fiercely loyal to the far left, you believed that the Rosenbergs were not guilty of espionage. At least you said you did.

For more than 50 years, defending Julius and Ethel Rosenberg was an article of faith for most committed American leftists. That the couple was framed — by officials intent on stoking anti-Soviet fervor and embarrassed by counterespionage lapses that allowed Russian moles to infiltrate the government — was at the core of a worldview of Communism, the Korean War and the ensuing cold war, and an enduring cultural divide stoked by McCarthyism.
Now, that unshakeable faith has been rattled seismically. Not for the first time, of course; in the 1990s, secret Soviet cables released by Washington affirmed the spy ring’s existence. But this time, the bedrock under that worldview seemed to transmogrify into clay.
The rattler was Morton Sobell, 91, the case’s only living defendant. He admitted in an interview that he and Julius Rosenberg had indeed spied for the Soviet Union. His admission prompted the Rosenbergs’ sons, Michael and Robert Meeropol — self-described magnets for global anguish over their parents’ execution in 1953 — to publicly accept, for the first time, that their father committed espionage. Ronald Radosh, co-author of “The Rosenberg File,” a comprehensive account of the trial, declared that “a pillar of the left-wing culture of grievance has been finally shattered.”
“The Rosenbergs were Soviet spies,” he said in an op-ed article in The Los Angeles Times, and “it is time the ranks of the left acknowledge that the United States had (and has) real enemies and that finding and prosecuting them is not evidence of repression.”

For the full commentary, see:
SAM ROBERTS. “Ideas & Trends; A Spy Confesses, and Still Some Weep for the Rosenbergs.” The New York Times, Week in Review Section (Sun., September 21, 2008): 6.

Deaths in ‘Natural’ Disasters Caused by Absence of Economic Growth

We are often made to feel guilty for the suffering of other countries in “natural” disasters. But the deaths are more due to the lack of infrastructure, sound buildings and the like, which in turn are due to the countries’ lack of economic growth, which in turn is due to their rejection of the process of capitalist creative destruction.

(p. 90) The simple truth is that money matters more than anything else in most disasters. Which is another way of saying that where and how we live matters more than Mother Nature. Developed nations experience just as many natural disasters as undeveloped nations. The difference is in the death toll. Of all the people who dies from natural disasters on the planet from 1985 to 1999, 65 percent came from nations with incomes below $760 per capita, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The 1994 Northridge earthquake in California, for example, was similar in magnitude and depth to the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. But the Northridge earthquake killed only sixty-three people. The Pakistan earthquake killed about a hundred thousand.

People need roofs, roads, and health care before quibbles like personality and risk perception count for much. And the effect is geometric. If a large nation raises its GNP from $2,000 to $14,000 per person, it can expect to save 530 lives a a year in natural disasters, according to a study by Matthew Kahn at Tufts University. And for those who survive, money is a form of liquid resilience: it can bring treatment, stability, and recovery.

Source:
Ripley, Amanda. The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why. New York: Crown Publishers, 2008.

“The Truth is More Important Than Our Political Position”

“Ethel and Julius Rosenberg’s sons, Robert, 6, left, and Michael, 10, looking at a 1953 newspaper. They still believe their parents did not deserve to die.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A22) They were the most famous orphans of the cold war, only 6 and 10 years old in 1953 when their parents were executed at Sing Sing for delivering atomic-bomb secrets to the Soviet Union. Then they were whisked from an unwanted limelight to urban anonymity and eventually to suburban obscurity.

