Speaking the truth when resigning

When senior government people resign from their office, they often use boilerplate language about how they were proud to serve, how they respected their superiors, and only hint that they are leaving because of serious disagreements. This may be due to the human desire to not cause a fuss or the less noble desire to not burn bridges with those in power as they seek new opportunities.

But Alexandra Hall Hall, a 33-year veteran of the British foreign service and a senior British diplomat in the US, said to hell with that, she was going to tell it like it is.
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The solution to yesterday’s logic puzzle

The solution to yesterday’s puzzle was deduced by some in the comments. I was not able to solve the puzzle myself but in such cases, once I know the solution, I try to figure out why I could not figure it out, to see what I had overlooked.

In this case there are four possibilities for the two coin tosses: HH, HT, TH, and TT where H stands for heads and T for tails. The two coin tosses are independent of each other and so knowing the result of one doesn’t enable one to predict the result of the other. This tempted me to ignore (or not properly register) the information that each person gets to see the result of his or her own toss before predicting the other. And since the captives each gets to make just one guess, that seemed to me to suggest that they must guess wrong at some point.
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Academics corrupted by power

One of the luxuries of being an academic is that one has more freedom than most to express one’s honest opinion on things. This makes academics sought after for their views on issues of public policy. It is often tempting for academics who have made a name for themselves to sign on to serve in governments. Some may do it because they feel that this gives them an opportunity to press more for policies that they favor. For others it may be just the allure of being close to the seats power and to gain even greater visibility.

But the cliché that ‘power corrupts’ applies very strongly to academics who fly too close to the bright lights of power and find that they end up supporting atrocious policies. A good example is Samantha Power who at one time was a Harvard academic who had a good reputation for her work on human rights around the world. In 2003 she wrote an essay that was sharply critical of US foreign policy, as Jon Schwarz writes.
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CO2 emissions for 2019 will hit record, but rate of increase is slower

Scientific American magazine reports that the Global Carbon Project has released a study that has bad news and just a bit of good news.

Global carbon emissions are expected to hit an all-time high in 2019, scientists say, smashing a previous record set in 2018.
…

There is some good news. The authors expect a substantial slowdown in worldwide fossil fuels emissions for this year. Emissions from coal, oil and natural gas expanded by about 2% globally in 2018. For all of 2019, they predict an expansion of just 0.6%.

Part of the slowdown can be attributed to declines in coal use in the U.S. and much of Europe, and lower-than-expected growth from other key coal consumers this year.

“We’re estimating a decline of 10% this year” for the U.S., said the Global Carbon Project’s executive director, Pep Canadell, “well above previous decline levels.”

But slowing the growth rate is not enough. We need to lower the rate altogether.

Philanthropy as a license to behave badly

I have had many posts about really awful wealthy people (the Sackler family and Jeffrey Epstein being noted examples) using philanthropy to cover over the stain of their actions and enable them to act like they are pillars of the community. The assumption is that these acts of generosity are after-the-fact attempts at covering up their ill-gotten gains or their evil acts and ingratiating themselves into society.

But Patricia Illingworth, a professor of ethics, writes that the problem is even worse and that the very act of philanthropy may actually give these people a sense that they have the right to behave badly, something she refers to as ‘moral licensing’.
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Nice little brain teaser

I came across this nice little puzzle that I got from the Quora website from someone named Alejandro Jenkins who said that he cannot recall where he first heard or read about it. In its essentials it is easy to state and understand even though, as seems to be the tradition with such puzzles, a story is constructed around it.

The two leading mathematicians in the kingdom, Alice and Bob, have run afoul of their tyrannical king. Rather than behead them outright, the king decides to prolong their misery by locking them in separate dungeons, so that any communication between them is impossible.

