Nathaniel

Nathaniel launched Difficult Run in November 2012 and ran the website alone until August 2013, when he invited the first Difficult Run Editors to join him in adding content to the site. Nathaniel has a background in math, systems engineering, and economics, and his day job is in business analytics. His real interests are science fiction, and theology, however. He is an avid runner, but not a very fast one. He is married to fellow DREditor Ro and they have two little children. In addition to Difficult Run, Nathaniel blogs regularly for Times And Seasons and writes a lot of reviews on Goodreads.

Maybe North Korea Didn’t Hack Sony

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999 - 2015 01 01 hackedbygop-1024x511

According to the White House, the FBI, and lots of other folks who really should be pretty sure of these things before making statements or taking action, North Korea was behind the infamous Sony hacks that have been in the news for most of the end of 2014. Apparently, the US was confident enough to retaliate by shutting down Internet to the entire country:

North Korea called U.S. President Barack Obama a “monkey” and blamed Washington on Saturday for Internet outages it has experienced during a confrontation with the United States over the hacking of the film studio Sony Pictures. The National Defense Commission, the North’s ruling body chaired by state leader Kim Jong Un, said Obama was responsible for Sony’s belated decision to release the action comedy “The Interview,” which depicts a plot to assassinate Kim.

And yet, as I’ve been paying attention to the story I am not convinced that we’ve got the write villain. It’s articles like this one that, as far as I can tell, make the strong case that the hack was actually an inside job pulled off primarily by disgruntled ex-employees of Sony itself. One of the first things to point out, for example, is that the hackers showed absolutely zero interest in “The Interview” until after media reports arose alleging a possible North Korean connection. Only at that point did the hackers make an issue out of it, as though taking a convenient opportunity to throw researchers on the wrong track.

Other reasons to think that North Korea might not have been to blame? Logs indicate that files were transferred at a rate that you would only get by physically plugging a device into the server to download files, not by moving them over the Internet. Specific IP addresses and user credentials were known to the hackers ahead of time, not discovered during preliminary hacks. Linguistic examination of online communication by the hackers (Guardians of Peace or GOP) suggests they are native Russian speakers, not native Korean or English speakers.

The leading theory, from where I’m standing, is that an angry, laid-off worker with tech skills (security researchers believe they have identified her individually) teamed up with the kind of hackers who resent Sony for attacking the Pirate Bay and other anti-piracy measures and maybe some friends left inside the company to pull off the hack. Why would the government get it wrong? Well, it’s not like it’s the kind of thing that North Korea wouldn’t or couldn’t do, so I don’t think it was a stupid mistake or a conspiracy theory or anything. But I don’t have a lot of confidence in the federal government’s ability to do this kind of analysis correctly and even less confidence in their ability to correct a mistaken impression once it takes hold at a senior level. Would you want to be the one who told the President he’d gone public with bad intel?

On the other hand, I can’t really think of a worse possible reason to start World War III than mistaken accusations about hacking a movie studio, so I really do hope they figure this one out.

 

Damon Linker: What I Got Wrong in 2014

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Damien Linker
Note: My beard is *way* bigger than Linker’s.

 

The only time I got into a discussion with Damon Linker was a rather heated exchange a month or two back about an article he’d written about ISIS. I still think that was a bad article of his  (and, since it didn’t make his list of bad pieces from 2014, I gather he still thinks it was a good article), but I was disappointed that it was our only contact since he’s written several articles that I thought were quite good. In fact, I wrote about one of them earlier this month.

In some ways, though, this is his best one: What I got wrong in 2014

I say “in some ways” because what Damon Linker thinks he got wrong is not the same as what I think Damon Linker got wrong. But that’s not that point. The point is that anyone writing an article about their missteps from the prior year is setting a healthy example of the rest of us. It’s a little late in the year for me to do a review of my own 2014 writings, but, in exactly one year, you can expect to read an article about what Nathaniel Givens got wrong in 2015.

In the meantime? Ironically, perhaps, the fact that I’ve got a plan to review my own mistakes makes me less worried about making them. I mean look: trying not to make mistakes is kind of a dumb goal. You can try to be careful. You can try to work hard. You can try to be honest. Those things are in your control. But, once you’ve done those things, whether or not you’re right or wrong is up to luck and fate. By planning on writing a piece about my own mistakes, I’m reminding myself that it’s just another one of those things that I can write about and analyze, not some deeply personal assessment of my value as a human being.[ref]Again, this is only after taking into account sincere efforts to be accurate and honest, of course.[/ref] So yeah: pressure’s off. Time to go to work for 2015.

