James Brody
December 26th, 2008, 11:49 AM
Irony, increased complexity sometimes leads to increased dependence on a particular set of environments and sometimes does not. Spengler and Toynbee were correct that complex organizations come apart but the controlling variables are neither time nor religion. Watts & Strogatz (1998) and Barabasi (2002) note that strategic attacks are more effective than random ones; Csermely (2006) and Garas et al (2008) point out that weak links can maintain a network or make the perforations at which it comes apart.
Thus, I have a lot of fun noting the perforations and guessing some of the new combinations that might form.
But, so do a lot of people.
George Will, for example, opens: "Never a stickler for rhetorical ruffles and flourishes, the president simply said: "This sucker could go down." He was referring to the economy, which took the president's party down with it. In the second quarter, General Motors lost $181,000 a minute. Would you buy a used car company? Didn't think so. But in 2009, you probably will, if you are a taxpayer.
"By 2010, you will be able to buy the plug-in electric Chevrolet Volt. Although it is designed to reduce America's dependency on foreign oil, a GM spokesman said: "There is a fear that if we position this as a 'pro-American' car, it will upset some of the environmentally conscious crowd." Heaven forfend."
(Heaven "forfend"! Neat word, George!)
He continues a bit further along the page:
"Even with a bum knee Tiger Woods was the best golfer. No one notified Michael Phelps that it was considered evolution when our Homo sapiens predecessors crawled out of the water."
Juxtaposition is fun for anyone with a functioning right cortex, whether artists, columnists, or crossword puzzle editors. More examples of fun in headlines from Pravda 12/24/08.
"People flush 580 billion liters of urine every three months....Russias economic and financial meltdown continues apace...Ten most horrible places on earth (Philadelphia's Mutter Museum heads the list)...Anorectic models inspire German photographer (a legacy of the holocaust?)...Russian dentists transplant fang to Siberian tiger (a bid for Putin's business?)....Alliance to the West brings nothing but suffering to Ukraine's economy...Doctors kill beauty queen during liposuction operation...Weird hairy females seduce hot-blooded Caucasian men...Russia modernizes its superpowerful Bulava missile to crush USA's ABM system...Putin says Russia doesn't want return to cold war...Moon exploration shut down because of aliens...The mysterious shadow: code name Obama...Young woman grows ugly nipple on her foot...Darwin had only theology degree..."
There's lots more at http://english.pravda.ru/allnews_en.html. And probably far more if you read the Russian version!
Finally, company for George Will's America and Pravda's Russia: Poland.
These "people of the fields" lived for generations on cabbage, potatoes, and black bread with, sometimes, a little meat on Sunday. Serfs, probably hungry ones who stuck pitchforks into nobility, proclaimed, "We belong to you but the land belongs to us." Catholic, educational, and linguistic stability materialized despite centuries of Lituanian, Russian, Prussian, and Austrian rule and even 127 years of nonexistence.
The Poles who write and legislate have affirmed for 300 years that individuals have a legal right to oppose popular will, to defame their enemies, and to insult their politicians. The Russians had problems with this disposition, the Austrians were ambivalent, the Prussians encouraged it! Something in the Poles' Cossack (from a Turkish word for "free man") ancestry made a huge percentage of Poles and Ukrainians into defenders of individualism and self-chosen environments. In an impressive display of "ground-up" emergence, 97% of her people today speak Polish despite 127 years when no one acre consistently remained "Poland." (Unfortunately, her economy grows but her young move west, her elderly remain right where they are, and Polish males have valiantly filled armies for Russia, German, Austria, and the United States but never with any great effect, for Poland itself.)
According to the Warsaw Voice, Lech Walensa (Vawensa!), the legendary Solidarity trade union leader who went on to become Poland's president, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for his leading workers instead of farmers to stick pitchforks in their Russian bosses.
The Warsaw Voice remarks further: "We have been together with Poland and our readers for 20 years. This is an extraordinary gift of fortune - to be the chroniclers of two magnificent decades that will remain unparalleled in Poland's history for a long time to come. Not all the events, not all the trends and not all the people that have appeared during those 20 breakthrough years can be considered - to use the witty and perverse language of Lech Walensa - "positive pluses." But a lack of "negative pluses" would mean that we live in paradise, and so are no longer alive." Http://www.warsawvoice.pl/view/19562.
