Reinventing the wheel

John Quiggin16 Comments

Over at Crooked Timber, Eszter has a post on physicists doing social network theory , which raises the issue of ‘reinventing the wheel’. In this case, the physicists are breathlessly announcing results that sociologists have known about for years.

That’s obviously silly, but I don’t think reinventing the wheel is entirely a bad thing. Whenever I start on a new research topic, I like to spend a bit of time thinking about the issues on the basis of first principles, before I start reading the literature to see what others have done. The benefit of this is not that you’re likely to discover anything fundamentally new, but that it makes it easier to see what is central to the literature and what’s merely the accidental result of its development history (Professor X, the founder of the field, stressed assumption A, so all subsequent writers pay homage to it, and so on). Of course, this is only useful if you can subsequently engage with the existing literature.

My short summary “By all means have a go at reinventing the wheel, but don’t try to patent it[1]”

fn1. Apart from anything else, this guy has already done it

Update As James Farrell reminds me, I’m reinventing my own wheel here.

Kingdom of Heaven

John Quiggin58 Comments

Today’s Fin ReView section (alas, subscription only) has a great article by Peter Manning, reviewing Ridley Scott’s film Kingdom of Heaven but also spelling out what a terrible crime the Crusades were, and how they are still affecting both the West and the Islamic world after nearly a thousand years. Manning is particularly good on the issue of just war doctrine, and the relationship between jihad and crusade.

Among the few good things to come out of our current trials is the fact that the word “crusade” is finally getting the evil connotations it deserves. A few years ago, George Bush was using the term “crusade” to describe the struggle against terrorism, and the US was about to build an artillery system called the Crusader. Now, just about the only time you hear the term is pejoratively, from bin Laden and like-minded jihadists.

Whether you call it crusade or jihad (or, for that matter, revolutionary communism), holy war is the worst of evils.

A good result

John Quiggin4 Comments

As I mentioned a couple of posts down, I’ve become pretty blase about letters from journals, at least to the extent that getting a rejection doesn’t bother me in the slightest. But I still get excited about the results from my annual karate grading, and I’m happy to say the news is good. I was hoping to be promoted to 7th kyu, which would have given me a black tip for my blue belt. Since our Kancho (founder) doesn’t encourage you to grade unless he thinks you’re ready, I was reasonably confident, but still nervous[1]. But when the results were announced, I’d reached 6th kyu and a yellow belt. Standards in our style are pretty high, and I can’t imagine ever getting a black belt. But a year ago, I would have thought a yellow belt was unattainable.

If you live in Brisbane or the Gold Coast and would like to learn karate in a rigorous traditional style, but with a friendly and non-threatening, mixed-age and mixed gender group, give Seiyushin a try.

fn1. Another successful grading meant I won a bet, in which my forfeit would have been watching a Dragonball Z movie marathon. Deliverance!

Life in Brisbane

John Quiggin12 Comments

I happened to notice a story in the local suburban newspaper about the midnight opening of Revenge of the Sith which begins “Hundreds of fanatics will brave the cool to be among the first to see …”

Torture and the pro-war blogosphere

John Quiggin14 Comments

In my first post on the Bagaric-Clarke paper advocating torture, I said “I haven’t seen any comment yet from pro-war bloggers, but I hope at least some of them will repudiate this terrible proposal”.

Andrew Norton[1] stepped up, pointing out that Bagaric has previously been identified with leftish positions, and criticising his current views. And regular commenter “Razor” on this blog says “As a confirmed RWDB and ex-soldier I can’t support the use of torture”.

Apart from that, I’ve come up blank. It’s easy to find pro-war bloggers and commenters supporting torture with more or less tortured arguments, defending Bagaric and Clarke’s right to speak and staying mum on the substantive issues, or just blogging on about Newsweek. I won’t bother linking to them – visit the obvious sites and you’ll find them. No doubt there are exceptions I’ve missed, but they aren’t very prominent.

This is a bit disappointing, but it provides a useful lesson. Next time you read one of these guys talking about Saddam and his crimes, remember it’s just a factional brawl within the pro-torture party. If Saddam had stuck to fighting wars against Iran, and torturing Iraqis, instead of invading Kuwait, he’d still be “an SOB, but our SOB”, just like Karimov in Uzbekistan.

