The solar terminator.

Shame on me, but I had never heard of the solar terminator. Or, to put it a different way, every single time I heard the concept in a context other than SCSI cables I thought it was referring to Terminator, the character in the movies. I was obviously wrong, and I owe to Neal Stephenson that I learned a new tidbit of information today.

They are angling across the terminator -not the robotic assassin of moviedom, but the line between night and day through which our planet incessantly rotates.

(Stephenson: p. 740)

Cryptonomicon.

A 1999 novel by Neal Stephenson, one of the best examples of postcyberpunk literature, a mixture of science fiction and historical fiction with plenty of references to science, philosophy, history, religion and many other topics. In Cryptonomicon, Stephenson explores the exploits of the cryptographers who worked at Bletchley Park during World War II, linking it to the story of their descendants, who are trying to set up a data haven in the Pacific at the end of the 20th century. Nominated for the Hugo Award in 2000, it quickly became a cult among hackers and cypherpunks.

Technical description:
Title: Cryptonomicon.
Author: Neal Stephenson.
Publisher: Arrow Books.
Edition: First edition, reimpressed, London (UK), 2007 (1999).
Pages: 918 pages.
ISBN: 0-09-941067-2

Find it on Amazon (USA, UK).

El sabor agridulce de los recuerdos de posguerra.

La lectura de Todo Paracuellos (que, por cierto, se hace bien ligera) tiene unas consecuencias bien extrañas en el espíritu. Se trata de una de esas historias que dejan un cierto sabor agridulce en el paladar. Nos hace reír y llorar a ratos, mientras que en otros momentos no nos queda más remedio que bajar el libro y entregarnos a una apesadumbrada reflexión sobre el oscurantismo que se apoderó de nuestro país durante la inmediata posguerra. Los ojos de los niños son en realidad sobrecogedores en ocasiones. Limitados como estamos a transcribir únicamente el texto de los diálogos, seguramente no podré ni sabré transmitir la enorme carga de nostalgia, sufrimiento y amargura que encierran estas páginas. Basten unas pinceladas para que el lector pueda hacerse una somera idea. He aquí, por ejemplo, una conversación entre dos chavales del "hogar":

— Anoche mi padre me contó que se ha vuelto a casar con... otra mujer que yo no conozco... y tiene hijos con ella. Dos niñas y un niño.
— ¿Y esos también están en los hogares?
— No, esos no. Esos viven con mi padre y la mujer de mi padre en nuestra casa de Madrid. Mira, mejor... así cuando mi padre me saque tendré con quién jugar.

(Giménez: pp. 490-491)

Ni que decir tiene que el padre, pese a todas las promesas, nunca le saca del "hogar". Y nosotros lo sabemos de sobra, lo cual no hace sino añadir mayor tristeza al diálogo. El padre es un falangista sinvergüenza, un vividor que se aprovecha de haber terminado la guerra en el bando de los vencedores para acostarse con el mayor número posible de mujeres y abandonar a su hijo en el orfanato. Eso sí, el mismo hijo se lo ve venir, como queda claro en este otro diálogo de los dos mismos caracteres:

— ¡Qué bien lo estamos pasando! ¿Eh, Hormiga?
— ¡Fenómeno! Pablito... ¿tú tienes padre?
— No, sólo madre.
— ¿Tu madre, cuando entra en una tienda, dice "Arriba España"?
— No sé. Mi madre no entra en ninguna tienda. Está enferma en un sanatorio.
— Es que mi padre, cuando entra en algún sitio, dice "¡Arriba España!" Todo el mundo dice "buenos días" y él "¡Arriba España!"... y lo dice como gritando. ¡Y me da una vergüenza...!
— Lo hará para llamar la atención, para hacerse el chulito...
— ¡Eso es lo que me da vergüenza! A veces le contestan mal. Cuando fuimos a hacernos la foto, había un señor en la tienda que le dijo: "¡menos gritos, milagritos!"
— ¡Ja, ja, ja...! "¡Menos gritos, milagritos!" ¡Qué risa...!

