Saturday, January 31, 2009

Citizen Soldier

I've seen a few movies recently and I can't help but feel uncomfortable when artists like 3 Doors Down and Kid Rock decide to do a commercial for National Guard recruitment. Now I have no problem with the National Guard just the types of ads. At the same time, art serves as a good critique, a check if you will, on the state. To have popular artists serve up propaganda is kind of disturbing. If Bob Dylan was dead, he'd be rolling over in his grave.
There is of course another principle here, these commercials, like all commercials, romanticize everything it is selling. I was in fact shocked to see an explosion in one of the ads - no one was hurt. Often these service ads tend to ignore the purpose of service in say, the Army. Its a dirty job but people need to be aware. The current use of the National Guard in Iraq typifies this. They are not firefighters. They are infantry. Of course even if action was actually shown, this would also be romanticized. Still. Its an odd nation when the Dixie Chicks are being berated for being anti-war and one of the few rock bands left happens to be doing these commercials.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Stealing Sperm

Apparently the Devil lacks sperm so...

“However, because the incubus did not possess his own sperm, the human female had to steal it from her unsuspecting husband in order to copulate with the devil.”

Poor guy.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Blanning's Pursuit of Glory

Blanning claims that the illegitimacy rate on the Continent and in England range from 1-4%. That's insane! I still haven't finished his explanation but the options for keeping it that low seem to be: birth control, social mores, the Church, infant mortality, pregnancy death. A combination of all of the above is my guess. With two and four being my favorites.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

coffee-induced impotence

I was listening to James Schmidt's audio lectures on The Enlightenment
when I came across Schmidt's description of the first coffeehouses in
England. Schmidt describes the resistance coffee met from 'concerned
citizens' who argued that coffee caused impotence, quite literally
drying patrons up. A letter warned that men faced being "cuckolded by
dildos" if they did not stop drinking coffee.

Friday, January 23, 2009

Google & the Future of Books

Google & the Future of Books - The New York Review of Books

Darnton writes in The New York Review of Books an article on the future of the library and by extension the future of knowledge itself. Highly recommended.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Manual for Letter Writing

I think I'll buy one:

"Aspiring English correspondents could find advice on how best to plead their cause in love or business in, for example, 'W.P.' 's A Flying Post with a Packet of Choice new Letters and Complements: containing a Variety of Examples of witty and delightful Letters, upon all Occasions, both of Love and Business (1678).", [Tim Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory]

Interesting note

"One important advantage enjoyed by the transport industry in the British Isles was the absence of internal customs barriers or tolls (apart from turnpikes). In most of Europe they were ubiquitous. Especially in rural areas where cash was hard to come by, transient merchants were tempting targets. When they crossed a frontier, entered a town, forded a river, passed over a bridge, ascended a mountain pass, or whatever, there was often someone exacting a fee.", [Tim Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory]

Saturday, January 17, 2009

HNN: Is Gaza’s Islamic University an Educational Institution Academics Should Be Defending?

Is Gaza’s Islamic University an Educational Institution Academics Should Be Defending?

Article posted for next week's editorial page on HNN which offers an interesting view on the recent ban on Israeli scholars in light of the bombing of the Islamic University in Gaza. While I don't necessarily agree to the 'loyalty oaths' Israeli academics are being held to in order to visit Ontario university campuses for many of the obvious reasons I can see what I presume their thinking is behind this maneouver.

Israel is seen as a modern state, it is thus held to the standards of a modern 'civilized' nation. The fair treatment of prisoners, the waging of only defensive wars, avoiding civilian targets when at all possible. Those under occupation after the war ends are expected to be able to have a number of rights and privelges. Israel because it is at times in a life or death struggle has been known to overreact on occassion which has stirred international outrage. I tend to think that the international community holds Israel accountable for bombing UN convoys, villages and universities while Palestinian outrages are ignored because we see a case of Rome vs. the Barbarians. The current fear among my politial ideology in America is that we will become just as bad as the fundamentalists who seek to destroy us in the course of our own protection. We seem to expect more of Israel than we do of Hamas and I think they inturn contribute to civilization more than Hamas but at the same time when outrages occur (on both sides) the international community has an obligation to react. While I don't support the expulsion and ban of Israeli academics who are being forced to choose between their country and their academic field I think that the state of Israel and the Palestinians should not be allowed to descend into barbarism. With that high-minded statement, I have no solution to the crisis.

