I'm interested in international relations, American foreign policy, climate change, US presidential elections, public debate, Kansas Jayhawks basketball, film, and major league baseball.
The share of Republicans with a positive opinion of the FBI tumbled from 65 percent in early 2017 to 49 percent this past July. In the past three years, Vladimir Putin’s approval rating among Republicans has almost tripled, to 32 percent.When Trump started criticizing the NFL for tolerating kneeling during the national anthem, Republicans started telling pollsters they did not like the NFL. At the time, I asked my students what they thought would happen in the south if a bunch of Southeast Conference (SEC) football players at schools like Alabama, Florida, and Georgia started kneeling during the national anthem -- especially if Trump continued to criticize the behavior.
A group of Israeli social scientists wanted to conduct an experiment disguised as an advertising campaign. The ads would run in a small, conservative Tel Aviv suburb, where many people were religious and supported right-wing politicians. The goal was to persuade the residents to abandon their anger toward Palestinians and agree that Israel should freeze construction of Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank, among other concessions.
The suburb they were hoping to convert, Giv’at Shmuel, was known for being strenuously opposed to anything associated with peaceniks, liberals, or anyone who said anything good about peaceniks or liberals.The scholars rejected standard suggestions to try to promote tolerance in the community. Instead, they decided to use a satirical campaign playing up the community's anger and outrage:
the researchers came up with a clever idea. Don’t tell everyone in Giv’at Shmuel that they’re wrong. Tell them that they’re right: A perpetual war with Israel’s neighbors made a lot of sense. If anything, the people of Giv’at Shmuel ought to be angrier.
With the help of an advertising agency, the social scientists created online ads celebrating the tension between Israelis and Palestinians, and extolling the virtues of fighting for fighting’s sake. One ad showed iconic photos of Israeli war heroes and proclaimed, “Without [war] we wouldn’t have had heroes. For the heroes, we probably need the conflict.” The ad was scored with Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyries.” Another ad featured footage of a soldier with a machine gun petting a kitten and an infantryman helping an old man cross the street. “What a Wonderful World” played in the background. Its tagline read, “Without [war] we would never be moral. For morality, we probably need the conflict.” The ads, along with brochures and billboards, began appearing in Giv’at Shmuel in 2015. Over a six-week period, according to polling, nearly all of its 25,000 residents saw them.The results were impressive:
when the researchers conducted polls in the suburb at the end of the advertising campaign, the residents who had held the most extreme views at the outset of the experiment appeared to have softened. The percentage of right-leaning residents who said that Arabs were solely responsible for Israel’s past wars decreased by 23 percent. The number of conservatives who said Israel should be more aggressive toward Palestinians fell by 17 percent. Incredibly, even though the advertisements never mentioned settlements, 78 percent more people said that Israel should consider freezing construction in the West Bank and Gaza. (Residents in nearby towns who hadn’t seen the ads were surveyed as a control; they showed no such evolution in their views over the same period.)
A year after the ads had ceased, by which time some residents had trouble recalling the specifics of the campaign, polls still showed greater tolerance. The campaign wasn’t a panacea, but it is among the most successful conflict interventions in contemporary social science.
“No one wants to think of themselves as some angry crank,” one of the researchers, Eran Halperin, told me. “No one wants to be lumped in with extremists or the angriest fringe.” Sometimes, however, we don’t realize we’ve become extremists until someone makes it painfully obvious.
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| Photo credit: *Keith |
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Alexandre Taillard de Vorms is tall and impressive, a man with style, attractive to women. He also happens to be the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the land of enlightenment: France. With his silver mane and tanned, athletic body, he stalks the world stage, from the floor of the United Nations in New York to the powder keg of Oubanga. There, he calls on the powerful and invokes the mighty to bring peace, to calm the trigger-happy, and to cement his aura of Nobel Peace Prize winner-in-waiting. Alexandre Taillard de Vorms is a force to be reckoned with, waging his own war backed up by the holy trinity of diplomatic concepts: legitimacy, lucidity and efficacy. He takes on American neo-cons, corrupt Russians and money-grabbing Chinese. Perhaps the world doesn't deserve France's magnanimousness, but his art would be wasted if just restricted to home turf. Enter the young Arthur Vlaminck, graduate of the elite National School of Administration, who is hired as head of "language" at the foreign ministry. In other words, he is to write the minister's speeches. But he also has to learn to deal with the sensibilities of the boss and his entourage, and find his way between the private secretary and the special advisers who stalk the corridors of the Quai d'Orsay - the ministry's home - where stress, ambition and dirty dealing are the daily currency. But just as he thinks he can influence the fate of the world, everything seems threatened by the inertia of the technocrats.Update February 22: The film reminded me in structure of Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. Basically, the film devoted about half of the narrative to the farcical politics of the French Foreign Ministry and half to the speechwriter’s domestic situation (where important political issues were also revealed in a personal manner). Both films generally ended happily for the ordinary people featured in the stories. No actor in the film played two roles, but the speechwriter literally provided the words for the Foreign Minister's closing address (and in previous speeches).
