February 06, 2008
Without it, you wouldn't be reading this
Today is the 50th birthday of the integrated circuit (at least if you're going by the date that the patent was filed).
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January 21, 2008
Letter from Birmingham Jail
Today we commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Of all of his writings, his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" is probably one of the most widely read. It was required reading when I was in college. Is it still?
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September 11, 2007
Six years on
Clip art by T.C. Design
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April 25, 2007
Block 37
I've often wondered about the big vacant lot in the Chicago Loop bounded by State, Washington, Randolph, and Dearborn. Just what are they going to put in there? I don't need to wonder any longer. (NY Times article on Block 37.)
More on the history of Block 37, and a construction cam.
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April 23, 2007
Wikipedia and the emergence of order
I have been critical of Wikipedia in the past, so it is only fair that I point out an example where the concept may work. Even so, I still have some reservations. The NY Times reports on Wikipedia's documentation of the Virginia Tech tragedy.
From the contributions of 2,074 editors, at last count, the site created a polished, detailed article on the massacre, with more than 140 separate footnotes, as well as sidebars that profiled the shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, and gave a timeline of the attacks.
Here is a link to the article. It is decently organized, extremely well-documented, and (best of all) it is in Wikipedia's "semi-protected" category. That means it cannot be edited by anonymous or newly registered users.
Somewhat counterintuitively (except perhaps to free-market economists), the fact that this is such a high profile event probably makes the page less prone to the sort of vandalism that has been an occasional problem for Wikipedia. Questionable and incorrect information is removed very quickly. Again from the Times article,
In interviews, some of the most prolific contributors about the Virginia Tech shootings said they were at a loss to explain how everything manages to come out as well as it does.
Emergence of order in a complex system--it does happen. Read on...
Miikka Ryokas, whose user name is Kizor and in an e-mail message said that he was a 22-year-old computer science student from Turku, Finland, wrote: “As the popular joke goes, ‘The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work.’ ”
Mr. Ryokas wrote that he had spent 15 hours on the article, mostly to “tag dubious information with ‘citation needed’ or remove it entirely” and to “restore valid information that is accidentally lost.”
“I get involved when a major tragedy strikes,” he wrote. “I may not be able to help the victims, but I can, and therefore must, do a small part in helping accurate information get through to the world.”
As unfamiliar as it may seem, the contributors insist there isn’t even a shadowy figure who becomes the mastermind of the process.
“People seem to self-assign,” said Natalie Erin Martin, 23, a history major at Antioch College in Ohio, who describes herself as “an obsessive copy editor and spellchecker.”
These few paragraphs perfectly encapsulate what is beneficial about this particular Wikipedia page, at least while the moment is fresh. There are people sitting on that site 15 hours a day obsessively checking and rechecking to make sure it is correct. They are right that there is no mastermind overseeing this--just like there is no mastermind ensuring that excess demand for July corn futures is constantly being driven toward zero. They are like arbitragers in a market, but their reward is non-pecuniary. It most certainly is an emergence of order in a complex system. I have to admire the concept. Not only that, but if you want to go to a site with over a hundred references to authoritative sources on the subject, Wikipedia is the way to go for this particular event.
And yet, one of the contributors interviewed by the Times makes my other point for me. He spends a lot of his time tagging and removing "dubious information." Certainly I would not take the text in the Wikipedia article (this one or anyone) as 100% unbiased, verified truth. I wouldn't accept the Wikipedia article itself as a source for a term paper. No journalist would use it as a source. That's not what it is there for.
But by the same token, I'll be a lot of journalists have looked at it. And a student doing a term paper on this event would be foolish not to use the list of references as a jumping off point for further serious research.
I like Wikipedia. I really do. I link to it once in a while, mostly for common knowledge that is available in a variety of sources but nicely organized on Wikipedia. I use it all the time as a search tool, but I don't believe anything I can't verify somewhere else.
It is extremely interesting to observe the way the contributors to Wikipedia have responded to this tragedy. This episode represents the best of what Wikipedia can be as well as the reasons to use it with caution.