HNN: Bush's Final Approval Rating: 22 Percent

And they said he couldn't do it.



History News Network

Friday, January 16, 2009

Man arrested for threatening to assassinate Barack Obama - Telegraph

Man arrested for threatening to assassinate Barack Obama - Telegraph

Wow. At this rate the entire Republican Party will be in jail by June.

PNG to act on 'sorcery murders'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7825511.stm


I'm taking a Witches & Vampires in Western Civilization seminar and came across this story added earlier in the week by the BBC. Apparently Paua New Guinea is trying to get a handle on the so-called 'sorcery murders' that are plaguing the nation. Superstition is being used by believers and the non-believers alike as an excuse to commit murder.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Bush Farewell Address

As a future historian I think that its important to keep up to date on current events that towards the end of my life will be rightly called History. George W. Bush is obviously going to be history and his farewell address will be one of the many sources historians use (less if the White House can't come up with these emails). I'd like to hear his farewell, yet even in the Information Age I can't find it anywhere. Its painful to listen to the man but still I feel an obligation yet all I can find are clips! Its seriously disconcerting.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Lincoln and Television

The more I read of Abraham Lincoln the more I experience this gradual epiphany. It comes to be in spurts, flashes of enlightenment like a storm with lightning. I'm slowly discovering that this man could have been great if he lived in our time. His legacy for his own people not just posterity would have been cemented. Few of those who met Lincoln in person, of those cited in Team of Rivals, ever come away from him with a harsh opinion.
Granted, party-lines prevent the most amiable of men from being liked, but at the same time I think that the more people Lincoln talked with in private the more votes he cemented. Television is much more personal than the radio, it presents the illusion that the speaker is actually in your living room. Once there, I think most Americans would have easily fallen into Lincoln's trap.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Mail.app and my University Email, finally defeated!

Ever since I bought my Mac about a year ago I've been trying to get the local OS mail program, coyly named 'Mail' to work with my university email. The best I have managed up until today is complete access (sending & receiving) on campus and partial access off-campus (receiving).

By making use of the NTLM feature for only the outgoing server and setting up my Exchange email account as a POP3 I've managed full access at home.

This allows me to now sleep at night because I tend to get obsessive.

“So Help Me God”: A George Washington Myth that Should Be Discarded

“So Help Me God”: A George Washington Myth that Should Be Discarded



I agree with Mr. Henriques that the myth should be discarded and I would like to add that the practice should be as well. As Henriques claims that Washington was a constitutional literalist it may do our country some good to have a few presidents who also strive to be a constitutional literalists.
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History News Network

Former UN prisoner to run for Macedonia presidentSource: IHT(UK) (1-11-09)A former Macedonian interior minister who spent more than three years in detention while on trial at a United Nations war crimes tribunal has announced that he plans to run for president.Ljube Boskoski, 48, was the first person to officially announce his candidacy for the elections, which are to be held March 22.Boskoski was welcomed as a hero in his native Macedonia in July after the UN tribunal in The Hague, acquitted him on several charges for war crimes.Boskoski spent more than three years at the tribunal's detention unit on trial over a 2001 police attack on an ethnic Albanian village that killed seven people. He was detained in Croatia in August 2004 and then sent to the UN tribunal in March 2005.The March presidential elections will be the fourth since Macedonia gained independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991 and officials say it will be crucial to the country's hopes of joining the European Union.
History News Network


One wonders if electing a UN prisoner will bolster or hurt their chances for membership in the EU?
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HNN: Japanese reading of WWII history stirs debate

Though their stated goal was accomplished one must remember the atrocities committed by Japan's military aristocracy during the war.


