The Five-Day War: Managing Moscow After the Georgia Crisis

"The Five-Day War: Managing Moscow After the Georgia Crisis" by Charles King (Foreign Affairs, November/December, 2008).

This article lays out a line of thinking and suggests some conclusions, without necessarily advocating strongly for them or supporting the conclusions very well. Basically, the article says:

This is the lowest point in US-Russia relations since the Cold War. It asks the question, "Is the recent war in Georgia a throwback to Brezhnev crushing the demonstrations of the Prague Spring?" The article also touches on the consistency of the US response to independence movements around the world.

Russia has been involved in territorial struggles over the last two decades in Azerbaijan, Moldova, and Chechnya. Russia also involved itself in the Civil War in Tajikistan. The Russian military has operated in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria since the early 90's. In that sense, the events in Georgia were not really new or unique.

However, there were certain departures from old patterns. Specifically:

1) The US and Europe engaged this issue much more directly than they did some of the other, aforementioned Russian interventions;

2) The Russian response, too, was different. "[This time was] an attempt to bypass established channels of conflict resolution and unilaterally change the boundaries of another UN member state."

Russia also broadened the conflict to "punish" Georgia.

But, Russia is likely to have a hard time sustaining the position it has carved out for itself. Only Moscow, Managua, and Minsk recognize independent Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Recognizing these countries' independence sets a dangerous precedent for Russia. It will drive some Asian countries toward NATO, and strengthen secession claims and cries from others.

There is a certain absurdity to micro-statehood (the areas in dispute in Georgia have only 200,000 inhabitants, combined). Kosovo, however, had a similarly small population. The intervention by NATO in Kosovo, though, while far more violent, enjoyed much wider support than the Russian participation in Georgia.

Finally, the article points out that this is not the beginning of a new cold war. There are ideological differences, as well as strategic ones, but the reason this is not a new cold war is simple - this time it's not a zero sum game. The domino theory, MAD, and Star Wars were all ideas based on the zero-sum nature of the conflict. In today's world, both Russia and the US have incentives to make their own systems attractive to third party countries and palateable to the rest of the world. However, they will both enjoy active influence in Georgian politics. The ways this influence will be achieved and the levels of influence will differ, but they will occur concurrently and sometimes even harmoniously. Overall, this is a far better paradigm, because in a zero-sum game, conflict is almost inevitable. In a non-zero sum game, conflict can cost both sides more than it gains them, even as they compete.

With Open-Source Arms

"With Open-Source Arms" by Sam Boykin (Scientific American, October, 2008).

In this article, Boykin tries to tie three phenomena together: 1) prosthetic limb design; 2) open-source, collaborative development; and 3) the relatively large number of recent, Iraq veterans needing prosthetic limbs.

Although there are many amputees in the United States, most are people over 50 who have lost a foot to diabetes or other ailments. Very few need upper-appendage replacements. Despite the tens of thousands of American soldiers who have been wounded in Iraq, less than 200 have lost an upper limb. The market for these devices is very small.

Because the market is so small, innovation in the technologies is quite limited. The subject of the article, Jonathan Kuniholm, himself a veteran-amputee, attempts to address this problem by "open-sourcing" robotic arm designs. In one specific case, he and others work to improve the design of one of the traditional "hook" appendages.

In the end, though, because the market is too small, no one wants to produce or distribute this new, better design. Almost as an afterthought, Boykin mentions the idea of lead-user research, essentially the idea that early adopters become developers, field application engineers, and generally valuable contributors to a product. However, he does not show a path by which lead-user research will somehow cause products that aren't profitable to start being profitable.

The Search for Intelligence

"The Search for Intelligence" by Carl Zimmer (Scientific American, October, 2008).

Much work has been done on twins to learn about intelligence in attempt to answer various nature vs. nurture questions. The studies done over the last 30 years looking for genetic influences on intelligence have been mostly disappointing. Of all the genetic markers shown to have statistically significant correlations with intelligence, the strongest was able to "explain" only 0.4% of intelligence variation.

Yet, as the article points out, we know that there is a meaningul concept of intelligence, which is more than just a personality trait, that helps us evaluate people that we meet every day.

One very interesting thing from this article was the research which showed that parts of the cerebral cortex were thinner in intelligent people at age 7, and then thicker than normal, in the same people, at ages 10-16.

But, on the whole, this article highlights (correctly, I think) that intelligence is primarily an emergent property. As the article mentions, some people may think "faster" about the same things. Some may think about a wider range of things, more slowly. Some may be better at recalling related facts during any given thought, others worse. The specifics are all very different, but when put together, create a system of "thought" that is somewhat unique to each thinker. "Smart" people are those with a system that has developed far enough to prove useful (at least, useful in a way that others can recognize).

Follow the Bouncing Universe

"Follow the Bouncing Universe" by Martin Bojowald (Scientific American, October, 2008).

This article is basically a review of some current research on "loop-quantum gravity" and on what might be called an "atomic theory of gravity."

There are two really good elements in this article, while most of the rest is just a survey and review.

1) The article describes the possibility, now being studied and thought upon, that gravity is not a purely attractive force. The idea is that gravity actually attempts to force quantum particles to be a specific distance apart. Further than this distance, it acts as an attractive force. When the sub-atomic particles come too close, though, gravity "flips" and acts to push things apart. In this idea, the big bang was an event which was caused by the density of matter in the universe being very, very high (100 billion suns in the space of a proton). At this density, the universe literally exploded. Gravity quickly began acting as an attractive force, and the expansion of the universe is just due to the "momentum" achieved in the initial explosion.

2) Another insightful element of this article was the metaphor of the balloon. One logical corollary to the hypothesized system of quantum gravity, described above, is that the universe could have actually "flipped" inside out. If you imagine a series of events with bang bang like explosion, followed by a contraction, following by an explosion, etc... it becomes conceivable that the universe actually turns inside out at the end of each contracting phase.

Imagine a balloon, blown up. Imagine the air all coming out of the balloon. Now, instead of simply lying limp and empty of air, imagine if, when the last bit of air came out, the balloon turned inside out and blew up again. You can also imagine this by thinking of a balloon attached to a hole between 2 walled-chambers. Imagine the pressure going up in one side and down in the other side, and the reversing, causing the balloon to inflate in one direction, deflate, and then inflate in the other direction.

Another interesting thing about these theories is that, as one can see from the balloon metaphor, it is possible that information could be preserved from one "side" or direction to the other. Not much information would be preserved, but it is possible that, say, some air particles would not be compressed to a singularity (a point at which information is lost), and how they flowed through the aperture (the balloon) would impact particles on the other side.

On the other hand, another way to interpret the metaphor is that no air could ever pass from one "side" to the other. Unless information could be "passed through" the membrane (balloon) without it actually being permeable to air, there might be no meaningful communication between the two sides. In this example, information might be preserved, not from the "last" universe before this one, but from the one before that.