References:
Babel, Nathalie (2002) Editor. The Complete Works of Isaac Babel. NY: Norton. Her father was shot on Beria's orders in 1940 and declared to never exist. His files were opened in the mid--50s and his daughter, Nathalie, brought him to life for all of us. Isaac Babel was a true believer Bolshevik who told too honestly the outcomes of Bolshevik decisions. Strongly lauded by Nicholai Gogol and Jim Brody: give this one too to your kids when they are old enough.
Barabási, A-L (2002) Linked: The New Science of Networks. NY: Perseus.
Brody J (2008) Rebellion: Physics to Personal Will. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse.
Csermely, Peter (2006) Weak Links: Stabilizers of Complex Systems from Proteins to Social Networks. NY: Springer.
Davies, Norman Poland: God's Playground. Esp Vol 2: 1795-Present. Vol 2 is available at Alibris in new condition for a couple of bucks. And there is plenty of grazing on more than potatoes and cabbage to be had in Volume 1 of the same title and price.
Garas, Antonios, Panos Argyrakis, and Shlomo Havlin (2008) The structural role of strong and weak links in a financial network. arXiv 0805.2477v1 [Physics.soc.ph], May 16.
Kuznetsov, Anatol (1970) Babi Yar NY: Washington Square. The Ukrainians, like the Poles, also had trouble with other people's kids breaking things and killing 33,771 Jews in two days at the end of September, 1941, and before the war ended, probably 70,000 others. Babi Yar is a huge gully, about 2 miles north of center Kiev. (Versions of Kuznetsov's book, started when he was about 14 years old, dated prior to 1970 were censored by the Russians: the final version is available because Kuznetsov smuggled out films of his text when he left Russia.) Save a copy to give to your children when they are old enough.
Watts, D. & Strogatz, S. (1998) Collective dynamics of 'small-world' networks. Nature. 393: 440-442.
Will, George (2008) "Rod, Eliot, Yuck" Newsweek.Http://www.newsweek.com/id/176299
If you're annoyed with American holiday schlock, go to to http://www.listenlive.eu/index.html, click on "Poland" and find three screens of radio stations. Also note that a noticeable proportion is marked "Catholic" or "Christian." I'm particularly fond of "RMF Classic" from Krakow: Brahms Second Symphony is sometimes followed by "The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly" but today is nonstop hymns in Polish and English! Beautiful stuff, no commercials. (You will need a VLC media player, easily downloaded from sources at the bottom of the site.) One station, Polska Stacj Country, plays C&W as it was when guys did nearly all the singing and about things that impressed cowpokes, cossacks, or farmers with pitchforks.
Thus, I have a lot of fun noting the perforations and guessing some of the new combinations that might form.
But, so do a lot of people.
George Will, for example, opens: "Never a stickler for rhetorical ruffles and flourishes, the president simply said: "This sucker could go down." He was referring to the economy, which took the president's party down with it. In the second quarter, General Motors lost $181,000 a minute. Would you buy a used car company? Didn't think so. But in 2009, you probably will, if you are a taxpayer.
"By 2010, you will be able to buy the plug-in electric Chevrolet Volt. Although it is designed to reduce America's dependency on foreign oil, a GM spokesman said: "There is a fear that if we position this as a 'pro-American' car, it will upset some of the environmentally conscious crowd." Heaven forfend."
(Heaven "forfend"! Neat word, George!)
He continues a bit further along the page:
"Even with a bum knee Tiger Woods was the best golfer. No one notified Michael Phelps that it was considered evolution when our Homo sapiens predecessors crawled out of the water."
Juxtaposition is fun for anyone with a functioning right cortex, whether artists, columnists, or crossword puzzle editors. More examples of fun in headlines from Pravda 12/24/08.
"People flush 580 billion liters of urine every three months....Russias economic and financial meltdown continues apace...Ten most horrible places on earth (Philadelphia's Mutter Museum heads the list)...Anorectic models inspire German photographer (a legacy of the holocaust?)...Russian dentists transplant fang to Siberian tiger (a bid for Putin's business?)....Alliance to the West brings nothing but suffering to Ukraine's economy...Doctors kill beauty queen during liposuction operation...Weird hairy females seduce hot-blooded Caucasian men...Russia modernizes its superpowerful Bulava missile to crush USA's ABM system...Putin says Russia doesn't want return to cold war...Moon exploration shut down because of aliens...The mysterious shadow: code name Obama...Young woman grows ugly nipple on her foot...Darwin had only theology degree..."
There's lots more at http://english.pravda.ru/allnews_en.html. And probably far more if you read the Russian version!
