2011 as a Turning Point

Here is a bit from an interesting article by Rick Salutin in The Toronto Star:

Time magazine named The Protester its 2011 “Person of the Year” because, for decades till recently, most protests “seemed ineffectual and irrelevant.” That’s just silly. You can always find resistance and, depending on how you judge, it’s often relevant. ...

What may have been unique this past year was something else: a collapse of the conventional fountains of authority and respect. In the Arab world that meant governments. But in the West, it meant big business and finance. The brilliance of Occupy Wall Street was that it didn’t go to Washington. The Tea Party did; it directed its rage toward politicians and so it was eclipsed by the Occupiers, who targetted the bankers and financiers who control governments. That clearly resonated, but it wouldn’t have, 20 or 30 years ago.

Think back to the torrent of bestselling business bios and takeover epics like Iacocca or Barbarians at the Gate that began around 1980. Business was the hero; government was the “problem” because it impeded business’s freedom (even if business icons like Lee Iacocca demanded and relied on public money). Pro-business think-tanks proliferated; they disgorged “educational” series, often on public TV, by advocates like Milton Friedman. This accelerated through the Clinton-Bush years and beyond. Disdain for the über-rich was unthinkable until —

It wasn’t the crash of 2008 that led to their fall from grace, nor exposure of the greed and stupidity that required a massive public rescue. It was their graceless reaction to the bailouts: no apologies, remorse or gratitude — even faked; just more arrogance, bonuses, takeovers, foreclosures. Wall Street begged to be occupied. The Unrepentant Financier could have been Time’s Person.

...

Whose authority has also declined? How about Time magazine? The newsmag style used to sound authoritative and serenely confident. Now it sounds inane. “Everywhere, it seems, people said they’d had enough. . . . They dissented; they demanded —” Everywhere? Like out my window right now? And “it seems”? Seems to who(m)? Who makes these claims? What voice would you need to actually say words so pompous and vacuous? You can see Jon Stewart (if he did print) wincing as he reads it. Where did that invincible authority go?

The power of authority diminishes when you can hear credible, contesting voices. Print tends to be monotonal and univocal, unlike the oral tradition that preceded it. But the Internet, though it often lacks actual speech, is oral in the sense of interactive, like a Socratic dialogue. In oral mode, less is often more because speech is so laden with gesture, tone etc.; even something as short as a tweet can suffice. That too diminishes normal authority, which likes to rumble on.

Go read the whole article. It is very thought-provoking.

I personally like the analysis that says that our culture is moving from hierarchy where the "experts" dictate to a collective where everybody's voice gets a chance to contend for attention and authority. I understand the need for an organizing principle to reduce the cacophony, but I'm also aware that elitism tends to suffocate the voice of the dissenter and prevents the rise of the new. We need diversity. Life is a race and we need change and innovation to help us to get from here with all its problems to there with its promise of a better future.

Coaltitions in Canada

The Conservatives are working overtime to make the term "coalition" distasteful, but as these bits from an article by Linda McQuaig make clear, coalitions are quite normal and healthy:

In December 2008, there was an electrifying moment in Canadian politics as the opposition parties threw away their usual scripts and boldly formed a coalition to prevent Stephen Harper’s Conservatives from doing further damage to the Canadian social fabric.

When Harper responded by pressuring the Governor General into shutting down Parliament, thereby denying the opposition the chance to defeat his government, there were demonstrations across the country.

Yet now, with this same Conservative wrecking crew apparently poised to win a majority, there appears to be widespread apathy.

At first glance, this seems puzzling. What’s at stake is enormous. Harper has presided over a mean-spirited, security-obsessed, business-dominated government that silences whistleblowers, defies election finance laws and shows contempt for Parliament. A majority would allow Harper to implement deeply unpopular policies — such as two-tier health care — which he openly championed only a decade ago as leader of the fiercely right-wing National Citizens Coalition.

The current apathy may be driven by a sense of hopelessness. For the past five years, at least 60 per cent of the electorate has supported parties opposed to the far-reaching changes the Conservatives have in mind. Yet elections come and go, and Harper only seems to become more entrenched.

The opposition parties bear some responsibility for failing to use their parliamentary power to oust him. After Harper shut down Parliament, the Liberals simply walked away from the coalition they’d formed with the NDP. Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff launched his current campaign by needlessly ruling out a coalition.

...

Harper’s determined efforts to demonize the notion of a coalition has helped push it off the agenda, even though coalitions are perfectly legitimate, common in European countries, and often more representative than governments elected in our first-past-the-post system.

Harper is now trying to scare off any sort of co-operation among the opposition in the event that the Conservatives win the most seats, yet fail to win a majority.

But in that situation, it would be entirely legitimate — and democratic — for the opposition parties to refuse to support another Harper government. If Ignatieff insists on ruling out a coalition (in which coalition partners jointly form a cabinet), the opposition parties could simply sign an accord. This would allow one party, presumably the Liberals, to assume power, with a binding written agreement to implement certain policies. (And, yes, an accord might include the Bloc — a party that Harper himself actively pursued as a coalition partner in 2004.)