 

Studio Ghibli: “The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness”

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2014 12 31 Miyazaki

I am a huge fan of Hayao Miyazaki, the genius behind Studio Ghibli productions like:

So I’m really interested in the documentary that, by good fortune, was filmed during the period when Miyazaki deliberated on, decided, and then announced his retirement. Although it doesn’t sound like it will necessarily be fun or happy. According to this article at The Verge, Miyazaki may well qualify as the variety of genius known as tortured:

[T]he man is also marked by moments of cynicism, resentment, and self-doubt that hint at a darkness behind his creations. “I don’t ever feel happy in my daily life,” he says. “How could that be our ultimate goal? Filmmaking only brings suffering.”

That actually makes me want to see the film even more, however. I’ve often wondered at the elusive relationship between desire and happiness and creativity. It often seems like creativity has to come from a kind of intense dissatisfaction with ourselves and the world. Only the discontent, perhaps, are on fire with the urge to change and make something different than what already is. On the other hand, depression is (in my experience) no fit state for accomplishing good work. There is a razor’s edge, it seems, between happiness in the change that is coming and sadness in the state of things as they are, and an artist’s goal is to dance along the sharp blade to make something beautiful.

The real question in my heart, however, is one that this film might not address. Is it possible to live a happy life and make great art? I hope so, but the truth is I’ve already made my choice. I’d rather be happy than be great. Not necessarily for my own sake–I’m not naturally that interested in being happy, and didn’t decide it was important until one day when I was 18–but because when I’m not unhappy I’m no fun to be around. And that’s not fair for my wife and kids. So I’ve made the decision to (try to) be a sane, healthy, functioning, happy father and husband.[ref]Not that I’m executing flawlessly.[/ref]

Does that preclude ever writing something truly great? Maybe. I hope not, but the fact that so many of my heroes seem to have been deeply unhappy people doesn’t exactly fill me with optimism on the subject. I will admit that, when I watch The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, I’ll be keeping an eye out for clues.

About deGrasse Tyson’s Christmas Tweets

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2014 12 30 deGrasse Trolling

On the one hand, Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Christmas day tweets are the kind of obnoxious trolling that tends to give atheists such a bad name, so I could see if they annoyed people. On the other hand, as obnoxious trolling goes, these are pretty tame. I didn’t think he was being mean-spirited. I just thought he wasn’t being as clever as he thought he was being. Besides, I wrote about his bigger problems back in September, so I was going to just let these go by without comment. But then Ro sent me this article highlighting three unintentional ironies behind Tyson’s quote, and I thought it was definitely worth sharing: Neil deGrasse Tyson’s (Unwittingly) Ironic Trolling.

The main points are:

  1. Isaac Newton Shows how Religion and Science aren’t Opposed.
  2. Newton’s Birthday Reminds us of the Church’s Role in Promoting Science.
  3. Tyson Gets Basic Historical Facts Wrong.

Check out the article for full explanations.

Hearing What They Hear

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2014 12 30 Best Albums of 2014

One of my very favorite parts of the New Year’s season are all the best-of lists that start to come out and especially best albums of 2014. I’m going through the Washington Post’s top 50 albums of 2014 list right now, starting with Montevallo by Sam Hunt (which they put at #2 for the year). I was surprised to find out that I’d already heard one of those songs (“Leave the Night On”), but pop-country is very much not my usual fare so this is definitely a different album from what I usually listen to.

Which is why I like it.

Sure, one of the main reasons I go through these lists is that I’m hoping to find something new that will really speak to me.[ref]Most recent find, if you’re curious, is twenty | one | pilots, which my brother told me to listen to. And now I have to stop myself from just listening to “Migraine” on repeat.[/ref] But the truth is that a lot of the time I like listening to songs that other people like, even if they don’t really speak to me in the same way, because I want to try and hear what they hear.