(Giménez: pp. 582-583)

El libro entero está repleto de historias enternecedoras y, al mismo tiempo, afiladas, desgarradoras, ácidas. Debe haber pocas obras que reflejen tan bien el ambiente de la posguerra española. Lo recomiendo encarecidamente. Todo Paracuellos es, sin lugar a dudas, una de las obras maestras del comic español.

Una historia en la Historia.

Novela histórica dirigida al lector juvenil que narra las vicisitudes del joven Claudio, víctima de las burlas de sus familiares, amigos y compañeros de escuela debido a su cojera y tartamudez. Pese a todo (y pese a las conspiraciones de su abuela Livia para deshacerse de él), Claudio consigue imponerse a las circunstancias y llegar a emperador precisamente debido a sus limitaciones físicas.

El libro de Marianelli es de lectura obligatoria en el primer curso de ESO en la escuela a la que asiste mi hijo Nicolás, así que no me queda más remedio que leerla para echarle una mano con los comentarios.

Ficha técnica:
Título: Una historia en la Historia.
Autor: Sauro Marianelli.
Editorial: Bruño.
Edición: Decimosexta edición, Madrid (España), abril 2008.
Páginas: 233 páginas, incluyendo preguntas y comentarios.
ISBN: 842-160-9971

Todo Paracuellos.

Edición en un solo volumen de Paracuellos que recopila la serie completa de historietas dibujada por Carlos Giménez entre 1977 y 2003 en la que retrata las experiencias de los huérfanos de la Guerra Civil acogidos por la Obra Nacional de Auxilio Social. Uno de los clásicos del cómic español, sin lugar a dudas.

Ficha técnica:
Título: Todo Paracuellos.
Autor: Carlos Giménez.
Editorial: DeBolsillo.
Edición: Tercera edición, Barcelona (España), febrero 2008.
Páginas: 608 páginas.
ISBN: 978-84-8346-324-6

The art of triangulation.

In the mid- to late-nineties, the concept of triangulation was all the rage among political commentators in the US. Morris, widely considered as its father, describes it for us in his book:

The key is to recognize that it is legitimate for Republicans to worry about the elderly, education, and the environment. It is okay for Democrats to work to solve crime and welfare and to hold down taxes. Issues are not the preserve of one party or the other. Candidates, to be effective, need to cross over and show their ability to solve the other side's problems.

Bill Clinton proved this to be so. But the Republicans have yet to realize they can use their basic issues of less taxation and government regulation to win elections only if they offer credible programs for education, the environment, the elderly, and economic growth. But as long as Republicans offer no real alternatives on these Democratic issues, voters will continue to reject them. Voters will not seek low taxes and limited government at the price of jettisoning their concerns over the Democratic issues.

In addressing the other party's issues, a "me too" campaign never works. To be successful, a candidate cannot jusst mimic his opponent's rhetoric or programs; rather, he has to invent a new range of solutions to the problems historically associated with the other party. In the 1996 campaign, Clinton did not merely parrot Republican proposals, he sought to defuse the pressure for GOP programs by using Democratic means to achieve Republican goals.

(Morris: pp. 51-52).

In other words, triangulation consists in "stealing" your opponents strong issues by taking a different approach in its resolution. As such, it sounds a lot like the Third Way proposed by Clinton, Blair, Schroeder and others, something similar to the concept of the radical center, which attempts to come up with a centrist path by combining the solutions coming from both sides of the aisle in the left-right divide. It's a position that doesn't have much credit these days, in spite of the fact that Barack Obama himself has applied it to his own campaign to a great extent (although without making a big deal of it, to be sure). I understand this position may have acquired a bad reputation after Blair went out supporting Bush's adventure in Iraq, but the fact is that the position itself continues making sense, I think. Simply put, today's problems are of a completely different nature than the one the old ideologies of left and right tried to answer. And yet, they still defend certain values (equality, freedom, tradition, etc.) that are obviously timeless. To this, we also should add the fact that today's voters are far more educated and sophisticated than in the past. They dislike being treated like sport fans who are expected to join in cheering chants according to an already written libretto, preferring to choose on their own. Catechisms should be thrown out the window.

Political scandals and their ability to mobilize voters.