An accord worked well in Ontario in the 1980s, when the Liberals and NDP seized an opportunity following an indecisive 1985 provincial election. Although the long-ruling Conservatives had won more seats and expected to stay in power, the Liberals pushed them out, after signing an accord with the NDP.

That accord called for a number of progressive measures — involving pay equity, social housing and protections for labour, the environment and medicare — which were all passed into law.

And the public liked the results.

In the next election, they rewarded the Liberals with a majority — and the NDP with official opposition status. Three years later, the NDP won a majority, with its leader, Bob Rae, becoming the only NDP premier in Ontario history.

It is tragic that political parties refuse to face the greater evil and instead insist on petty politics. Sadly that is why most people find politicians and politics so distasteful.

Experimental Science Denounces Right Wing Political "Theory"

For nearly 40 years a right wing politics has held sway that argues that humans are selfish and the only "glue" in society is through self-serving contracts. This philosophy argues that any government is a perversion because it claims to act on behalf of "the people" when in fact the only "real" values are greed and selfishness.

But experimental science denies this ridiculous view of human nature. Here is a bit from an interview with Frans Waal in the MDM Wonderlance on-line magazine:

For the past three decades, scientists and popularizers have tried to tell us that we and all other animals are inherently selfish, and that the evolution of morality is an almost impossible affair, since nature cannot provide the caring for others needed for morality. I call this "Veneer Theory," since it assumes that human morality and kindness is just a thin veneer over an otherwise nasty human nature. This is a position that goes back to Thomas Henry Huxley, a contemporary of Darwin, and has been repeated over and over even though Darwin himself disagreed. Darwin saw human morality as continuous with animal social instincts, and my own work is a return to Darwinian thinking. I am supported in this now by many recent studies that indicate that humans (and other animals) are far more altruistic and cooperative than was assumed. The field has radically changed in recent years. Psychologists stress the intuitive way we arrive at moral judgments while activating emotional brain areas, and economists and anthropologists have shown humanity to be far more cooperative, altruistic, and fair than predicted by self-interest models. Similarly, the latest experiments in primatology reveal that our close relatives will do each other favors even if there's nothing in it for themselves.

Chimpanzees and bonobos will voluntarily open a door to offer a companion access to food, even if they lose part of it in the process. And capuchin monkeys are prepared to seek rewards for others, such as when we place two of them side by side, while one of them barters with us with differently colored tokens. One token is ‘selfish,’ and the other ‘prosocial.’ If the bartering monkey selects the selfish token, it receives a small piece of apple for returning it, but its partner gets nothing. The prosocial token, on the other hand, rewards both monkeys. Most monkeys develop an overwhelming preference for the prosocial token, which preference is not due to fear of repercussions, because dominant monkeys (who have least to fear) are the most generous.

And he makes this comment:

I study chimpanzees, bonobos and other primates mainly to learn more about them, but of course they also tell us something about ourselves. We are primates, after all. So, a second goal over the years has become to understand human society and how many aspects that we consider complex -- such as culture, morality, politics -- actually have roots that can be illustrated by the behavior of other primates.

For example, chimpanzee males form a hierarchy in which the smallest male may be the leader. How is such a thing possible? It is based on deal making by this male: he is probably more diplomatic than the others, grooms his supporters, gives them bribes and favors, so that when he is challenged by a bigger male he has coalition partners that help him. Such coalitions are part and parcel of human politics, and are now very well documented in chimpanzees both in the field and in zoo settings.

They are not necessarily based on kinship, because -- as in humans -- chimpanzees often strike these deals with non-relatives, so long as both parties stand to gain. This is why I read Machiavelli in the time that I wrote Chimpanzee Politics, now almost thirty years ago: the old Florentine philosopher had more to offer than most books on animal intelligence.

OK, to be honest, De Waal isn't making the claim I headed this post with, but the reality is that the politics of the last 40 years has seen the biggest resurgence of right wing thinking since the 1930s leading into WWII. The good news is that all the demostrations around the world imply a reawakening of the democratic spirit to push back the false values sold to the public by right wing extremists.

For those horrified by violent demonstrations, a look at early democracy in Greece indicates that at the very roots of democracy lies a bloody struggle between tyrants and oligarchies composed of aristocrats versus the politics of the street that would rise up as democratic revolts from time to time. So violence goes deep and it goes far back into the past. Ideally there would be no violence, but the right is unwilling to give up power when their "politics" fails and the people become unhappy.

Violence is tragic, it is to be avoided unless you are like the Libyan people, trapped with no way out and your own crazed leader bombing you from the air and unleashing mercenaries to shell and shoot at you from the streets. In that case, democratic revolt -- even bloody revolt -- is justified to get the hand of the mad killer off your throat.

