China’s decade long surge into becoming an economic power house and global heavy hitter has given rise to a myriad of theories and assertions regarding the role of Asia in this century. It has been widely touted that the 21st century will be “Asia’s Century” as the US fades from virtual hegemony and hyperpower and joins it’s European cousins in the ranks of imperial has beens. That the on going economic crisis embattling what I’ll term the “Old Order of Global Primacy” has left China’s 10% annual economic growth unscathed seems to be validating those theories and assertions.

Map via Wellesly College Chinese Politics

I was thinking about a reverse Facebook, an unFacebook . The key difference is that this is not a social network that is populated by willing participants, but populated with people by information gatherers.

For example, I meet you, and unbeknownst to you, I add you to my unFacebook. I meet another person and add them. Later I find out that you and he are business partners. I then “friend” you to him on my unFacebook. I give access to this database to all the people in my organization and send them out with iPhones and a handy little app that they can use to snap facial photos, grab a GPS point for last location, and fill in some quick details about subjects. Sometimes my people use their iPhones to show photos of subjects to other people to verify names or aliases, corroborate last known locations, and make links with other subjects in the database. Multiple aliases could be resolved through face recognition software. Multiple spellings could be resolved through morphological analysis. Personal details, links, and geolocation data can all be captured on the go in a very simple and familiar system (everybody knows how to use Facebook). As these bits of disparate information come into my UnFacebook, I use this data for an advanced type of link analysis, or scalable social network analysis (SSNA). It seems to me that a system like this would be handy for soldiers fighting an insurgency.

I would assume that law enforcement organizations have something like this that has been the result of a long evolution of link analysis technology. Doing a little research I found a list of tools used by the NSA in James Bamford’s The Shadow Factory (pp. 149): PatternTracer, Agility, AMHAS, Anchory, ArcView, Fastscope, Hightide, Hombase, Intelink, Octave math, Document Management Center, Dishfire, CREST, Pinwale, COASTLINE, SNACKS, Cadence, Gamut, Mainway, Marina, Osis, Puzzlecube, Surrey, Tuningfork, Xkeyscore, and Unified Tasking Tool. This is simply a list of tools used by the NSA. I could not find out what many of these did. That may be because they are specific to the NSA, or historical with no trace left on the net. ArcView is the only social network analysis tool I could confirm. Pinwale is data-mining software, which can be used for SSNA. But this is beside the point.

The military has its own needs and different ways of collecting intel than domestic law enforcement agencies, or even the NSA. With all the COIN work Western militaries have been conducting in the past decade, a flexible, automated, unFacebook-style link analysis application could be a benefit. Such an application probably exists, and if anyone has some information on it, please share. If not, this is a potential market for an enterprising startup. Please contact me if you would like to collaborate. ;)

Be Like Reagan, says Kaplan. More specifically:

Iran is the new Eastern Europe during the last phase of the Cold War. Like Poland during the heady days of Solidarity in the early 1980s, the protestors in the streets of Iranian cities are not crazed ethnics demonstrating on behalf of some illiberal blood-and-soil nationalism, but enlightened, technologically savvy multitudes crying out for universal values of democracy and human rights. As such, they have captured the imagination of liberal intellectuals in the West. Even as the United States is tied down with 200,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran promises to be the signal issue of our time.

Rare for Kaplan, he lays out a policy prescription for the US President—well, be like Reagan, but more specifically:

Given that the regime could last another month or another decade, what is President Barack Obama to do? Throughout his first year in office, he’s attempted the Nixonian détente approach: talk, work back channels, get the two governments to negotiate on the basis of naked national interests. That approach seems to have failed—less because it doesn’t make sense than because the Iranian regime is so internally divided that it can’t adequately respond. That leaves us with the Reaganite approach: be open to far-reaching talks, as President Ronald Reagan was with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, but do nothing to legitimize the Iranian system. And, throughout any discussions, adopt the rhetoric of democracy. Make it clear that Washington is on the same side of history as the demonstrators, but also make it clear that the door is open to negotiations with those in power. And to avoid the risk of undermining the demonstrators by overt American support of them (thus catering to regime’s basest conspiracy theories), Obama should talk about democracy only in general, albeit pointed, terms, without directly referring to Iran. That is, he should get the language of universal values out over Iranian air waves as much as possible: encouraging the demonstrators without specifically backing them.

