Recommended Reading

July 7th, 2009 by zen

Does social complexity cause people to adapt and become smarter?  Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan.

Foreign Policy – The Death of Macho

Twitteramigo Reihan Salam is wrong by about – I will wager – 180 degrees. Results of trends here in the medium term are likely counterintuitive and potentially nasty, if the trends are accurate.

That’s it.

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  1. Women dominating the ranks of college graduates – What’s the effect on America? « Fabius Maximus:

    July 7th, 2009 at 6:22 am

    […] false, analysis of the causes of the financial crisis.  But very PC, very trendy.  Hat tip to Zenpundit.  Excerpt: Manly men have been running the world forever. But the Great Recession is changing all […]

  2. Lexington Green:

    July 7th, 2009 at 9:57 pm

    The way Salam frames the issues is so condescending and wrongheaded it is hard to get a grip on it.  Does he really think masculinity = "macho" = beer and football?  I have to hope there is some satire in this that I am not picking up on a quick read.  Does he really think that the future is one of zero-sum conflict between men and women?   Does he really have disdain for men who work and support their families?  Why?  Does he really think that Iceland selecting a lesbian bank president as its prime minister is a bellwether for the future of the world?  Tiny scandinavian-derived communities don’t predict much.  I think the world in 50 years may well look more like Pashtunistan than Iceland.  A very odd piece. 

  3. A.E.:

    July 7th, 2009 at 10:12 pm

    I think Harvey Mansfield’s "Manliness" defines it as "confidence under risk." Of course, this quality is so general that it is meaningless.

    Thanks for the link to my SWJ piece!

  4. onparkstreet:

    July 8th, 2009 at 12:21 am

    I read, and very much enjoyed, the Adam Elkus piece. It is well-written.

    I wonder about the first sentence, though, " When Iranians took to the streets to protest vote-rigging by their nation’s theocratic-military dictatorship, the West was more transfixed by the medium rather than the message."

    Is this really true? The medium made the message more exciting, you felt you were a part of it, but you can’t really divorce such an exciting message from the medium. Perhaps I am being too pedantic. Still. I have to reread it, it’s very dense and their is a lot there.

  5. onparkstreet:

    July 8th, 2009 at 12:22 am

    sigh, I always do the there, their thing…..

  6. A.E.:

    July 8th, 2009 at 4:31 pm

    Of course one cannot divorce the message from the medium, and there was a certain visceral thrill from the use of Twitter.

    However, western journalists and opinionmakers became obsessed with social media and some (as I noted in my piece) were saying that American bloggers and journalists who had mastered microblogging comprised an "information elite." Hence the thesis of my article.

  7. onparkstreet:

    July 9th, 2009 at 5:40 pm

    Ah, I see now!

    Okay, I definitely need to re-read the article!