Finally, company for George Will's America and Pravda's Russia: Poland.
These "people of the fields" lived for generations on cabbage, potatoes, and black bread with, sometimes, a little meat on Sunday. Serfs, probably hungry ones who stuck pitchforks into nobility, proclaimed, "We belong to you but the land belongs to us." Catholic, educational, and linguistic stability materialized despite centuries of Lituanian, Russian, Prussian, and Austrian rule and even 127 years of nonexistence.
The Poles who write and legislate have affirmed for 300 years that individuals have a legal right to oppose popular will, to defame their enemies, and to insult their politicians. The Russians had problems with this disposition, the Austrians were ambivalent, the Prussians encouraged it! Something in the Poles' Cossack (from a Turkish word for "free man") ancestry made a huge percentage of Poles and Ukrainians into defenders of individualism and self-chosen environments. In an impressive display of "ground-up" emergence, 97% of her people today speak Polish despite 127 years when no one acre consistently remained "Poland." (Unfortunately, her economy grows but her young move west, her elderly remain right where they are, and Polish males have valiantly filled armies for Russia, German, Austria, and the United States but never with any great effect, for Poland itself.)
According to the Warsaw Voice, Lech Walensa (Vawensa!), the legendary Solidarity trade union leader who went on to become Poland's president, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for his leading workers instead of farmers to stick pitchforks in their Russian bosses.
The Warsaw Voice remarks further: "We have been together with Poland and our readers for 20 years. This is an extraordinary gift of fortune - to be the chroniclers of two magnificent decades that will remain unparalleled in Poland's history for a long time to come. Not all the events, not all the trends and not all the people that have appeared during those 20 breakthrough years can be considered - to use the witty and perverse language of Lech Walensa - "positive pluses." But a lack of "negative pluses" would mean that we live in paradise, and so are no longer alive." Http://www.warsawvoice.pl/view/19562.
References:
Babel, Nathalie (2002) Editor. The Complete Works of Isaac Babel. NY: Norton. Her father was shot on Beria's orders in 1940 and declared to never exist. His files were opened in the mid--50s and his daughter, Nathalie, brought him to life for all of us. Isaac Babel was a true believer Bolshevik who told too honestly the outcomes of Bolshevik decisions. Strongly lauded by Nicholai Gogol and Jim Brody: give this one too to your kids when they are old enough.
Barabási, A-L (2002) Linked: The New Science of Networks. NY: Perseus.
Brody J (2008) Rebellion: Physics to Personal Will. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse.
Csermely, Peter (2006) Weak Links: Stabilizers of Complex Systems from Proteins to Social Networks. NY: Springer.
Davies, Norman Poland: God's Playground. Esp Vol 2: 1795-Present. Vol 2 is available at Alibris in new condition for a couple of bucks. And there is plenty of grazing on more than potatoes and cabbage to be had in Volume 1 of the same title and price.
Garas, Antonios, Panos Argyrakis, and Shlomo Havlin (2008) The structural role of strong and weak links in a financial network. arXiv 0805.2477v1 [Physics.soc.ph], May 16.
Kuznetsov, Anatol (1970) Babi Yar NY: Washington Square. The Ukrainians, like the Poles, also had trouble with other people's kids breaking things and killing 33,771 Jews in two days at the end of September, 1941, and before the war ended, probably 70,000 others. Babi Yar is a huge gully, about 2 miles north of center Kiev. (Versions of Kuznetsov's book, started when he was about 14 years old, dated prior to 1970 were censored by the Russians: the final version is available because Kuznetsov smuggled out films of his text when he left Russia.) Save a copy to give to your children when they are old enough.
Watts, D. & Strogatz, S. (1998) Collective dynamics of 'small-world' networks. Nature. 393: 440-442.
Will, George (2008) "Rod, Eliot, Yuck" Newsweek.Http://www.newsweek.com/id/176299
If you're annoyed with American holiday schlock, go to to http://www.listenlive.eu/index.html, click on "Poland" and find three screens of radio stations. Also note that a noticeable proportion is marked "Catholic" or "Christian." I'm particularly fond of "RMF Classic" from Krakow: Brahms Second Symphony is sometimes followed by "The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly" but today is nonstop hymns in Polish and English! Beautiful stuff, no commercials. (You will need a VLC media player, easily downloaded from sources at the bottom of the site.) One station, Polska Stacj Country, plays C&W as it was when guys did nearly all the singing and about things that impressed cowpokes, cossacks, or farmers with pitchforks.