16 January 2010
Globalization and Its Discontents
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.
23 December 2009
21 December 2009
13 December 2009
The best of the internets...
What's wrong with David Brooks?
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
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?
09 December 2009
05 August 2009
Bill Clinton in NoKo
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.
29 July 2009
Defend Democracy! Stop Hippy Professors!
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.
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?
Beef in the Obama White House?
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.
28 July 2009
Cat Scan to the Past!
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.
27 July 2009
Playing Offense on Defensive Medicine
Krugman on Health care
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.
Tax on Religious Minorities in Pakistan
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.
"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.
You can't keep a good sage down
Join the Taliban!
Reflection on Graduate Life
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.