Morris doesn't seem to believe that political scandals have any influence whatsoever:

Scandal sells newspapers, radio programs, and TV shows. It just doesn't move voters. It attracts those who are already decided politically —base voters of either party— to the TV set, but it does little to influence the real playing ground of our politics: the independent middle.

(Morris: p. 45)

I beg to differ. It all depends on the type of political scandal we are referring to. If it only involves personal issues, as I've indicated somewhere else, I do agree they end up having little influence over electoral behaviors. On the other hand, if they involve political corruption, their effects could be the key to winning or losing an election. I do believe voters these days are way too sophisticated to fall into the sensationalistic trap that political strategists sometimes like to use. They are too often described as brainless, amorphous individuals who can be easily influenced by political marketing. Far from that, today's average voter is more educated than in the past, and also more adept at reading and interpreting messages from the media, separating the wheat from the chaff without much trouble.

Oh, and one more thing: I don't completely agree with Morris' assessment that today's elections are won by attracting "the independent middle". Yes, the "floating vote", the voters who could go either way at the last minute, is important. However, I am convinced there is another sociological group that is far more influential in the final outcome of the elections but that is usually underestimated: the one that goes out to vote sometimes but decides to stay home in other circumstances. This is the group that can make or break elections, I think. Yet, precisely because they sometimes stay home and their vote is not counted, political scientists and consultants confuse things and blame the shifts on "independent voters". Let me put it this way: I think that, for the most part, there are no independent voters. The vast majority of people feel identified with one or another side of the political spectrum, and rarely change their views. When they do, it tends to be for a period of years (for instance, people who used to vote Democrat change their preferences at a given point and start voting for the Republicans consistently). One way or another, there is no such a thing as a true "floating vote" (or, at least, not a group that is statistically significant enough to decide the elections, I think). However, there are plenty of people on both sides of the aisle who may or may not turn out to vote. These are the ones who decide the elections. Why would political scientists then fall for the idea that there is such a thing as a significant group of independent voters? The reason lies precisely in the way this behavior I am referring to here shows in the election results. Suppose there is a group of voters A who tend to vote for the Democrats, and a group B that leans towards the Republicans. If voting group A becomes actively involved in an election and goes out to vote while group B stays homes, the Democrats will win. On the other hand, if in the next elections group A stays home and group B goes out to vote, the Republicans will win. A quick look at the results will seem to clearly show the existence of a group of "independent voters" who sometimes vote for the Democrats and some other times vote for the Republicans, in spite of the fact that the reality is not truly like that. I am obviously not arguing that there are no independent voters out there, but rather that their importance is usually overestimated, I think. On the other hand, the voting group that I think is truly vital to a winning strategy (i.e., the one one that sometimes votes and some other times decides to stay home) is usually overlooked. I also think Obama's campaign proves that my hypothesis is more correct than Morris'.

Clinton and personal scandals in contemporary politics.

Quite a few people were surprised to see in the late 1990s that no political (or personal) scandal seemed to have any effect on Bill Clinton's popularity level. The clearest example of this was, of course, the Lewinsky scandal. The Republicans strategists thought they had finally caught Clinton in a situation that would pretty much force him to resign or that, at the very least, would have a significant cost for the Democrats at the ballot box. Morris, however, has a completely different approach to the issue:

One of the reasons politicians like Clinton have proven less vulnerable than one might expect to constant attacks on their characters, is that voters don't want to have to trust a candidate to make decisions for them. They want their elected officials on a shorter leash. Voters now insist that a candidate spell out his program, his vision, his ideas, and then they will elect him to fulfill that specific mandate. As Tina Turner sang, "What's love got to do with it?"

(Morris: pp. 32-33)

I'm not sure I totally agree with Morris' view though. I am convinced voters view a politician as a professional these days: as long as he delivers, we don't have to care about his personal affairs. To put it a different way: do we want to see the Government (or even media) mingle with our own personal affairs? I believe the centrality of media these days has led people to learn the importance of privacy. Sure, ogling into other people's lives is tempting, and everybody does it to one extent or another. Yet, we also know that each person's life is his or her own. We have learned to respect that, at least in general terms. As a matter of fact, I'd say that the main reason that makes a given type of media that specializes in airing information about the private lives of big stars so popular is directly related to the fact that people see it as mere entertainment. In other words, people who consume this type of media is fully aware that the whole thing may not be more than a big lie, a marketing plot set up to spread a given public image of the star in question. People are far more media savvy than we want to give them credit for. In this sense, political "scandals" that only affect the politicians' personal lives are nothing but fodder for this particular form of gossip entertainment. People couldn't care any less about them, except to gossip, discuss and joke about it. That's all. Scandals of a real political nature, of course, are a completely different thing.

Idealism as the most pragmatic course.

Although Morris' choice of title for his book may generate a good amount of mixed feelings among readers (after all, Machiavelli has come to be seen, unfair as it is, as a synonym of dirty politics and overt hipocrisy and pursuit of self-interest at any cost), the truth is that The New Prince does not read as a manual of dirty tricks. Rather, it reads as a political manual in the good old tradition started by the author of The Prince, widely considered to be the first study in Political Science. The preface already gives us a good idea of the line he follows in the rest of the book:

If American politicians were truly pragmatic and did what was really in their own best self-interest our political process would be a lot more clean, positive, nonpartisan, and issue-oriented. It is not practicality which drives the partisanship, and the never-ending cycle of investigation and recrimination in which we wallow, but a complete misapprehension of what Americans want and what politicians —in their own career self-interest— should offer. If Machiavelli were alive today, he would counsel idealism as the most pragmatic course.

(Morris: p. XV)

I totally agree with Morris on this one. How often have we heard in the past twenty years or so that the problem with contemporary politics is precisely the fact that politicians are too pragmatic (too "professional") and don't hold deep beliefs? On the contrary, I think what most citizens dislike about politics (the constant bickering, the sectarian approach to the issues, the ad-hominem attacks) have more to do with ideological dogmatism than pragmatism. Everyone is fully aware that our societies are too complex for politicians to be amateurish. This may be OK at the local level in the smallest towns, but as soon as we move to higher levels the amateur approach just doesn't cut it anymore. The people who hold most offices have to work on it full-time. They have to be professionals. There is no other choice. However, precisely because they are professionals, their main goal should be to achieve objectives, to deliver. I am convinced that citizens don't have a problem with a politician who commits mistakes or changes his mind on a particular issue, as long as he delivers. That's how voters —especially those who matter most: the independents— will judge him. They are seen as freelance advocates. And yet, Morris is right when he points out that most politicians simply are not aware of this change in perception. They continue doing politics the old way: in a partisan manner, with an ideologically-driven agenda, blinded by a set of rigid ideological principles that are seen as the magic recipe to solve all problems.

I have a little issue with Morris' choice of words though. Idealism is usually identified precisely with the sort of starry-eyed unrealistic expectation based on a given dogma. True, it doesn't have to refer only to that, but let's face it, it's what most people identify the term with. I do think a politician must have some deeply held principles or values, but she must also have an idea how to bring them to life, how to implement them in real life. Politics is the art of applying ideas to the real life by implementing it in the form of projects. It's not so different from business management after all, although most people would shy away from that comparison because it doesn't sound grandiose enough.

The New Prince. Machiavelli Updated for the 21st Century.

Dick Morris, one of Bill Clinton's political advisors and the brains behind his electoral victory in 1996, writes what he considers the essential rules for office-seekers and anyone who cares about politics. There is no theory in this book. Rather, Morris writes about the practice of running for office and doing politics based on his long experience as a political advisor to many politicians. Although his reference to Machiavelli might turn off many potential readers who may think that Morris portrays a conspiratorial way to reach power and avoid being unseated from it, the contents of the book are quite different. He simply reflects upon the essence of the political activity in the 21st century.

