Choctaw Telegraph

Militant leader hanged by Iran

typewriterking — 2010-06-23T06:00:05Z

Iran hanged the leader of the militant group Jundallah, Abdolmalek Rigi, yesterday, after he was found guilty of nearly 80 criminal charges.

Rigi was the founder and leader of Jundallah, which have carried out numerous attacks in Iran since 2003, killing 154 people and injuring 320 more. Charges against him numbered 79, including armed robbery, contacting intelligence agents from the United States, NATO, and Israel, kidnapping, and the founding of a terrorist group, which the Iranian government classified Jundallah as.

Jundallah says its attacks are intended to protest the alleged discrimination of Sunni Muslims in Iran, whose government is largely Shi'ite. Although Iran has claimed that the group has the backing of the United States, and a video of Rigi while in custody shows him admitting the same, the US has denied that it has any ties to the group. Both the United Kingdom and Pakistan are also claimed to have ties to the group by Tehran; both governments deny the allegations.

According to Iranian authorities, Rigi was arrested while traveling from Dubai to Kyrgyzstan, and state TV ran a video of Rigi being taken from a plane by men in masks.

Rigi was apparently hanged in a prison in Tehran early on Sunday, according to state media. His hanging is the latest in a string of executions of Jundallah members by the Iranian government.

All text created after September 25, 2005 is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License unless otherwise specified. Contributions must be attributed to Wikinews.

Four coalition soldiers die in Kandahar helicopter crash

typewriterking — 2010-06-23T05:54:38Z

Less than two weeks after two Australian soldiers (Diggers) died in the explosion of a roadside bomb, three more Diggers and a US soldier were killed last night in a helicopter crash in southern Afghanistan, while seven other soldiers are being treated for injuries.

Australian Defence Force Chief, Angus Houston said in a statement this afternoon that two of the crash survivors are in a serious condition and will be moved with the other survivors to the US military hospital in Begram.

The crash occurred at 03:39 yesterday local time (23:09 on Sunday, UTC) in the north of Kandahar province. Although the cause is still unknown, Houston said "the terrain is rugged, the helicopters are often heavily loaded, it's at high altitude and it was three o'clock in the morning. All of these factors will no doubt be considered". Houston confirmed that enemy fire was not to blame for the crash.

These new casualties in the Afghan War brings Australia's death toll to sixteen, while that of the US comes to 1128 since the war began in 2001.

Despite this, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, remains firm on the issue: "We work beside our allies [...] to avoid Afghanistan once again becoming a breeding ground for terrorists who can then strike at innocent Australians both at home and abroad" and continued by saying that all Australians owe the soldiers a debt of gratitude for making the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty.

Although the names of the soldiers have yet to be released, the tragedy follows last week's casualties where Australian combat engineers Darren Smith, age 26, and Jacob Moerland, age 21, were killed along side their bomb sniffer dog, Herbie in a roadside blast.

All text created after September 25, 2005 is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License unless otherwise specified. Contributions must be attributed to Wikinews.

Test: Google Maps Street Level Widget

typewriterking — 2009-01-14T04:54:55Z

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Retro: Senator Peter Fitzgerald Explains His Vote Against Airline Bailout

typewriterking — 2008-12-10T04:34:36Z

Editor's Note: Peter G. Fitzgerald was a one-term Republican Senator that served from 1998 to 2004, choosing to retire, rather than run for re-election. The current President-Elect won that open seat in a landslide victory over Alan Keyes. Fitzgerald is probably best remembered for his lone vote against the airline industry bailout following the September 11th attacks and the following three-day national shutdown. The vote was 99 to 1, leaving Fitzgerald the lone Senator standing against the first industry-wide bailout of a decade that will doubtlessly be known for the series of bailouts that followed. Below is the transcript from the Illinois Senator, explaining his vote:

The Treasury Department recently began wiring $5 billion to the bank accounts of U.S. airlines. After it completes these up-front cash payments, the Treasury will then be obliged to guarantee up to $10 billion in airline industry loans, all as part of a $15 billion bailout bill passed by Congress. This package is unfair to workers and unfair to taxpayers. It sets a troublesome precedent for how to deal with other industries which have in some way been affected by the events of September 11.

The airlines claim that a taxpayer-funded bailout was necessary to save the industry and preserve air travel in the United States. Not so. Many of the airlines had sufficient liquidity to weather the storm following the terrorist attacks. Southwest Airlines, for example, had and still has a fortress balance sheet and may even show a profit for the quarter. A few of the airlines are in serious trouble, and remain at risk despite the bailout. But some of their problems long predate September 11, and may have as much to do with ordinary management decisions as with an extraordinary national crisis.

In any event, a case may have legitimately been made to compensate the airlines for the temporary government-ordered shutdown of air travel. Instead, Congress, acting precipitously and with little examination of the airlines' books, gave them many times the amounts that they lost. According to industry testimony, the shutdown cost $340 million a day in lost revenue. That adds up to $1.36 billion (even assuming a four as opposed to a three-day shutdown). But how much was the bailout? Fifteen billion dollars. Five billion in cash, ten billion in loan guarantees.

And who exactly is the "industry"? How about the airlines' one million employees? Layoffs are coming fast and furious and what is Congress doing about that? Remarkably, the federal aid package includes no help for flight attendants, baggage handlers, mechanics or pilots. There are no requirements that the airlines – the beneficiaries of the taxpayer magnanimity – in turn treat their employees with care and generosity. Prior to the bailout, one investment adviser was enthusiastically noting the upside of the crisis: the industry could get billions while at the same time blowing out employee contracts by citing events "beyond their control." A twofer. For a fraction of what it cost to save airline industry shareholders, Congress could have greatly reduced the hardship experienced by furloughed workers. Instead, Congress bailed the investors and booted the skycap.

The bailout was as unfair to taxpayers as it was to workers. Evaluating airline stocks before the bailout, a Wall Street analyst observed, "It's simple. Either the shareholders or the taxpayers will take the hit." Guess who Congress chose? Sure enough, the taxpayers took the hit. The people I represent will have to work awfully hard, for an awfully long time, to recoup a potential $15 billion loss. The fundamental inequities here are extraordinary. The shareholders are, in many instances, sophisticated investors. They may be people familiar with any inherent risks in airline stocks. They will be protected. The people who will pay, on the other hand, are the ordinary Joes – the men and women who go to work every day, feed their families, and may not have two nickels to invest in the market in the first place. It's a dark irony that these men and women are being called upon to belly up for the sophisticates who've seen their stock head south.

Finally, by compensating the airlines for more than their losses during the government shutdown, Congress has created an already haunting precedent. Many other industries have also experienced a general decline in their business since September 11. Airport concessionaires, theme parks, car-rental companies, are claiming that they, too, need a bailout. Hotels and restaurants are hurting; so are cab drivers. Railroads and steel companies are coming in the wake of the terrorist attacks. Having indemnified the airlines for September 11 "related" losses, by what principle do we now deny aid to others?