Adopting their foster parents’ surname, they staked their own claim to radical campus politics in the 1960s. Then in 1973, they emerged to reclaim their identities as the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, determined to vindicate their parents.
Now, confronted with the surprising confession last week of Morton Sobell, Julius Rosenberg’s City College classmate and co-defendant, the brothers have admitted to a painful conclusion: that their father was a spy.
“I don’t have any reason to doubt Morty,” Michael Meeropol said after several conversations with Mr. Sobell over the weekend.
Their conclusions, in separate interviews, amount to a milestone in America’s culture wars and the culmination of the brothers’ own emotional and intellectual odyssey.
It began in July 1950, when F.B.I. agents arrested Julius Rosenberg in the family’s Lower East Side apartment, thrusting the boys onto a global stage as bit players in their parents’ appeals, in the government’s efforts to extract their parents’ cooperation, and in Soviet propaganda campaigns to cast the Rosenbergs as martyrs.
Their journey became public again nearly a generation later when the brothers proclaimed that their parents were framed to feed cold war hysteria and compensate for America’s counterespionage lapses. Amid the Watergate-era revelations of criminal conspiracies and cover-ups, they began a legal battle to release all the government records in the case.
While they were vested in a single outcome, they insisted all along that they would follow the facts, wherever they led.
“We believed they were innocent and we tried to prove them innocent,” Michael Meeropol said on Sunday. “But I remember saying to myself in late 1975, maybe a little later, that whatever happens, it doesn’t change me. We really meant it, that the truth is more important than our political position.”

For the full story, see:
SAM ROBERTS. “Rosenbergs’ Sons Sadly Accept That Father Was a Spy.” The New York Times (Weds., September 17, 2008): A22.
(Note: the online title is the slightly different “Rosenbergs’ Sons Accept Conclusion That Father Was a Spy.”)

“Michael, left, and Robert Meeropol rehearsing in 2003 for a commemoration of the execution in 1953 of their parents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, for passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Doctors Rejected Pasteur’s Work

Whether in science, or in entrepreneurship, at the initial stages of an important new idea, the majority of experts will reject the idea. So a key for the advance of science, or for innovation in the economy, is to allow scientists and entrepreneurs to accumulate sufficient resources so that they can make informed bets based on their conjectures, and on their tacit knowledge.
A few entries ago, Hager recounted how Leeuwenhoek faced initial skepticism from the experts. In the passage below, Hager recounts how Pasteur also faced initial skepticism from the experts:

(p. 44) If bacteria could rot meat, Pasteur reasoned, they could cause diseases, and he spent years proving the point. Two major problems hindered the acceptance of his work within the medical community: First, Pasteur, regardless of his ingenuity, was a brewing chemist, not a physician, so what could he possibly know about disease? And second, his work was both incomplete and imprecise. He had inferred that bacteria caused disease, but it was impossible for him to definitively prove the point. In order to prove that a type of bacterium could cause a specific disease, precisely and to the satisfaction of the scientific world, it would be necessary to isolate that one type of bacterium for study, to create a pure culture, and then test the disease-causing abilities of this pure culture.

Sobell Admits He and Julius Rosenberg Really Were Spies for the Soviets

“Morton Sobell, 91, at his home in the Riverdale section of the Bronx.” Source for caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

The left has long chastised the right, for having wrongly persecuted the Rosenbergs. Score one for the right:

(p. A1) In 1951, Morton Sobell was tried and convicted with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on espionage charges. He served more than 18 years in Alcatraz and other federal prisons, traveled to Cuba and Vietnam after his release in 1969 and became an advocate for progressive causes.

Through it all, he maintained his innocence.
But on Thursday, Mr. Sobell, 91, dramatically reversed himself, shedding new light on a case that still fans smoldering political passions. In an interview, he admitted for the first time that he had been a Soviet spy.
And he implicated his fellow defendant Julius Rosenberg, in a conspiracy that delivered to the Soviets classified military and industrial information and what the American government described as the secret to the atomic bomb.
In the interview with The New York Times, Mr. Sobell, who lives in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx, was asked whether, as an electrical engineer, he turned over military secrets to the Soviets during World War II when they were considered allies of the United States and were bearing the brunt of Nazi brutality. Was he, in fact, a spy?
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, call it that,” he replied. “I never thought of it as that in those terms.”
Mr. Sobell also concurred in what has become a consensus among historians: that Ethel Rosenberg, who was executed with her husband, was aware of Julius’s espionage, but did not actively participate. “She knew what he was doing,” he said, “but what was she guilty of? Of being Julius’s wife.”