At one level, it’s just math. The more genres you have acquired a taste for, the more great music there is in your world. But it goes beyond that. You do yourself a favor expanding your capacity to appreciate and your potential to empathize, and in my experience you lose nothing of your own individual perspective along the way. I’m not saying every artist is equally talented or that popularity is quality. Just pointing out that there are a lot of people out there, trying to find or make something beautiful or inspiring or soothing or powerful. If you feel like your world could use a little more of those things, then try stretching out its horizons a little.

Even when you don’t find a new favorite artist, just realizing that other people are trying to bring more light or meaning or fun into the world can bring a sense of hope and optimism. Listening to new genres of music until the sounds and the lyrics start to make some sense is a way of reminding yourself how much we have in common, even when we don’t see eye-to-eye.

And, since I mentioned my current addiction, I’ll give you a sample. I totally didn’t get these guys at first,[ref]I made fun of one of their songs here at Difficult Run before I got into them.[/ref] but now that I’m dialed in to their frequency I can’t listen to their songs without cranking the volume and, more often than not, singing / screaming along.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4-Wvg4OsaA

If the suicide theme seems dark, by the way, be sure you pay attention to the lyrics of the song towards the very end.

How to Respond to Terrorism with Love

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Earlier this morning, a tense standoff in Australia ended in gunfire. A single hostage-taker initially held 17 hostages, of whom 12 had been released. When police heard gunfire inside the building, they responded immediately. The hostage taker and two hostages are dead. Three people are injured, including one police officer. All this info comes from an ABC News article, which also includes an apparent connection to radical Islam:

Two people inside the cafe were seen holding up a flag with Arabic writing on it that has been used by extremists in the past — raising fears that a terror attack was unfolding in Australia’s largest city.

Also this morning, I found an article with the headline: Australians Just Showed the World Exactly How to Respond to Terrorism With #IllRideWithYou. The article describes the origins of the #IllRideWithYou hashtag in which Australians are volunteering to accompany Muslims who wish to wear their religious clothes (e.g. hijab) on public transportation but are afraid of animosity or retaliation in the wake of the hostage crisis. The pictures–and the sentiment behind them–are noble and touching.

2014-12-15 I'll Walk With You
Read the bottom one first.

I agree with the idea of #IllRideWithYou. Even if you take–simply for the sake of argument–the strong and controversial position that the scripture or theology of Islam tend towards violence, it does not follow that all Muslims are violent. So, even in this extreme case, the correct response to peaceful, law-abiding Muslims is support and compassion.

But I do not agree with the headline. This is not the one true correct way to respond to terrorism. There are two correct responses. #IllRideWithYou is one half. Here’s what the other half looks like:

2014-1215-AP-Australia-Police-Operation

That photo[ref]from coverage at USA Today[/ref] shows one of the hostages running into the arms of a police officer moments after escaping the chocolate store through a side entrance. As lovely, as beautiful, and as necessary as the compassionate outreach of Australian commuters may be, none of that was what you would have been praying for if you were a hostage or had a family member held hostage in that store. There is also bravery and even love in the willingness to use violence–and be subject to the threat of violence–in lawful defense of the innocent.

A courageous and just society needs both of these responses. Not just one or the other.

This fits very nicely with Walker’s post from earlier today. He pointed out an article by Hernando de Soto in the WSJ arguing that–in the long run–you overcome terrorism not just with dronestrikes but also with economic development that gives people a better life.[ref]Walker and I wrote about this connection between love and economics for the journal SquareTwo: “No Poor Among Them”: Global Poverty, Free Markets, and the “Fourfold” Mission[/ref] As coldly calculating as the discipline of economics and the emphasis on free markets may appear, a focus on economic liberty and investment and development is really nothing but a sincere and informed desire for other humans to prosper and draw closer to us in webs of trade, communication, mutual interest, and interdependence.

Love of fellow man doesn’t always look like what we expect it to. Sometimes it comes in the form of sympathetic hashtags. Sometimes it wears body armor and wields automatic weapons. And sometimes it spouts statistics, theories, and economic jargon. We need to broaden our concept of what it means to love if we are to love as expansively as these dark times require of us.

 

Hypersensitivity and Trolls: A Codependent Dysfunction

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2014-12-08 Troll-No-PowersHypersensitivity is a pernicious way to win a debate: if you can brand an argument as offensive/harmful, then you never have to respond it. Trolling is a destructive response to that tactic: provoking more and more outrage undermines the credibility of your opponent. These are, I think, the twin central dysfunctions of political debate today, and that’s what I decided to write about for Times and Seasons this morning.