We are not in control. But something wonderful has begun: nothing less than the most positive development in the Middle East since President Anwar Sadat went to Jerusalem. And while that daring gesture led only to a cold bilateral peace between Egypt and Israel, the Green Revolution in Iran carries the potential to unleash a true Islamic Reformation.

Yet another guest post on history and theology by occasional guest contributor Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace.

The story of Sir Isaac Newton stumbling upon the nature of gravity after seeing an apple fall to earth is one of the most enduring, and endearing, anecdotes of modern physics. Newton (1642-1727) was a genius with many skills. He laid the groundwork for classical mechanics, which usefully describes all macroscopic phenomena affecting our daily lives, built the first reflecting telescope, showed that white light was a mixture of colors, and invented calculus. His famous Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Principia) was to physics what Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species was for biology.

Less well known is that Newton was a deeply religious Christian who wrote more on Biblical interpretation than he did on science. In particular he was very uneasy about the doctrine of the Trinity, and wrote a weighty tome entitled An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture. Most of his ire was aimed at the first letter of John (1 John 5:7), which in the King James’ Bible reads “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” By comparing early manuscripts in many languages, he came to the conclusion that the final phrase was a late addition. His writings were so controversial that he dared not publish them during his lifetime, yet modern scholars concur, and the Revised New Standard Version has been revised to end with, “these three agree.”

Newton also had a bone to pick with the doctrine esposed by Bishop Athenasius (293-373) of Alexandria (Egypt) over the question of whether Christ was a different ‘substance’ from the Father. Athenasius proposed a robust Triniarian creed, as opposed to the doctrine that there was a time when only God the Father existed, and that Christ was in some small way subservient to him. Here again, Newton wrote a spirited critique—Paradoxical Questions Concerning the Morals and Actions of Athanasius and his Followers in the 1690s—and once again, history has him on the winning side. Athenasius’ creed is consigned to the archives of historical documents.

Today these issues of Christian theology seem arcane and tedious, but don’t think for a moment that Newton’s hesitation to publish during his lifetime was whimsical. His views in the 17th century were subject to prosecution, as it was an offense to deny any of the persons of the Trinity to be God, punishable with loss of office. Newton’s caution was clearly warranted, as a friend lost his professorship at Cambridge for this very reason in 1711. By comparison, he got off lucky—an eighteen-year-old student, Thomas Aikenhead, was hanged at Edinburgh, Scotland in 1697 for denying the Trinity.

Newton’s biography leaves two lessons to today’s students of history.

First, the fathers of the natural science—Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, and :ahem: Alfred Russel Wallace—did not find natural science to be incompatible with their Christian faith. If they merely attended church and nodded agreement at religious thought of the time, it might be easy to dismiss them as charletans who stuck to the thought of the time to protect themselves. Yet this was far from the case—all three wrote careful engagements of religion at the time, and all had unique takes on theology. This seems hard to consider when we see the vocal vitriol of those such as geneticist Richard Dawkins, who claims title to Darwin’s legacy of evolution.

Second, when we recoil at today’s Islamic religious zealots, such as the Ayatollah of Iran ordering the assassination of Salman Rushdie for blasphemy, public commenters think this is evidence of the intollerance of Islam. Yet we might stop and ponder what future generations will think of some of our attempts in the past of enforcing orthodoxy and the results it caused in spreading fear and stifiling free expression. How will history view us both centuries from now? After all, Rushdie survives to this day and has claimed celebrity status overseas. Thomas Aikenhead was not nearly so lucky.

If you can get past the initial vulgarity, this jolly little skit is most amusing.

I believe the Prime Minister is Robert Cecil, an (in)famous traditional, aristocratic conservative.

I tweeted this but it is too awesome not to share here: The world’s first Swiss Army knife has been revealed – made 1,800 years before its modern counterpart.

Makes you wonder if there was ever a Primus MacGyverus…

Via William Gibson, aka @GreatDismal.

Or so says Christopher Hitchens in a compelling piece in Slate on North Korea. Part reminiscence, part reconsidertion, and part book review, Hitchens praises the book The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters, recently written by B.R. Myers, in which Hitchens repeats Myer’s theory that communism in North Korea is dead—its most recent constitution drops all mention of the word and there is no dictatorship of the proletariat. Instead, Pyongyang operates like a textbook fascist totalitarian government, maintained by slave labor, and based on racism and xenophobia. (Ironically, many of the principles may be carried over from Japanese imperialism.)