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February 19, 2007
Presidents' Day
Brad DeLong links to this NRO Symposium on the favorite presidents of the panelists. Want to see their list?
Richard Brookhiser... George Washington
H. W. Crocker III... Ronald Reagan
John Derbyshire... Calvin Coolidge
Bruce Frohnen... William Henry Harrison
Paul Kengor... Ronald Reagan
John J. Miller... Calvin Coolidge
I'm with DeLong--could none of them bring themselves to mention Abraham Lincoln? Nothing against Washington, you understand. But were it not for the fact that he was the first, he would have been remembered as the Eisenhower of his day--a war hero who gave a great farewell address that his successors ignored. Someone had to be first, and Washington was good in the role. But Lincoln's task was much more trying.
He wanted to save the Union and end the expansion of slavery, but he did not set out to be an emancipator even though he felt that slavery was morally wrong. He would have preferred that slavery die a slow death and fade away. But the war changed him. In his final speeches, you sense that he knew that things had changed. It is truly a tragedy of history that he did not live to preside over the reconstruction. It is that question--what would the reconstruction have been like if Lincoln had lived--that vexes me. Did he have enough fight left in him to resist the opponents in his own party? We romanticize Lincoln--perhaps too much. What if he had lived and had failed at the reconstruction? Would he still be on the penny then?
Interesting questions, but reality brings us back. He went out on top, and... for better or for worse... become a martyr. He was an incredibly complex man, not without contradictions. I've studied him, but I never stop wanting to know more. He managed to do the right thing when it counted.
And did it ever count.
I can think of half-a-dozen founding fathers would would have made an adequate first president. But the thought of any other mid-19th century politician being elected president in 1860 is unfathomable. And that right there, is the most concise statement of why Abraham Lincoln is my pick for our nation's greatest president.
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January 15, 2007
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr.
Brad DeLong reprints the "Letter from the Birmingham Jail". This was required reading when I went to college. Is it still?
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September 11, 2006
Personal reflections on 9/11
I have been thinking about what kind of post to write today. I didn't post on the 4th anniversary of 9/11, and I wasn't yet blogging on the 3rd. I remember thinking last year that I would save it for next year. It's next year. But what can I say that hasn't been said?
Perhaps there is value in saying what has already been said. Take a look at posts from Russell Fox, David Tufte, and John Palmer. Each one a personal reflection, each one expressing thoughts or retelling events that we have heard before. But each one as individual as a fingerprint. As we stop to remember a moment of profound national grief, we take heart in the fact that we were (and are) not alone. Our neighbors went through similar emotions. In some small way that is comforting.
It was a beautiful day in New York as well as in Illinois. Indeed, the clear weather across the country was instrumental in allowing air traffic controllers to clear the sky as quickly as they did that day. I watched the morning's events from the perspective of a licensed private pilot and aviation enthusiast. When I saw the amount of smoke and the size of the hole in the tower, I knew it was a large jet. It was on the north side of the tower only about 1000 feet off the ground. There is no approach path that takes you that low over the southern tip of the island. The weather was perfect. This was no accident. When the 2nd one hit, we all knew it was coordinated.
By noon the television coverage was becoming repetitive and speculative. With no training in aviation or engineering, most of the talking heads were in way over their heads. I could take no more, and I had a class to teach. It was a course on international monetary economics. We talked about the event itself and discussed what the Fed would do (lower interest rates) and wondered how long it would take for Wall St. to get back up and running. There was little worry among my class that this would trigger a global financial crisis. Fortunately we were right.
As I drove home I passed by long lines at the gas pumps in Peoria. My route home on highway 24 paralleled the only contrails in the sky. Air Force One and its fighter escort were heading back to Washington from Offutt AFB. Knowing what had happened and seeing those contrails gave me an eerie feeling. It was a connection to the horrible events of that day that I could see with my own eyes, not on television. Here, right before my eyes, the president was being escorted back into what was for all practical purposes a war zone by aircraft armed and ready for battle.
