zenpundit.com

I feel this one will be a weird mix.

Top Billing! Col. Dr. Kilcullen vs. Col. Dr. Bacevich over Dave Kilcullen’s new book,  The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (Dual hat tip SWJ Blog and BJ at Newshoggers.com).

Bacevich Review: Raising Jihad .  Killcullen Rebuttal: Accidental Guerrilla: Read Before Burning

I have not read Accidental Guerilla yet but it seems obvious that Andrew Bacevich begins from a position longstanding and very strong, non-interventionist, anti-COIN, pro- “Big Army/Near Peer Competitior” policy views. I suspect that may have influenced his take on Dave’s argument just a bit, thus leading to Dave to speculate that Bacevich may have not read the final book or read it in full. A possibility; about 80% of the books I review here are advance copies sent by publishers, authors or their agents.

Outside the Beltway ( Dave Schuler) – Negotiating With Iran

Dave’s reasoned and reasonable take on the Obama administration’s opening moves with Iran.

Coming Anarchy – Financial Warfare and Idea: The Dictionary of Modern Ideas

Liked both of these posts – phrase of the day – “argotic arms race”.

Two for One:  Whirledview (CKR) – Diplomacy Is Not What Bush Did  and Duck of Minerva (Nexon) – Haven’t they Filled the Protocol Positions Yet?

This post by Cheryl is a lucid counterpoint to my knock on Obama administration stumbles in foreign policy while subsequent events have caused Dr. Dan to move in my direction on this score.

Threatswatch.org ( Elkus, Tanji) – Legacy Futures in Cyberspace and Brave Digital World 

A cyberspecial.

Tom Barnett is on C-Span in a few hours.

John Robb indulges his dark side.

Open the Future – The End of Long-Term Thinking

A good example from Jamais on how words frame analytical thought.

NewsDaily – Who got AIG’s bailout billions?

Primarily the Brits, French and Germans it turns out – the same folks who were loudly blaming the crisis on American capitalism in public had the weaker and more poorly managed financial systems, despite heavy state regulation, and were taking enormous handouts from U.S. taxpayers in private.

Scientific American – Building a Portrait of a Lie in the Brain

SEED – Adapting to a New Economy , A Hormone to Remember and Is MIT Obsolete?

WSJ – Philanthropy and Its Enemies  (Hat tip to Instapundit and Steve Schippert)

A united Hard Left and multiculturalist Race Hustling attempt at extortion and hijacking of private foundation endowments to advance political causes of the Left through a blandly named front group that is led by extremist antiglobalization activists like Christine Ahn and “social justice” organizers such as Judy Hatcher. Ironically, most of the major philanthropic foundations like Rockefeller, Ford and MacArthur are pretty liberal in their orientation and grant giving but in the perspective of these folks, “liberal” is another name for right-wing, capitalist, crypto-patriarchy. People like this are why David Horowitz never lacks for material.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING:

Evan Williams on Twitter’s user-driven evolution…..

Humor, a take on an old optical illusion ( hat tip Dave of Thoughts Illustrated)

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday…where action is the attraction…

Top Billing! Threatswatch.org – Mexican President: Gov’t Does Not Control Areas on US Border

Steve Schippert pushes attention toward the greatest underreported national security problem of recent years. Other than John Sullivan,  John Robb, Adam Elkus, Stratfor, Fabius Maximus and a few other small blog sites, is anybody paying regular attention to our Southern neighbor becoming a failed state ?

Congrats to Winslow Wheeler and Dr. Chet Richards for Stanford University Press picking up America’s Defense Meltdown.

Tim Stevens has a new article up in World Defence Systems.

Complexity and Social Networks Blog – Alone in the Crowd: The Structure and Spread of Loneliness in a Large Social Network

Is loneliness contagious ? More evidence on the dynamic qualitative nature of networks.

The Glittering Eye – Visualcy, Newspapers, and Political Communication and Case In Point

Visualcy has been a continuing on/off subject of discussion between myself and Dave

CTLab Review – Dr. Marc Tyrell – The Fight For Academic Hearts and Minds (warning: rant)

I like a good rant.

John P. Sullivan & Adam Elkus – SWJ – Postcard from Mumbai

The postmodern urban insurgency.

Fabius Maximus –  The media doing what it does best these days, feeding us disinformation

FM takes on “advocacy journalism” ( case in point Newsweek, which explicitly practices this model)

Abu Muqawama –  Special Abu Muqawama Interview: Craig Mullaney

Perhaps Craig Mullaney’s book, The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier’s Education (Penguin USA), will be the Fiasco, the defining book, for the war in Afghanistan. Looks good and Mullaney is getting a lot of attention. Great title.

SWJ Blog – The Unforgiving Minute

Review by Dave Dilegge, another indicator that Mullaney may have written “the” book re: Afghanistan war for some time to come.

Top RAND defense intellectual, David Ronfeldt now has a blog,  Apropos Two Theories ( hat tip to Shloky)

David Armano – Battle of the Brands

“Brandividuals” ?

Danger Room – Scientist Looks to Weaponize Ball Lightning

Cool.

Scientific American – Six Ways to Boost Brainpower

Finally! Research we can use ! Guys – it justifies our excess caffeine consumption and playing of video games!

Recommended Viewing:

Courtesy of Tim Stevens of Ubiwar, the PPT of General  (res.)  Dr. Shimon Naveh of the IDF, feautured in a post here last week.

