https://ogma.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/ /manager/Index en-au 5 https://ogma.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/ /manager/Repository/uon:14348 Wed 11 Apr 2018 09:26:53 AEST ]]> https://ogma.newcastle.edu.au/vital/access/ /manager/Repository/uon:23120 Wikipedia, a classic humorous paradigm of inductive reasoning is the so-called 'duck test'; i.e. 'If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.' This aphorism has been attributed to several individuals, but Richard Immerman notes in his book on the CIA a rather interesting and sinister instance of pernicious labelling associated with the saying in the United States during the Cold War, when fear of Communist aggression drove American foreign policy and highly placed officials who had themselves suffered from Senator McCarthy's indictments applied the same highly subjective processes and criteria for discrimination to a foreign arena. The American diplomat Richard Cunningham Patterson Jr., ambassador to Guatemala in 1950 openly boasted that he could spot a Guatemalan Communist merely by projecting his own understanding of Communism to the local context. In the case of Cleomenes of Naucratis, Ptolemy's hyparch in Egypt and Alexander's former satrap (if Stanley Burstein is right), we might substitute 'villain' for 'duck'; if Cleomenes seems to have behaved like a crook, and several of our ancient writers condemn him as such, then should we do the same? Well, we shall see.]]> Sat 24 Mar 2018 07:16:35 AEDT ]]>