For the full story, see:
SAM ROBERTS. “57 Years Later, Figure in Rosenberg Case Says He Spied for Soviets.” The New York Times (Fri., September 12, 2008): A1 & A14.
(Note: all of the part quoted above, appeared on p. A1.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the slightly different title “For First Time, Figure in Rosenberg Case Admits Spying for Soviets.”)

Government Regulation Kills the River City Star

We enjoyed several cruises on the River City Star over the past many years. Apparently no more.
It is silly to think that Homeland Security regulations can make us significantly safer when traveling on the River City Star.
I judge the risks as small, and the best way to prepare for whatever risks there are, would be to take the sorts of steps advocated by Amanda Ripley in her book The Unthinkable. One of the main lessons of her book is that it is not primarily government regulations and professionals that make us safer, but the alertness and preparation of regular people.
Maybe Homeland Security disagrees with my assessment of the risks. But who are they to tell me what risks I am not permitted to take? (That’s what they are in effect doing when they increase the costs of sailing the River City Star to the point that it is turned into a non-sailing restaurant.)

(p. 1B) The River City Star will make its final voyage Thursday to a new home in Plattsmouth, where it will become a floating restaurant. Two new riverboats will replace it along Omaha’s riverfront.
The Star, previously called the Belle of Brownville, operated as an excursion boat for cruises for more than 40 years.
Larry Richling, the boat’s most recent owner, said he decided to sell the boat because federal regulations for boats capable of carrying more than 300 passengers became too costly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The smaller boats, each with a capacity of 149 passengers, fall in a different category with fewer regulations, he said, and will be cheaper to operate.
. . .
(p. 2B) “There’s nothing wrong with the boat. The boat is in fantastic condition,” Richling said.
Richling said he would have had to invest at least $500,000 in the River City Star to meet Homeland Security Department requirements, but those requirements won’t apply if it is permanently docked.

For the full story, see:
CHRISTINE LAUE. “River City Star Going South; Boat Will Become a Plattsmouth Restaurant.” Omaha World-Herald (Thursday, December 4, 2008): 1B-2B.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the title was: “River City Star Making Final Voyage.”)

Regular Citizens Perform Vast Majority of Disaster Rescues

Source of book image: http://www.cleveland.com/arts/index.ssf/2008/06/the_book_the_unthinkable_expla.html

The most important message of this book is a very important message indeed. That message is that overwhelmingly, disaster survival and rescue depends on the actions of regular people, not the actions of professional lifesavers. (Very often, the professionals cannot get there quickly enough, or in sufficient numbers, to get the job done.)
This message, is itself worth the price of the book—if it were sufficiently understood, it would have enormous implications for individual preparedness, and government policy. (Think about the implications, for instance, for whether individual regular people should be allowed to carry guns.)

(p. xiii) These days, we tend to think of disasters as acts of God and government. Regular people only feature into the equation as victims, which is a shame. Because regular people are the most important people at a disaster scene, every time.

In 1992, a series of sewer explosions caused by a gas leak ripped through Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city. The violence came from below, rupturing neighborhoods block by block. Starting at 10:30 A.M., at least nine separate explosions ripped open a jagged trench more than a mile long. About three hundred people died. Some five thousand houses were razed. The Mexican Army was called in. Rescuers from California raced to help. Search-and-rescue dogs were ordered up.
But first, before anyone else, regular people were on the scene saving one another. They did incredible things, these regular people. They lifted rubble off survivors with car jacks. They used garden hoses to force air into voids where people were trapped. In fact, as in most disasters, the vast majority of rescues were done by ordinary folks. After the first two hours, very few people came out of the debris alive. The search and rescue dogs did not arrive until twenty-six hours after the explosion.

Source:
Ripley, Amanda. The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes – and Why. New York: Crown Publishers, 2008.

Fred Thompson Satirizes Current Economic Bailout Policies

Source of image: screen capture from the Fred Thompson video commentary described, and linked-to, below.

My brother Eric alerted me to a wise and witty video commentary by former Senator Fred Thompson satirizing current government bailout policies. The video has been posted to multiple locations. Here is the link to the posting on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKc4XFK0iVY