Moral Foundations and Irritating Social Liberals

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2014-12-04 no-relation

Believe it or not, I am not the one irritating anyone this time. Nope, it’s Damon Linker, who is himself a social liberal. But he frustrated his compatriots with a recent article about moral libertarianism. Linker traced the origins of moral libertarianism to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy claim, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, that “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, of the mystery of human life.” As Linker writes:

Justice Antonin Scalia recognized immediately that such a libertarian principle created serious problems for morals legislation of any kind. In his Casey dissent, he pointed out that the principle would seem to make laws against bigamy unconstitutional.

Scalia has been proved right again and again as morality-based laws have fallen beneath the scythe of Kennedy’s moral libertarianism which boils down to one simple precept: if it’s not hurting anyone then it should be legal. Sound familiar? It should. Because it’s becoming the dominant moral-legal view of our entire society, which is Linker’s whole point. And then Linker did the truly unthinkable: he suggested that this brave new future of maximal moral permissiveness might not be 100% good. That’s where he angered his fellow social liberals, and it prompted today’s article: No, I’m not the Rick Santorum of punditry.[ref]Hence the pic above, which comes from this article.[/ref]

To his credit, Linker doesn’t back down.

As social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has shown (and as I’ve written about before), liberals tend to focus on two aspects of moral experience: care for and avoidance of harm toward others, and a concern for egalitarian fairness and hostility to cheating. As for more hierarchical or aspirational moral ideals — loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation — those matter much less to liberals. Conservatives, by contrast, express concern about all five moral categories, with religiously oriented conservatives placing special emphasis on striving for moral sanctity or purity.[ref]Haidt has revised his theory to include 6 foundations, but the basic observation is correct.[/ref]

When I write about our moral qualms (or rather, our increasing lack of moral qualms) about homosexuality, polyandry, porn, consensual brother-sister incest, and bestiality, I’m focusing on a dimension of morality that liberals are both relatively uninterested in and often positively uncomfortable with… I sound an awful lot like a conservative… But the suspicion that I’m covertly on the religious right’s payroll goes beyond my mere discussion of such topics… I may strive for a dispassionate tone in my writing about moral trends, but it’s possible to detect a degree of discomfort as well. When I ask what my readers would do if their daughters began to work in porn, or raise the question of whether there are any legal grounds for outlawing consensual brother-sister incest, or wonder if it’s okay for a human being to engage in sexual relations with a horse, I sometimes sound troubled, disturbed, agitated.

Am I?

Yes. And you know what else? I suspect that many liberals are, too, though they’re loathe to admit it in public, and perhaps, in many cases, even to themselves.

It’s great that an outspoken liberal like Linker is willing to point this out. But it’s also sad that he’s one of the very few willing to do so, and will be largely ignored. That’s true despite the fact that, like Linker, I believe that “many liberals” privately share his concerns. But, unlike Linker, they have neither the inclination nor the shield to be willing to speak up about their concerns.[ref]When you write a book like The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege you buy yourself some wiggle room.[/ref] So: good for Linker. But my applause is significantly dampened by the ominously rigid ideological conformity on such an important issue. When everyone knows something is wrong and almost no one is brave enough to say so, you start to see the real power of the New Intolerance.

Force Awakens Trailer and Lightsaber Crossguards: I am Dissappoint

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2014-11-28 Useless Lightsaber Crossguard

I am not a fan of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens teaser. It was so bad that I didn’t believe it was the real trailer at first. Alas, it is. Of all the things that annoyed me, however, there is one that stuck out the most: the absolutely useless and silly design of the crossguard for the lightsaber.

The purpose of a crossguard is simple: to protect the hand of the person using the sword (or, in this case, lightsaber).

2014-11-28 Sword_parts_no_scabbard

In order to be effective, the crossguard therefore has to be tough enough to stop an opponent’s blade. In an ordinary sword (made of metal), you just accomplish this by also making the crossguard out of metal. Simple. But the entire point of a lightsaber is that the blade cuts through just about anything. So the only thing that you could possibly make a crossguard out of would be the actual light blade. Anything else is just going to get lopped off instantly, offering absolutely zero protection. This can actually be done. If you look at the entry for crossguard light sabers in the Wookieepedia[ref]Yes, there’s a Wookieepedia, and yes, it has an entry for crossguard lightsabers.[/ref]you can see how it’s been pulled off in the past.