"Merle Haggard didn't even think much of my songs. I know he didn't. He didn't say that to me, but I know way back when he didn't. Buck Owens did, and he recorded some of my early songs.
"Together Again, that's Buck Owens. And that trumps anything else out of Bakersfield. Buck Owens or Merle Haggard? If you had to have somebody's blessing, you can figure it out."Merle Haggard responded to this apparent slight with grace (see this tweet):
"I've admired your songs since 1964," the 77-year-old singer of country classics like Branded Man and I'm a Lonesome Fugitive said on his Facebook page Saturday. Haggard added that he and Willie Nelson have cut Dylan's Don't Think Twice, It's All Right for an upcoming album.Moreover, in October 2013, Haggard told an interviewer that he was doing a tribute album to Dylan. He was asked "Q: What draws you to Bob Dylan's music?"
Haggard: I've always been drawn to his music, since when he first came out in 1964. I was just beginning my career as well at that time. But I've come to find out that he's a been a Merle Haggard fan and he was watching what I was doing while I was watching what he was doing. I've always thought he was one of the better writers that I've been fortunate enough to be alive at the same time with.My friend and neighbor Michael Young, the host of WFPK's "Roots n' Boots" radio show, is one of the world's biggest Haggard fans and his reaction was stronger than Haggard's. After all, as his bio says, Mike "firmly believes Merle Haggard is the greatest songwriter of our generation, and he’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table and shout it." Tonight, Mike played a number of Haggard songs on his program for "no special reason," though he laughed after saying that. His Facebook feed offers an explanation: "Tempted to play nothing but Merle Haggard today in light of Dylan's dis of the Hag, but I don't think I could get away with that. How about 5 Haggard songs that are better than anything Dylan ever wrote?"
"Merle Haggard has always been as deep as deep gets," says Bob Dylan. "Totally himself. Herculean. Even too big for Mount Rushmore. No superficiality about him whatsoever. He definitely transcends the country genre. If Merle had been around Sun Studio in Memphis in the Fifties, Sam Phillips would have turned him into a rock & roll star, one of the best. I'm sorta glad he didn't do it, though, because then he'd be on the oldies circuit singing his rock roll hits instead of becoming the Merle Haggard we all know and love."In 2005, Dylan asked Haggard to tour with him. Incidentally, this is what Haggard told Billboard in an interview about that tour:
Q: How did this tour with Bob Dylan come about?
A: I had my itinerary set to do some light touring in the spring and ease my way through the year, and Bob Dylan calls and wants me to tour America with him. And he's not just talking about once and awhile, it's 40 out of the next 60 days. But it's Bob Dylan, and Bob Dylan's the Einstein of music. He calls and wants you to be on his show and your name is Merle Haggard, you're honored.
Q: I've heard that most people who tour with Dylan don't get a chance to talk to him, but I imagine he'll talk to you at some point.
A: I don't know. I've rubbed shoulders with him before and he just sorta grunts.Maybe Dylan was just making some news and selling some records for both geezers?
He is expected to talk about the importance of free expression, the challenge of his work in Malaysia and the need for activism from cartoonists, satirists and comedians as well as human rights activists and social campaigners.Last fall, I saw some of Zunar's political cartoons when participating in a workshop on "Comedy and Satire as Discourses of Protest in Asia." The images presented there were just terrific. Here's more info on Zunar:
[He] received the 2011 Award for Courage in Editorial Cartooning from Cartoonists Rights Network International. In 2010 the Malaysian government banned the publication of his book “1 Funny Malaysia” and then months later police seized and confiscated copies of his latest book, “Cartoon-o-phobia,” and arrested him hours before its planned launch. He lost his appeal for wrongful arrest when the Malaysian appellate court ruled that police had cause to suspect the book was seditious.To learn more about his life and work, visit his website.
7 p.m. in the Brown & Williamson Club at Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium, 2800 S. Floyd St.; visitors should enter through Gate 6. The talk and reception afterward are free and public, but guests are asked to register through a form on the center’s site
This year’s workshop seeks to examine the relationship between political protest and comedy in East Asia. In particular we are interested in the ways in which comedy has and is being used to critique and parody authoritarianism, corruption and political leadership. Recognizing that in the West comedy and satire have a long tradition of not just speaking truth to power but also as a powerful tool of public criticism, this workshop aims to analyze the role of comedy in East Asia. Is it analogous to the role it plays in the West? Are there unique forms of comedy and protest? Are there cultural obstacles to parody and satire?Specifically, I'm slated to give the Introductory Remarks at 10:00am — "Comedic and Satirical Narratives in Global Politics."
Mr. President, my name is Stephen Colbert, and tonight it is my privilege to celebrate this president, ‘cause we're not so different, he and I. We both get it. Guys like us, we're not some brainiacs on the nerd patrol. We're not members of the factinista. We go straight from the gut. Right, sir?
That's where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. Now, I know some of you are going to say, "I did look it up, and that's not true." That's 'cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut. I did. My gut tells me that's how our nervous system works.Here's the video:
The gut has its own nervous system; it contains as many neurons as the spinal cord. About 95 percent of the body's serotonin, a neurotransmitter usually discussed in the context of depression, is produced in the gut....
So the gut isn't just where we absorb nutrients. It's also an immune hub and a second brain.More, from Scientific American, February 2010.
I trekked across the state border tonight to see Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane speak at Indiana University Southeast. Beane had been invited to deliver the keynote address for the annual Sanders Speaker Series. Harold begins to hear a voice in his head, one that is describing his own life -- not in advance, but as a narrative that has just happened. He seeks counsel from a shrink (Linda Hunt) and convinced he is hearing his own life narrative, seeks counsel from Jules Hilbert, a literature professor (Dustin Hoffman). Hilbert methodically checks off genres and archetypes and comes up with a list of living authors who could plausibly be writing the "narration." He misses, however, Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson), because he decides Harold's story is a comedy, and all of her novels end in death. However, Eiffel is indeed writing the story of Harold's life.Ah yes, the old comedy-versus-tragedy argument.
It’s worth remembering that in 1993, when Spy magazine prank-called U.S. congressmen, asking what the administration should do about ethnic cleansing in Freedonia, several of the officials demanded immediate action. Freedonia, as it happens, was not a warring Balkan land but the fictional setting of the Marx Brothers film Duck Soup. Spy soon exposed the trap it had laid...If readers are unfamiliar with the 1933 film Duck Soup, my advice is to watch it! Turner Classic Movies airs it frequently. For now, however, suffice to know that it is a farce about the buildup to war between Freedonia and Sylvania. Groucho becomes Prime Minister and his brother Chico serves as his Secretary of War. The storyline is wacky and as I wrote a few years ago, one would be "hard-pressed to learn any valuable lessons about international relations or war from the film."
Posing as the host of a New York radio talk show, Spy's staff called about 20 first-term House members and, after a series of innocuous questions, asked, "Do you approve of what we're doing to stop what's going on in Freedonia?" or "Do you approve of what we're doing to stop ethnic cleansing in Freedonia?"The Times also quoted some of the responses:
Representative Corrine Brown, Democrat of Florida, said she approved of what the United States was doing in Freedonia, and added, "I think all of those situations are very, very sad, and I just think we need to take action to assist the people."The magazine also called Nick Smith (R-MI), who said that "moving through the United Nations effort has a great deal of merit."
Representative Jay Inslee, Democrat of Washington, was candid. "I have to be honest with you, I'm not familiar with that proposal," he said. "But it's coming to the point now that a blind eye to it for the next 10 years is not the answer."
Representatative Steve Buyer, Republican of Indiana, said, "Yeah, it's a different situation than the Middle East."
The play, dramatizing the lives of the extraordinary team of international physicists racing to make an atomic bomb during World War II, will be performed Feb. 29-March 4 at 8 p.m. nightly plus a matinee at 3 p.m., March 4. All performances are at the Thrust Theatre, 2314 S. Floyd St.Those interested in the material should note that Russ has cooperated in producing a CD.
Directed by Vandenbroucke, a theater professor, the play will be the third stage production of the play originating from an earlier short play by Vandenbroucke that was performed on stage and for public radio.
Before writing and producing the play, Vandenbroucke had to obtain permission from Richard Feynman, the eccentric American scientist and Nobel Prize winner whose essay in a science journal was his inspiration. Vandenbroucke even went as far as to engage the president of the California Institute of Technology, where Feynman taught, to aid his request.
Feynman agreed to Vandenbroucke’s proposal and the first play was based on the atomic bomb tests at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Vandenbroucke later expanded the play to include the initial work at the University of Chicago which was broadcast on public radio during the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan.
“It is a funny play about a very serious subject,” Vandenbroucke said. “This was the greatest gathering of scientific geniuses at one time and place for a single purpose. Only later did they realize the full extent of the horrible devastation that resulted.”
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Reflecting on his career in 1983, Dr. Kaufmann criticized the defense policy world, likening it to a deep pit. "It was easy to get caught up in the whole nuclear business," he told Kaplan. "You could eat and breathe the stuff. . . . Then you move away from it for a while, look at it from a distance and think, 'God that's a crazy world.'"Kaplan quoted the same words in a piece for Time on September 27, 2010.
