Saying the Things You Shouldn't

One of the things that drives me crazy is the tendency of people in positions of authority to say things they shouldn't. Not just the standard open-mouth-insert-foot sort of thing we expect from the Dan Quayles and George W. Bushes of the world, but the things that people who should know better really shouldn't say.

In the course of my nearly forty-year professional career, I have signed countless nondisclosure agreements. I have solemnly promised to keep secrets of all sorts, and I have...partly because I don't want to go to jail, but more because it's the right thing to do. Unfortunately, not everyone believes the same thing.

Bob Woodward's new book Obama's Wars is a classic example. It is based largely on his access to classified government documents and frequently sensitive, if not downright classified, interviews with senior military and government officials.

So I ask all of those who participated in the writing of this book: what part of not authorized to speak is it that you don't understand? Did you sign your nondisclosure statements with disappearing ink? Why is it that none of you will ever go to jail for happily chatting about things you shouldn't? Have you considered the consequences of your self-important blather to a self-important writer?

As it happens, Eliot Cohen has. In yesterday's Washington Post, Mr Cohen wrote this wonderful op-ed piece: "Obama's Wars: the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight...or Shut Up."

In this article, which you really ought to take a few minutes to read, Mr Cohen offers a few imaginary responses on the part of various famous and not-so-famous persons to the secrets blithely spilled in Mr Woodward's book. He writes this comment from a hypothetical, relatively junior general in the Pentagon:

"I don't get it. The president fired one of our truly great commanders not for things that he said but for tolerating indiscretion, disloyalty and disrespect among his subordinates -- but do these people apply anything remotely like that standard to themselves?"

Of course, the Woodwards and the persons who speak "on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly" or "on the condition of anonymity because the information is classified" don't worry about simple moral things like this. The Bilbos of the world go to jail for violating confidentiality. The big shots write books for big money.

If it doesn't bother you, it should.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow on Cartoon Saturday. I need it.

Bilbo

My Book's Better Than Your Book

You don't need me to tell you that the world has gotten pretty crazy. One of the main reasons it's gotten so crazy is that we don't know how to respect one another any more, and there are a lot of reasons for this. One of them is the dismal state of the economy, which drives a wedge between the "haves" and the "have nots," encouraging jealousy and anger. Another is the poisonous "I'm right, and I'm never going to compromise" attitude of ass clowns on the political far left and far right. Another is religion.

Some scientists believe that the tendency to belief in God is hard-wired into each of us, as an evolutionary way of helping us make sense of a hard and unforgiving world. Philosophers tell us that religion gives us a framework within which to develop ethical and moral standards, and ordinary people fall back on religious belief as a comfort in times of trial and a unifying bond with other people of the same school of belief.

It also leads to some of the most outrageous, hateful, and divisive behavior we can imagine.

There are two prime examples swirling in an interrelated whirlpool of hatred and intolerance at the moment: the hard-headed insistence of a Florida preacher who plans to burn a pile of Qurans tomorrow to protest Islamic radicalism, and the hard-headed insistence of an Islamic leader on building a huge Islamic center (lately recast as an "interfaith" facility) about two blocks from Ground Zero in New York. Both represent the very worst in religious belief.

My problem with the major organized religions is, as you've read here often enough, that they tend to be exclusive and divisive. You are with us, or you are damned. Muslims believe that Islam is the absolute, final, perfect system of belief, and divide the world into Muslims and everyone else. Christians believe that there is only one way to eternal life, which is belief in and worship of Jesus as the Son of God and absolute belief in the Bible as God's word, and if you don't believe that, you are destined for a very uncomfortable stint in a very hot place after you shuffle off your mortal coil.

Everybody can't be right, but nobody can compromise on a belief so fundamental to their view of world and self. John wrote eloquently about this in his blog post titled What if They Are All Wrong? Absolute belief in a single and omnipotent God that has chosen the belief system of one group of humans above all others is a prescription for hatred and intolerance: I'm right, you're wrong, you're damned forever, and I know it's true because the (insert name of holy scripture here) says so.

I've said it before: a God capable of creating the endless grandeur and majesty of the universe and the wonderful diversity of life on Earth has better things to do than worry about whether or not men shave, women cover themselves from head to foot, people eat pork or beef, or worship services take place on Friday or Sunday. If we can't get past absolute belief in a single, specific, religious belief that's indifferent to others at best, or violently intolerant of them at worst, we're destined to keep living with morons whose heads are so far up their scripturally-sanctioned backsides that they can't relate to anyone else.

And we'll keep seeing it reflected in explosions, fires, and chants of hatred instead of choruses of Kumbaya. Which is sad beyond words.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

The Mathematics of Disaster

One of my co-workers who knows I'm always in search of bloggable things sent me this interesting link the other day: Drilling the Macondo Prospect. It contains a great deal of interesting information about the late, lamented Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, where and how oil drilling is done at great depths in the Gulf of Mexico, and how we can go about calculating the force and pressure of the oil that, until recently, was blasting out of the ruined well and into the Gulf.

I'm no math genius (as generations of sobbing teachers can attest), but the article lays out the calculations in a very understandable way and puts the figures into a way even someone like me can understand. For instance, the amount of pressure exerted by 5000 feet of water and 13,000 feet of rock that was forcing the oil out of the well was sufficient to lift six fully-loaded dump trucks straight up into the air...and it was pushing the oil out at about 260 mph.

That's a lot of force. And one has to wonder why nobody thought about how to control that much force if something had gone wrong.

Which brings me to an interesting article by Seth Borenstein: Technology's Disasters Share Long Trail of Hubris. Mr Borenstein writes,

It’s all so familiar. A technological disaster, then a presidential commission examining what went wrong. And ultimately a discovery that while technology marches on, concern for safety lags. Technology isn’t as foolproof as it seemed.

The word hubris comes to us from the Greek, and refers to extreme arrogance and the overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities, especially for people in positions of power. And it often leads to a bad and humiliating end.

We often do things because we can, and not necessarily because we should. We can split the atom and generate lots of energy. We can also build nuclear weapons...but whether we should do either one is another issue. Nuclear power is often advertised as safe, clean, and environmentally friendly ... but the search for a place to store radioactive waste that will be deadly to humans for tens of thousands of years indicates that there might have been an element of hubris involved in the decision to go forward. As an aside, you may recall that I wrote about the linguistic aspects of generating warnings meaningful over vast stretches of time in this post: Don't Dig Here!

Anyhow, hubris seems to keep popping up and inviting us to calculate ... after the fact ... the mathematics of disaster. How much oil has spilled into the Gulf? How much will the cleanup cost? How long will Gulf seafood be unsafe to eat? What will be the ultimate cost in blood and treasure of a war in Iraq that was probably not necessary in the first place? Will New Orleans ever recover from a belief that the levees are just fine, thank you?

Hubris. It's been around since the time of the ancient Greeks, and it's not going away soon. And it's good to remember that it often leads to the invocation of another Greek word - nemesis, the divine retribution against acts of hubris.

The faint laughter you hear in the background is nemesis waiting to celebrate the next round of hubris.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo