All posts by Dr. ESP

Word of the Year 2023

Culture

On December 15, Dictionary.com selected “hallucinate” as its Word of the Year 2023.  It is not the word I would have chosen, even considering their focus on hallucination’s relevance to artificial intelligence.  Below is the official announcement.

The definition strikes me as an inaccurate description of both “hallucinating” and “artificial intelligence.”  If they intended to show how information can be mangled, or even corrupted, to make a non-factual observation, based on their own definitions, a better choice would have been the following.

CONTEXT

noun

  1. the parts of a written or spoken statement that precede or follow a specific word or passage, usually influencing its meaning or effect.
  2. the set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event, situation, etc.

SOURCE: Dictionary.com

If we learned anything at all during this off-year political conversation, it is the adage “context is everything” no longer applies.  Today, the more apt lesson is, “If you need context to explain any declaration, you have already lost the argument.”  Just ask the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania.

I should have learned this lesson in 1978, when, as director of development planning at the Maryland Department of Economic and Community Development, my team drafted a development policy agenda titled, “A Five-Part Strategy for the Maryland Marketplace.”  The tag line?  “Maryland, Close to What Counts.”  The document laid out the context for this phrase including the state’s proximity to every major East Coast population center, the Nation’s capital, its shipping access via the Chesapeake Bay and the port of Baltimore, etc.  Within weeks, the Delaware economic development agency launched a new campaign.  “Delaware, What Counts.”  They might as well have added, “Maryland, Close but No Cigar!”

While I hopefully did not continue to make that same mistake, others have been less fortunate.  During the 2023 election cycle, voters in Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia told the GOP leadership and pro-life advocates, “If you have to explain why government should intervene in decisions about reproductive health, take your message elsewhere.”  In contrast, Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat in a deep red state, won re-election based on a campaign ad in which the now 21 year-old victim asks, “Should a 12 year-old, who has been raped by her stepfather, have to bring his baby to term?”  Game, set, match.  No context needed.

Wednesday night, Republican presidential contender Nikki Haley, at a rally in New Hampshire, ripped the award for “worst answer of the year” from the hands of the three university presidents who wilted during the House Education Committee hearing on anti-Semitism on college campuses.  When asked, “What caused the American Civil War,” she pontificated about the role of government, individual freedom and capitalism.  She did not mention the word “slavery,” to which the questioner replied, “In the year 2023, it’s astonishing to me that you answer that question without mentioning the word slavery.”  In the video you see Haley hesitate, wondering how to put her response in context.  Lesson #2.  Do not expect, much less ask, those who disagree with you to provide the context in which to explain your position.  Haley responded, “What do you want me to say about slavery?”  In other words, in what context do you want or expect me to talk about slavery?  This response was so ludicrous even Ron DeSantis accused her of trying to whitewash history (after which he vanished in a puff of irony).

Politics and academia are not the sole arenas in which context is used to mask the more obvious reason for any action.  During the holidays, my son-in-law gave me a book by Bruce Schoenfeld titled Game of Edges.  The subtitle reads, “The Analytics Revolution and the Future of Professional Sports.”  A central theme focuses on team ownership and how it has morphed from a hobby of the rich and famous into the most successful investment in their portfolios.  The gift’s relevance was affirmed when the Los Angeles Dodgers spent over one billion dollars to sign two players:  Shohei Ohtani ($750 million over ten years) and Yoshinobu Yamamoto ($325 million over 12 years).

It begs the obvious question about return on this record breaking outlay.  “Will their presence on the Dodgers’ roster generate enough revenue to justify their inflated salaries?”  Sports journalists provided an array of answers about TV contracts, merchandise royalties and income from other activities associated with the team.  Although, I doubt Nobel laureate John Nash could calculate how many #17 and #18 jerseys (Ohtani and Yamamoto, respectively) you need to sell to raise a billion dollars. Schoenfeld suggests such financial gymnastics are unnecessary.  There is a simple answer.  Guggenheim Baseball Management (GBM), headed by majority owner Mark Walter, purchased the Dodgers in 2011 for $2.15 billion dollars.  If sold today, the buyers would pay an estimated minimum of $4.25 billion.  GBM and Walter would recover their investment with a billion dollars to spare.

As we approach 2024, the question for the Biden campaign is whether they have learned the lesson.  Yes, Bidenomics has been successful.  The post-pandemic American economy is the envy of the industrialized world.  Lower inflation.  Higher GDP.  Most job growth in a presidential term.  Increasing consumer confidence.  Inflation reduced by 67 percent without a recession. But that requires context and a longer attention span than most voters have.  You know what does not.  A box score on any sports web site or on the sports pages of any newspaper.  You immediately know which team won and why.  Therefore I suggest the Biden campaign start purchasing billboards across the country with a series of box scores.  Here are two examples.

21st Century Recessions

Obama/Biden 0
Bush/Trump 2

 

21st Century Job Creation (in millions)

Obama/Biden 26.147
Bush/Trump -2.14

 

Let the GOP fumble with the context.

POSTSCRIPT: 2024 Word of the Year

Will journalists, academics and politicians continue to invoke the word “context” in the coming year?  I, for one, hope so.  Although it may take on new significance, requiring  one more definitional variation.

CONTEXT

noun

~a Donald Trump post on social media.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

Last Sane Man Not-Standing

Politics

More revealing than yesterday’s decision by the Colorado Supreme Court to disqualify Donald Trump as a candidate for President in the state’s primary was the reaction of the other contenders for the Republican nomination.  Let’s begin with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and whatever Vivek Ramaswamy.  Remember all three raised their hand when asked if they would support Trump even if he was convicted of a felony crime.  Here is what each said about the Colorado decision.

DeSantis:  The Left invokes ‘democracy’ to justify its use of power, even if it means abusing judicial power to remove a candidate from the ballot based on spurious legal grounds.

Haley:  The last thing we want is judges telling us who can and can’t be on the ballot.

Ramaswamy:  This is what an actual attack on democracy looks like.

In contrast, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said he would not support Trump if he was convicted of a felony.  However, his support of the American judicial system ended last night with his response to the Colorado ruling.

Christie:  I do not believe Donald Trump should be prevented from being president of the United States by any court.

Ironically, Christie harbored no similar opinion concerning court intervention when it came to Gore v. Bush following the 2000 election.  In fact, he uses Gore’s concession to contrast Trump’s behavior when it comes to respect for the judicial process.

Sadly, the only candidate for the Republican nomination who said he would not vote for a convicted felon and agreed with the Colorado ruling was former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, who remains in the race although he is polling at less than one percent and has not qualified for the last two debates.

Hutchinson: The Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling barring Donald Trump from the presidential ballot is what I raised as a concern in the first presidential debate in Milwaukee. The factual finding that he supported insurrection will haunt his candidacy.

So we now have five candidates, including Trump, who might as well be running on a platform to repeal Article III of the U.S. Constitution.  For you strict constructionists out there, it contains some of the clearest possible language in any of the founding documents.

Section. 1.

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. 

Section. 2.

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority.

The U.S. Supreme Court will eventually have to rule on the Colorado disqualification.  On today’s edition of “Morning Joe,” conservative and former Republican attorney George Conway admitted he had been skeptical of the case for disqualification until he read the dissenting opinions of the three Colorado judges who voted against banning Trump from the March 5 primary ballot.  He found them to be logically weak and did not refute the facts.  Trump engaged in insurrection and Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars people who engage in insurrection from holding any public office.

He made another observation which undermined the argument that Trump had not physically participated in the January 6 insurrection.  Conway noted that the phrase in the 14th amendment which reads, “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same,” especially the phrase “the same” refers specifically to “the Constitution of the United States” in the previous clause.  Therefore insurrection in Section 3 need not be a physical act.  Insurrection, in this case, requires only a failure to follow the Constitution.

Conway concluded that, if the Supreme Court takes up the appeal, Trump’s lawyers will need to make much better arguments (not that such exist) and hope enough justices can tie themselves in knots coming up with a valid rationale to subvert the constitutional language.

One can only imagine Trump’s wrath if “my justices” uphold the Colorado decision.  Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett should hope their benefactor did not keep a copy of Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2 on his bedstand next to “The New Order,” a collection of Adolf Hitler’s speeches.  Otherwise he might get ideas from Act IV, Scene 2 for his Day One dictatorship.  “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the [judges].”

POSTSCRIPT:  PARENTING LESSON

If your children have any interest in becoming conservative Republican politicians or working for one, there is a sure fire way to ensure that do not abandon their moral compasses.  Change their last name to Hutchinson.  If it’s a girl call her Cassidy.  If it’s a boy, Asa seems appropriate.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

Even a Caveman…

Culture, Politics

On Tuesday, New York Representative Elise Stefanik asked the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania a simple question.

“…does calling for the genocide of Jews violate (your university’s) code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment? Yes or no?”

There are only two possible answers.  #1:  Of course it does.  #2: We never expected we would face this situation.  Therefore, we felt no need to specifically prohibit such speech.  But we know we must now.

All three academic leaders first told Stefanik it depended on the context.  In her response, Penn President Elizabeth Magill clarified, “If the speech becomes conduct.  It can be harassment, yes.”  An incredulous Stefanik shot back, “Conduct meaning committing the act of genocide?”

You might suspect I, being a Jew, am outraged by this exchange and especially the unwillingness of three university presidents to stand up against antisemitism which exploded beginning with false reports the Israel Defense Forces bombed a Gaza hospital when, in truth, the death and destruction was the result of an errant Islamic Jihad rocket.  If so, you would be half-right.  I am outraged at everyone involved.

If any one of my former students had come to class as ill-prepared as the three university presidents I would have excused them immediately.  (For the record, I actually would do that, explaining that I did not want the offending student to benefit by learning from the hard work of those students who did prepare.)  The trio knew exactly why they had been called before the House Committee on Education & the Workforce.  All they had to do was read the hearing title on the Committee’s web page, “Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism.”

As professed in a classic Geico commercial, preempting the unfortunate discussion which occurred “…was so easy, even a cavewoman (all three presidents were women) can do it.”  Just imagine one of them had made the following opening statement.

Members of the committee, I share your concerns about the heated and potentially dangerous debate on college campus precipitated by the events of October 7, 2023 and Israel’s response.  I have always held academia should provide an environment for the free exchange of ideas and opinions.  And, as you know, there are strong opinions on both sides.

As a university president, I am required to make decisions that both protect free speech and ensure the safety of our students.  No easy task.  I have met with my leadership team and the university trustees and we came up with a set of ground rules we think does both.  Let me give you a few examples.

    • Condemning Hamas for the terrorist attack on October 7 and challenging Israeli tactical conduct of the war can and should be topics of civil discourse.
    • Equating all Palestinians with Hamas and all Jews and Israelis with government policies is not.
    • Signs, banners and posters supporting or opposing either the Palestinian or Israeli cause are acceptable.
    • Social media posts supporting or opposing either cause are also acceptable.
    • Signs, banners, posters and social media which threaten the free movement and safety of any student, faculty or administrator will be removed and the person originating the message may, following due process, be subject to suspension or expulsion.
    • Calling for the extermination of either Muslims/Palestinians or Jews/Israelis crosses a line we will not tolerate.
    • Anyone who engages in any activity which harms an individual or defaces property will be held accountable.
    • Anyone disrupting normal business including classes and extracurricular events, after due process, may be suspended or expelled.

If and when we observe unanticipated actions outside these ground rules we will amend them as necessary.  I hope you will support our efforts to be as precise as possible what we, as educators, see as the difference between free speech and unacceptable behavior.  Thank you.

Which brings me to my equal antipathy toward Congresswoman Stefanik.  When Stefanik referred specifically to calls of “genocide of Jews,”  MIT president Sally Kornbluth replied, “I have not heard calling for the genocide for Jews on our campus.” It turns out Kornbluth was correct, not just about MIT, but other campuses on which similar claims have been made.  Those claims turned out to be generated by Instagram and other social media users, often misquoting attendees at Palestinian rallies.  The Associated Press provides several examples including this one at the University of Pennsylvania.  The AP reports:

“Students @uofpenn gathered chanting ‘We want Jewish genocide’ ‘there is only 1 solution’ in reference to the Nazis ‘final solution’,” wrote an Instagram user who shared the clip in a post. “There has possibly never ever been a more dangerous time to be a Jewish student as Antisemitism continues to grow as a disease.”

The poster may be correct this is a dangerous time to be a Jewish student.  But it is not a license to make stuff up. The AP continues:

But the anti-Israel chants heard during the pro-Palestine rallies are being misquoted, Jewish and Palestinian groups say.

The protestors are actually chanting, “Israel, Israel, you can’t hide: We charge you with genocide,” the Anti-Defamation League, which frequently speaks out against anti-Semitism and extremism, confirmed in an email Tuesday.

Whether she believes the Israeli airstrikes are necessary to defeat a terrorist organization which brutally murdered so many of the country’s citizens or not, does Ms. Stefanik, a raging advocate for the First Amendment right to free expression when it comes to Donald Trump, really want to restrict debate about the future of the Middle East based on rumors?  Especially ones she perpetrates.  If only she had read the AP report which was published five days before the hearing.

Back to the academic leaders.  They do not need to take sides in this debate.  They need to lead by giving direction to the debate. And ensuring it is based on facts, not rumors and false assumptions.  It might even be a great practicum opportunity for students to hone their research and analytical skills.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

Freezed Out

Sports

Was it coincidence or some cosmic reminder that yesterday, Americans saw a crime committed on live television, almost 60 years to the day after the Sunday when ABC News aired the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby in real time?  To add to the  paranormal nature of these two events, both offenses took place at approximately the same time, noon on the East Coast.  And even though both breaches took place in plain sight, neither was without controversy which generated a multitude of conspiracy theories.

Of course, I am talking about the College Football Playoff Selection Committee’s decision to choose Alabama over Florida State as the fourth and final participant in this year’s quest for a national championship.  As with any crime, we need to ask, “Who was the perpetrator who had the motive, opportunity and skill to commit such as felony?”

Was it the selection committee?  Is this what happens when the star chamber consists of a majority of gray-haired, white guys with names like Chris, Mitch, Boo, Chet, Warde, Jim, Mark, David and Gene who are more beholden to memories of the past than the possibilities of the future?  Most are current or past coaches and athletic directors at universities such as Nebraska, Kentucky, NC State, the Naval Academy, Baylor, Utah and Michigan.  Their academic backgrounds include degrees in sports administration, communications and business. The only female, Kelly Whiteside, is also the only sports journalist on the committee.  Where are the humanities graduates who might remind the committee Americans relish stories like those written by Horatio Alger about impoverished youths who, against the odds, make it to the upper rungs of society’s ladder?  Or the theologian who could argue what could be more compelling than the next David and Goliath story?

In this age of sports analytics, one might assume the committee would defer to the only member, Rod West, who holds a degree in mathematics which he earned at Notre Dame.  Since the committee’s deliberations are not public we will never know if West pointed out the Atlantic Coast Conference’s record against non-conference Power 5 conference opponents (10-9)  was better than the Southeast Conference (7-9).  Or that head-to-head the ACC won six of the ten games against SEC teams.  Or, of the four the SEC won, one was against Virginia with 3-9 record and two were against Georgia Tech (6-6).

Yes, the SEC has been the premiere football conference for most of the 21st century.  However, that is hardly the case this year.  But for the worst coaching decision of 2023, this would have been indisputable.  On November 25, Alabama was trailing Auburn 20-24 with 42 seconds remaining in the game.  The Crimson Tide faced a fourth and goal at the Auburn 31 yard line.  Instead of blitzing Bama quarterback Jalen Milroe or even calling for a standard four-man rush, Auburn coach Hugh Freeze employed a three-man front line which was more interested in containing a Milroe run than forcing a short pass which would have given the Auburn backfield more than enough opportunities to stop the receiver before reaching the goal line.

According to ChatGPT, on a typical passing play, the quarterback has 2.5 to 3.0 seconds to release the ball.  Freeze’s no-man rush gave Milroe just over six seconds to set up the play that won the game.  Otherwise, Alabama would have had two regular season losses and would not have been part of the playoff conversation.  They would, however, still played in the SEC championship game this past Saturday.  The victory over Georgia by a two-loss team would have made it quite clear the SEC was unworthy of even one shot at the national title.

Now consider Florida was just a 1-point favorite when it was still unclear whether second string QB Tate Rodemaker or third string QB Brock Glenn would be leading the Seminoles.  When it was announced Rodemaker would not play, many thought FSU was finished.  But FSU’s defense carried the team to a 16-6 victory.  For which the committee suggested FSU, without their star quarterback, had no chance against any of the other three teams in the playoffs.  Did the committee never hear of the 1963 Chicago Bears which rode the league’s and maybe the all-time best defense to an NFL championship?  Or Don Larson pitching a no-hitter in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series.

Defense has won championships in other major sports. This season we might have learned whether the same thing was possible in college football.  Sadly, we will not get the chance.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

Lessons of Recent History

Culture, Politics

Israeli officials obtained Hamas’s battle plan for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened, documents, emails and interviews show. But Israeli military and intelligence officials dismissed the plan as aspirational, considering it too difficult for Hamas to carry out.

Underpinning all these failures was a single, fatally inaccurate belief that Hamas lacked the capability to attack and would not dare to do so. That belief was so ingrained in the Israeli government, officials said, that they disregarded growing evidence to the contrary.

~Ronan Berman and Adam Goldman
New York Times/December 1, 2023

When asked about this revelation, Israeli government officials replied the primary concern now is execution of the war against Hamas.  A full investigation of the October 7 terrorist attack will come later.  The United States can save whatever investigative body emerges the time and resources needed to explain the past mistakes and recommend changes for the future.  Just send them a copy of the report released on July 22, 2004 by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.  The commission concluded, “Above all, the failure on 9/11 was a failure of imagination.”  Despite intelligence which suggested Al-Qaeda was planning an assault on American soil, failure to imagine an enemy 6,700 miles away could coordinate an attack on New York City and Washington, D.C. Failure to imagine commercial airliners could be used as guided missiles. Failure to imagine the hijackers were suicidal.  

Ted Singer, former CIA official with years of experience in the Middle East is quoted in the New York Times story.  “The Israeli intelligence failure on October 7 is sounding more and more like 9/11.”  He added, “The failure will be a gap in analysis to paint a convincing picture to military and political leadership that Hamas had the intention to launch the attack when it did.”

However, such a “gap in analysis” was not supposed to happen after a similar failure in October 1973 when Egypt and Syria surprised Israeli troops in the Sinai Peninsula and Golan Heights on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.  I’ll let Max Brooks (Mel Brooks’ son) explain the fundamental post-Yom Kippur War change in Israel’s intelligence process to ensure there would not be similar gaps in analysis in the future as laid out in his fictional account of a global conflict with a supernatural enemy.

In October of 1973, when the Arab sneak attack almost drove us into the Mediterranean, we had all the intelligence in front of us, all the warning signs, and we had simply “dropped the ball.” We never considered the possibility of an all-out, coordinated, conventional assault from several nations, certainly not on our holiest of holidays. Call it stagnation, call it rigidity, call it an unforgivable herd mentality. Imagine a group of people all staring at writing on a wall, everyone congratulating one another on reading the words correctly.

From 1973 onward, if nine intelligence analysts came to the same conclusion, it was the duty of the tenth to disagree. No matter how unlikely or far-fetched a possibility might be, one must always dig deeper.

~Max Brooks/World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

You might logically ask, “Why wasn’t there a tenth analyst who would make the case that the threat of a terrorist attack of the magnitude of October 7 was real?”  Actually, there was, a female analyst identified in the Times story only as “a veteran of Unit 8200.”  She argued the Hamas plan was more than aspirational, providing evidence of training exercises conducted by senior Hamas commanders in July 2023.  She shared her concerns with colleagues. “We already underwent a similar experience 50 years ago on the southern front in connection with a scenario that seemed imaginary, and history may repeat itself if we are not careful.”

The reason I raise these issues is not just the Israeli government’s failure to learn from the American experience on 9/11.  It is to ask whether Americans understand the underlying causes which enabled Hamas to carry out its attack on October 7 and the extent to which similar forces are on our horizon.  Without speculation about Bibi Netanyahu’s motive or intent, consider the following facts.

  • On November 21, 2019, prime minister Netanyahu was indicted on three counts: accepting bribes, fraud and breach of trust.
  • In December 2022, Netanyahu became prime minister for the sixth time.  He filled his cabinet with far-right hawks and theocrats.  They include his national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a West Bank settler who opposes Palestinian statehood and was convicted of incitement against Palestinians in 2007.  And interior and health minister Aryeh Deri, an ultraorthodox rabbi who was convicted of tax fraud in 2021.
  • On July 24, 2023, the Knesset (Israel’s parliament), with Netanyahu’s support, passed a law to weaken the nation’s judiciary.  The vote resulted in massive protests including many reserve officers who said they would no longer report for duty.
  • This year the Israeli government has authorized an additional 12,855 housing units for Jewish settlers on the West Bank, some in areas challenged by the Israel Supreme Court.

These facts point to a regime that, before October 7, was focused on self-interest, fealty to the most extreme members of its coalition, weakening national institutions, challenging long-established norms and creating distractions. 

I do not know if these actions were memorialized in a single document.  But if they were, and you want the English translation, just read about the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which according to the Foundation website, “…paves the way for an effective conservative Administration based on four pillars:  a policy agenda, Presidential Personnel Database, Presidential Administrative Academy, and 180-Transition Playbook described as ‘a comprehensive, concrete transition plan for each federal agency’.”  Or the MAGA translation: tax cuts for the rich, loyal friends of Donald Trump, a federally-funded version of Trump University and weaponization of the entire executive branch to go after Trump’s perceived enemies.

Lessons of recent history class dismissed.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP