Going Up, Going Down, CSI and Rap

Today's Washington Post has an article along this theme:

"Prosecutors say jurors are telling them they expect forensic evidence in criminal cases, just like on their favorite television shows, including 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.' In real life, forensic evidence is not collected at every crime scene, either because criminals clean up after themselves or because of a shortage in resources. Yet, increasingly, jurors are reluctant to convict someone without it, a phenomenon the criminal justice community is calling the 'CSI effect.'"

It seems a case study in the flow of culture (ideas/info/norms) down the classes (see NY Times series). Consider: well paid scriptwriters in Hollywood come up with story ideas for CSI and similar series. They're aired and the ideas/information about DNA and other forensic science get spread around. Jurors take their cues from what they've seen. Even assuming that many criminals don't watch CSI, defense attorneys learn to focus on the holes in the prosecutor's cases. Any success will get incorporated into the folklore of the "criminal street." That changes behavior.

In contrast, consider the flow of rap from the criminal street up to the top of the entertainment industry. It's certainly not the first instance of obscenity rising from its roots to become modish--I remember the reaction to rock in the 1950's. I think you can go back further to vaudeville and other entertainments that rose up.

Query--if class mobility has declined recently, can we say culture is flowing up and down more rapidly these days?

Bureaucrat's Dictionary

This is intended as an ongoing list:

blogger: n. (1) A person who sees ignorance as empowering

On Organizational Culture

Joel Achenbach in the chatroom followup to his good piece on space exploration in the Washington Post Magazine: To Infinity and Beyond says (referring to NASA): "

Joel Achenbach: I'm always skeptical when I hear people talk about 'internal cultural change,' because let's face it, most organizations have a culture that rises organically from below, rather than imposed dictatorially from above (though I should check with someone smart, like Malcolm Gladwell, about that). "

I'd modify that. In my view an organization often reflects the founder (think FBI and J. Edgar Hoover, IBM and Tom Watson, etc.). If the organization is able to survive, it and its culture become almost the same thing, so new leaders have great difficulty in changing the culture (which is what Achenbach is getting at). Some change is possible, as in the differences between Secretaries Rice and Powell at State, but major change is very difficult. (Look at all the old blue-chip companies that have either gone under or lost their former eminence.) But sometimes what people call "culture" is really the interlocked networks of stakeholders, of customers and suppliers. See the Innovator's Dilemma by Christenson.

True Conservatives, As Defined by a Liberal

A true conservative is one who not only believes Stephen Decatur's words: "our country, right or wrong", but also knows who Decatur was.

Mailer and Conspiracy, via Achenblog

Joel Achenbach at Achenblog comments on Norman Mailer's conspiracy theory on Newsweek:

"Journalists and pundits and aging novelists should try to think more like scientists, who typically favor parsimonious rather than elaborate theories. Dan Rather and Mary Mapes and many other reporters have gotten in trouble when they've tried too hard to prove a theory and ignored possible alternative explanations (like, these documents could be fraudulent). Conspiracies do exist, but so do simple mistakes. The Mailer scenario has an implausible number of moving parts. That's not to say that it couldn't be possible, only that it's exceedingly more likely that a journalist unwisely relied on a single source who didn't know what he was talking about. Happens all the time, and you don't need the White House Office of Counter-Espionage to orchestrate it."

I absolutely agree. I also comment: "Mistakes are much more common than conspiracies. A mistake has only one prerequisite: a person. A conspiracy requires two people."

Three Party Conflicts

One of the interesting aspects of the Koran flushing episode is the light it throws on three party conflicts. What do I mean?

Take any war. Typically it seems that the adversaries demonize each other. It's easy to think of examples: Japanese in WWII, Chinese in Korean War, native Americans in the Indian Wars, parents in a divorce. But there are cases where there are third parties, neutral states or fence-sitters, children in domestic disputes. In these cases both combatants try to appeal to the neutrals for support, or at least to keep them from joining the other side.

In the case of Bush's war on terror, we see both impulses at work in the U.S. Demonizing the adversary--there's plenty of it. Appealing to the neutrals--also plenty. After Bush's first misuse of "crusade", he's been careful to include Islam as one of the U.S.'s major religions, etc. To the extent that Americans in uniform have mistreated the Koran, that fits the demonization side. To the extent that the Establishment is horrified by the Newsweek error, the net effect of the episode seems to reinforce American tolerance.

Kerala and Reading

The Christian Science Monitor has a very interesting piece on the Indian state of Kerala, known for its radicalism and more recently for its universal literacy.

"The roots of Kerala's literacy culture can be traced back at least to the Hindu rulers of the 19th century. The Queen of Trivandrum issued a royal decree in 1817 that said, 'The state should defray the entire cost of the education of its people in order that there might be no backwardness in the spread of enlightenment.' She hoped education would make her people 'better subjects and public servants.'"

Significantly, that's earlier than in the U.S., showing the power of enlightened autocracy. This also shows the effect of the first mover.

Rice's focused style creates learning curve at State - The Washington Times: World - May 18, 2005

Management style makes a difference. Kudos to the The Washington Times: World for an article on the differences between Powell and Rice. Powell was into e-mail and was open to messages from the bureaucracy. Rice is more like Ike, short memos and structured meetings with input from fewer people. The Times doesn't mention another obvious difference: Rice likes to travel and meet while Powell didn't. It would be interesting to know more about the differences--does Rice's personality fit with a classical musician as opposed to a jazz one? Have the differences always been there or is the relative experience of each a factor?

From a bureaucrat's view there's no consistent advantage to either style. Each has strengths and weaknesses, and each will produce good results on particular types of issues. On the whole, though, I'd prefer a traveller who e-mails.

The Sepoy Mutiny and Flushing the Koran

History is instructive, as reader Sean McEnroe observes in letters to the Washington Post:

"In 1857 the British were nearly driven out of India when rumor spread among their Hindu and Muslim soldiers that ammunition was coated in unclean grease from cows and pigs. A year later, after much death and destruction, the British were wise enough to realize that the conflict was not just about rifle cartridges. I hope U.S. policymakers understand that the past week's anti-American riots in Afghanistan ['Afghan Protests Spread,' news story, May 14] were not just about one Newsweek article."

Definitional Drift: Math Goes Postmodern

According to the LATimes, solving mathematical propositions and proving the solution is correct has become so difficult mathematicians are either giving up or turning to the computer to do checking by brute computational force. In the end, if the community agrees it's solved, it's solved.
So:

"Like so many other fields, mathematics is becoming less about some Platonic ideal of ultimate answers, and more a functional project of computational simulation and communal negotiation. Dare we say it: Math is becoming postmodern."