Pentagon Papers
一起知名的文件泄密事件
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled United States – Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. The papers were released by Daniel Ellsberg, who had worked on the study; they were first brought to the attention of the public on the front page of The New York Times in 1971. A 1996 article in The New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers had demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration "systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress".
More specifically, the papers revealed that the U.S. had secretly enlarged the scale of the Vietnam War with the bombings of nearby Cambodia and Laos, coastal raids on North Vietnam, and Marine Corps attacks, none of which were reported in the mainstream media.
For his disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg was initially charged with conspiracy, espionage, and theft of government property, but the charges were later dropped after prosecutors investigating the Watergate Scandal discovered that the staff members in the Nixon White House had ordered the so-called White House Plumbers to engage in unlawful efforts to discredit Ellsberg.
Daniel Ellsberg
Pentagon Papers 事件的主角，哈佛的经济学博士，研究决策理论，也是 Ellsberg paradox 的提出人，他的有一段人生经历对他后来的行为有所启发：「车祸使丹尼尔意识到，即使是当时毫无恶意的把握方向的父亲，也有可能因为疏忽和未被提醒而犯下大错，而越战期间向美国人民编造谎言的政府官员，同样是因为缺乏监督而误入歧途。」
His mother wanted him to be a concert pianist, but he stopped playing in July 1946, after both his mother and sister were killed when his father fell asleep at the wheel and crashed the family car into a culvert wall.
Ellsberg paradox
一个罐中有90个球，已知其中有30个红球，其余的60个要么是黑球，要么是黄球。现从中随机抽取一个，并设计4个赌局如下：
赌局A：若是红球，赌客得到100元；若是其它颜色得到0元。
赌局B：若是黑球，赌客得到100元；若是其它颜色得到0元。
赌局C：若是黑球，赌客得到0元；若是其它颜色得到100元。
赌局D：若是红球，赌客得到0元；若是其它颜色得到100元。
实验调查结果发现多数人在A、B之间选择A而非B；在C、D之间选择D而非C。
The Ellsberg paradox is a paradox in decision theory in which people's choices violate the postulates of subjective expected utility. It is generally taken to be evidence for ambiguity aversion. The paradox was popularized by Daniel Ellsberg, although a version of it was noted considerably earlier by John Maynard Keynes.
The basic idea is that people overwhelmingly prefer taking on risk in situations where they know specific odds rather than an alternative risk scenario in which the odds are completely ambiguous—they will always choose a known probability of winning over an unknown probability of winning even if the known probability is low and the unknown probability could be a guarantee of winning. That is, given a choice of risks to take (such as bets), people "prefer the devil they know" rather than assuming a risk where odds are difficult or impossible to calculate.
Ellsberg actually proposed two separate thought experiments, the proposed choices which contradict subjective expected utility. The 2-color problem involves bets on two urns, both of which contain balls of two different colors. The 3-color problem, described below, involves bets on a single urn, which contains balls of three different colors.
grand jury
大陪审团，然后与之对应的「小陪审团」是 petit jury，petit 这个词源自法语的「小」
Grand jury is a legal body empowered to conduct official proceedings and investigate potential criminal conduct, and determine whether criminal charges should be brought. A grand jury may compel the production of documents and compel sworn testimony of witnesses to appear before it. Grand jury is separate from the courts, which do not preside over its functioning.
United States and Liberia are the only countries that retain grand juries, even though some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most others employ some other form of preliminary hearing. Grand juries perform both accusatory and investigatory functions. Investigatory functions of grand juries include obtaining and reviewing documents and other evidence, and hearing sworn testimonies of witnesses who appear before it. Grand jury's accusatory function is to determine whether there is probable cause to believe that one or more persons committed a certain offence within the venue of district court.
Grand jury in the United States is usually composed of 16 to 23 citizens, though in Virginia, it is composed of fewer numbers for regular or special grand juries. In Ireland, they also functioned as local government authorities. In Japan, Law of July 12, 1948 created the Kensatsu Shinsakai (Prosecutorial Review Commission or PRC system), inspired by the American system.
Grand jury is so named because traditionally it has greater number of jurors than trial jury, called a petit jury (from the French word petit meaning "small").
Whiz Kids
福特公司接纳的10位二战退伍军人，Pentagon Papers 事件中的主要责任人 Robert McNamara 便是其中的一位
The Whiz Kids were a group of ten United States Army Air Forces veterans of World War II who became Ford Motor Company executives in 1946.
The group was part of a management science operation within the Army Air Force known as Statistical Control, organized to coordinate all the operational and logistical information required to manage the waging of war. They participated in the broader revolution in logistical and organizational science that World War II fostered. After the war, some of the group discussed opportunities to go into business together.
They were led by their commanding officer, Charles B. "Tex" Thornton. The others were:
- Wilbur Andreson — left after two years to return to California and became an executive with Bekins Van Lines.
- Charles Bosworth, retired as director of purchasing.
- J. Edward Lundy, retired as chief financial officer — he remained at Ford through the 1970s and was known as one of the most powerful people in the company and as a confidant of Henry Ford II.
- Robert S. McNamara, who eventually became the president of Ford. He then became the Secretary of Defense and the President of the World Bank.
- Arjay Miller, rose through finance and became Ford president in the mid 1960s. After being dismissed in favor of Bunkie Knudsen, an executive recruited from General Motors, he became the dean of the Stanford Business School.
- Ben Mills, became general manager of Lincoln-Mercury Division.
- George Moore, left after two years to become an automobile dealer.
- Francis "Jack" Reith, became head of Ford of France and was a rising star. Subsequently he was the executive responsible for the Mercury Turnpike Cruiser and heavily involved in the Edsel, both sales failures. Reith left the company to run the Crosley Division of Avco in Cincinnati, Ohio, later renamed AVCO Electronics Division. Reith committed suicide a few years later. AVCO Electronics was subsequently bought out by George Mealey in 1973 and renamed Cincinnati Electronics; in 1981 it was sold to GEC England.
- James Wright, eventually head of Ford division and the car and truck group. Retired in the early 1960s after a power struggle with executive John Dykstra.
Biomechanics
生物力学，研究生物体相关力学结构的学科
Biomechanics is the study of the structure and function of biological systems such as humans, animals, plants, organs, fungi, and cells by means of the methods of mechanics.