Shimon Naveh PowerPoint

View more presentations from ubiwar.

From Jamais Cascio of Open The Future:

Art Center Summit talk – Future: To Go

View more presentations from Jamais Cascio. (tags: futuro de)

Dan Robles of Ingenesist ( Hat tip to Dave Davison at Thoughts Illustrated) 

Innovation Economics Next

View more presentations from ingenesist. (tags: innovation economics)

Going for an odd juxtaposition today.

Top Billing! On Google:  LA Times – Google ready to pursue its agenda in Washington and The Guardian – Google plans to make PCs history

Let’s be very clear. Google will be to the Obama administration what Halliburton and Blackwater combined were to the Bush II administration…and maybe then some. That doesn’t make Google “evil”, some of what the search engine giant desires from the USG is good policy but it means that those watching the intersection of politics, public policy and technology need to give Google below the radar scrutiny in order to be ahead of the curve.

MountainRunner – Noteworthy

Check out the link to WindowonEurasia ( hat tip Galrahn ). This fits the growing “neo-Eurasianism” ideology of the Siloviki clique around Putin.

Haft of the Spear –  Book Update 

I will post on this topic when it goes “live” on Amazon.

Global Guerillas – PROTECTION RACKETS

An interesting analysis by John Robb on the nature of the state.

Conversations with History – Niall Ferguson

Committee of Public Safety – Neglected Strategists: Kautilya, the Arthashastra, the Spectrum of Power, and 5GW

An introduction to the Machiavelli of India ( China’s Machiavelli was Han Fei-tzu )

SEED – Seed Salon: Albert-Laszlo Barabasi + James Fowler and  Revolutionary Minds

Network theory’s great figure and cutting edge thinkers.

On Networks and Time: 

“Time-Dependent Complex Networks: Dynamic Centrality, Dynamic Motifs, and Cycles of Social Interaction*”   by Dr. Dan Braha and Dr. Yaneer Bar-Yam

This stretched my brain and I’m not qualified to vet the work BUT for military/intel types, this research implies IMHO that “targeted assassinations” or less than total war “EBO” campaigns may only have transient effects or at least less effect than expected because the dynamic nature of nodal roles gives the network more resiliency than a casual analysis might lead one to believe. Shane and Dr. Von are cordially invited to weigh in and correct me here.

Logic and Emotion – Thinking Visually

Thinking Visually

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: storytelling presentation)

That’s it!

Top Billing!: John Hagel – Pareto Power and Leveraged Growth and Pareto Paring – Achieving Strategic Cost Reduction

The “Pareto Curve” of Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto is bettern known in the blogosphere as “The Long Tail” due to Chris Anderson of WIRED who wrote the recent bestseller The Long Tail, (Revised and Updated) and Nassim Nicolas Taleb‘s  The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable which expounded on “Black Swan” events occuring on the “Extremistan” end of Pareto’s distribution curve.  The Pareto Curve has powerful applications, particularly well in a globalized, information economy, environment and John Hagel is, for me, always an educational read.

Scientific American – Evolution of the Mind: 4 Fallacies of Psychology and The Future of Man–How Will Evolution Change Humans?

“…Harpending and Hawks’s team estimated that over the past 10,000 years humans have evolved as much as 100 times faster than at any other time since the split of the earliest hominid from the ancestors of modern chimpanzees. The team attributed the quickening pace to the variety of environments humans moved into and the changes in living conditions brought about by agriculture and cities”

Lexington Green – Clausewitz, On War, Book I: The Enduring Value of Clausewitz’s Articulation of the Nature of War

Also courtesy of Lex….

John Robb – Fewer Teachers more Automation

I want to tackle this post in detail later.

Fabius Maximus – “Some people just want to see the world burn”

I agree with FM. Mr. Bowman does not understand the psychology of the warlord, or those who would sign up with them. From my view, the world contains no shortage of armed bohemians.

Josephfouche – The First Rule of 5GW is, You Do Not Talk About 5GW

Heh. Dan of TDAXP meets his match in the smooth, original, Open Office, color graphics for war theory department.

SWJ Blog – A Proposal for a Unifying Strategic Doctrine for National Security

A discussion starter.

The Claremont Institute – Bennett and Cribb on Post-Racial Politics

There appears to be an interesting – though warily executed by both parties – reachng out going on between the conservative intellectual establishment and the incoming administration of Barack Obama. Sort of a political detente in progress for a possible strategic triangulation on issues where common ground can be discerned. 

John Seely Brown on “Creativity”:

That’s it !

“He was basileus who became tyrannos….” 

Via Ian , here is a link to eminent classicist and historian Donald Kagan’s introductory course to Ancient Greek History at Open Yale courses. Right now I’m listening to a lecture where Kagan is distinguishing between the Greek views of monarchy and tyranny, something I happen to be teaching my own students via the writings of Polybius.

A hundred plus years ago, when most Americans did not finish their elemntary school education, much less go on to high school, philanthropists like Andrew Carnegie liked to build public libraries because they were the university of the poor man. Today when the overwhelming percentage of Americans graduate high school, however marginal the actual competence of the grads might be and a significant plurality have at least some college, platforms like Yale Open courses and Stanford iTunes let anyone with an internet connection access the best education available on mainstream subjects on their own time, their own pace and for free.

 A state of affairs that could be leveraged fairly easily to systemically enrich other levels of education, public and private.