Monday, March 12th, 2007
FOR COMPUTER GEEKS AND FANS OF TOM BARNETT
Critt Jarvis has set up some new examples of the evolving grazr app using PNM as a touchstone.
Perhaps someday I’ll understand OPML.
Archive for March, 2007
Monday, March 12th, 2007
RECOMMENDED READING
Hmmm…before I pen my review…let’s go with a 300 theme, shall we ?
Top Billing !:
Dave Schuler – “Star Wars, 300, History, and Whatnot“
Dave adds some thoughtful historical realism and common to what I expect will soon be a cacophony of hysterics about an enjoyable, highly stylized film that, like Titus or Richard III, wasn’t for everyone. I however, will be seeing the 300 again.
Armchair Generalist -“Casual Fridays“
Younghusband -“This is not madness…“
John Robb -“THE 300 is absolutely amazing“
Matthew Yglesias – “300“
That’s it !
Sunday, March 11th, 2007
ON ANTHROPOLOGY AND WAR
Historians, with their methodological emphasis on documentary evidence tend to look somewhat askance at the other social sciences, excepting economics and political science ( in that order). Back in my graduate student days I recall my professors treating economic studies with seriousness, poli sci articles with some respect and cracking jokes at the expense of sociology.
Anthropology, on the other hand, was summarily ignored. Unfortunate for me, as the discipline has as much practical application on matters of societal analysis as does history, economics or psychology. Studying WWII is enhanced by reading OSS psychological profiles of top Nazi leaders or Ruth Benedict’s classic -and aptly named –The Chrysanthemum and the Sword.
One of the more interesting characters on The Small Wars Council is Dr. Marc Tyrrell, a professional anthropologist, whose insights I have found well worth reading on many a thread (like this one on “Military Totemism” – how’s that for an esoteric topic?). Well, The Small Wars Journal has an article by Dr. Tyrrell this quarter entitled “Why Dr. Johnny Won’t Go To War: Anthropology and The Global War on Terror“(PDF). Tyrrell puts the field of anthropology and the influence of Franz Boas ( Benedict’s mentor, also Margaret Meade’s and the father of the standard social science model and cultural relativism) into the context of the war on terrorism. An interesting piece from which learned a few things, an excerpt:
“Boas combined very strong methodologies and a sound theoretical basis with a ruthless political outlook in his drive to professionalize North American Anthropology – a discipline that he and his students ended up controlling….by the end of WWI. This institutional control….decreased importance of Anthropology as an intelligence source, led to a total reformatting of the ethics of research.”
Read the rest here.
Sunday, March 11th, 2007
THE GLOVES ARE COMING OFF IN THE DEMOCRATIC RACE….4GW STYLE
People send me many things. Too much in fact, for me to ever post them all unless blogging becomes a paying gig but I do look at and read everything you send to me. This was just em,ailed and it’s hilarious – as well as an indicator of where 2008 is going and possibly a harbinger of the role Web 2.0 apps may play in the presidential race. ( Hat Tip: to Fabius Maximus).
This was posted by “Parkridge47” as if it was by a contemporary of Hillary from her High School days at Maine South. Perhaps it is. Some folks have long memories for slights or insults. But if I was to hazard a guess, I’d say the subtle stiletto of David Axelrod (Senator Barack Obama’s “political brain”) was behind this 4GW move to hit Hillary with some negative advertising in the youth demographic that leaves no forwarding address.
I’d take pride in saying that Republicans were behind this but I can’t see the Bush administration pulling off something quite this smart. Or even being aware of Youtube.
And if you think this was something, wait until they engage the social networking platforms.
Friday, March 9th, 2007
“DA MARE”
“Chicago ain’t ready for reform”
Alderman Paddy Bauler
Jonathan at Chicago Boyz points to “A Brilliant Analysis of Chicago Politics” by Michael Barone entitled “Mayor Daley Re-elected“. I have to concur.
I grew up reading columns by the legendary Mike Royko and as a small lad of five or six, I was hustled by patronage minions of Mayor Richard J. Daley’s Park District overlord, Ed Kelley, along with other children in a park district summer day camp, onto school buses to participate in a parade downtown marching past Hizzoner himself ( this was my first and last moment participating in Democratic politics). Barone’s piece on Chicago politics is one of the few I would put in a league with Royko or alongside the excellent Cohen and Taylor biography of Richard J. Daley, American Pharoah. An excerpt from Barone:
“Things became different after Richard M. Daley was elected to a two-year term in 1989 after the death of Harold Washington. The new Mayor Daley was as popular in the suburbs as in the city–perhaps even more so. He became the face of the Democratic party in Illinois. Even though Republicans, in the Republican year of 1994, were able to re-elect Edgar and get majorities in the legislature, they have fared disastrously otherwise. The Daleys gave great encouragement and tacit support to Bill Clinton in the 1992 primaries, and were amply rewarded: Bill Daley became NAFTA honcho and then secretary of commerce; Richie Daley advanced his plans to expand O’Hare Airport. His father built O’Hare to its present dimensions; he seeks to expand it much more. They both recognized that Chicago established its great eminence in 1850-1950 as the railroad hub of the nation and have consistently sought to make it in 1950–2050 the great airport hub of the nation.
Given New York’s dysfunctional airports, long misadministered by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and the distance of city-mismanaged LAX from the rest of the country, they have had as their major competition only Atlanta and maybe Dallas–Fort Worth; and O’Hare–named after a machine-related World War II fighter pilot who was a genuine hero–is I think the only worldwide equal of Heathrow. Daley’s in with the Clinton administration helped, as did his in with Speaker Dennis Hastert, who is from the collar counties and was so much a political ally of Daley’s that when it came time to redistrict Illinois in 2001, the Democrats in the legislature, led by Michael Madigan and surely not out of consultation with Daley, sacrificed a Downstate incumbent and left the Republicans the majority of the Illinois delegation.
Asked if the sacrificed Democrat would like the plan, Madigan, in the monosyllabic don’t-back-no-losers language of Illinois politics, replied, “No.”
Indeed.