Technical description:
Ttitle: The New Prince. Machiavelli Updated for the Twenty-First Century.
Author: Dick Morris.
Publisher: Renaissance Books.
Edition: First Edition, Los Angeles (USA), 1999.
Pages: 252 pages.
ISBN: 1-58063-147-9

Find it on Amazon (USA, UK, in Spanish)

The Irish monks as the saviors of ancient libraries.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, any form of sophisticated culture that previously existed disasppeared in Western Europe. The Roman Empire of the East survived to the fall of Rome, but it was far too remote to make a difference. The barbarians took over, destroyed, pillaged and ransacked. The libraries, the repositories of all the ancient knowledge, disappeared:

The western empire was scarcely a memory now. The last Latin emperor had fallen just a few years after Patrick died. And though there was still a Greek emperor in the east at Constantinople, where a small, defensible state was long established on the Bosporus, he might as well have been at Timbuktu for all his law was known in western lands. All the great continental libraries had vanished; even memory of them had been erased from the minds of those who lived in the emerging feudal societies of medieval Europe.

(Cahill: p. 181)

To Cahill, it was the Irish monks who saved that very same ancient civilization that had otherwise disappeared:

Ireland, at peace and furiosuly copying, thus stood in the position of becoming Europe's publisher. But the pagan Saxon settlements of southern England had cut Ireland off from easy commerce with the continent. While Rome and its ancient empire faded from memory and a new, iliterate Europe rose on its ruins, a vibrant, literary culture was blooming in secret along its Celtic fringe. It needed only one step more to close the circle, which would reconnect Europe to its own past by way of scribal Ireland. (...) Columcille provided that step.

(Cahill: p. 183)

I'd say he is partially right. Yes, the Irish monks did salvage plenty of ancient books and, together with them, a good part of the old knowledge. However, we shouldn't forget the important role that Bizantium and, later on, the Arabs played in this story. It is to them that we owe the most important works from the Greek masters that survived throughout these difficult times. It would be a disservice to the historical truth to emphasize only the role of the Irish because they are "Western like us" and downplay the importance of the Greeks and, above all, the Arabs, who contributed their fair share to human knowledge during a few centuries before the Renaissance took off.

But there is one more fact that I consider of the utmost importance and that Cahill never seems to consider at all: human knowledge tends to flourish whenever there is a high density of population (which tends to be associated to urban settlements) and, above all, a high density of cultural exchanges (i.e., a rich flow of information). Neither of those things happened during the Middle Ages, a dark time when the rural lifestyle supplanted the cities and people lived in isolated communities. This wouldn't change until trade increased sometime in the 15th and 16th centuries and urban spots became important again. This is something to keep in mind at times like ours, when some people start hearing the beautiful chants of the rural life once again.

City versus countryside.

The civilization of classical Antiquity (both Greek and Roman) cannot be understood without the idea of polis, urbs or city:

To Roman citizens, the place to be was a Roman city or villa. The pagus, the uncultivated countryside, inevitably suggested discomfort and hardship. The inhabitants of the pagus —pagani, or pagans— were country bumpkins, rustic, unrealiable, threatening. Roman Christians assumed this prejudice without examing it.

(Cahill: p. 107)

Now, this is something we may be at risk of forgetting in certain societies these days. Thanks in part to the environmentalist movement, anything rural is in. Some young people's dream is to move to a small property in the countryside and live there, surrounded by a calm life and closer to nature. Even more people's idea of a better life is to live somewhere in the suburbs, away from the stress and pollution of city life, and yet close enough to benefit from it services. One way or another, the idea has been gaining ground in the last couple of decades or so.

To a great extent, the movement that proclaims the need to return to the countryside is guided by an utopian view of what life there means. Simply put, those who were born and grew in the city are so used to certain perks that they take them for granted. However, the reality still is that, in spite of all the advances experienced in the last twenty or thirty years, life in the countryside is hard, especially if one has to live from nature's own fruits. And let's not even talk about the lack of dynamism of the economy in the country, which makes it far more difficult to find a decent job. It shouldn't surprise no one, then, that a significant amount of those who fled the city to go live in the countryside are actually professionals who saved enough and can afford some decent living there. In other words, hardly the majority of the population.

In any case, I find it important to emphasize that the city, with all its problems (yes, the pollution, criminality and high density) has given us so much: laws, political institutions, democracy, universities, technology, science, places to debate, to meet, to enjoy the diversity that can only be seen in the large cities. What sort of society would we live in without our cities? What would be the effect of large sums of people fleeing to live in the countryside? Yes, something tells me that it would be akin to a return to the Dark Age, something not so different from what happened in the Mediterranean region back then.

