The Economist has a fascinating article on the arms race going on between American soldiers and bomb makers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A great example is something called “Darwin” patrols. Many early improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were triggered by remote controls for garage doors. The CIA quickly realized this and began driving around pressing their own garage openers. Any bomb makers nearby would be blown up.

Predictably, these easy wins didn’t last. By killing those bomb makers the CIA effectively improved bomb making. Only better IEDs and bomb makers survived – hence the name “Darwin” patrols.

As the coalition forces become better at detecting IEDs the bomb makers get better at making them. There are plenty more examples of innovation being met with innovation in the article.

Both sides must constantly keep improving just to keep up. This is common in evolutionary biology and is known as the Red Queen effect.

In Through the Looking Glass (the sequel to Alice in Wonderland) the Red Queen tells Alice:

“It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that.”

It’s a great name for this effect.

Wherever there is competition, from biology to the Iraq war to the office, the Red Queen effect arises. We have to keep moving, just to stay where we are.

The latest Economist has an article on corruption in South Africa. It makes for pretty frightening reading.

Examples

The article mentions several high profile cases of corruption: Zuma, Cwele, Selebi, etc.

There is also discussion of several other examples of corruption.

• 400,000 civil servants getting welfare payments to which they are not entitled
• 6,000 senior government officials who failed to declare business interests and are awaiting disciplinary hearings
• 423 prison officials disciplined for corruption; 26 criminally charged
• 923 corrupt officials from the ministry of public works have been ‘brought to book’

Reasoning

Corruption among those in power is a human condition. However, it seems that ANC officials are especially prone to corruption.

Even Gwede Mantashe, the ANC secretary-general, explains that too many “comrades” regard election to office as simply a chance to get rich.

The Economist also mentions that corruption in South Africa is exacerbated by “a culture of entitlement to compensate for past suffering under apartheid”.

In other words many in the ANC feel entitled to take their fill because of our history. As I have blogged in the past, a feeling of entitlement has been shown to make corruption significantly worse.

Silver lining

The ANC claims to be working on several corruption busting laws and measures including:

• Laws to facilitate swifter and reliable prosecution of corrupt officials
• A review of the ANC’s deployment policies which currently put people into jobs based on having the right connections instead of the right skills
• Tougher rules and more openness on the awarding of public contracts
• Better protection for whistle blowers who are often suspended for “poking their noses into smelly areas”

The old anecdote says that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Economist has a fascinating article describing experiments into this effect.

These experiments show that there is in fact a causal link between power and corruption. Even more interestingly, they may point to the reason for this link.

How the experiments work

The researchers used “priming” techniques to make test subjects feel either powerful or powerless.

Once primed, both high-power and low power subjects were asked to rate the morality of various situations. For example the researchers asked subjects to rate the morality of cheating on taxes or of taking an abandoned bicycle.

The results

The experiments showed a significant difference in the judgments of high-power and low power subjects:

• High-power = Judge others more harshly than yourself
• Low-power = Judge others more leniently and yourself more harshly

Power does indeed seem to cause people to judge themselves more leniently than others – they are moral hypocrites.

The entitlement hint

It seems that powerful people not only abuse the system, they also feel entitled to abuse it. This proved to be an important hint and the researchers did more experiments to explore this entitlement.

In these experiments the subjects were primed again, but this time entitlement was split from power:

• High-power subjects who felt they deserved to be powerful
• High-power subjects who felt they did not deserve the power
• Low-power who deserved to be powerless
• Low-power who did not deserve to be powerless

These subjects were also asked to rate moral actions of themselves and others.

Again the powerless judged others leniently and themselves harshly. This was true whether they legitimately powerless or not.

As expected, those who felt entitled to their power judged others very harshly and themselves very leniently.

The interesting result is for those who were powerful but felt the high-power position was undeserved. These subjects were lenient on others but very harsh on themselves.

This was the exact opposite of the normal result for high-power test subjects.

The reasons why

Why would undeserving powerful people be harsher on themselves than others? That is the opposite of the usual reaction to having power.

The answer to that question provides an elegant explanation for the whole set of results.

Humans evolved living in smallish groups with dominance hierarchies. In such hierarchies all of the experimental results make sense.

Powerful (dominant) members of the band can get away with bending the rules (judging themselves more leniently). They should also deal harshly with anyone lower in the hierarchy taking a chance (judging others more harshly).

Powerless group members should be submissive – they should judge others (normally more dominant) leniently and themselves harshly.

When people from low in the hierarchy find themselves temporarily in powerful positions they are in danger of attracting punishment from the true dominants.

So they act extra-submissively by judging themselves extra harshly and being extra lenient on others.

It all makes sense!

The Economist has an article on education in South Africa. Some of the facts from the article:

• South Africa spends about 5% of GDP on education – more than any other country in Africa
• About 50% of students drop out before achieving a Matric
• Only 15% of Matrics get marks good enough to enter university
• The Matric pass rate has fallen from 73% in 2003 to 61% in 2009

The results are drastically different for white and black students. For example, matric mathematics results are enormously different between the two races.