Each morning, a guard is to enter the corresponding dungeon and toss a coin so that the prisoner in that dungeon can see the outcome. Then the prisoner will be asked to guess the outcome of the coin toss in the other dungeon (i.e., Alice has to guess the outcome of the toss witnessed by Bob, and Bob has to guess the outcome of the toss witnessed by Alice). If at least one of the two prisoners guesses correctly, they will live to see another day. Otherwise they will be put to death forthwith.

It would seem that the mathematicians are doomed. But as they are being led away in chains Alice and Bob manage to confer for a brief moment and they agree on a strategy that will delay their execution indefinitely. What is the strategy?

What I like about this puzzle is that there is no trickery involved, no hidden meanings and the like. It is a straightforward logic puzzle. Jenkins provides the solution but for some reason, I cannot deep link to it and so will wait a day to let people discuss it in the comments if they so choose and then post the solution in the comments.

“No malarkey”? Really?

I am a certified old guy. Just for the fun of it, I sometimes show my children how in touch I am with the younger generation by using slang that is way out of date, such as ‘far out’, ‘groovy’, ‘dig’, and ‘hip’. But even I would not stoop to using the word ‘malarkey’ and it baffles me that Joe Biden, already fighting an image that he is utterly out of touch with current times, would actually use it in his campaign slogan.

Conan O’Brien talks to Biden’s communications person as to the wisdom of this decision.

But maybe this might work. Young people may not know that this is a very old term and may think he has coined new slang and that would make him a trendsetter.

I can’t believe I’m defending Donald Trump

I was intrigued by this news item.

One of President Donald Trump’s most common responses to intelligence briefings is to doubt what he’s being told, former Deputy Director of Intelligence Susan Gordon said Tuesday.

Gordon, an intelligence veteran of more than 30 years, said Monday that Trump had two typical responses to briefings.

“One, ‘I don’t think that’s true,'” Gordon told the Women’s Foreign Policy Group.

“The one is ‘I’m not sure I believe that,'” Gordon continued, “and the other is the second order and third order effects. ‘Why is that true? Why are we there? Why is this what you believe? Why do we do that?’ Those sorts of things.”

The article implied that Trump was asking these questions because he had got information from other sources that he liked and trusted more that went counter what the intelligence briefers were telling him.

In my own teaching of science, I had two goals: (1) to enable students to sufficiently understand (not necessarily believe) the scientific consensus on the topic we were learning so that they could use it to solve problems; and (2) to get in the habit of reflexively asking themselves the questions: What do I believe? Why do I believe it? What is the evidence for it? What is the counter-evidence against it?

I felt that these two things enabled them to function is the world of science as well as building up necessary critical thinking skills that would stand them in good stead in all areas of their lives.

So I cannot fault Trump for asking the intelligence officials such questions. Of course, it is not clear if he was actually seeking information in order to make better judgments or whether he was merely finding a way to reject conclusions he did not find congenial. Given what we know about him, the latter is likely but still the asking of such questions is a good thing.

The Democratic party’s problematic foreign policy positions

The Democratic party does not have a good record on foreign policy. The party’s establishment has long adopted hawkish interventionist polices rationalized by asserting humanitarian motivations that have doubtful validity. As Alex Kane writes, one notable feature has been the subservience of the party leadership to the dictates of the Israel lobby, even though the grass roots of the party and progressive Jewish groups have long since distanced themselves from it. In the party leadership, we see an abundance of so-called PEPs (Progressive Except for Palestine). Three powerful Democratic congresspersons Eliot Engel, Jerome Nadler, and Nia Lowey have been instrumental in advancing the lobby’s agenda but all three are encountering progressive challengers in the upcoming primaries.
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Post-election plans for the NHS

Given the current polling, it looks like the Conservative party might win an outright majority in the December 12 general election. If so, Brexit will almost surely pass in some form or other, leading to turmoil in the near future.

But I want to look at another major issue and that is the future of the National Health Service. It is widely assumed that Boris Johnson will put NHS privatization on the table as part of a bilateral trade deal with the US. Donald Trump has said in the past that he wants this.
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