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.

Last year I posted this fantastical map of WWI Europe from Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld. This week I read the book, which I found to be an excellent escape. It was supposed to be nightstand reading, but I couldn’t put it down.

Rather than a graphic novel in the Dark Knight and Watchmen style, this is an illustrated novel. The hardcover is thick, but is a quick read with black and white illustrations every 5 or 10 pages. I think the audiobook would be really entertaining, but the illustrations make the printed version worthwhile. If you have an imaginative 15 year old in the house, this book is highly recommended. I am sure many in the CA community — steeped in history, science and technology — would also get a kick out of this book.

The only criticisms I have — aside from the negative characterisation of Churchill — are technical: character development is rather unsubtle, and mixed metaphors run rampant as a school of fish. That said, this book is not supposed to be Chaucer. It is meant for young readers and is thus fast-paced with lots of action. It is a fantastical adventure that is also character building. Westerfeld’s strength is in descriptive detail. He has filled his alternate reality with historical hooks and clever technological innovations. As stated in the Epilogue: “That’s the nature of steampunk, blending future and past.”

The world of Leviathan is highly imaginative and engaging. I can’t wait for the second installment.

Below is a trailer featuring many of the illustrations in the book. See more at Scott Westerfeld’s blog.

“… they also have large corporate parties down here.”

Stalin-themed corporate parties? Pleasant. From Tsar Podcast.

Nils Gilman posted a series of “nonsense beliefs” on his Twitter account, but didn’t reproduce them on his blog for discussion, so I have taken the liberty to reproduce them here as I think Twitter is not a good forum for debating such propositions. Here are the nine:

1) In the economic system, what you can’t count doesn’t count.
2) The environment is an externality—it doesn’t ‘count’.
3) What can’t be measured can’t be reasoned about: it’s either economics or irrationality.
4) In economic terms, sacrificing near-term gains for possible long-term benefits for posterity is irrational.
5) Probability and harm can be priced, and so every risk has its price.
6) Everything has its price.
7) By definition, profit maximisation is social responsibility.
8) By definition, markets are efficient and regulation inefficient.
9) We can use the past to model and predict the future.

My quick take just to get the discussion rolling: as any historian will tell you, context is important (1 and 2); I am iffy on 3 since concepts (justice, morality) can be reasoned about but metrics are handy especially when policy-making; yes on 4; i don’t get 5; 6 is not nonsense (except in quantum mechanics) since price doesn’t necessarily mean gold; 7 I agree; 8 is a strawman argument so I agree; 9 conflates “prediction” with “forecasting”, which I am not sure Nils is clear on.

Since these are all short tweets the points are difficult to qualify and we must tread carefully. That said, I think it is a good check list for examining bias, and a good discussion starter.

What do Fantastic Mr. Fox, The BFG, Pan American Airways and James Bond have in common? Celebrated children’s author Roald Dahl.

Before writing his popular children’s tales including the above and others such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach, Dahl was an RAF pilot in World War II. Early in the war he was injured and reassigned to Washington, DC where he worked undercover as a spy for the British Security Coordination with James Bond creator Ian Fleming and famous philosopher Isaiah Berlin, all under the direction of the “Intrepid” William Stephenson. The mission was to get the Americans into the war. All the details can be read in The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington.

The book focuses on only a handful of years in Dahl’s life, but much of its content involves the activities of those who surrounded Dahl in wartime Washington. There is an amazing breadth of characters, comparable only to the high stature it reaches with the likes of president Franklin D. Roosevelt, Henry Morgenthau, a young LBJ and writer Ernest Hemingway making appearances. Much of the story surrounds the eccentricities of vice president Henry Wallace and the problems they caused during the 1944 presidential election, and Dahl’s close relationship with Texas newspaper tycoon Charles E. Marsh. It is sometimes difficult to keep track of all the characters but the author, Jennet Conant, a magazine writer by trade, writes well and the story reads easily. Oftentimes it reads like one of the social gossip rags of the time, detailing the bawdy adventures of the moneyed movers and shakers of the political class in Washington.

A central issue in the book is the political battle over post-war air routes. The civilian air industry was a business taking off and companies like Pan Am wanted control over it. The negotiations involved many national representatives: some free marketers, some monopolists, some on the take. Be sure that the intelligence services had their hand in steering the negotiations to their own nations advantage. Dahl, as a pilot himself, was assigned to keep track of elite Washington opinion on the civilian aviation problem, and report back to the Crown.

It is amazing to think that such negotiations were taking place in the middle of a war that no one was sure when it would end. This book does an excellent job of showing us the kinds of things that were happening in the shadow of the war. Oftentimes, people think that when war begins — especially total war — everything else stops. Clausewitz warned that this was mistaken, and The Irregulars superbly illustrates: politics never stops, not even for war.

Educate a boy and you educate only that boy, educate a girl and you educate her entire family.

— Sign in a new school for girls in Afghanistan, as reported by Irshad Manji in a speech at Tufts University, March 30, 2005 (cf. Breaking the Spell, pp. 411)

Bat bombs, corkscew tanks, guns that shoot around corners, aircraft carriers made out of ice and wood pulp or landing strips built on top of zeppelins. Crazy stuff that goes beyond war tubas but ranks up there with the First Earth Battalion. Check it out: Weird Military Innovations: 10 Crazy Weapons of War

A note about the anti tank dogs. I don’t know if this is true but I heard a story about the first time the Soviets deployed these dogs on the battlefield. Once unleashed the dogs ran out towards the enemy, paused and then turned back, running under the tanks of the Soviets! The plan had backfired in the worst possible way. You see, the dogs had been trained to run under tanks by putting raw meat under training tanks. Soviet training tanks. When the dogs went to war they looked at all the different types of tanks on the battlefield and knew “where the meat was” so to speak, and ended up turning on their masters.

ADDENDUM: Wikipedia knows all!

Soviets used their own diesel-engine tanks to train the dogs rather than German tanks, which had gasoline engines. As the dogs relied on their acute sense of smell, the dogs sought out familiar Soviet tanks instead of strange-smelling German tanks.

Qom: the most religious city in Iran; the well-spring of the Islamic revolution; and the location of the latest secret nuclear facility to be discovered. Years ago I passed through Qom on my way back to Tehran from central Iran. Earlier that day I was surprised to spot anti-aircraft and SAM sites sprinkled alongside a gently sloping mountain. It was Natanz, another nuclear facility built partially underground.

More recently Graeme Wood of The Atlantic visited Qom and was saw that:

Despite their conservatism, Qom’s pilgrims seemed motivated not by passion for Ahmadinejad—I never heard anyone say his name, though the “Leader” Ali Khamenei was mentioned repeatedly over outdoor loudspeakers—but by a total denial of politics, and a preference for something much simpler.

One observation of Iranians, universal in Western books, articles and travelogues, is that of the incessant need to talk politics — over tea, in the bazaar or even in a taxicab. This is in stark contrast to other Middle Eastern countries like Syria or Saudi Arabia. It has been noted as a sign of a democratic spirit. Iran’s parliament dates back to 1906, and is one of the oldest in the region. I engaged in countless conversations on politics, with both North Tehran liberals and self-proclaimed Muslim fundamentalists.

Thus Wood’s observation of “a total denial of politics” in Qom struck me. I am curious as to whether this has always been a characteristic of Qom, or is a recent development. Moreover, the alternative: since the beginning of the Green Movement, has the daily political chatter in the Persian Street been quietened? Can people talk openly about politics over tea and in the bazaar without fear of being turned in as a member of the Sea of Green?

Please enlighten me, dear reader.

Last summer Michael J. Totten — intrepid independent foreign correspondent — interviewed Robert D. Kaplan. Last week, over “glasses of Johnny Walker Black Label” he got a chance to talk to another hero writer of mine: Christopher Hitchens.

Most people annotate their introduction of Hitchens with such a comment as: “I don’t agree with everything he says, but…” I, on the otherhand will be less furtive in my introductions by saying that I greatly admire Mr Hitchens, and believe him to be universally respected for his rhetorical ability, both in speech and in letters. A good man to have on your side, but you must never assume that he will be. But I digress.

Totten’s interview is entertaining: religion, morality, censorship, terrorism, democracy, and travel stories abound. I mean who wouldn’t want to read an interview with a quotes such as:

• Islamophobia is vague and linguistically clumsy. A phobia is an irrational fear. My fear of Islamic terrorism is not irrational. It’s quite well-founded.


• I don’t want to be sitting on a plane in Detroit and wondering if some craphound is going to blow me up.


• … occasionally, carving up grandfathers and granddaughters with an axe on New Year’s Eve can be okay if it’s done to protect the reputation of a seventh century Arabian man who heard voices.


• If you can give the name Mohammad to a shitting, screaming, nuisance of a kid—which somebody does 5,000 times a day—then I think you should be able to give it to the class’s favorite teddy bear.

Poor Totten can barely get a word in edgewise! Though it must be said that it is a rarity that Christopher Hitchens does not let the world know what he really thinks. Enjoy!

I look forward to part two. Part II is now live!

Christopher Hitchens’s latest book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is available in fine online bookstores everywhere. I believe he is currently working on an autobiography.

This guy is freaked out and I don’t blame him!