Politics don't change

At an Arts Club dinner recently, a fellow diner recommented Lynne Olson's book, Troublesome Young Men, about Winston Churchill (a not-so-young man at the time) and other Conservatives who opposed the appeasement policies of  Neville Chamberlain, their own prime minister, before World War II. I have found the book enlightening for many reasons, but one is that it reminds me that politics don't change with time and place. Right after the Munich meeting Chamberlain was exceptionally popular for keeping the peace. Convinced he had saved the nation, he was so enraged by the anti-appeasers that he employed tactics  the author likened to Richard Nixon and his operatives' Watergate tactics. In addition to spies who reported conversations, pressure placed on local Conservative groups  to bar anti-appeasers from the ballot and stories placed in newspapers, Chamberlain's operatives tapped the phones of Churchill, other anti-appeasers, government staffers and journalists considered anti-Chamberlain. Chamberlain exulted in writing to his sister that he had "complete knowledge of their doings & sayings."

The "Cloud" is a bank of machines

There is much discussion lately of the advantages of "cloud" computing, meaning that your files are saved where your phone, tablet, computer, etc. can access the latest versions automatically, even if, for example, the file was last changed by your computer but accessed by your phone.  In conversations, I find that people have difficulty in conceiving where the files are physically located, or that they have a physical form. Logically they have to be on stored on discs of a computer being used as a server. This morning, the Washington Post published a photo of Steve Jobs in front of a blowup of the actual storage units for the iCloud. I offer this picture as a reminder that whatever one of us puts in a "cloud" is located on a machine owned, in this case, by Jobs' company, Apple. This raises some questions: Who can access these files? What kind of backup is available in case of mechanical failure or natural disaster? What if Apple changes its mind or is acquired by some other entity in the future. Is this a good idea?

Modern antiques

This week I went to an exhibit called Vienna 1900 at the Neue Galerie in New York city. It was the era of Freud and the exhibit included a reproduction of his patients' couch. This was an ordinary chaise lounge with an Oriental carpet draped over it. What struck me most were the streamlined pieces of furniture that could easily be displayed as contemporary in a furniture store over 100 years later. In particular, an armoire by an architect named Otto Wagner looks exactly like those found in very modern hotels. It has no decoration, simply flat, functional surfaces. Another piece that would be classified as contemporary in 2011 was a grandfather clock all of whose sides were glass.

Some questions arise: why have these designs lasted for so long in some quarters, but why are they also avoided in favor of copies of early American, Victorian, Louis XIV, etc. in other quarters? 

A Visit to a Paleolithic Cave

Note: It must be the beginning of summer that turns my fancy to blogging. I notice that my last post was about this time last year. Also, a few of you loyal readers kept asking me when I would write. So the blog returns.

A few weeks ago, I saw a documentary showing the Chauvet Cave in southern France. Discovered in 1994, the cave contains paleolithic era wall paintings estimated to be 30,000 years old. Avoiding the disaster of the Lascaux cave paintings, which have been damaged by tourism and closed, the French strictly limit access to archaologists and scientists.

One film crew has been admitted and produced a 3D documentary film so the experience is available to the rest of us. Current high tech brings us prehistoric low tech. I have thought of 3D as a gimmick, but not in this instance. The value of technology is in the application perhaps.

The impressive thing about the paintings is not only their age but their beauty. The painters produced sensuously curved lines and employed shading to create a sense of form.

The painting might have been a religious ritual or other ceremony. Paleolithic people necessarily would have devoted most of their time and energy to survival.  Yet they still devoted some of that scarce time and energy to spiritual and aesthetic pursuits. Does this tell us something about being human?

Why the appeal of "The Girl...?

I just finished reading "The Girl Who Played with Fire," and began to wonder why I, and so many others, like these books. I think it's Liz Salander's ability to read other people's computers and to delve into the data that accumulates on all of us. In this cyberage, she is the equivalent of a flying Superman with X-ray vision in a physical age. She can go anywhere and find out what anybody is doing and thinking. We are happy to go with her.

Cycles of Oppression

I have been reading the memoir of Helen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia, who interested me when I covered her appearance at the Press Club some time ago. Her own life is intertwined with the history of Liberia. As most readers know, the country was populated by freed African-American slaves in the nineteenth century. These people retained their American ways and created a colonial society with themselves in power and the indigenous people "colonial" subjects similar to colonies created by European powers. Revolts in recent decades led to other repressive regimes and horrendous civil wars not different from those elsewhere in Africa. Descendants of the original "colonists," known as Americo-Liberians, were persecuted. The story seems to say something very unfortunate about human nature.  Is hierarchy inherent?

What is Reason?

Last night Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer spoke at the John Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies on the need for American judges to understand international laws. Referring to being in India on 9/11, he reflected that the division in the world is not between nations but between those who accept reason and those who don't. But what is reason? Use of technology and deductive logic might be included but the terrorists used them to good effect, deducing that airliners could be used as missiles and learning how to fly them. It seems that Justice Breyer meant something else, perhaps resolving differences through negotiation or mediation within an legal framework rather than through violence. Or, of course, through a judicial system. Such a meaning would also require that parties accept the result as legitimate even when they don't reach their goals. So perhaps reason, to him, means acceptance of the rule of law and an associated legal structure. Not "unreasonable." But what if laws are not the same everywhere? What if sharia is the accepted framework? Is his distinction a tautology?