My gas tank was nearly empty, so unlike many of the drivers in line back in Peoria who were just topping off before prices jumped, I would have to fill up. I was the only one filling up at the gas station close to home. They had not raised prices (at least not that I could tell), and they were not running out of gas. That night my wife and I drove back to Peoria to church and passed by numerous gas stations with bags over the pumps, thus providing me with a real-world example of response to uncertainty that I use in my principles classes to this day.
And it was that uncertainty that enveloped the country as night fell. Rumors flew everywhere. False alarms caused evacuations in other buildings. What would 9/12 bring?
Although 9/12 did not bring more carnage, we know we are still vulnerable. Madrid and London stand as reminders of that fact. But the truth is that life on earth has never been guaranteed. Tomorrow is uncertain, just as it was on 9/11/2001. The next life-changing disaster may be a terrorist attack, or it may be an earthquake or tsunami. It is prudent to take steps to protect ourselves from all of those calamities. A good security screening program is as important as a tsunami warning system. But banning fingernail clippers from airplanes makes about as much sense as keeping people a thousand feet back from the water at all times just in case of a tsunami. Finding the right balance is everything, and our record has been hit-and-miss. We need a renewed call for open, honest, and fact-based dialogue on these issues.
We can learn to live with uncertainty without being ruled by fear.
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March 21, 2006
There's probably stuff like this all over the place
Via CNN:
NEW YORK (CNN) -- New York workers have discovered a trove of Cold War-era supplies within the masonry of the Brooklyn Bridge, a cache meant to aid in survival efforts in the event of nuclear attack.
...
Some containers were marked with two dates notorious in the annals of the Cold War: 1957, when the Soviet Union launched the first satellite into space, and 1962, the year of the Cuban missile crisis when the two superpowers may have come closest to war.
Salin said one of the containers was marked, "To be opened after attack by the enemy."
...
"It's hard to believe that the space was meant to be a fallout shelter, because it is not underground and light and air does get inside it," she said. "Could it have been a bunker for the mayor? We don't know."
I'd have to imagine that the mayor would have a better bunker than the Brooklyn Bridge. Maybe it was some government employee's private stash. One can only wonder how many such treasures await discovery in little closets and bunkers that time forgot.
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February 23, 2006
Iwo Jima Anniversary
Sixty-one years ago today, the Marines captured Mount Suribachi and this photo by Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press become one of the most reproduced photos in history. This photo and many others are in the public domain and can be seen at the National Archives.
"On This Day" from the NY Times reminds us of the anniversary.
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February 03, 2006
The day the music died
Forty-seven years ago this morning, the airplane carrying Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. Richardson ("The Big Bopper") crashed just a few minutes after taking off from the Mason City, Iowa airport. They had just played the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake and were heading to Moorhead, Minnesota (the town where I would go to college some three decades later).
Buddy Holly was 22 years old, Richardson was 28, and Valens was only 17. Elvis was in the military when they died. They would have never heard of the Beatles or the Rolling Stones. I often wonder what would be different about the American music scene if they had lived to meet John, Paul, George, and Ringo, play at Woodstock, and start growing grey hairs. Though we can never know the answer, the question itself is part of their legacy. It's as if you can see that question in the picture of the smiling, bespectacled musician--forever young--his music frozen in time, unchanging, for future generations to discover anew.
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January 28, 2006
To the memory of the Challenger crew
Twenty years ago today, the nation was stunned by the loss of the space shuttle Challenger and her crew of seven astronauts. I was 13 years old. At the time I did not yet have my pilot's license though I was already dreaming of it. Flying is one of the most thrilling things I can think of. The idea of space travel... well, there are no words for the feeling I have about it.
My 4 year old son and I enjoy watching the International Space Station on clear nights as it goes overhead. He knows there are people up there. In fact, the world he will grow up knowing is a world in which people have always been in space. There have been people in orbit every single day of his life. We also enjoy looking at the moon and the planets with our telescope (114mm Newtonian reflector). He knows the names of all the planets. (Saturn is our favorite.) Maybe he will want to go to space. Maybe my two year old daughter (who is still a little young for the telescope) will want to. Though the risks would be scary for a parent, it would make me very proud.