Congress has created a legislative morass, and many are already crying foul. If Congress had constructed a responsible package, while demanding concessions for the workers and protections for the taxpayers who paid the bill, the effort to assist the airlines in a rough time could have been a legitimate enterprise. But Congress effectively wrote a blank check with no strings attached. It may be poised, now, to do it again and again. At some point, however, someone may ask: who, finally, will bail out the American taxpayer?

An Interview With Mike Lebowitz, Modern Whig Party Chairman

typewriterking — 2008-12-03T08:21:15Z

In the United States, there are two major political parties; the Republican and the Democratic. However, there are several other minor - commonly referred to as "third" - parties. One of these is the Modern Whig Party, which has been steadily increasing in popularity over recent months.

Last week, Wikinews reporter Joseph Ford was able to speak with MWP Chairman Mike Lebowitz about how his party was formed, what it stands for, and why you should consider joining. The interview can be read below.

Wikinews (Joseph Ford): What does The Modern Whig Party stand for?

Chairman Lebowitz: The Modern Whig Party is unique in that it minimizes traditional ideology and instead stands for common sense solutions and rational thought. In fact, this grassroots movement is a non-fringe, mainstream effort designed to cater to those individuals who find themselves cherry-picking between traditional Republican ideals and also traditional Democratic ideals. The fact remains that most people agree with various aspects of both major parties, but one or two issues or reasons ultimately compels them to identify with a specific political party. The Modern Whig Party offers a home for these independent-minded individuals. The general platform of the Modern Whig Party relates to fiscal responsibility, strong national defense and bold social progression.

Joseph Ford: How old is your party? How many members does it currently have?

Chairman Lebowitz: The age of the party depends on how one views our organization. The "Whig" name has been associated with American history and tradition since the early 19th Century. The old Whig Party was mainstream and middle-of-the-road during its time. It are those general aspects of rational thinking and common sense that we adopt in terms of the old Whig Party. But at the same time, we do stress that we are the "Modern" Whig Party. We recognize that we live in a different time. In that regard, the Modern Whig Party basic infrastructure was organized in 2007, and ultimately went public in April 2008.

Currently, the Modern Whig Party has well over 10,000 members. We realize this is a modest number in the grand scheme of things, but considering how quickly we have inspired these members to sign on offers evidence that this movement has a chance to catch on and grow. The Modern Whig Party was originally founded by Iraq/Afghanistan veterans as a veterans' advocacy organization and our growth has occurred with minimal funding and can be regarded as a truly grassroots effort. It also is important to note that roughly 6,500 of these members are affiliated with the military. Our membership expanded so quickly based almost exclusively on word-of-mouth through the military ranks. Instead of trying to attract people to our Web site, we decided to come to them. What happened was that military members would send emails to their friends, who in turn would forward these emails to others. These emails described our movement and provided a means of merely contacting the national party, providing some basic information and ultimately becoming a member. Word of mouth among the military eventually caught the Pentagon's attention due to the fact that the military is supposed to be apolitical, and the Modern Whig Party was ultimately featured in the Military Times newspapers. We have since expanded with members coming from all walks of life — military and non-military alike.

Joseph Ford: How does The Modern Whig Party differ from America's major political parties (Republican, Democratic, Constitution, Green, Libertarian)

Chairman Lebowitz: The Modern Whig Party differs from the other political parties because our members come from across the political spectrum. Our common sense approach has found a way to reconcile actual common ground among individuals from all political stripes. The Modern Whig Party strives to remain mainstream and practical. Unlike other parties, we don't expect our members to agree with everything, and in fact encourage them to remain independent minded. In a way, the Modern Whig Party is different in that it is designed to provide a palatable home to independents and those who want to be independent. Another element to look at is the diversity of our members. Our state leaders include retired Vietnam veterans, Iraq/Afghanistan veterans, attorneys, college students, a retired CEO, a prominent rock musician, a golf professional, teachers and many others.

What we have found is that even though someone is socially liberal, they also may be very conservative when it comes to other issues. Same for our conservative members. This goes back to our theory that most people find themselves cherry-picking between issues of both major parties, but ultimately end up on one side of the fence. In the end, we offer a realistic and mainstream home for those who want to pick and choose from various ideals and solutions from across the political spectrum.

Joseph Ford: Currently, are there any elected officials in the United States that are members of The Modern Whig Party?

Chairman Lebowitz: By design, we have held off on running or endorsing candidates this year. The established third parties are essentially marginalized because they consistently trot out candidates just to lose. Our goal is to avoid such traps as we attempt to build a mainstream and practical organization that in time will be strong and credible enough to actually be a force in politics and our communities.

Our plan from the beginning is to operate methodically and gradually. The Modern Whig Party leadership is comprised of people who are not deluded into thinking that we are somehow entitled to members. We also are not deluded into thinking that the majority of voters are ready to take that plunge and actually vote for a third party, let alone a group called the "Whigs." We understand the reality, and perhaps that is our biggest asset. As we grow, our name will slowly filter back into the mainstream mentality. Our longterm strategy is nuanced but includes initially running a few candidates who are members of the Modern Whig Party but will initially run on the Democratic and Republican tickets. The plan is to run a few candidates on state and local ballots in 2009 and then support three candidates for Congress in 2010. If our members can win a few during this time, while at the same time our membership ranks continue to rise, we will have accomplished a winning track record from which to really make our move. We believe that we need to be innovative in order to succeed as we know the odds are stacked against us. But nothing ever came out of doing nothing.

Joseph Ford: Today, more Americans than ever before are disgusted with the Republican, Democratic and Libertarian parties. Many of these people are looking into joining another party. Why should they consider The Modern Whig Party?

Chairman Lebowitz: We have found that many Americans are frustrated with the established political parties because these organizations have moved to such ideological extremes that these groups no longer truly represent the majority of Americans. This means that people tend to either fit somewhere in the middle or they find themselves picking and choosing their stance on issues from all points of the political spectrum. In this regard, I should point out that not all of our members would classify themselves as moderate or centrist. The Modern Whig Party has members who are conservative and we also have many members who are liberal. I think it is a testament to our organization that people from all over the political spectrum can find common ground under the Modern Whig movement.

To this end, the Modern Whig Party offers a political home that actually encourages independent thought while also adopting rational, mainstream and common-sense solutions that takes all points of view into account. Are we deluded into thinking that we will become a major political force overnight? No. But what we offer is the fastest growing political movement in the country with a realistic plan to succeed based on mainstream and common-sense ideals.

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Reflection: Remembering A Notorious Lynching In Paris, Texas

typewriterking — 2008-11-20T02:28:10Z

It is 2008, well beyond 100 years since the 1890s, which was regarded as the worst decade in an era stained by race-based lynching in the United States. Vigilante slayings weren't new, but the 1890s in much of America saw the rise of racially-motivated slayings explode in frequency all of a sudden before the turn of the twentieth century.It's a common misconception to believe this terrible legacy only occurred in the Deep South, but lynch mobs spontaneously formed wherever there was a sensationalist outrage, including one episode in Paris, Texas.

The Choctaw Telegraph remembers that history by reprinting a contemporary account of the best-documented lynching in full horrible detail.
Ed

Note: The original title in the New York Sun was 'Burned at the Stake: A Black Man Pays for a Town's Outrage'

Paris, Texas, Feb. 1, 1893.—Henry Smith, the negro ravisher of 4-year-old Myrtle Vance, has expiated in part his awful crime by death at the stake. Ever since the perpetration of his awful crime this city and the entire surrounding country has been in a wild frenzy of excitement. When the news came last night that he had been captured at Hope, Ark., that he had been identified by B. B. Sturgeon, James T. Hicks, and many other of the Paris searching party, the city was wild with joy over the apprehension of the brute. Hundreds of people poured into the city from the adjoining country and the word passed from lip to lip that the punishment of the fiend should fit the crime—that death by fire was the penalty Smith should pay for the most atrocious murder and terrible outrage in Texas history. Curious and sympathizing alike, they came on train and wagons, on horse, and on foot to see if the frail mind of a man could think of a way to sufficiently punish the perpetrator of so terrible a crime. Whisky shops were closed, unruly mobs were dispersed, schools were dismissed by a proclamation from the mayor, and everything was done in a business-like manner.

About 2 o'clock Friday a mass meeting was called at the courthouse and captains appointed to search for the child. She was found mangled beyond recognition, covered with leaves and brush as above mentioned. As soon as it was learned upon the recovery of the body that the crime was so atrocious the whole town turned out in the chase. The railroads put up bulletins offering free transportation to all who would join in the search. Posses went in every direction, and not a stone was left unturned. Smith was tracked to Detroit on foot, where he jumped on a freight train and left for his old home in Hempstead County, Arkansas. To this county he was tracked and yesterday captured at Clow, a flag station on the Arkansas & Louisiana railway about twenty miles north of Hope. Upon being questioned the fiend denied everything, but upon being stripped for examination his undergarments were seen to be spattered with blood and a part of his shirt was torn off. He was kept under heavy guard at Hope last night, and later on confessed the crime.

This morning he was brought through Texarkana, where 5,000 people awaited the train. . . . At that place speeches were made by prominent Paris citizens, who asked that the prisoner be not molested by Texarkana people, but that the guard be allowed to deliver him up to the outraged and indignant citizens of Paris. Along the road the train gathered strength from the various towns, the people crowded upon the platforms and tops of coaches anxious to see the lynching and the negro who was soon to be delivered to an infuriated mob.

Arriving here at 12 o'clock the train was met by a surging mass of humanity 10,000 strong. The negro was placed upon a carnival float in mockery of a king upon his throne, and, followed by an immense crowd, was escorted through the city so that all might see the most inhuman monster known in current history. The line of march was up Main street to the square, around the square down Clarksville street to Church street, thence to the open prairies about 300 yards from the Texas & Pacific depot. Here Smith was placed upon a scaffold, six feet square and ten feet high, securely bound, within the view of all beholders. Here the victim was tortured for fifty minutes by red-hot iron brands thrust against his quivering body. Commencing at the feet the brands were placed against him inch by inch until they were thrust against the face. Then, being apparently dead, kerosene was poured upon him, cottonseed hulls placed beneath him and set on fire. In less time than it takes to relate it, the tortured man was wafted beyond the grave to another fire, hotter and more terrible than the one just experienced.

Curiosity seekers have carried away already all that was left of the memorable event, even to pieces of charcoal. The cause of the crime was that Henry Vance when a deputy policeman, in the course of his duty was called to arrest Henry Smith for being drunk and disorderly. The Negro was unruly, and Vance was forced to use his club. The Negro swore vengeance, and several times assaulted Vance. In his greed for revenge, last Thursday, he grabbed up the little girl and committed the crime. The father is prostrated with grief and the mother now lies at death's door, but she has lived to see the slayer of her innocent babe suffer the most horrible death that could be conceived.

Words to describe the awful torture inflicted upon Smith cannot be found. The Negro, for a long time after starting on the journey to Paris, did not realize his plight. At last when he was told that he must die by slow torture he begged for protection. His agony was awful. He pleaded and writhed in bodily and mental pain. Scarcely had the train reached Paris than this torture commenced. His clothes were torn off piecemeal and scattered in the crowd, people catching the shreds and putting them away as mementos. The child's father, her brother, and two uncles then gathered about the Negro as he lay fastened to the torture platform and thrust hot irons into his quivering flesh. It was horrible—the man dying by slow torture in the midst of smoke from his own burning flesh. Every groan from the fiend, every contortion of his body was cheered by the thickly packed crowd of 10,000 persons. The mass of beings 600 yards in diameter, the scaffold being the center. After burning the feet and legs, the hot irons—plenty of fresh ones being at hand—were rolled up and down Smith's stomach, back, and arms. Then the eyes were burned out and irons were thrust down his throat.

The men of the Vance family have wreaked vengeance, the crowd piled all kinds of combustible stuff around the scaffold, poured oil on it and set it afire. The Negro rolled and tossed out of the mass, only to be pushed back by the people nearest him. He tossed out again, and was roped and pulled back. Hundreds of people turned away, but the vast crowd still looked calmly on. People were here from every part of this section. They came from Dallas, Fort Worth, Sherman, Denison, Bonham, Texarkana, Fort Smith, Ark., and a party of fifteen came from Hempstead County, Arkansas, where he was captured. Every train that came in was loaded to its utmost capacity, and there were demands at many points for special trains to bring the people here to see the unparalleled punishment for an unparalleled crime. When the news of the burning went over the country like wildfire, at every country town anvils boomed forth the announcement.

Source: New York Sun, 2 February 1893.

CARGO CULT SCIENCE by Richard Feynman

2008-11-11T21:25:31Z

During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method was discovered for separating the ideas—which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn't work, to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science. And it developed very well, so that we are now in the scientific age. It is such a scientific age, in fact that we have difficulty in understanding how witch doctors could ever have existed, when nothing that they proposed ever really worked—or very little of it did.

But even today I meet lots of people who sooner or later get me into a conversation about UFOS, or astrology, or some form of mysticism, expanded consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and so forth. And I've concluded that it's not a scientific world.

Most people believe so many wonderful things that I decided to investigate why they did. And what has been referred to as my curiosity for investigation has landed me in a difficulty where I found so much junk that I'm overwhelmed. First I started out by investigating various ideas of mysticism, and mystic experiences. I went into isolation tanks and got many hours of hallucinations, so I know something about that. Then I went to Esalen, which is a hotbed of this kind of thought (it's a wonderful place; you should go visit there). Then I became overwhelmed. I didn't realize how much there was.

