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BOOK RECOMMENDATION:

Empire of the Steppes by Grousset. A highly readable and classic work of scholarship from a time before niche specialization in academia created professors who knew more and more about less and less.

Grousset, originally publishing in 1939, mastered linguistics, history, ethnology and religion and wrote with a richness of detail and insight of a region that usually remains a blank spot for most Westerners.

PREDICTIONS FOR 2004

We will see how effective of a prophet I can be in a year’s time:

Al Qaida will switch from attempting catastrophic acts of terrorism against the American homeland in the short term to the assassination of high profile, non-American, ” soft targets ” with symbolic resonance. My short list would include the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, Musharraf of Pakistan, Muhammed VI of Morocco, the Pope, a member of the British Royal Family and any minister of the ” New Europe ” governments that supported the Iraq war.

President Bush will be reelected, winning 52-54 % of the popular vote. Either Colin Powell or Donald Rumsfeld will resign from the cabinet but not both. If Rumsfeld resigns it will only be because he was forced out.

There will be a boom to replace Dick Cheney with Condi Rice on the GOP ticket which will not happen unless the Vice-President suffers a serious health problem.

American forces in Iraq will draw down for a potential intervention in Pakistan whether or not Musharraf survives the year. American special operatives will capture or kill a major Saudi financier of al Qaida terrorism, perhaps with Saudi complicity.

A major al Qaida leader will be captured or killed by American forces.

The bioethics of implanting computer chips and components into human beings will become a media hot-button issue.

Hard core leftists will challenge Tony Blair’s leadership of the Labor Party at the first opportunity, most likely after a scandal of some kind, be resoundingly crushed and will subsequently bolt the party.

NEW YEAR BLOGGING RESOLUTIONS

I, Zenpundit, do solemnly swear, for the year 2004 a.d. to do the following:

* Post on a semi-regular basis: No more posting a dozen times followed by thirteen days off followed by four days of moderate posting. Three times a week ought to be enough to keep things moving without stressing me out.

* Faithfully Credit All Links: I do this most of the time anyway but it’s good Blogosphere manners.

*Update Breaking News: At times, stories I pull off of AP Breaking or other newswires turn out to be unfounded or change considerably from the initial reports. Because I have blogged so haphazardly by the time I return to Blogger the story is stale

*Upgrade the Zenpundit Site: This will be hardest for me as my time is so stretched as it is and my technical skills are limited ( for me a computer is a means to an end, not a hobby in and of itself). It would be nice to post pictures and have a more aesthetic site like Prometheus6 for example, or Regions of Mind where Geitner Simmons has had some beautiful photographic essays. Knowing myself as I do, this resolution will be the hardest to keep.

*Balance Blogging With Other Writing: Basically, I need to write in other venues because the Blogging format, over time, is injurious to a good prose style and I think mine has declined considerably as a result. There’s an overwhelming tendency in the blogosphere to rely upon an ” inside baseball ” blogging shorthand that regular blogreaders ” get ” and links to make one’s point instead writing concisely and descriptively.