There is a feeling that you get when you fly solo in an airplane. You are alone, and yet there is no feeling of loneliness. You are as free as you will ever be while you have breath. Going into space must provide that feeling multiplied a hundred-fold. We earthbound people can only imagine what it must be like. Those who go into space not only pursue scientific knowledge. They also pursue a dream as old as mankind and as new as a preschooler looking through a telescope for the first time--the dream of leaving this world and taking our place among the stars.
The Challenger crew has taken their place among the stars.
The following poem has a special place in the hearts of pilots. It was quoted by Ronald Reagan in his eulogy of the Challenger crew. The words evoke feelings of joy and wonder, and that is an appropriate way to remember all who give their lives for the dream.
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
"High Flight"
--John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
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November 09, 2005
On this day in 1989...
...the Berlin Wall was opened. In the days that followed, it was broken apart with sledgehammers.
There's a piece of the Berlin Wall at Eureka College, Ronald Reagan's alma mater, not far from here.
Whatever your political leaning, it is a sobering experience to walk around to the back side--the side without the graffiti--to touch the blank concrete.
Hat tip to Cold Spring Shops for reminding us of the day.
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August 20, 2005
Tuskegee Airmen hold their last convention
The story of the Tuskegee Airmen is one of those stories that not enough people know about. Alas, a time is coming when the story will only be able to be told second-hand. From the Chicago Tribune:
ORLANDO -- Moments after retired Maj. William Watkins set aside his walker and sat down in the hotel lobby, a woman carrying a poster of him and other Tuskegee Airmen rushed up to get his autograph.
A number of African-American Air Force officers also gathered around the 92-year-old, eager to hear tales about World War II from one of the storied blacks who defied expectations in a segregated military.
Watkins, of Columbus, Ohio, is one of 80 airmen at the annual convention this week of Tuskegee Airmen Inc. It is estimated that only 200 of the original 13,000 airmen are still alive.
The stark reality of those numbers led to the decision that the 34th convention will be the last of its kind. Next year, Tuskegee Airmen Inc. will join the International Black Aerospace Council at its convention.
"Our seniors are more frail," said Cora Tess Spooner, president of the Tuskegee group. Some came to this final gathering in wheelchairs, others dragged around oxygen tanks, a few were accompanied by nurse's aides. "Some of them don't come because of economic issues--they are on fixed incomes.
...
Tuskegee Airmen is the nickname given to the men who trained in Tuskegee, Ala., one of the only places in the 1940s that blacks interested in military aviation could train. About 1,000 became pilots. Some were trained as airplane mechanics and radio control workers and for other support jobs, but all were considered Tuskegee Airmen.
Today, there are fewer than 300 African-American pilots in the U.S. Air Force, said Spooner, whose father-in-law was an airman.
When the airmen started, the War Department said black men couldn't be trained to pilot aircraft.
"The first thing one has to appreciate is the context in which these men occurred," said Alvin Thornton, a political science professor at Howard University. "One, there was a perception about the intellectual inadequacy of African-Americans. Secondly, there was a perception that African-Americans did not have the same will to defend and fight for democracy and freedom."
With the first class graduating in 1942, the airmen became role models, Thornton said.
"The Tuskegee Airmen allowed black people to hold their heads up," he said. "You heard examples where these young, professional fighter pilots were so impressive."
After World War II, many of the men went their separate ways and lost touch with each other. But nearly all dedicated themselves to mentoring black children and encouraging them to seek careers in aviation.
Learn more about the Tuskegee Airmen here.
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August 15, 2005
August 15 is quite a day in history
Depending on your time zone in the world, V-J Day is usually celebrated on the 14th or 15th, but August 15th has seen a lot of other action.
India and Pakistan became independent (1947)
Macbeth was killed (1057)
Napoleon was born (1769)
Will Rogers and Wiley Post killed in plane crash (1935)
The movie "The Wizard of Oz" premiered (1939)
Woodstock got underway on Max Yasgur's farm in upstate New York (1969)
Nixon announces a 90 day freeze on wages, prices, and rents (1971)
Other birthdays include Justice Steven Breyer, Ethel Barrymore, T. E. Lawrence, and Princess Anne.
These bits of trivia are courtesy of On This Day, a feature of the New York Times.
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