zenpundit.com

I’m hard at work trying to create a new blogroll and then a separate links page ( which frankly, is as much for my blogging convenience as anything else). Patience, patience….it may take me a few days.

DINNER WITH THE NEW MAPMAKER

Last night, I enjoyed a delicious meal at Fogo de Chao in the company of Dr. Barnett, his very bright and spirited daughter, Emily, fellow Chicago Boyz blogger Lexington Green and his gracious wife…umm…”Mrs. Green“. As Brazilian cuisine is basically a salad followed by about seven pounds of meat, we may all still be in the process of digestion even as I write this post (Special thanks to Sean ” Jack Bauer” Meade and Mrs. Zenpundit for facilitating the communication logistics of this get-together).

This was my first occasion meeting Tom and he was pretty much as I had expected him to be, except taller. An interesting aspect of the discussion was that if you have seen Dr. Barnett’s televised brief, that represents a modulated pacing, of his sometimes rapid-fire conversational delivery, highly energized by ideas and their prospective implementation. The discussion was wide-ranging and intriguing, though some elements of it have been or will be posted on Tom’s blog as they related to his recent Central Asian tour with Admiral Fallon, chief of CENTCOM, but good books, politics, Japanese anime, various public intellectuals and writing all came up as topics of conversation.

The food was excellent, as was the company. I’d like to thank Dr. Barnett for taking the time out of a very busy travel schedule with Emily for a social engagement with the Greens and myself, as well as for dinner. The generous gesture is much appreciated. It was also a pleasure to see Lex and his wife again. Hopefully, we can all sit down again sometime in the future.

ADD TO SCHOLARSHIP, TAKE TDAXP’S SURVEY

On Creativity and Blogging. You don’t need to have a blog to take the survey so be a good egg and help him out.

APPLIED NEUROLEARNING

My copy of The Mislabeled Child by Drs. Brock and Fernette Eide, that I ordered through work last spring, finally arrived the other day ( Use private sector Amazon.com, the book arrives in a few days. Use an educational bureaucracy and it arrives five months later). I have been looking forward to reading this for some time ( literally).

The Drs. Eide, in addition to being authors, clinicians and researchers, also have two excellent blogs, The Neurolearning Blog and The Classical School Blog, where they share their professional expertise and deep interest in enhancing learning for children, particularly those in outlier populations with special needs. The Eides have been less active in the blogosphere this year but The Neurolearning Blog is one of my few daily “must reads”.

It’s a moderately thick text with an impressive bibliography for a book written for laymen rather than specialists. I look forward to diving in and learning something new!

ADDED TO THE BLOGROLL

Dipnote

The new, somewhat meandering, official U.S. State Department blog. This site has potential, if not squelched by unhappy seniors, to bring some of the 21st century’s Web 2.0 interactivity into the insular world of Foggy Bottom. We’ll see how it evolves, right now they seem to be experimenting. Perhaps Colonel Kilcullen can give his former diplomatic colleagues a blogging tutorial ?

The Diplomad

I just noticed that State’s ” conservative underground” has reactivated the once highly popular and long dormant Diplomad blog, absent the former Chief Diplomad. Regardless, I’d like to say welcome back to the blogroll to the Diplomadmen.

Jesserwilson’s Blog

Wandered over there via a recommendation from Michael Tanji. Mr. Wilson is off to a stronger start as a blogger than is the U.S. Department of State.

CSIS Commission on Smart Power Blog

The awkwardly named group blog of the CSIS Commission on Smart Power that sort of reads as a CORANTE site for foreign policy wonks. They should get Nye and Armitage to write an occasional post ( Nye has guest-blogged at Paul Kretkowski’s Beacon)