The article goes on to speculate about the causes of these dismal results. Obviously the historical impact of Apartheid policies on black education is mentioned. The OBE initiative also cops some blame.

But why would results be getting worse even 15 years after Apartheid and despite affirmative action programs?

The Economist speculates that the appalling quality of teachers is also to blame. The article notes that teachers’ unions prevent teachers from being evaluated – a sure recipe for bad teachers. If someone isn’t evaluated on performance, then they aren’t going to perform.

Teachers really should be evaluated on their performance – just like the rest of us.

If I were to pick a single article from each week’s Economist it would be the obituary. The last article in each edition, I often find the obituaries the most enjoyable to read.

Reading an obituary in The Economist is to be given a series of glimpses into a life, after which you have a feeling for the subject that mere story telling can’t provide.

Not every such article captures me, but some are certainly stunning and I always look forward to the final article in each edition.

This week the subject of the obituary is Charis Wilson, a model and writer who was prominent in the 1930’s and 40’s.

Initially the subject of beautiful photographs by Edward Weston she eventually wrote the articles for his books.

The article is a gem and I recommend it – good returns for a single page of reading.

One of the first things that I learned when I was a waiter in a seafood restaurant is that red wine doesn’t go with fish.

Why that was, I had no idea. It turns out that nobody else did either.

The Economist has this article detailing how some researchers were able to find the answer.

In an experiment the researchers analyzed wines tasted with seafood and found that wines with high iron content left an unpleasant taste. Generally red wines have a higher iron content and therefore don’t taste good with seafood.

In order to test the hypothesis the researchers changed the iron content in various wines and repeated the test. Sure enough iron content was strongly correlated with a foul taste.

Science is awesome. I must be honest though – I don’t mind red wine with seafood. Apparently the combination tastes very fishy and I like that taste.

A pagoda is a tall and often very old structure built entirely out of wood.

They are common in Japan and some are extremely old. For example “Horyuji pagoda in Nara was built in 607 and is thought to be the oldest multi-storey wooden structure in the world.”

The Economist has an article explaining just how these structures have managed to survive hundreds of years of typhoons and earthquakes.

Summary:

• To withstand very heavy rains the eaves are extended way beyond the building’s width – about 70% beyond!
  • This prevents rain water from weakening the foundations
• The floors are not actually attached. They are simply stacked on top of eachother and held down by the weight of the heavy tiles on the roof
  • This allows each floor to move during an earthquake without breaking up
• There is a central pillar known as a shinbashira that (normally) rests on the ground
  • This pillar prevents the shifting floors from sliding off eachother and also transmits the energy into the ground.

It’s a fascinating article and a good example of why The Economist is so great.

The Economist has an article on Zuma, South Africa, and the recession.

Summary:

• The current recession means that many of Zuma’s grand campaign promises are falling aside
• This is causing serious problems among the impatient poor masses
• It is also causing problems among his powerful left leaning COSATU and communist allies
• The fact that Tito Mboweni is leaving (suspiciously timed) suggests that perhaps Zuma is giving in to pressure
• It will be crucial to see if Zuma is able to “hold his left-wing allies in check” during the recession

In short, my take is this:

South Africa is full of poor people (40% of our population is below the poverty line).

These poor masses are impatient to improve their lot. They also believe that this is their right and will happen fast.

• Many believe their current situation to be the direct result of past injustice
• They have all been promised quick and drastic change by the ANC

With good governance and hard work their lot should improve – but only over time.

This is a problem because:

• We do not have good governance. Especially at the extremely important municipal level we often have shockingly bad governance
• The ANC promises unrealistic and quick results. Zuma made lots of mad promises during the campaign which are now falling by the wayside

So we have an already impatient, poor and jobless population being continually disappointed you surely have a recipe for unrest and possible disaster?

I believe that a lot of life is a big confidence game.

From sport to public speaking, to work, to relationships I have found that self-belief goes a long way. I call it my confidence trick and it’s worked very well for me.

The Economist has an article outlining experimental results that suggest positive thinking can leave you worse off – if you don’t believe the positive thoughts.

Read the article for details of the experiment, but in short the results were:

• High self-esteem => benefit from positive thoughts
• Low self-esteem => worse off because of positive thoughts!

The article goes on to suggest that the positive thoughts clash with the self beliefs of those with low self-esteem thereby reinforcing those negative self-perceptions!

So, positive thoughts do help – but only if you believe them.

Pott’s confidence trick has experimental support!

Incidentally, I think that this is the reason that religion is beneficial to many. Religion is a positive thoughts believability engine. The problem is that it so often gets co-opted into ignorant or political ends.

The Economist has a very interesting article reporting experiments that show a relationship between smiling in a yearbook photo and divorce later in life.

The Experiment

• The experimenters got hold of about 700 yearbook photos
• The smiles in the photos were then rated
• Smile ratings were then statistically compared with divorce in later life

The Results

• Never divorced subjects had average smile ratings of 5.9
• Divorced subjects had average smile ratings of 5.2 (a statistically significant difference)
• Those who were least smiling were three times more likely to be divorced than those who were most smiling

It seems that statistically significant information can be gleaned from a thin “slice” of information. Smiles really do indicate personality.