{"id":31070,"date":"2014-01-20T03:23:01","date_gmt":"2014-01-20T03:23:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=31070"},"modified":"2014-01-20T18:09:24","modified_gmt":"2014-01-20T18:09:24","slug":"recommended-reading-132","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=31070","title":{"rendered":"Recommended Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

[by Mark Safranski<\/strong>, by “zen<\/strong>“]
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Top Billing! Pete Turner \u00a0Afghan Polling and what it Really Means<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

One last thing about the DoS and it\u2019s polling. My personal experience working near the DoS folks is they lack the ability to know what the \u201cpeople\u201d think. They usually make decisions in a vacuum and tend to disregard the\u00a0people they are seeking to serve.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a critical statement, but I\u2019ve seen on any number of occasions large scale decisions, assessments and plans being worked without the presence of an Afghan. The \u201cAccountability Ladder\u201d of DoS is culturally ignorant and often times offensive, even dangerous,\u00a0to the people the DoS seeks to help.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Second, Glevum Associates. How do I say this succinctly? I don\u2019t trust anything they produce. My direct experience with Glevum has shown a serious lack of credible information being collected by this organization. One example should suffice\u2026We requested a survey for the district I was researching. Keep in mind, I had previous experiences with Glevum in Iraq that made me reluctant to use their data. This time, when we received our data, I laughed. Glevum Associates had managed to survey more people than the reported population of the district. Again, they found more people than actually exist in this district.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Orthosphere – \u00a0Post-Literacy and the Refusal to Read<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

….Increasingly students tell me that they \u201ccan\u2019t understand\u201d the reading.\u00a0 If they referred to Plato\u2019s\u00a0Symposium,<\/em>\u00a0the confession would be easy to interpret.\u00a0 Abstract argument, syllogisms, and the refutation of syllogisms pose difficulties for inexperienced readers.\u00a0 However, the texts that students tell me they \u201ccan\u2019t understand\u201d are\u00a0The Odyssey<\/em>\u00a0or a novel by Hawthorne or Melville or a short story by Ray Bradbury.\u00a0 In the case of\u00a0The Odyssey,<\/em>\u00a0I assign Palmer\u2019s WWI-era prose translation, so as not to traumatize the readership by confronting it with narrative in verse.\u00a0 Students are telling me that they can\u2019t understand stories, where one thing happens which leads to another and so forth.\u00a0 Students give voice to a different, a radical species of incomprehension that bodes ill for the culture, the society, and the polity that they will constitute.\u00a0 Their bafflement harbingers the age of post-literacy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

….The post-literate subject somewhat resembles the oral subject: His world is a purely personal world; he is ego-centered and yet his ego is a strictly limited one in correspondence with his limited intellectual horizon; he does not precisely lack objective standards, but he tends to resent and therefore to reject them as infringements on his\u00a0libido<\/em>.\u00a0 Like the oral subject, the post-literate subject communicates through what Ong calls the\u00a0verbo-motor<\/em>\u00a0activity of gestures, body-language, and face-making.\u00a0 He is demonstrative and body-centered.\u00a0 Like the oral subject, the post-literate subject thinks not\u00a0for himself<\/em>\u00a0butwith the group.\u00a0<\/em>Like any tribesman or clansman, the post-literate subject is quick to be \u201coffended.\u201d His is not E. R. Dodd\u2019s \u201cguilt culture,\u201d that product of the higher, scriptural religions; his is, rather, Dodd\u2019s \u201cshame culture,\u201d the default ethos of pre-literate societies.<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the other hand, post-literacy is not a relapse into orality, which, in its intact form, has institutions of its own such as folklore and social custom that codify the knowledge essential to living.\u00a0 Post-literacy can draw on no such resources, for these have only been preserved in modern society in literature, and post-literacy has not only lost contact with literature, but also it simply no longer knows how to read in any meaningful sense.\u00a0 It cannot refer to the archive to replenish itself by a study of its own past.\u00a0 Post-literacy is therefore also, to borrow a phrase from Oswald Spengler,\u00a0history-less.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hat tip to James Bennett<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oil Review Middle-East<\/em> \u00a0(Christopher Gunson) –\u00a0US shale revolution poses no threat to Middle East market<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many commentators have speculated that this will create a new geopolitical balance, one that will weaken the traditional oil and gas producers of the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia. But the impact of the shale revolution on the global oil and gas supply chain is misunderstood.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The role of Middle East oil exporters in the global economy remains secure and the direct impact of US shale on the global market is commonly overestimated.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Crude oil comes in different density grades (heavy or light) and with different levels of sulfur. Shale oil is light with little sulfur, yet many US refineries are designed to accommodate heavy sulfur-rich crudes, typically imported from Canada, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. These refineries cannot be easily recalibrated to refine light sweet shale crude oil, which means that heavy high-sulfur crude oil will continue to be imported into the US oil refining and petrochemical supply chain.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Arabian crude oil share predominately exported eastward to Japan, China, and Korea. This supply chain will remain unchanged. Simply put, US shale oil cannot easily offset traditional Arabian oil supplies to Asia \u2014 the oil requires different refining capabilities and there is geographic logic in the existing supply chain. The immediate impact of US shale oil production is to reduce imports of light oil from producers such as Nigeria.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0War on the Rocks (Adam Elkus) – The Odd Sheikh Out: A Complex Problem<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Small Wars Journal<\/em> –\u00a0California-Raised Kids vs. Mexico\u2019s Violent Cartel<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Recent Santa Muerte Spiritual Conflict Trends<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0Global Guerrillas-\u00a0Bossnapping<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross – Interpreting al Qaida<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Science News – Thinking hard weighs heavy on the Brain<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Volokh Conspiracy – Ninth Circuit to Hear Challenge to Obamacare\u2019s \u201cPlatonic Guardians\u201d January 28<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Venkatesh Rao –Consent of the Surveiled<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Slightly East of New – Can America Win Wars?<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and Boyd Conference in San Diego<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

That’s it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[by Mark Safranski, by “zen“] Top Billing! Pete Turner \u00a0Afghan Polling and what it Really Means\u00a0 One last thing about the DoS and it\u2019s polling. My personal experience working near the DoS folks is they lack the ability to know what the \u201cpeople\u201d think. They usually make decisions in a vacuum and tend to disregard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31070"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31074,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31070\/revisions\/31074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}