Newsgroups: bit.listserv.csg-l
Date:         Wed, 16 Dec 1992 21:27:48 CST
From:         John Gabriel <gabriel@EID.ANL.GOV>
Subject:      More for Rick Marken

[From Gabriel 921216 20:30 CST]

More about feedback mechanisms in the wolf community. After this I'm going
to have to swear off anything but serious business on the NET for a month,
but one last anecdote.

As I'm sure you know, the alpha wolf's job is essentially to know where
to find the moose. This is what he learns in the two or three years he
spends surviving as a lone wolf before a vacancy for an alpha opens
in a pack, or a piece of unoccupied territory and an alpha female
are encountered at roughly the same time. This is a very tough "Ranger
Course", I think Rolf Peterson estimates that 90%-95% of the candidates
wash out and their genes are lost to the gene pool. Essentially
for most wolves, "Go along to get along" is a genetically sound strategy.
Alphas have to be bloody minded and very able to survive as far as their
graduation ceremony and marriage.

Now, when the alpha gets a bit too old and tired to find the moose,
he retires and is held in honour and affection, and as long as there
are enough moose to get by he eats. As we get old our calorific needs
diminish anyhow. And the pack treat him with respect, and he can still
keep up with everybody in their travels. Peterson tells however of one
very autocratic alpha, who didn't listen, was not very good at finding
moose anyhow, and so on. The pack was being observed daily from a light
aircraft, and one day, the pack was seen, but without its autocrat.

So Peterson backtracked, and came on a very large area of reddened
snow, pieces of fur, and not much else. His comment was "The wolves
held an election." This is the phenomenenon Tom Baines is constructing
a publication around, with the Romanovs in 1917, and Marie Antoinette
somewhat more than century before as a few of the particular instances.

There seem to be some interesting breakdowns of communication, and
a chaotic bifurcation. This is what the American Revolution and the
Constitution are all about, and background to the Amendments.

Publish or perish is not nearly so brutal as the wolves' election.
But the observations about academic wars being vicious because
nobody has real claws or teeth are absolutely to the point. I have
seen a Dept. riven down the middle by a squabble over whether
faculty should take their turn with graduate students in buying
cookies and making tea for the social occasion before the weekly
seminar.

This is what I mean when I say that Heinlen has a point, easily
misunderstood, when he remarks that an armed society is a polite
society. Fighting is serious business, and that is all Heinlen
is trying to say. And all of Bill's counter arguments are well taken and
sound, moreover arguments on both sides of the point are mainly
only sound. They only become real when the wolves hold an election,
or funding becomes scarce enough so that tenure is no longer
a protection against involuntary termination.

I will write early in the New Year on the taxonomy of the inhabitants
of the academic world. In the meantime, may I recommend the following
light reading:-

Microcosmographia Academica, by F.M. Cornford, now almost a century
old. It may be out of print. It used to be a family custom to hold
about a dozen copies "for the delectation of friends
and the confusion of enemies", since the 1930s. Sadly Heffers
were not able to replenish my stock when I asked them a few years
ago. If the copyright has expired or if I can obtain permission to
do so, I may scan my only remaining copy, and publish a limited
edition of a few hundred or perhaps a thousand. It used to be my
custom to give a copy to each new incomimg director of Argonne.
A very few (perhaps one) were even so polite to write a short
note of thanks and acknowledgment.

For those of you who have any curiosity about what soldiers are like,
there is a wide variety of books to read. Some of those my friends
have enjoyed, and which they say have shed light on my colleagues
in green suits are:-

The Face of Battle - John Keegan (The most brilliant evocation of
military experience of our time - C.P. Snow) - I knew Snow at
Harwell, but not very well (naturally). A delightful and brilliant
chap.

The Second World War - John Keegan

About Face - Col. David H. Hackworth - Hackworth has been said by
some to have been the most able infantryman of his generation.
If he had not been disgusted by the situation in VietNam, and
left the Army, he might perhaps have been a present or recent
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

There are legions of others. One, ultimately concerned with
the origins of the VietNam Memorial, but only as its' coda,
is The Long Gray Line by Rick Atkinson.

People are even more interesting to study than wolves.

        John (gabriel@eid.anl.gov)