Chicken Hawks
Weiler's law: Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
An interesting column in the Guardian on "Chicken Hawks", people who generally advocate aggressive military intervention while they themselves were enthusiastic draft-dodgers during the Vietnam war.
During World War I, while the flower of Europe's youth was being packed off to be butchered by the millions in places like Verdun, cowards who had managed to be exempted had the gall to criticize loudly the supposed timidity of the soldiers and generals from the safety of the rear. This was captured memorably in novels like Erich Maria Remarque's "Im Westen, nichts Neues" (Nothing new on the Western front).
This bred huge resentment among returning veterans that led to the takeover of Germany by the Nazis and the rise of fascistic movements that fatally wounded the French Republic, leading to the Pétain collaborationist regime. Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" explores this idea further in a world where citizenship is contingent on military service.
Update (2002-10-25):
An excellent article illustrating how brazen chickenhawks can be. To quote the tag line: Jeff Berry doesn't like it when draft dodgers question the patriotism of veterans.
Laurent Lafforgue awarded the Fields Medal
Le Monde article in French (good to see that in France at least, Mathematics can still make the front page, an editorial page and a biographical profile in the newspaper of record)
For the French-challenged, the Mathematical Association of America article.
The prestigious Fields Medal is the equivalent of the Nobel prize for Mathematics (except, unlike the more pedestrian Nobels, it is awarded only once every four years). One of the winners this year is Laurent Lafforgue.
He was one of my TAs preparing us for the competitive entrance exams to the Grandes Écoles like Polytechnique or Normale Sup (a "colleur" in French) when I was in my first year of preparatory classes at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. The problem, of course, was that he was so brilliant he had no idea which problems were reasonable and which all but impossible for lesser mortals...
Update (2002-09-23): Salon.com has an article as well.
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