At Esalen there are some large baths fed by hot springs situated on a ledge about thirty feet above the ocean. One of my most pleasurable experiences has been to sit in one of those baths and watch the waves crashing onto the rocky shore below, to gaze into the clear blue sky above, and to study a beautiful nude as she quietly appears and settles into the bath with me.

One time I sat down in a bath where there was a beautiful girl sitting with a guy who didn't seem to know her. Right away I began thinking, "Gee! How am I gonna get started talking to this beautiful nude babe?"

I'm trying to figure out what to say, when the guy says to her, I'm, uh, studying massage. Could I practice on you?"

"Sure," she says. They get out of the bath and she lies down on a massage table nearby.

I think to myself, "What a nifty line! I can never think of anything like that!" He starts to rub her big toe. "I think I feel it, "he says. "I feel a kind of dent—is that the pituitary?"

I blurt out, "You're a helluva long way from the pituitary, man!"

They looked at me, horrified—I had blown my cover—and said, "It's reflexology!"

I quickly closed my eyes and appeared to be meditating.

That's just an example of the kind of things that overwhelm me. I also looked into extrasensory perception and PSI phenomena, and the latest craze there was Uri Geller, a man who is supposed to be able to bend keys by rubbing them with his finger. So I went to his hotel room, on his invitation, to see a demonstration of both mindreading and bending keys. He didn't do any mindreading that succeeded; nobody can read my mind, I guess. And my boy held a key and Geller rubbed it, and nothing happened. Then he told us it works better under water, and so you can picture all of us standing in the bathroom with the water turned on and the key under it, and him rubbing the key with his finger. Nothing happened. So I was unable to investigate that phenomenon.

But then I began to think, what else is there that we believe? (And I thought then about the witch doctors, and how easy it would have been to cheek on them by noticing that nothing really worked.) So I found things that even more people believe, such as that we have some knowledge of how to educate. There are big schools of reading methods and mathematics methods, and so forth, but if you notice, you'll see the reading scores keep going down—or hardly going up in spite of the fact that we continually use these same people to improve the methods. There's a witch doctor remedy that doesn't work. It ought to be looked into; how do they know that their method should work? Another example is how to treat criminals. We obviously have made no progress—lots of theory, but no progress— in decreasing the amount of crime by the method that we use to handle criminals.

Yet these things are said to be scientific. We study them. And I think ordinary people with commonsense ideas are intimidated by this pseudoscience. A teacher who has some good idea of how to teach her children to read is forced by the school system to do it some other way—or is even fooled by the school system into thinking that her method is not necessarily a good one. Or a parent of bad boys, after disciplining them in one way or another, feels guilty for the rest of her life because she didn't do "the right thing," according to the experts.

So we really ought to look into theories that don't work, and science that isn't science.

I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call cargo cult science. In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to imitate things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas—he's the controller—and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land.

Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they're missing. But it would be just about as difficult to explain to the South Sea Islanders how they have to arrange things so that they get some wealth in their system. It is not something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of the earphones. But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school—we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty—a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid—not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked—to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can—if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong—to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.

In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

The easiest way to explain this idea is to contrast it, for example, with advertising. Last night I heard that Wesson oil doesn't soak through food. Well, that's true. It's not dishonest; but the thing I'm talking about is not just a matter of not being dishonest, it's a matter of scientific integrity, which is another level. The fact that should be added to that advertising statement is that no oils soak through food, if operated at a certain temperature. If operated at another temperature, they all will— including Wesson oil. So it's the implication which has been conveyed, not the fact, which is true, and the difference is what we have to deal with.

We've learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science.

A great deal of their difficulty is, of course, the difficulty of the subject and the inapplicability of the scientific method to the subject. Nevertheless it should be remarked that this is not the only difficulty. That's why the planes didn't land—but they don't land.

We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off, because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of the electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher.

Why didn't they discover that the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of—this history—because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong—and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number closer to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that. We've learned those tricks nowadays, and now we don't have that kind of a disease.

But this long history of learning how not to fool ourselves—of having utter scientific integrity—is, I'm sorry to say, something that we haven't specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you've caught on by osmosis.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

I would like to add something that's not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you're talking as a scientist. I am not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when you're not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We'll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.

For example, I was a little surprised when I was talking to a friend who was going to go on the radio. He does work on cosmology and astronomy, and he wondered how he would explain what the applications of this work were. "Well," I said, "there aren't any." He said, "Yes, but then we won't get support for more research of this kind." I think that's kind of dishonest. If you're representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to the layman what you're doing—and if they don't want to support you under those circumstances, then that's their decision.

One example of the principle is this: If you've made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look good. We must publish both kinds of results.

I say that's also important in giving certain types of government advice. Supposing a senator asked you for advice about whether drilling a hole should be done in his state; and you decide it would be better in some other state. If you don't publish such a result, it seems to me you're not giving scientific advice. You're being used. If your answer happens to come out in the direction the government or the politicians like, they can use it as an argument in their favor; if it comes out the other way, they don't publish it at all. That's not giving scientific advice.

Other kinds of errors are more characteristic of poor science. When I was at Cornell, I often talked to the people in the psychology department. One of the students told me she wanted to do an experiment that went something like this—it had been found by others that under certain circumstances, X, rats did something, A. She was curious as to whether, if she changed the circumstances to Y, they would still do A. So her proposal was to do the experiment under circumstances Y and see if they still did A.

I explained to her that it was necessary first to repeat in her laboratory the experiment of the other person—to do it under condition X to see if she could also get result A, and then change to Y and see if A changed. Then she would know that the real difference was the thing she thought she had under control.

She was very delighted with this new idea, and went to her professor. And his reply was, no, you cannot do that, because the experiment has already been done and you would be wasting time. This was in about 1947 or so, and it seems to have been the general policy then to not try to repeat psychological experiments, but only to change the conditions and see what happens.

Nowadays there's a certain danger of the same thing happening, even in the famous (?) field of physics. I was shocked to hear of an experiment done at the big accelerator at the National Accelerator Laboratory, where a person used deuterium. In order to compare his heavy hydrogen results to what might happen with light hydrogen" he had to use data from someone else's experiment on light hydrogen, which was done on different apparatus. When asked why, he said it was because he couldn't get time on the program (because there's so little time and it's such expensive apparatus) to do the experiment with light hydrogen on this apparatus because there wouldn't be any new result. And so the men in charge of programs at NAL are so anxious for new results, in order to get more money to keep the thing going for public relations purposes, they are destroying—possibly—the value of the experiments themselves, which is the whole purpose of the thing. It is often hard for the experimenters there to complete their work as their scientific integrity demands.