Augustine's "Confessions" and the beginning of self-consciousness.

As Cahill points out, Augustine of Hippo represents the first instance where self-conscience takes shape in Western literature:

If we page quickly through world literature from its beginnings to the advent of Augustine, we realize that with Augustine human consciousness takes a quantum leap forward —and becomes self-consciousness. Here for the first time is a man consistently observing himself not as Man but as this singular man —Augustine. From this point on, true autobiography becomes possible, and so does its near relative, subjective and autobiographical fiction.

(Cahill: p. 41)

Sure, before Augustine there were other instances of people writing about their experiences. However, the key was always the experiences themselves, the outside, the events. With Augustine, for the first time, it's the individual's concept of self, his own internal struggles and doubts, that is reflected on the page. Now, this would be a trivial issue if it weren't because the idea of individual is key to our civilization. Most people would agree that Western civilization is sustained on four legs: classical Antiquity (i.e., the Greek and Roman cultures), the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Age of Enlightenment and, finally, although directly linked to the previous one, modern Science. Well, in Augustine we find the first clear indication of the idea of individual, developed by the confluence between the classical civilization and both Judaism and Christianity. Neither the contemporary notion of human rights nor the idea of modern democracy would be possible without this accomplishment.

An empire that turned its back on the outside.

In page 12, Cahill shares a thought about the natural inward-looking approach of the Romans that should serve as a caution to us in the present too:

For all the splendor of Roman standard, the power of Roman boot, and the extent of Roman road, the entire empire hugs the Mediterranean like a child's village of sand, waiting to be swept into the sea. From fruitful Gaul and Britain in the north to the fertile Nile Valley in the south, from the ricky Iberian shore in the west to the parched coasts of Asia Minor, all provinces of the empire turn toward the great sea, toward Medi-Terra-nea —the Sea of Middle Earth. And as they turn to the center of their world, they turn back on all that lies behind them, beyond the Roman wall. They turn their back on the barbarians.

(Cahill: p. 12)

Great empires and large countries always tend to ignore what lies beyond their borders, considering it worthless or, at least, of less value, inferior to their own clearly superior ways and manners. This is a permanent danger in History, something that afflicted Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries and it may afflict the United States now. We should be careful here though. This is not a Western defect only, as many multiculturalists would have it nowadays. The old Chinese Empire also viewed itself as the center of the world, to the point that it referred to itself as the Empire of the Middle, and something similar can be said of the Japanese. Quite to the contrary, this is a very human fault, something intrinsic to human nature and not to this or that particular nationality or culture.

On how the Irish monks preserved Western civilization.

Thomas Cahill soon describes the core argument of this volume at the beginning of the book:

The word Irish is seldom coupled with the word civilization. (...) And yet... Ireland, a little island at the edge of Europe that has known neither Renaissance nor Enlightenment —in some ways, a Third World country with, as John Betjeman claimed, a Stone Age culture— had one moment of unblemished glory. For, as the Roman Empire fell, as all through Europe matted, unwashed barbarians descended on the Roman cities, looting artifacts and burning books, the Irish, who were just learning to read and write, took up the great labor of copying all of western literature -everything they could lay their hands on. These scribes then served as conduits through which the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian cultures were transmitted to the tribed of Europe, newly settled amid the rubble and ruined vineyards of the civilization they had overwhelmed. Without this Service of the Scribes, everything that happened subsequently would have been unthinkable. Without the Mission of the Irish Monks, who single-handedly refounded European civilization throughout the continent in the bays and valleys of their exile, the world that came after them would have been an entirely different one —a world without books. And our own world would never have come to be.

(Thomas Cahill: pp. 3-4)

We'll see later to what extent he manages to come up with clear evidence to back up these statements. However, it's true that until Cahill published this book the importance of the Irish contribution to Western civilization had not been stressed enough. Sure, there had been mentions here and there (Kenneth Clark's seminal work, Civilisation: A Personal View, deserves a special mention in this sense), but they had been ignored for the most part in favor of more familiar (and larger) countries. It is, unfortunately, a frequent bias in the study of History.