2014-11-28 Useful Crossguard Lightsaber

Notice how the crossguard in that image is recessed so that a strike of an opponent’s blade that slid along the user’s blade would be intercepted by the blade of the crossguard. Not by the vulnerable housing for the crossguard blade. But in the crossguard lightsaber from the trailer, the blades of the crossguards are offset from the grip.This makes the crossguards about as useful as if a Viking went into battle with a crossguard make out of tissue paper.

2014-11-28 Crossguard Comparisons

The whole idea of a lightsaber crossguard is a little dumb to begin with because what makes lightsabers awesome is their elegant simplicity.[ref]”An elegant weapon for a more civilized age.” – Obi-Wan Kenobi, A New Hope[/ref] Double blades, intricate handles, all these additions detract from that simplicity and elegance. But if you’re going to put on a crossguard, at least think about it for 5 seconds and don’t make something that looks like a 7-year old glued the pieces together.

2014-11-28 Useless Lightsaber Crossguard - ZOOMED

Look, I get that Star Wars isn’t exactly supremely realistic, not even when it comes to lightsabers and their practical utility.

The Ewoks were always kind of dumb, even when I was a kid, and the idea of individual pilots zooming around in space fighters exactly as if it were a World War 2 era dogfight was outdated by the technology of the Korean War (jet engines and guided missiles), let along by the time we’ve got FTL spaceships. The originals had flaws, but they were still great. The prequels were so egregiously horrible as to be nigh unwatcheable.[ref]Brief personal Star Wars history: I loved the originals so much that I waited overnight in line to be #5 to get tickets for Phantom Menace. I won Star Wars trivial pursuit in that line, with those super-fans. I watched it six times, willing it to be good. It wasn’t. I never watched Episode II all the way through, and I watched Episode III just once, for old time’s sake. I also read several of the tie-in novels, but they all suck except for the ones by Timothy Zahn. The Clone Wars series is pretty good, and I’ve read a couple of comic books that were OK.[/ref]

We’ve all got to draw our own lines for what fits the spirit of the films, and what doesn’t. For which unrealistic detail is just part of the show, and for which is a violation of artistic integrity. The dumb crossguards cross a line of basic common sense for me. Even if my wife thinks I’m crazy and obsessive. But I’m not ruling out the new movie based on just a teaser. In the final product the good could very well outweigh the bad, and like I said, the originals had some pretty glaring flaws of their own. [ref]”But I was going into Tosche Station to pick up some power converters!”[/ref] But between the dumb crossguard and all the other issues with the trailer[ref]The narrator’s voice sounds like a parody, for starters.[/ref], my hopes for the franchise’s attempted resurrection are not getting any higher.

My First Piece for Meridian’s Expand

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Thought Cloud

Not long ago I was asked to participate in a new initiative at Meridian Magazine: creating a new section (called “Expand”)[ref]First as a writer, and then as a contributing editor.[/ref] The site launched about two weeks ago with a mission statement from Ralph Hancock, who is leading the project. The image above gives a pretty succinct distillation of what Expand hopes to do: provide a space for Mormon thinkers to host “civil discussion that engages the great moral questions, ideological movements, and contending intellectual frameworks of our day.”

 

The next two articles consisted of a pair of interviews/dialogues (part 1, part 2) between Hancock and Terryl Givens about Givens’ newest book:Wrestling the Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought: Cosmos, God, Humanity.[ref]Terryl Givens is my father.[/ref]

Earlier today the fourth article was posted, and this is one that I wrote: Maybe the Prophets Know What They’re Doing. In it, I manage to dredge up most of the controversies and conundrums to hit the Bloggernaccle over the past couple of years. Except Mitt Romney. I didn’t mention him. But other than that, it’s probably in this article.

I don’t know how frequently I’ll be contributing posts there, but there are already lots more great articles in the pipeline, and I’m excited to see how the project grows and develops over time.[ref]I could have said “expand,” but come on. Too easy.[/ref] I hope you’ll all check it out.