The Portico

Globalization and Its Discontents

2010-01-16T19:39:00.000-08:00

The progression of history towards a happy world community driven by increased globalization isn’t going so well.

I read today that many Israelis are more radicalized after last years’ war with Gaza. Says one Israeli: "We needed to hurt them and not have mercy ... to destroy every house till [we] found that soldier," says Buson, who dropped out of law school to open clothing shops in Jerusalem. I read elsewhere that the President is so embattled in places in his own country that “Charles Manson could beat him” there, not only because of his policies, but because the constituency believes him to be an African, Muslim, Socialist hell bent on taking down America. Apparently: "The zoo has an African lion and the White House has a lyin' African". One major news source’s Senior Political analyst says that it looks like Al-Qaeda, armed with box cutters and a demoralization-fueled plan, is winning the terror war. Amidst the threat that two hundred thousand people could be dead after the Haiti earthquake, a popular American news show pats itself on the back for its fruitful endeavors to find one Iowa couple’s child adoptee amidst the chaos.

Colonialism in 1900

2009-12-23T10:11:00.001-08:00

Via Wikipedia:

The meaning of "garlic"

2009-12-21T20:36:00.000-08:00

The best of the internets...

2009-12-13T01:38:00.000-08:00

... according to the The Guardian. The brits might know a thing or two.

Some interesting sites you want to know about: if you're too busy to blog, believe in freeing up public information access, or need to be getting cheaper hotels.

What's wrong with David Brooks?

2009-12-13T00:43:00.000-08:00

A column about Hannukah from the NYT. From the comments:

David Brooks, the Jew, is as interesting to read as David Brooks, the Conservative, or David Brooks, the Pragmatist.

Pissing on the world, Pissing off the world

2009-12-13T00:03:00.000-08:00

Today Gail Collins underlines some of the irresponsible, frat-boy behavior of American military contractors in Afghanistan.

What do you think Dwight Eisenhower would say about all of this? In his last speech as president, Eisenhower famously warned the country about “the potential for the disastrous use of misplaced power” if the military industrial complex got too big. That was back when defense contractors just sold the Pentagon fighter jets and wildly expensive widgets. Imagine how Ike would have reacted if they were driving the C.I.A. to snatch-and-grab dates.

But doesn't the humiliation at Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere, teach us that we can't blame contractors for things that even our professional soldiers are engaging in?

I understand that most of the men and women in our armed forces are professionals who are taking very seriously the increased sensitivity to cultures their jobs require, but I can't help but ask: when "accidents" like the contractors pissing on each other and Abu Ghraib villainies do occur, isn't there at least a trace of purposefulness to them? Don't such events function to tell the darkies out there in those lands who is boss?

College education read against the grain

2009-12-09T14:53:00.000-08:00

Are American colleges failing?

Bill Clinton in NoKo

2009-08-05T07:40:00.000-07:00

I want to cover this story in greater detail, but for now, there are some interesting writings on this issue, like one from Maureen Dowd. Money quote:

But the former Bush bullies have no credibility on diplomacy. They spent eight years wrecking it, and the score for them on North Korea is 0-6; zero meetings with Kim and enough plutonium for six nuclear bombs.

Bill Clinton will bring back valuable information about Kim’s mental and physical health. If we’d had that sort of information about the snubbed Saddam, we would have known that he was in his own spiral of doom, trying to bluff his neighbors, with no need for our shock and awe.

Defend Democracy! Stop Hippy Professors!

2009-07-29T17:14:00.000-07:00

Two letters to the editor recently caught my eye. Under the heavy weight of the title, "One Must Understand Western Culture to Defend It," the first letter-writer decries the impending destruction of "our society and freedom" because our colleges and universties do not ascribe to a "core curriculum in classical philosophy and humanities". For her, there is an obvious and clear line in the last two-and-a-half millennia to this American moment:

Our Constitution was not thought of on a whim by our Founding Fathers. It resulted from their study of 2,500 years of Western thought about what defines man and how he should live.
An understanding of Western thought will guard against the simple dismissal of our civilization’s values in the name of relativism. The notion that all cultures are equal so pervades the thinking at the modern-day university that often the graduates of these institutions will easily accept any new ideas cloaked in the name of change because they never quite grasped the principles under which they’ve lived so freely their whole lives.

Oh, please!

Apparently, what teen Miss South Carolina needs more of is Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas and Adams. Well, actually, she needs a globe, knowledge of the world, and speech lessons.

Anyways, the next letter writer goes on:

The shame is that administrators ever allowed “Sociology of Heterosexuality” and the plethora of other nonsense that has invaded our campuses to be taught at the expense of great books and our great heritage.

Sociology of Heterosexuality? Can I add that class?

Alas, If only Sarah Palin had taken more core requirements:

2009-07-29T16:40:00.000-07:00

See more here.

Beef in the Obama White House?

2009-07-29T16:20:00.000-07:00

A recent NYT Magazine piece highlights the role of Valerie Jarrett, Obama friend and advisor, inside the current White House. Fascinating, as it is, it speaks quietly of tensions within Obama's staff. They include the following gem about the relationship between Chief attack dog Rahm Emmanuel and Jarrett during the transition between Bush and Obama regimes:

Rahm Emanuel himself visited the West Wing to confer with his counterpart, the Bush chief of staff Joshua Bolten. In the course of their conversation, Bolten told Emanuel that Jarrett had been by, looking at office space.

Emanuel was not happy to learn this. He confronted Jarrett, and today he says: “There was a misunderstanding. . . . It wasn’t a dust-up.” As it would develop, Pete Rouse and Jim Messina, the deputy chief of staff, assigned Jarrett the airy second-floor office suite formerly commandeered by Karl Rove and before that the first lady, Hillary Clinton. But Emanuel’s reaction, at bottom, had little to do with West Wing real estate. Instead, it conveyed the understandable wariness with which the other top Obama advisers greeted the only one among them who could claim to be a close personal friend of both the president and the first lady.

It's the kind of article that shows you what everyone would have been talking about about how the Obama campaign "fell apart" had someone else won the 2008 race. For example, I mean like this piece on Hilary's campaign, complete with leaked memos.

Most interesting for me is how "loyalty" is a word so easily thrown around in this White House, just as it was in W's 8 years, when it came to talk surrounding his advisors.

Cat Scan to the Past!

2009-07-28T23:09:00.000-07:00

This economist piece shows how technology is helping to reintegrate little pieces of the world's OLDEST bible. Money quote:

Through a number of odd historical circumstances, the constituent parts of the world’s oldest manuscript of the Bible—usually dated to the mid-fourth century—are located in four different places. They are the British Library in London, the University Library in Leipzig, the National Library of Russia in St Petersburg and the ancient monastery of St Catherine’s on the slopes of Mount Sinai, the Bible’s original home.
But as of this month, the manuscript has been “reunited” in cyberspace, thanks to a joint effort by the four institutions. The monastery agreed to collaborate only after making clear that by doing so it was not compromising its claim to be the moral owner of the whole text, known as the Codex Sinaiticus; all sides agreed to investigate the recent history of the text more deeply. So now anybody can read a more or less intact manuscript, complete with selected translation and commentary, on a website (www.codexsinaiticus.org) which has already proved hugely popular—and hence is a little slow.

Some time back, the WSJ featured some of the new research being done super important sources for history. Here is the multimedia and the article.

What's most fascinating is how some scholars are using MRI technology to digitally unravel scriptural scrolls that have shrunk and withered like an old cigar. How much knowledge of history is beyond our ability to reconstruct it? How much can we revive?

Ride of the Day

2009-07-27T14:29:00.000-07:00

Hot summer day, think cool thoughts.

And play this with the sound up:

Playing Offense on Defensive Medicine

2009-07-27T12:43:00.001-07:00

This one goes out to all my MD'z:

The President of the AMA is on the case. Doctors of America have a representative at the Health Care debate table talking about the costs of defensive medicine as well as about tort reform.

But what does defensive medicine cost? There is no straight answer.

Here are some ideas on the issue:

One, two, three, four.

Krugman on Health care

2009-07-27T12:09:00.000-07:00

Check it.

Money quote:

One interpretation, then, is that the Blue Dogs are basically following in Mr. Tauzin’s footsteps: if their position is incoherent, it’s because they’re nothing but corporate tools, defending special interests. And as the Center for Responsive Politics pointed out in a recent report, drug and insurance companies have lately been pouring money into Blue Dog coffers.

What do you think?

Tax on Religious Minorities in Pakistan

2009-07-27T11:35:00.000-07:00

It's been in the news quite a bit recently: religious minority groups, the most conspicuous of which are Sikhs, must pay jizya, or poll tax. Some have compared it to a Mafia-style protection payment.

Interesting thing is, though, the parallel governments in Pakistan. People ask is Pakistan going to break up? My question is, did it already?

"Minorities in Orakzai and Khyber were warned by some militant groups to become Muslims or leave the area. This was a real threat," Singh said.
"They're running a parallel government. Hindu and Sikh families did not feel safe, in Orakzai, in Bara and in Tirah. We preferred to migrate, at least here we can breathe in peace and feel safe," he said.

Anyways, Sikhs in Pakistan is a fascinating topic, how cool would it be for someone to do more research on it.

You can't keep a good sage down

2009-07-27T11:00:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, the economist had a great article about a Confucian comeback in contemporary China.

Apparently, despite tradition's ideological differences with Communism, there are just some things about that are too hot NOT to co-opt.

Join the Taliban!

2009-07-27T10:43:00.000-07:00

According to the AJE, the Taliban has recently issued a code of conduct ("Rules for Mujahadin in Afghanistan") to regulate and centralize their authority. This is so interesting, it blows my mind.

Why this? Why now? Of what is the Taliban anxious?

Reflection on Graduate Life

2009-07-27T10:37:00.001-07:00

The NYT did a recent section highlighting stories of transformation from higher education, and one of the stories came from a graduate student in humanities. Money quote:

On bad days, I lose all faith. I wonder if I will ever be part of a world where an education in the humanities matters, and if Southeast Asian art is relevant to anyone. I look around at friends who are married, have children, have pets, have real furniture, and I wonder if, having spent the last five years dedicated to my studies, I have made the worst decision of my life. Thankfully, these days are few.

Being on the other side of the dissertation and job search process (barely!), the piece helped give me posterity to the struggles and doubts of grad school life. Big ups to all those who are out their, still fighting the good fight.

Welcome to the Portico

2009-07-11T09:52:00.001-07:00

disciplined space for spirited discussion