Chris Hedges on American Decline

Here is an interesting video where Chris Hedges talks about his book Death of the Liberal Class:



His thesis that the Democratic party shifted away from classic liberalism is true enough. But at the same time the Republican party shifted away from classic conservatism. So now you have two parties which are essentially fronts for big corporations whose lobbying means they own the politicians. It is a sad history.

Freedom of the Press in Russia

Journalists in Mexico are being killed by drug lords.

And here's a story from Yahoo about a journalist in Russia:

A leading Russian journalist was in a coma on Saturday after two men broke his legs, jaw and fingers in an attack which his editor said was likely to be linked to his coverage of banned opposition groups.

Rights groups have criticized the Kremlin for doing too little to solve a string of journalists' murders that have made Russia one of the most dangerous places in the world for reporters.

Police said they had opened a criminal case over the attempted murder of Oleg Kashin, 30, a political reporter with Kommersant, Russia's best respected general daily newspaper.

"They didn't just rough him up. To make their point they broke the fingers of a journalist," Kommersant editor Mikhail Mikhailin told Reuters. "I'm stunned."

Mikhailin said the motive was unclear, but likely to be linked to Kashin's recent investigations into extremist youth groups, including banned opposition group the National Bolshevik Party.

"He undertook investigations into various informal organizations. I feel something he wrote might have upset someone who decided to take these vicious measures," he said.

Meanwhile in America... can you compare these journalists who risk their lives to tell the truth with the sold-out, paid-for pretend journalists of Fox "News"? Real journalists report about the bad guys. At Fox they are the paid lap dogs of the bad guys. At Fox they aren't journalists, they are paid mouthpieces whose job it is to shape "the news" to sell the interests of the rich and powerful at the expense of the broad public.

Here's what a Tulane University political scientist has to say about US "news" coverage:

So why are Americans so fearful, so conscious of threats? He blames, in part, the manipulative nature of current television news. "Fear is an essential component of the business model of both CNN and Fox News, a necessary tool to keep fingers away from remote controls during commercial breaks. Voices of reason tend to spoil the fun, and may inspire people to see excitement elsewhere. News outlets win by presenting stories that are more frightening, angry and simple than those of their competitors. … "

One of the victims of this system, he goes on to argue, is poor old reasonable President Obama: "Only in a deeply pathological society is reason a synonym for weakness."

The "New" Chemistry: Open Source

Here's a plea for help posted by Derek Lowe on his blog In the Pipeline:

One of the people I met this past weekend was Matt Todd, chemistry professor at the University of Sydney. We talked about a project his lab is working on, and I wanted to help call attention to it.

They're working on praziquantel, also known as PZQ or Biltricide, which is used to cure schistosomiasis in the tropics. It's on the WHO's list of essential medicines for this reason. But PZQ is used now as a racemate, and this is one of those cases where everyone would be better off with a single enantiomer - not least, because the active enantiomer is significantly easier for patients to stand than the racemic mixture. Problem is, there's no cheap enantioselective synthesis or resolution.

So what Todd's group has done is crowdsourced the problem. Here's the page to start with, where they lay out the current synthetic difficulties - right now, those include enantioselective Pictet-Spengler catalysts and help with the resolution of a key intermediate. They were in need of chiral HPLC conditions, but that problem has recently been solved. I'd like to ask the chemists in the crowd here to take a look, because it wouldn't surprise me if one of us had some ideas that could help. Don't leave your suggestions here, though; do it over at their pages so it's all in one place.

This sort of thing is an excellent fit with open-source models for doing science: it's all pro bono, and the more eyes that take a look at the situation, the better the chance that a solution will emerge. I don't think it's getting the publicity it deserves. And no, in case anyone's wondering, I don't think that this is how we're all going to end up discovering drugs. Figuring out how to do this for large commercial projects tends to bring on frantic hand-waving. But in cases like this - specific problems where there's no chance for profit to push things along - I think it can work well. It makes a lot more sense than that stuff I was linking to last week!

Go to Derek Lowe's post to pick up the embedded links, especially to pick up the key link "here's the page to start with".

I'm guessing this will work and be a success. Lots of chemists won't mind taking a look and if they have an idea, put their two bits in. Open source works in the software world despite some rather high hurdles. When you want to help, it requires

a heck of a lot more than just "take a look". It is a substantial effort to access the code base, take on a task, develop, test, and submit the change/fix/enhancement.

I'm not a chemist, but looking at the requesting page, a lot of what Matt Todd asks for requires just a few minutes if you know the answer. This is so much easier than open source software, I don't see how it can fail to attract the help it needs.

In the past I've helped by choosing one of the collaborative distributed computing projects (see list here) and spent time helping there. I worked on "Folding@Home". I ended up spending many, many hours. But they set it up as a kind of "game" and contest where you could see your "score" versus other collaborators. It got the competitive juices going and I ended up spending more time that I intended. Ah... but it was for a "good cause".