Update Tim Dunlop has lots more on this here and here

Further update In comments, Andrew Norton advises that he was pro-war but didn’t blog on it directly, and Andrew Leigh is in a similar category. I can’t read Currency Lad’s blog (for heaven’s sake ditch the wallpaper!) but I’m not too surprised to learn from the comments that he is opposed to torture. And that’s it so far. Of the legion of noisily pro-war RWDB bloggers (a group from which I exclude CL), not one has so far taken a position any different from that of Saddam Hussein, and most of the noisiest have eagerly lined up with Saddam.

fn1. I should say that I haven’t actually seen anything Andrew’s written on the war, so I’m only guessing that he fits into the pro-war anti-torture category. I’ll be happy to correct this if it’s wrong.

One for three

John Quiggin29 Comments

Yesterday’s mail from the journals included one rejection, one acceptance and one revise-and-resubmit. Not a triumphant day, but I was happy enough, since major economics journals often have rejection rates of 90 per cent or more[1], and revise-and-resubmits generally lead to acceptance in the end.

As a result of this process, a big part of an academic’s research life consists of dealing with rejections. I gave up counting them after the first hundred or so, and it’s water off a duck’s back to me now, but this is something people starting out in academic life often find very hard to deal with. I can’t say I find the system satisfactory, but I don’t have an adequate alternative to offer.

fn1. The same is true in quite a few other disciplines, though not all.

Bagaric and refugees

John Quiggin16 Comments

The Age reports that torture advocate Mirko Bagaric will no longer be assessing refugee cases

Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone confirmed that Professor Bagaric would no longer hear appeals to the Refugee Review Tribunal, which deals with many asylum seekers who have suffered torture overseas. However, Professor Bagaric will continue to serve on the Migration Review Tribunal, which deals with non-refugee immigration cases.

But Bagaric presumably didn’t arrive at his repugnant views overnight. From his own writing, it appears he’s a member of the “September 11, 2001 changed everything” school. Given that he held views so radically different from official public policy on this central issue, he ought to have disqualified himself from RRT appeals, or at least advised the Minister of his position. As it is, I would say that any rejection of an appeal by an RRT panel on which Bagaric served is morally, and perhaps legally, suspect.

Marohasy on cod

John Quiggin18 Comments

I’ve had an interesting discussion over at the new blog of Jennifer Marohasy, who runs the environment unit at the Institute of Public Affairs. Marohasy has criticised virtually all the main scientific groups working on the Murray-Darling Basin, and in this post, she nominates The NSW Rivers Survey by the CRC for Freshwater Ecology and NSW Fisheries. as the “worst ever”. She says

The report’s principal conclusions include that “A telling indication of the condition of rivers in the Murray region was the fact that, despite intensive fishing with the most efficient types of sampling gear for a total of 220 person-days over a two-year period in 20 randomly chosen Murray-region sites, not a single Murray cod or freshwater catfish was caught.”

Most remarkably at the same time, in the same years and regions, that the scientists were undertaking their now much-quoted survey that found no Murray cod, commercial fishermen harvested 26 tonnes of Murray cod!

Criticism of the report’s findings from a local fisherman goes something along the lines “The scientists, although having letters behind their name, spending some $2million on gear, and 2 years trying, evidently still can’t fish.”

Zing! Those egghead scientists are conclusively nailed! Well, not quite.
Read More »

Australians for torture ?

John Quiggin64 Comments

According to this SMH report, two Australian academics are advocating the legalisation of torture, including the torture of innocent people who [their interrogators believe] might have useful information. If the SMH report is to be believed, the supporting ‘argument’ is just our old (and multiply-refuted) friend, the ‘ticking-bomb’ scenario. (Here’s my response, and here’s a fairly typical instance of the way the ticking-bomb scenario is used in practice to justify routine and prolonged torture[1].

I find it difficult to believe that this report can be accurate and I certainly hope it isn’t. The views of Bagaric and Clarke are spelt out in this opinion piece, which is as lame and morally obtuse as you might expect. A quick Google reveals that Bagaric is a Part-time member, Refugee Review Tribunal and Migration Review Tribunal, which is certainly inappropriate for someone who apparently advocates sticking needles under the fingernails of innocent suspects. At least, that was what this Age report said when I checked it an hour ago, but the relevant passage has now disappeared.

Update More from Ken Parish, Tim Dunlop and Benambra. I haven’t seen any comment yet from pro-war bloggers, but I hope at least some of them will repudiate this terrible proposal.

fn1. This was a case in Israel, but I don’t want to discuss the Israel-Palestine issue here. Any comments on this issue, or on the fact that there are other countries that do far worse, and don’t have courts to appeal to, will be deleted.