Monday Odds and Ends

Busy. Busy. Busy. I have three days left to get a bunch of stuff done and then I am California bound for a week. Whoohoo!.

Bowl Bound. Congrats to both the Steelers and the Packers on making the Super Bowl. I don't really care all that much, but I'm compelled to root for the NFC North team. 

Knock Yourself Out. New York Times Readies Pay Wall. Fine with me. They won't get one cent from me until they decide that informing their customers is more important than enforcing a narrative. Anyone who subscribes to the Times and doesn't understand that that is what they are buying now is a tool.

Global Warming Lawsuits. No, the dogs of law are not yet unleashed(as the headline asserts) when it comes to suits alleging damages from global warming, but that's not from lack of effort from some quarters. It mentions a 2006 suit by California against six car makers and notes that one of the alleged damages was the decline of the mountain snow pack that the state depends on for water. Global warming, it alleged, had been the reason for the reduction and the automakers produced one of the main CO₂ emitters. The suit was dismissed in 2007, appealed, and then dropped for now in 2009 because of Obama's willingness to see CO₂ regulated.

The purpose of these suits is not to actually collect damages, but to force more regulation. The use of the real drought conditions was just an excuse, and one that couldn't be used today in California if they were to try to sue again. April of 2010 saw snow pack levels at 143% of normal and right now snow pack levels in California are approaching 200% of normal. If above levels continue then you can be sure that somebody will eventually sue for damages from flooding.

More Specialized Scholars. Here's an interesting piece from someone who works up close with Rhodes Scholarship applications(via Instapundit). She has noticed an increased specialization of studies to the point now where many of the very bright students she interviews are often lost when asked about anything outside of that narrow specialization. Here's a brief excerpt, but read the rest:

I wish I could say that this is a single, anomalous group of students, but the trend is unmistakable. Our great universities seem to have redefined what it means to be an exceptional student. They are producing top students who have given very little thought to matters beyond their impressive grasp of an intense area of study.

In every field I have worked in since 1983, printing, materials management, and IT, there have been explosions of knowledge and technology that forced more and more specialization. I think this is inevitable and not necessarily a bad thing as long as people understand, or are taught to understand, what they know and what they don't know. They may be brilliant in their field of intense study and yet have only a shallow grasp of another, even though what they know of the latter might be as detailed as a scholar of only a decade or so ago. 

Broad areas of study and technology have become so specialized that learning to be the generalist leader who can tie all of them together in an organization has ironically become a specialization itself. I saw that years ago as an IT Director. When I started I personally handled everything from PCs to UNIX servers to network communication devices, though I never did get into programming. By the time I had left I had hired expert administrators in every area and it was all I could do to maintain enough knowledge in each field to understand them enough and still provide leadership to the department as a whole. That change happened over seven years.

One implication in all of this goes to assigning credibility. For example, once a scientist gets outside of his increasingly narrow field of study, how much credibility should we give him? Okay, he's a scientist, but is he really any more qualified than you or I to talk to things that are outside of his primary area of study? Perhaps, but he's should probably have to build that credibility on more than just his work in a different area. 

Transferring credibility in one area to another has happened for a very long time. Actors and athletes make lots of money doing that every year and it works. When it comes to deodorant that's not really a big deal, but when it involves big societal issues we should now more than ever try to be careful about that. Particularly as specialization continues and perhaps even accelerates.

I think failure to recognize some of this is why our political and intellectual elites are failing us and why we do ourselves no favors by ignoring it ourselves. People are too eager to proclaim themselves experts outside of their lanes or to bestow that sort of credibility on people who are not entitled to it. And unfortunately the generalists that we normally would rely on to sort this stuff out have become to overwhelmed or are just flat-out corrupt.