All experiments in psychology are not of this type, however. For example, there have been many experiments running rats through all kinds of mazes, and so on—with little clear result. But in 1937 a man named Young did a very interesting one. He had a long corridor with doors all along one side where the rats came in, and doors along the other side where the food was. He wanted to see if he could train the rats to go in at the third door down from wherever he started them off. No. The rats went immediately to the door where the food had been the time before.

The question was, how did the rats know, because the corridor was so beautifully built and so uniform, that this was the same door as before? Obviously there was something about the door that was different from the other doors. So he painted the doors very carefully, arranging the textures on the faces of the doors exactly the same. Still the rats could tell. Then he thought maybe the rats were smelling the food, so he used chemicals to change the smell after each run. Still the rats could tell. Then he realized the rats might be able to tell by seeing the lights and the arrangement in the laboratory like any commonsense person. So he covered the corridor, and still the rats could tell.

He finally found that they could tell by the way the floor sounded when they ran over it. And he could only fix that by putting his corridor in sand. So he covered one after another of all possible clues and finally was able to fool the rats so that they had to learn to go in the third door. If he relaxed any of his conditions, the rats could tell.

Now, from a scientific standpoint, that is an A-number-one experiment. That is the experiment that makes rat-running experiments sensible, because it uncovers the clues that the rat is really using—not what you think it's using. And that is the experiment that tells exactly what conditions you have to use in order to be careful and control everything in an experiment with rat-running.

I looked into the subsequent history of this research. The next experiment, and the one after that, never referred to Mr. Young. They never used any of his criteria of putting the corridor on sand, or being very careful. They just went right on running rats in the same old way, and paid no attention to the great discoveries of Mr. Young, and his papers are not referred to, because he didn't discover anything about the rats. In fact, he discovered all the things you have to do to discover something about rats. But not paying attention to experiments like that is a characteristic of cargo cult science.

Another example is the ESP experiments of Mr. Rhine, and other people. As various people have made criticisms—and they themselves have made criticisms of their own experiments—they improve the techniques so that the effects are smaller, and smaller, and smaller until they gradually disappear. All the parapsychologists are looking for some experiment that can be repeated—that you can do again and get the same effect—statistically, even. They run a million rats no, it's people this time they do a lot of things and get a certain statistical effect. Next time they try it they don't get it any more. And now you find a man saying that it is an irrelevant demand to expect a repeatable experiment. This is science?

This man also speaks about a new institution, in a talk in which he was resigning as Director of the Institute of Parapsychology. And, in telling people what to do next, he says that one of the things they have to do is be sure they only train students who have shown their ability to get PSI results to an acceptable extent— not to waste their time on those ambitious and interested students who get only chance results. It is very dangerous to have such a policy in teaching—to teach students only how to get certain results, rather than how to do an experiment with scientific integrity.

So I have just one wish for you—the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.

Montana's Fantasy Football Lottery

typewriterking — 2008-10-21T15:50:24Z

The state of Montana has an exciting new lottery system as an NFL-based fantasy football league. Meant to supplement the state's horse racing infrastructure, Montana Sports Action Fantasy Football is projected to generate several times the necessary revenue to re-open the race tracks.

Betting is open in well over a hundred bars in the state, and the rules a pretty much the same as typical fantasy football. A key difference is that the state is barred from using player names and team trademarks, meaning names. Players are identified by the city they play and their jersey number, instead. Bets may be placed in the amounts of denominated bills from $5 to $100.

The top three scorers each week split just shy of three-quarters of the revenue generated.

The NFL disapproves of the venture, but thanks to Montana's godfathered status under the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, the lottery can't be shut down. Nor can the NFL blackmail the state by threatening to pull events out, as the state has no prospect for acquiring a team.

Montana is in the works to expand fantasy franchises into other sports, NASCAR, rodeo, and golf being explicitly named.

Archieved Evidence Contradicts Obama Spokesman's Claim

typewriterking — 2008-10-21T11:48:00Z

It was long before he proclaimed the Earth was beginning to heal, and the oceans were receding, but an action taken by Senator Barack Obama back in 1997 is now raising interest. That's because Obama's recent efforts to distance himself from past collaborations with William Ayers, founder of the domestic terrorist group The Weather Underground, are being contradicted by new surfacing evidence out of Chicago.

In the latest hard bit of evidence, The Choctaw Telegraph and other publications are disclosing a 1997 brief book review or "blurb" by Obama for the Ayers book 'A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court'. Published in the 'Chicago Tribune', which recently endorsed Obama for President, the blurb calls the book “A searing and timely account of the juvenile court system, and the courageous individuals who rescue hope from despair.” The review made the pressed in the 'Tribune's' “Mark My Word” column, where notable figures in the Windy City write reviews for their favorite books.

The revelation follows the appearance of Senator Obama's communication director and senior spokesman, Robert Gibbs, appearing on the FOX News Channel debate program Hannity & Colmes asking out of nowhere if co-host Sean Hannity were an Anti-Semite immediately after Hannity asked if Obama had blurbed the Ayers book. Intriguingly, Bill Ayers mentions Obama in the very book under discussion, as on page 82 on the hardcover edition, while describing Hyde Park in Chicago, he mentions "writer Barack Obama."

While the uncovered hard facts don't seem to amount to much, the casual ties found between the two concretely are seen to vindicate assertions that hard journalistic digging would find much more.

So far, it's known that Obama and Ayers served together on the board of the Chicago Annenburg Challenge, an educational initiative in Chicago. Their time together lasted three years, and it has recently come to light that Obama and Ayers shared an office in the Small Schools Workshop, located at 115 S. Sangamon Street, Chicago, and that while in the Annenburg Challenge, Obama had funneled grants into the workshop, which was run by Ayers. The new evidence completely contradicts the assertion by Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt that Ayers and Obama only "encountered each other occasionally."

But they were in closer proximity than merely the same building, as contact information tells us Annenburg and the Workshop shared the third floor of the building.

Now, the Choctaw Telegraph is aware of many different threads of circumstantial evidence and theories linking the two together in other ventures, but at this time there isn't enough together to publish these accounts. I ask for patience as more comes forward.

Isaiah's Job

2008-10-21T10:11:22Z

One evening last autumn, I sat long hours with a European acquaintance while he expounded a political-economic doctrine which seemed sound as a nut and in which I could find no defect. At the end, he said with great earnestness: "I have a mission to the masses. I feel that I am called to get the ear of the people. I shall devote the rest of my life to spreading my doctrine far and wide among the population. What do you think?"

An embarrassing question in any case, and doubly so under the circumstances, because my acquaintance is a very learned man, one of the three or four really first-class minds that Europe produced in his generation; and naturally I, as one of the unlearned, was inclined to regard his lightest word with reverence amounting to awe. Still, I reflected, even the greatest mind can not possibly know everything, and I was pretty sure he had not had my opportunities for observing the masses of mankind, and that therefore I probably knew them better than he did. So I mustered courage to say that he had no such mission and would do well to get the idea out of his head at once; he would find that the masses would not care two pins for his doctrine, and still less for himself, since in such circumstances the popular favourite is generally some Barabbas. I even went so far as to say (he is a Jew) that his idea seemed to show that he was not very well up on his own native literature. He smiled at my jest, and asked what I meant by it; and I referred him to the story of the prophet Isaiah.

It occurred to me then that this story is much worth recalling just now when so many wise men and soothsayers appear to be burdened with a message to the masses. Dr. Townsend has a message, Father Coughlin has one, Mr. Upton Sinclair, Mr. Lippmann, Mr. Chase and the planned economy brethren, Mr. Tugwell and the New Dealers, Mr. Smith and Liberty Leaguers — the list is endless. I can not remember a time when so many energumens were so variously proclaiming the Word to the multitude and telling them what they must do to be saved. This being so, it occurred to me, as I say, that the story of Isaiah might have something in it to steady and compose the human spirit until this tyranny of windiness is overpast. I shall paraphrase the story in our common speech, since it has to be pieced out from various sources; and insasmuch as respectable scholars have thought fit to put out a whole new version of the Bible in the American vernacular, I shall take shelter behind them, if need be, against the charge of dealing irreverently with the Sacred Scriptures.

The prophet's career began at the end of King Uzziah's reign, say about 740 B.C. This reign was uncommonly long, almost half a century, and apparently prosperous. It was one of those prosperous reigns, however — like the reign of Marcus Aurelius at Rome, or the administration of Eubulus at Athens, or of Mr. Coolidge at Washington — where at the end the prosperity suddenly peters out and things go by the board with a resounding crash.

In the year of Uzziah's death, the Lord commissioned the prophet to go out and warn the people of the wrath to come. "Tell them what a worthless lot they are." He said, "Tell them what is wrong, and why and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don't mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you," He added, "that it won't do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction, and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life."

Isaiah had been very willing to take on the job — in fact, he had asked for it — but the prospect put a new face on the situation. It raised the obvious question: Why, if all that were so — if the enterprise were to be a failure from the start — was there any sense in starting it? "Ah," the Lord said, "you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it."

Apparently, then, if the Lord's word is good for anything, — I do not offer any opinion about that, — the only element in Judean society that was particularly worth bothering about was the Remnant. Isaiah seems finally to have got it through his head that this was the case; that nothing was to be expected from the masses, but that if anything substantial were ever to be done in Judea, the Remnant would have to do it. This is a very striking and suggestive idea; but before going on to explore it, we need to be quite clear about our terms. What do we mean by the masses, and what by the Remnant?

As the word masses is commonly used, it suggests agglomerations of poor and underprivileged people, labouring people, proletarians, and it means nothing like that; it means simply the majority. The mass-man is one who has neither the force of intellect to apprehend the principles issuing in what we know as the humane life, nor the force of character to adhere to those principles steadily and strictly as laws of conduct; and because such people make up the great and overwhelming majority of mankind, they are called collectively the masses. The line of differentiation between the masses and the Remnant is set invariably by quality, not by circumstance. The Remnant are those who by force of intellect are able to apprehend these principles, and by force of character are able, at least measurably, to cleave to them. The masses are those who are unable to do either.

The picture which Isaiah presents of the Judean masses is most unfavorable, In his view, the mass-man — be he high or be he lowly, rich or poor, prince or pauper — gets off very badly. He appears as not only weak-minded and weak-willed, but as by consequence knavish, arrogant, grasping, dissipated, unprincipled, unscrupulous. The mass-woman also gets off badly, as sharing all the mass-man's untoward qualities, and contributing a few of her own in the way of vanity and laziness, extravagance and foible. The list of luxury-products that she patronized is interesting; it calls to mind the women's page of a Sunday newspaper in 1928, or the display set forth in one of our professedly "smart" periodicals. In another place, Isaiah even recalls the affectations that we used to know by the name "flapper gait" and the "debutante slouch." It may be fair to discount Isaiah's vivacity a little for prophetic fervour; after all, since his real job was not to convert the masses but to brace and reassure the Remnant, he probably felt that he might lay it on indiscriminately and as thick as he liked — in fact, that he was expected to do so. But even so, the Judean mass-man must have been a most objectionable individual, and the mass-woman utterly odious.

If the modern spirit, whatever that may be, is disinclined towards taking the Lord's word at its face value (as I hear is the case), we may observe that Isaiah's testimony to the character of the masses has strong collateral support from respectable Gentile authority. Plato lived into the administration of Eubulus, when Athens was at the peak of its jazz-and-paper era, and he speaks of the Athenian masses with all Isaiah's fervency, even comparing them to a herd of ravenous wild beasts. Curiously, too, he applies Isaiah's own word remnant to the worthier portion of Athenian society; "there is but a very small remnant," he says, of those who possess a saving force of intellect and force of character — too small, preciously as to Judea, to be of any avail against the ignorant and vicious preponderance of the masses.

But Isaiah was a preacher and Plato a philosopher; and we tend to regard preachers and philosophers rather as passive observers of the drama of life than as active participants. Hence in a matter of this kind their judgment might be suspected of being a little uncompromising, a little acrid, or as the French say, saugrenu. We may therefore bring forward another witness who was preeminently a man of affairs, and whose judgment can not lie under this suspicion. Marcus Aurelius was ruler of the greatest of empires, and in that capacity he not only had the Roman mass-man under observation, but he had him on his hands twenty-four hours a day for eighteen years. What he did not know about him was not worth knowing and what he thought of him is abundantly attested on almost every page of the little book of jottings which he scribbled offhand from day to day, and which he meant for no eye but his own ever to see.

This view of the masses is the one that we find prevailing at large among the ancient authorities whose writings have come down to us. In the eighteenth century, however, certain European philosophers spread the notion that the mass-man, in his natural state, is not at all the kind of person that earlier authorities made him out to be, but on the contrary, that he is a worthy object of interest. His untowardness is the effect of environment, an effect for which "society" is somehow responsible. If only his environment permitted him to live according to his lights, he would undoubtedly show himself to be quite a fellow; and the best way to secure a more favourable environment for him would be to let him arrange it for himself. The French Revolution acted powerfully as a springboard for this idea, projecting its influence in all directions throughout Europe.

On this side of the ocean a whole new continent stood ready for a large-scale experiment with this theory. It afforded every conceivable resource whereby the masses might develop a civilization made in their own likeness and after their own image. There was no force of tradition to disturb them in their preponderance, or to check them in a thoroughgoing disparagement of the Remnant. Immense natural wealth, unquestioned predominance, virtual isolation, freedom from external interference and the fear of it, and, finally, a century and a half of time — such are the advantages which the mass-man has had in bringing forth a civilization which should set the earlier preachers and philosophers at naught in their belief that nothing substantial can be expected from the masses, but only from the Remnant.

His success is unimpressive. On the evidence so far presented one must say, I think, that the mass-man's conception of what life has to offer, and his choice of what to ask from life, seem now to be pretty well what they were in the times of Isaiah and Plato; and so too seem the catastrophic social conflicts and convulsions in which his views of life and his demands on life involve him. I do not wish to dwell on this, however, but merely to observe that the monstrously inflated importance of the masses has apparently put all thought of a possible mission to the Remnant out of the modern prophet's head. This is obviously quite as it should be, provided that the earlier preachers and philosophers were actually wrong, and that all final hope of the human race is actually centred in the masses. If, on the other hand, it should turn out that the Lord and Isaiah and Plato and Marcus Aurelius were right in their estimate of the relative social value of the masses and the Remnant, the case is somewhat different. Moreover, since with everything in their favour the masses have so far given such an extremely discouraging account of themselves, it would seem that the question at issue between these two bodies of opinion might most profitably be reopened.

III

But without following up this suggestion, I wish only, as I said, to remark the fact that as things now stand Isaiah's job seems rather to go begging. Everyone with a message nowadays is, like my venerable European friend, eager to take it to the masses. His first, last and only thought is of mass-acceptance and mass-approval. His great care is to put his doctrine in such shape as will capture the masses' attention and interest. This attitude towards the masses is so exclusive, so devout, that one is reminded of the troglodytic monster described by Plato, and the assiduous crowd at the entrance to its cave, trying obsequiously to placate it and win its favour, trying to interpret its inarticulate noises, trying to find out what it wants, and eagerly offering it all sorts of things that they think might strike its fancy.

The main trouble with all this is its reaction upon the mission itself. It necessitates an opportunist sophistication of one's doctrine, which profoundly alters its character and reduces it to a mere placebo. If, say, you are a preacher, you wish to attract as large a congregation as you can, which means an appeal to the masses; and this, in turn, means adapting the terms of your message to the order of intellect and character that the masses exhibit. If you are an educator, say with a college on your hands, you wish to get as many students as possible, and you whittle down your requirements accordingly. If a writer, you aim at getting many readers; if a publisher, many purchasers; if a philosopher, many disciples; if a reformer, many converts; if a musician, many auditors; and so on. But as we see on all sides, in the realization of these several desires, the prophetic message is so heavily adulterated with trivialities, in every instance, that its effect on the masses is merely to harden them in their sins. Meanwhile, the Remnant, aware of this adulteration and of the desires that prompt it, turn their backs on the prophet and will have nothing to do with him or his message.

Isaiah, on the other hand, worked under no such disabilities. He preached to the masses only in the sense that he preached publicly. Anyone who liked might listen; anyone who liked might pass by. He knew that the Remnant would listen; and knowing also that nothing was to be expected of the masses under any circumstances, he made no specific appeal to them, did not accommodate his message to their measure in any way, and did not care two straws whether they heeded it or not. As a modern publisher might put it, he was not worrying about circulation or about advertising. Hence, with all such obsessions quite out of the way, he was in a position to do his level best, without fear or favour, and answerable only to his august Boss.

If a prophet were not too particular about making money out of his mission or getting a dubious sort of notoriety out of it, the foregoing considerations would lead one to say that serving the Remnant looks like a good job. An assignment that you can really put your back into, and do your best without thinking about results, is a real job; whereas serving the masses is at best only half a job, considering the inexorable conditions that the masses impose upon their servants. They ask you to give them what they want, they insist upon it, and will take nothing else; and following their whims, their irrational changes of fancy, their hot and cold fits, is a tedius business, to say nothing of the fact that what they want at any time makes very little call on one's resources of prophesy. The Remnant, on the other hand, want only the best you have, whatever that may be. Give them that, and they are satisfied; you have nothing more to worry about. The prophet of the American masses must aim consciously at the lowest common denominator of intellect, taste and character among 120,000,000 people; and this is a distressing task. The prophet of the Remnant, on the contrary, is in the enviable position of Papa Haydn in the household of Prince Esterhazy. All Haydn had to do was keep forking out the very best music he knew how to produce, knowing it would be understood and appreciated by those for whom he produced it, and caring not a button what anyone else thought of it; and that makes a good job.

In a sense, nevertheless, as I have said, it is not a rewarding job. If you can tough the fancy of the masses, and have the sagacity to keep always one jump ahead of their vagaries and vacillations, you can get good returns in money from serving the masses, and good returns also in a mouth-to-ear type of notoriety:

Digito monstrari et dicier, Hic est!

We all know innumerable politicians, journalists, dramatists, novelists and the like, who have done extremely well by themselves in these ways. Taking care of the Remnant, on the contrary, holds little promise of any such rewards. A prophet of the Remnant will not grow purse-proud on the financial returns from his work, nor is it likely that he will get any great reknown out of it. Isaiah's case was exceptional to this second rule, and there are others, but not many.

It may be thought, then, that while taking care of the Remnant is no doubt a good job, it is not an especially interesting job because it is as a rule so poorly paid. I have my doubts about this. There are other compensations to be got out of a job besides money and notoriety, and some of them seem substantial enough to be attractive. Many jobs which do not pay well are yet profoundly interesting, as, for instance, the job of research student in the sciences is said to be; and the job of looking after the Remnant seems to me, as I have surveyed it for many years from my seat in the grandstand, to be as interesting as any that can be found in the world.

What chiefly makes it so, I think, is that in any given society the Remnant are always so largely an unknown quantity. You do not know, and will never know, more than two things about them. You can be sure of those — dead sure, as our phrase is — but you will never be able to make even a respectable guess at anything else. You do not know, and will never know, who the Remnant are, nor what they are doing or will do. Two things you do know, and no more: First, that they exist; second, that they will find you. Except for these two certainties, working for the Remnant means working in impenetrable darkness; and this, I should say, is just the condition calculated most effectively to pique the interest of any prophet who is properly gifted with the imagination, insight and intellectual curiosity necessary to a successful pursuit of his trade.

The fascination and the despair of the historian, as he looks back upon Isaiah's Jewry, upon Plato's Athens, or upon Rome of the Antonines, is the hope of discovering and laying bare the "substratum of right-thinking and well-doing" which he knows must have existed somewhere in those societies because no kind of collective life can possibly go on without it. He finds tantalizing intimations of it here and there in many places, as in the Greek Anthology, in the scrapbook of Aulus Gellius, in the poems of Ausonius, and in the brief and touching tribute, Bene merenti, bestowed upon the unknown occupants of Roman tombs. But these are vague and fragmentary; they lead him nowhere in his search for some kind of measure on this substratum, but merely testify to what he already knew a priori — that the substratum did somewhere exist. Where it was, how substantial it was, what its power of self-assertion and resistance was — of all this they tell him nothing.

Similarly, when the historian of two thousand years hence, or two hundred years, looks over the available testimony to the quality of our civilization and tries to get any kind of clear, competent evidence concerning the substratum of right-thinking and well-doing which he knows must have been here, he will have a devil of a time finding it. When he has assembled all he can and has made even a minimum allowance for speciousness, vagueness, and confusion of motive, he will sadly acknowledge that his net result is simply nothing. A Remnant were here, building a substratum like coral insects; so much he knows, but he will find nothing to put him on the track of who and where and how many they were and what their work was like.

Concerning all this, too, the prophet of the present knows precisely as much and as little as the historian of the future; and that, I repeat, is what makes his job seem to me so profoundly interesting. One of the most suggestive episodes recounted in the Bible is that of prophet's attempt — the only attempt of the kind on the record, I believe — to count up the Remnant. Elijah had fled from persecution into the desert, where the Lord presently overhauled him and asked what he was doing so far away from his job. He said that he was running away, not because he was a coward, but because all the Remnant had been killed off except himself. He had got away only by the skin of his teeth, and, he being now all the Remnant there was, if he were killed the True Faith would go flat. The Lord replied that he need not worry about that, for even without him the True Faith could probably manage to squeeze along somehow if it had to; "and as for your figures on the Remnant," He said, "I don't mind telling you that there are seven thousand of them back there in Israel whom it seems you have not heard of, but you may take My word for it that there they are."

At that time, probably the population of Israel could not run to much more than a million or so; and a Remnant of seven thousand out of a million is a highly encouraging percentage for any prophet. With seven thousand of the boys on his side, there was no great reason for Elijah to feel lonesome; and incidentally, that would be something for the modern prophet of the Remnant to think of when he has a touch of the blues. But the main point is that if Elijah the Prophet could not make a closer guess on the number of the Remnant than he made when he missed it by seven thousand, anyone else who tackled the problem would only waste his time.

The other certainty which the prophet of the Remnant may always have is that the Remnant will find him. He may rely on that with absolute assurance. They will find him without his doing anything about it; in fact, if he tries to do anything about it, he is pretty sure to put them off. He does not need to advertise for them nor resort to any schemes of publicity to get their attention. If he is a preacher or a public speaker, for example, he may be quite indifferent to going on show at receptions, getting his picture printed in the newspapers, or furnishing autobiographical material for publication on the side of "human interest". If a writer, he need not make a point of attending any pink teas, autographing books at wholesale, nor entering into any specious freemasonry with reviewers. All this and much more of the same order lies in the regular and necessary routine laid down for the prophet of the masses; it is, and must be, part of the great general technique of getting the mass-man's ear — or as our vigorous and excellent publicist, Mr. H. L. Mencken, puts it, the technique of boob-bumping. The prophet of the Remnant is not bound to this technique. He may be quite sure that the Remnant will make their own way to him without any adventitious aids; and not only so, but if they find him employing any such aids, as I said, it is ten to one that they will smell a rat in them and will sheer off.

The certainty that the Remnant will find him, however, leaves the prophet as much in the dark as ever, as helpless as ever in the matter of putting any estimate of any kind upon the Remnant; for, as appears in the case of Elijah, he remains ignorant of who they are that have found him or where they are or how many. They did not write in and tell him about it, after the manner of those who admire the vedettes of Hollywood, nor yet do they seek him out and attach themselves to his person. They are not that kind. They take his message much as drivers take the directions on a roadside signboard — that is, with very little thought about the signboard, beyond being gratefully glad that it happened to be there, but with every thought about the directions.

This impersonal attitude of the Remnant wonderfully enhances the interest of the imaginative prophet's job. Once in a while, just about often enough to keep his intellectual curiosity in good working order, he will quite accidentally come upon some distinct reflection of his own message in an unsuspected quarter. This enables him to entertain himself in his leisure moments with agreeable speculations about the course his message may have taken in reaching that particular quarter, and about what came of it after it got there. Most interesting of all are those instances, if one could only run them down (but one may always speculate about them), where the recipient himself no longer knows where nor when nor from whom he got the message — or even where, as sometimes happens, he has forgotten that he got it anywhere and imagines that it is all a self-sprung idea of his own.

Such instances as these are probably not infrequent, for, without presuming to enroll ourselves among the Remnant, we can all no doubt remember having found ourselves suddenly under the influence of an idea, the source of which we cannot possibly identify. "It came to us afterward," as we say; that is, we are aware of it only after it has shot up full-grown in our minds, leaving us quite ignorant of how and when and by what agency it was planted there and left to germinate. It seems highly probable that the prophet's message often takes some such course with the Remnant.

If, for example, you are a writer or a speaker or a preacher, you put forth an idea which lodges in the Unbewusstsein of a casual member of the Remnant and sticks fast there. For some time it is inert; then it begins to fret and fester until presently it invades the man's conscious mind and, as one might say, corrupts it. Meanwhile, he has quite forgotten how he came by the idea in the first instance, and even perhaps thinks he has invented it; and in those circumstances, the most interesting thing of all is that you never know what the pressure of that idea will make him do.

For these reasons it appears to me that Isaiah's job is not only good but also extremely interesting; and especially so at the present time when nobody is doing it. If I were young and had the notion of embarking in the prophetical line, I would certainly take up this branch of the business; and therefore I have no hesitation about recommending it as a career for anyone in that position. It offers an open field, with no competition; our civilization so completely neglects and disallows the Remnant that anyone going in with an eye single to their service might pretty well count on getting all the trade there is.

Even assuming that there is some social salvage to be screened out of the masses, even assuming that the testimony of history to their social value is a little too sweeping, that it depresses hopelessness a little too far, one must yet perceive, I think, that the masses have prophets enough and to spare. Even admitting that in the teeth of history that hope of the human race may not be quite exclusively centred in the Remnant, one must perceive that they have social value enough to entitle them to some measure of prophetic encouragement and consolation, and that our civilization allows them none whatever. Every prophetic voice is addressed to the masses, and to them alone; the voice of the pulpit, the voice of education, the voice of politics, of literature, drama, journalism — all these are directed towards the masses exclusively, and they marshal the masses in the way that they are going.

One might suggest, therefore, that aspiring prophetical talent may well turn to another field. Sat patriae Priamoque datum — whatever obligation of the kind may be due the masses is already monstrously overpaid. So long as the masses are taking up the tabernacle of Moloch and Chiun, their images, and following the star of their god Buncombe, they will have no lack of prophets to point the way that leadeth to the More Abundant Life; and hence a few of those who feel the prophetic afflatus might do better to apply themselves to serving the Remnant. It is a good job, an interesting job, much more interesting than serving the masses; and moreover it is the only job in our whole civilization, as far as I know, that offers a virgin field.