Category Archives: History

Food, History, Security

Carrot-Vision Myths

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Marty Ottenheimer pointed out to me the other day that Carrots do not actually help vision. Rather, the story we often hear is a result of a rumor from WWII. ABC Science explains:

…if you don’t get enough carotenes or Vitamin A in your diet, eventually you will suffer problems in your vision. This was the basis of the myth started by the Royal Air Force, the RAF.

In the Battle of Britain, in 1940, the British fighter pilot, John Cunningham, became the first person to shoot down an enemy plane with the help of radar. In fact, in WW II, he was the RAF’s top-scoring night fighter pilot, with a total of 20 kills. Some pilots were better flying in daylight, while others, like Cunningham, were better at night. His nickname was “Cats’ Eyes”. The RAF put out the story in the British newspapers that he, and his fellow night pilots, owed their exceptional night vision to carrots. People believed this to the extent that they started growing and eating more carrots, so that they could better navigate at night during the blackouts that were compulsory during WW II.

But this story was a myth invented by the RAF to hide their use of radar, which was what really located the Luftwaffe bombers at night – not human carrot-assisted super-vision.

The punch-line is that German folklore already held that carrots would make eyes better. Susceptibility to fraud is usually rooted in pre-existing beliefs and prejudice.

History, Security

The Congo Disaster

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The article in Slate by Michael J. Kavanagh starts with the unnerving title:

Five Million Dead and Counting: The disaster in Congo is all the more tragic because it was utterly avoidable.

That should get your attention, especially if you work in security and you believe, or have experience, in preventable disasters.

Earlier this year in Goma, U.N. official Phil Lancaster told me, “As much as the international community can feel responsible for Rwanda, it should feel even more responsible for what happened here in Congo.” Lancaster knows what he’s talking about. As a U.N. soldier, he watched the 1994 genocide happen in Rwanda. And until September, he led the U.N. program that encouraged Rwandan Hutu rebels who’d been living in Congo since the genocide to go home.

This has all been unfolding right in front of our eyes, but my guess is that most people are distracted by the US Presidential election, the financial meltdown, football season, and so forth. The core of the problem, in brief, is rooted in a simple list of events:

  1. After the Rwanda crisis of 1994, more than a million Hutus, many of whom were accused of killing hundreds of thousands of Tutsis, fled across the border to a part of the Congo called the Kivus
  2. The Tutsi-led army of Rwanda then initiated a war with the support of other countries, against the Hutus in the Congo, including invasions of the Kivus in 1996 and 1998
  3. A Congolese Tutsi, Laurent Nkunda, who served as a general in Congo’s army, also created a “liberation” war against the Hutus in the Kivus.
  4. The Congolese Army, supported by the international community, has only made things worse. Rather than take on Rwandan Hutu rebels as well as stop Nkunda’s rebels to calm the region, they have been accused of attacking the same groups as Nkunda and raping, looting, and pillaging civilians.

Only 5,500 U.N. peacekeepers currently patrol North Kivu, a mountainous region with more than 5 million inhabitants and at least 40,000 heavily armed soldiers and militia. Compare this with Chicago on the night of the U.S. presidential election, where 13,500 police patrolled a city of about 3 million that, as far as I can tell, hasn’t had a militia since the 1860s.

Although it is the biggest U.N. mission in the world, the MONUC mission in Congo has never received the full troop allotment it has asked for, and the civilian section is chronically and disastrously understaffed.

Ironically, the current head of the U.N. mission in Congo, Alan Doss, was hired to wind down the $1 billion-a-year operation. Instead, he’s asking for reinforcements. To put it kindly, Doss’ first 11 months in Congo have been inauspicious. He has stood by as massacres have taken place in Bas Congo and Ituri provinces and now he has permitted a rebel movement backed by a foreign country to essentially take over North Kivu.

The answer, according to Kavanagh is to mobilize the EU rapid-reaction force (the former French RDF based in Djibouti?) to intervene. I suspect this will have no more effect than when the French deployed forces to Rwanda in 1993. On the other hand, clearly the conflict is spreading into Angola (who back the Congolese army) and Rwanda (who support Nkunda), with the potential to draw in Uganda and Zimbabwe. As these preventable disasters continue to unfold, something must be done by international leadership.

History, Poetry, Security

Psychology of Cons

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Psychology Today, as discussed by Bruce, provides insight into the mind of cons and the practice of fraud:

My laboratory studies of college students have shown that two percent of them are “unconditional nonreciprocators.” That’s a mouthful! This means that when they are trusted they don’t return money to person who trusted them (these experiments are described in my post on neuroeconomics). What do we really call these people in my lab? Bastards. Yup, not folks that you would want to have a cup of coffee with. These people are deceptive, don’t stay in relationships long, and enjoy taking advantage of others. Psychologically, they resemble sociopaths. Bastards are dangerous because they have learned how to simulate trustworthiness. My research has demonstrated that they have highly dysregulated THOMASes [The Human Oxytocin Mediated Attachment System].

The author emphasizes that two percent is not bad since that means a large majority of people therefore are not bastards. He also turns to literature for historic prose on living with fraud:

Russian playwright Anton Chekov said “You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.” I’d say that’s about right-just watch for the occasional con.

Occasional is higher than two percent, seems to me. What percentage would Chekov have guessed? Does the percentage go up in later age groups?

A 2002 paper called Trust among strangers is based on a game that simulates the opportunity for reciprocation and charts the probabilities.

History, Poetry, Security

Michelangeo’s Freedom of Art

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The WSJ explores the influences and supposedly hidden messages of Michelangelo in an interview with Roy Doliner:

Q: So these images aren’t exclusively Jewish?

What Michelangelo was doing was trying to remind Rome five centuries ago that Jesus was a Jew, he came from Jews, and that Christianity is based on Judaism. Florence in his time was proud of that connection, whereas Rome was not only trying to separate the two religions but to negate in great part its roots in Judaism — and even forcibly separate Jews and Christians. There were many Papal bulls outlawing fraternization and friendship between Jews and Christians, whereas in Florence everybody was partying together.

Q: Was Michelangelo simply promoting the Florentine agenda in Rome?

Absolutely. In his poems he complains about the abuses of power and hypocrisy of the church. It’s not us imagining it; it’s in his own words and work. This was not somebody who was thrilled about working for the Vatican on a ceiling.

Although today the message might be subtle, perhaps in his lifetime it was as open as his poetry.

One only has to be
finding windows and doors
a member among those with a key
to unlock what we all stare towards