I think the population’s ignorance about their state of affairs is overblown, and I don’t think that Hitchens’ one racist, xenophobic tour guide is quite as representative of the population as he claims to think, and I think that in the past few years the people of the DPRK have learned that their government is dirt poor compared to their southern neighbor. (The country recently backtracked on its currency devaluation after it unleashed public outrage, a mighty rare occurrance.) But that’s about the only point of optimism in the Korea.

Hitchens’ article is titled A Nation of Racist Dwarfs, and the reason is clear only at the end of the article:

Here are the two most shattering facts about North Korea. First, when viewed by satellite photography at night, it is an area of unrelieved darkness. Barely a scintilla of light is visible even in the capital city. Second, a North Korean is on average six inches shorter than a South Korean. You may care to imagine how much surplus value has been wrung out of such a slave, and for how long, in order to feed and sustain the militarized crime family that completely owns both the country and its people.

But this is what proves Myers right. Unlike previous racist dictatorships, the North Korean one has actually succeeded in producing a sort of new species. Starving and stunted dwarves, living in the dark, kept in perpetual ignorance and fear, brainwashed into the hatred of others, regimented and coerced and inculcated with a death cult: This horror show is in our future, and is so ghastly that our own darling leaders dare not face it and can only peep through their fingers at what is coming.

I think the last line is interesting coming from Hitchens, a left-wing radical who supported advocated invading Iraq on the grounds that the civilized nations of the world will inevitably have to face off against such a tyrant, and that it was better to do so on our terms. He stops short of advocating a strike on North Korea, but the dreaded implication is that we are going to have to deal with the fallout from North Korea’s tragic situation at some point, and the legacy will likely be with us for a century or more.

From Fastcompany.com comes this introduction to the zoomable paper map. Each quarter of the map can be unfolded, revealing zoomed-in detail.

In Christopher Hitchens’s interview with EconTalk about his book Why Orwell Matters, Hitchens praises George Orwell on his “plain honest speech, transparent political positions, detestation for euphemism and falsification” and argues (1:00:54~):

The job of the intellectual, the so-called public intellectuals as we are now for some reason doomed to call it, is or ought to be to say something along the following lines: “It’s more complicated than that… You mustn’t simplify this… There’s more complexity to the subject.” That’s what an intellectual should be doing to public discourse, one thinks. But then there are occasions when it seems to me that the reverse is the case. That actually what the really thoughtful person should be saying is actually: “It’s simple! Do not make complexity here, where none is required.”

You can listen to the above quote (and a bit extra) straight from Hitchens below:

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What an excellent point. Often I find myself exasperated with commentary on the internet which frequently represents the extreme and the childish, with no indication of understanding or nuance. The short-form of the blog only exacerbates the problem. It is almost enough to abandon the enterprise altogether. But all hope for public discourse on the internet is not lost! The point made by Hitchens, that sometimes things are just that simple tempers my irritation. It is a useful aphorism to keep bias in check.

Of course, the problem remains of proper application. The non-complexity argument cannot be used for every issue, and one must recognize its misuse and call it out. Truly complex issues should be handled in other forae, such as academic journals or conferences. But there are issues that can be broached in shorter formats. For example issues of morality or principle. Abandoning relativism, properly defining terms and being transparent in speech (as Orwell advises in his classic essay Politics of the English Language) should lead to clearer understanding in general. Casting off complexity is not drawing an arbitrary line in the proverbial sand (eg. moralizing), but stripping away the unwarranted and getting at the core of an argument. Often simple is not easy, and complexity is used to obfuscate. Nobody ever said being a public intellectual would be easy.

Listen to the entire Christopher Hitchens interview with EconTalk.

Pop quiz for readers—who is the oldest monarch in the world? You might think that the answer is Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, or Emperor Akihito of Japan, or King Rama IX of Thailand, or perhaps someone else.

Give us your answer in the comments, but naturally, no googling or any other form of unfair play, please! I’ll be back with the answer in about 24 hours.

(See past pop quizes here, here and here.)