Recommended Reading
Have not done this in a while…
Top Billing! Thomas P.M. Barnett –Rogoff’s “second great contraction” and why I’m mad as hell at Washington
….Worse, I have a White House that claims I’m the problem because I don’t pay enough taxes and so it wants to soak me because that’s an evil state of affairs. Funny thing is, I pay the Fed a whopping sum every year – about three times as much as my dad ever made in a year while he supported us seven kids. So naturally, when more than one out of every three dollars I make goes to the government, I feel like I’m supporting all sorts of programs for the needy, plus I’m doing the right thing by the mortgage, plus I keep up my charity donations, plus I pay 3 private grade school tuitions (saving the public schools) and two public college tuitions (eldest daughter and wife). I don’t ask for any hand-outs from the government. Hell, I fund them and am glad to do so. But then I’m told I’m the reason why the government is so in debt (not enough taxes from the “rich”) and yet I’m the dupe who continues honoring that mortgage from another era while paying for the bail-outs of those who can’t. And you know, I don’t feel like I’m the problem – or evil for doing all that.
In short, I’m doing everything I can to help this economy. I’m working my ass off, I’m honoring all long-term debts and keeping myself out of any short-term credit. But you know what that takes in this economy? It means I am as stingy as possible on consumer spending. It means I put off business investments for as long as possible. It means I’ve got nothing for venturing investments. It means I’m more incentivized than ever to stuff as much into retirement funds to avoid the tax man. It means I will vote for anybody who seems to spell reasonable restraint and relief – and that sure as s–t ain’t Obama.
I’m not a Tea Partier. I’m very middle-of-the-road: a conservative Democrat on domestic and a liberal Republican on foreign. I crave compromises in Washington because our political elite’s inability to make those deals happen reasonably means I compromise across the board. They do nothing to lift the economy out of its doldrums and I reciprocate. Everything I read from them says, “Screw you” and I can’t help wishing them the same.
President Obama is managing to lose foreign policy experts from his own party who were invited to his inauguration festivities. That’s a neat political trick I don’t think I have seen since Jimmy Carter.
Small Wars Journal –Interviews with Stephen P. Cohen and C. Christine Fair
Octavian Manea continues his outstanding series of interviews with leading COIN, strategy and foreign policy experts
Two new blogs on the blogroll, The Mellow Jihadi and iRevolution.
Sultan Knish –The Warrior’s Tale
…Before there were cities or nations, and railways and airports, computers and telephones– the tale was told around campfires. Acted out in pantomime, dressed up in animal furs and cave paintings. But the tale was the same. The people were confronted with a threat and they called upon the best and strongest of their men to go out and fight it. These were their warriors. What they did in the face of that threat is the tale.
Hat tip to Morgan.
Metamodern –My next book: Radical Abundance, 2012
Radical Abundance will integrate and extend several themes that I’ve touched on in Metamodern, but will go much further. The topics include:
- The nature of science and engineering, and the prospects for a deep transformation in the material basis of civilization.
- Why all of this is surprisingly understandable.
This country needs a book with some kind of optimistic narrative.
SEED – Full Steam Ahead on CS-STEM
Mark Cuban – If you want to see more jobs created – change patent laws and My Suggestion on Patent Law
How “innovations” in patent law keep lawyers employed, Americans out of work and real innovations off the market
Recommended Viewing:
Steven Pressfield on creativity and writing.
That’s it.
August 9th, 2011 at 12:21 pm
Steven Pressfield was on C-SPAN this weekend.
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http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Etho
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Regarding the Small Wars link:
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I’ve been unable to access the Octavian Manea interview with Drs. Cohen and Fair but when they’ve got the site up and running again (poor things, rough transitioning to a new website) I’d like to read through it.
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Random thoughts about the curious nature of DC Pakistan "experts"….
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1. Do you lose visa access if you don’t create an India-Pakistan parity in some way in your writings? Must be tough to formally study the army of an essentially illiberal regime. Not making any accusations, mind you, just wondering aloud. I enjoy what I’ve read online of both scholars, but I tend to disagree with their policy advice when given.
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2. Being a good scholar doesn’t necessarily make you a good policy advisor. A proposition to discuss, at any rate. How does one become a good policy advisor? What does that mean? Do you cultivate politicos, do you go for brute honesty, do you cultivate reporters who might quote you, and so on and so on. Again, not making accusations toward anyone, just wondering aloud about that strange town, D.C.
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3. I’m working part time now and have left my old associate professorship. When you crunch the numbers, look at what is looming, look at how much harder you have to work to make only a limited amount more money, "going Galt" looks like the better option. The sad thing about teaching medicine these days is that it might be easier to write and teach (you can do it online, you see) working outside the academic hospital environment. Big private labs, private hospitals, VA hospitals, etc. If you can find a nice "small" job within those settings, or work half-time, you can write and write and write in a way you cannot very well in academia. Provided your areas of interest are like mine and don’t require a lab or lab space.
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– Madhu
August 9th, 2011 at 3:15 pm
Hi Madhu,
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Good question. Every academic in the field over the age of 50 had their scholarly training on India-Pakistan shaped by the Cold War and were taught by mentors whose academic/government careers spanned the Cold War. This by itself created a built-in pro-Pakistan tilt because India and the ruling Congress Party were a) pro-Soviet, actually a de facto ally of Moscow, and b) anti-American and anti-China. I am sure this intellectual legacy persists in academia much as it does in the upper reaches of the US Army and USG but as it is not my field, I can’t cite specific examples ( a great data-free analysis, eh?)
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Query: I don’t think this directly affects you, given what I recall about your med specialty, but how does the astronomical cost of malpractice insurance impact medical academics? I know in the past, as my emeritus uncle was one of these, it was not unusual for them to see a small number of patients or a hospital practice, partly for working with their interns and residents outside of a lab with real people. Is this still done? Only under institutional umbrellas like research hospitals? Or is the part private/part academic physician a thing of the past?
August 9th, 2011 at 9:58 pm
WRT patents, good news: http://www.geekosystem.com/courts-fin-patent-troll/
August 10th, 2011 at 6:56 am
Thanks for the blogroll!
August 10th, 2011 at 12:17 pm
@ Zen,
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On the query: I don’t know the specifics because I’ve always worked for teaching hospitals in the past, I negotiated a salary and the hospital group paid for the group insurance, etc. My guess is that it adds to the overall inefficiency of running a hospital and cuts into salaries, number of overall hires, and money available for patient care.
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On the DC Pakistan "experts":
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DC seems a funny town from my perspective. I think there are lots of competing agendas and not everyone is on the make or take, you know? Even very well meaning people probably run into lots of nasty stuff.
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The issues include DC bureaucracies like State, the CIA, DOD, and others with a budget interest in "saving Pakistan," NGOs, congressionals that can be lobbied by a variety of companies to include defense contractors, and so on and so forth.
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Then there is the old Cold War tilt toward the Israel-Saudi-Pakistan "sunni" containment axis, first toward the old Soviet Union, and now toward Iran. Competing oil pipelines. NATO politics (Russia and Iran). Lots of money in Mideast sharia banks (I mean nothing negative about sharia banking, just that there is a lot of money in banking, sharia or otherwise. This is a factor that gets ignored in our dumbed down public domestic debate. But who am I to complain? I’ve enthusiastically taken part in much of the dumbing down myself and only now am I trying to change….an intellectual journey, you might say.)
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My personal opinion is that Abbottabad was the shot-across-the-bow for all of these old vested interests. The American people cannot be fooled anymore and they see that we are being dragged into a strange global proxy of business and political interests not always aligned with ours.
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– Madhu
August 10th, 2011 at 12:34 pm
At any rate, I think the powers-that-be see that the status quo is not sustainable. The most fascinating CSPAN thing I’ve every seen yesterday: "Simulations of oil supply disruptions response," by a bunch of old Bush admin officials sponsored by some domestic energy interests?
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At any rate, even if there are vested interests toward domestic drilling, the topic was fascinating and we as a country need to move forward on disentangling ourselves from a troublesome part of the world. One Al Q attack on Saudi plants, a new global oil crisis. They said only ten percent of the oil comes to the states, but Asian markets would be disrupted which would hurt us so Russia and Canada and others need to be brought into this process. Not just Opec anymore (in a rush, so typing all this out in an impressionistic way). The twenty first post NATO world is stirring….
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– Madhu
August 10th, 2011 at 12:37 pm
The twenty-first century post NATO world is stirring….
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Tom Barnett is right to do a wikistrat competition. I’m skeptical about the US-China-India thing (it’s easy to game people in the West, that’s been my experience growing up between two cultures) but I’m intrigued nonetheless. It’s the right start even if the specifics may need to be continually worked on.
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Fascinating.
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– Madhu