Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity

This is a very simple case. A well known joke from the 70’s says that Israel should attack the US in order to become the 51st state. Pre six day war Israel was having a very slow economy and the biggest wave of Israelis leaving Israel. The attempt to provoke a war in order to be occupied was later proven unnecessary as the new strategy of SMO – simultaneous mutual occupation (”we do everything you say oh great masters” + jewish control of capitol hill via instructions from the protocols of the elders of zion) has achieved total success somewhere in the 90’s.

Conspiracy ? I will not hear of it ! Read the latest book of Carter and you will see.

Rafi.

In June 8, 1967, on the fourth day of the six day war, Israeli airplanes and boats attacked an US spy ship called the USS Liberty. 34 US soldiers were killed, but the attack was aborted once the ship was identified as a US ship. The ship was close to the Sinai desert that was in the process of being occupied by the Israeli forces.

The Israeli version, is that the ship was unidentified, did not carry a flag, it was in a war zone, and was falsely identified as an Egyptian ship. American stated (in the UN) that all their ships are at least 300 miles away from the war zone. As soon as the ship identified itself as an American ship the attack was aborted. This version is problematic, since it seems like the ship was identified the previous days, and somehow this identification was lost. The ship was twice bigger than the Egyptian ship it was identified as, and the ship was covered with Antennas – not exactly a threatening presence. The numerous Israelis involved in the incident swear by their not yet dead grandmother that the ship was NOT showing any flag. In any case, even if we accept the Israeli version, is indicates a scale of incompetence previously demonstrated only by the guards of Troy that decided not to check the horse before dragging it into their city.

The American version is also problematic. The ship received direct orders to leave the theater the day before. Strangely the ship failed to receive the commands (but it received messages before and after this message without any problems). The US sailors claim that the American flag was flying high, but the ship was moving too slowly for the flag to be flying high (and the Israelies claimed there was no flag).

So far, a story of incompetence and stupidity, and at least one side seems to be lying a bit (I believe the Israeli version, you might prefer the American version). But there are numerous conspiracy theories about why would Israel knowingly attack an American ship. Most of these theories do not make any sense, but they seemed to be fueled by the inability to believe that the IDF (Israeli defence forces) could have been that incompetent (while winning the six days war so convincingly).

The Israeli navy at the time was small, underfunded and of low priority for the Israeli army. Not to mention that the Israeli ships were WW II scrap quality stuff. It seems that this level of incompetence is quite believable. But the conspiracy theories, once out of the bottle, will live on.

See here for many more details (than you want to know) about this story and numerous conspiracy theories and their limitations.

Just remember – any part of a conspiracy theory that can not be explained more convincingly by incompetence, can be explained by higher level of incompetence.

For god sake – this is after resting and using all relevant drugs.

The trick may be to take a break from refereeing. You seem
too jaded.

> That’s all a prophet is good for – to admit somebody else is an ass or a whore.
– The Violent Bear It Away, Flannery O’connor

And so does a referee find himself, pointing out that:

1. This result is easy.

2. This is already known.
3. This shockingly simpler proof is in fact more complicated than some other proof for the same fact.
4. This paper has nice ideas, but the authors go out of their way to hide it below numerous tedious and straightforward details, never explicitly stating their ideas.

And so on. And the referee knows that his papers might also have the same drawbacks. And the referee tries to think positive, and not see issues, and ignore minor imperfections, and he prays that the next paper he reads would be perfect and beautiful. But again the defects looms large, and the referee wonders where had all the beauty had gone to. And he realizes that the defect might be within himself. Maybe he is no longer able to see beauty in the world. And he sighs, and he start reading the next paper, again hoping for the perfect paper.

The Holy Spear of Antioch or
the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch – the debate continues.

After 40 hours of traveling. Not too bad, overall. Slept a bit, but I am still recovering. The first buisness of the day is to read the weekend newspapers.

I am currently making my way to Israel using random walk on the flights graph. So far, I had flown Urbana->Chicago->London->Brussels and maybe the next flight would be Tel-Aviv, who knows. Everything is possible.

At every stop on this trip my flights got delayed, and my schedule got re-booked in a different way a few thousands times. If an airport was not considered for my schedule it was only because some major natural disaster had wiped out the country with this airport from the face of the earth.

In short, a lovely experience – highly recommended. Will report once I make it to Israel.

1. I am a coauthor (just to avoid snarky comments from some people).
2. It takes more than 10 minutes of reading a definition to understand that the set X the authors define in a very weird way is just the Voronoi cell of the point x. At this point of enlightenment, the results of this section become intuitively predictable (but not necessarily uninteresting).

So you think you have high IQ? Then, read [this][1].

[1]: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2007/12/17/071217crbo_books_gladwell