Link:

http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/59570.html
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Thursday, January 8, 2009

Neoconservatism dies in Gaza

Neoconservatism dies in Gaza

Article by Juan Cole @ Salon.com. I agree with Professor Cole that Neo-Conservatism's Foreign Policy has largely contributed to the current state of affairs in the Middle East. I don't expect President Obama to achieve 'Peace in the Mid-East' but I hope that he doesn't go out of his way to actively screw up the region.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Marco Polo's India

Marco Polo's India
3quarksdaily

I liked this article. A good defense of Polo's views which are summed up at the end of the second to last paragraph; "He had no role models in his writing and the result such as it is, warts and all, is nothing short of a miracle."

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

In the Middle: ITM: now, learngasmic

In the Middle: ITM: now, learngasmic


I agree Online Degrees are falling, and falling quickly. But at least they're erotic.

Digg

I am now submitting HNN headlines to Digg. You have to categorize each submission and the options for say, Entertainment are: Celebrity; Movies; Music; Television; Comics & Animation. Does it say something about us as a people that the word 'Book' does not appear under any of the categories?

‘Lawfare:’ Another Weapon in the Jihad Against Israel

‘Lawfare:’ Another Weapon in the Jihad Against Israel

Though I don't necessarily agree it is an interesting new take on how International Courts are one-sided in the case of Israel. A wit may claim that the Palestinian state will be tried once one exists.

I'm very confused on this subject and though I fully acknowledge the pain and depth of the Holocaust and the need for the Israelis to now protect themselves I think the line, "only democratic state" is telling. Israel certainly has committed its own crimes in the past and I fear that we sometimes turn a blind eye because it is our only 'success' with the Great Western Experiment in the Middle East.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Coffeehouses

Coffee amazes me. It has for sometime now. Not only is it my personal drink of choice, but to me it also resembles so much in this world. A symbol of globalization, manual labor, empire, democracy, the public sphere, not to mention aroma and flavor.

Coffeehouses are similarly notable. While the men waiting at Lexington for the British passed the time in a tavern, the seeds of revolution are born in such coffeehouses. Why? Because of the ancestor to the iron newspaper stand sitting across from me. Coffeehouses became a communal place for people to read the news (or have it read to them) and then discuss it. A bloke (I like British slang) pissed at the government only discovers that he's pissed because of the coffeehouse.

I'm starting a reading course this semester where I will study various pieces of literature dealing with the 18th Century (primarily focusing on the French Revolution) one book will deal with Coffee, another the public sphere - the two are inseparable. Coffee is and has always been a commodity. As such it was not grown in Europe and had to be imported. Namely from the Turks. So now we have globalization. The Middle East has given Western Civilization so much, one wonders why they are not counted in the picture - it would certainly lead to a more interesting picture of Western Civilization. But I digress.

A reference to James Schmidt's audio commentary on the Enlightenment seems due. He has greatly influenced my thoughts on the subject. As Schmidt points out, coffee had its opponents then as it does now. They used to argue it caused impotence and was not nearly as communal as a pint (it was too expensive to buy a round for everyone) now usually the detractors are parents, most will let you drink your weight in Mountain Dew but not touch coffee. One wonders though, if there is something in this warm brew that causes a spark in the synapse and leads one to think outside the box. Wish for change, hope for it, and then fight for it. Maybe the Reign of Terror was then simply a caffeine high, or conversely a symptom of withdrawal.

Much of this sounds ridiculous but I'd be willing to bet someone who reads this will eye his fellow patron at Starbucks a little differently, probably while calling the ATF or FBI.

The Death Feud

I just finished reading Nelson DeMille's The Lion's Game, featured prominently in the book is an old Arab war song (pre-Islam):

Terrible he rode alone,
  With his Yemen sword for aid;
Ornament it carried none
  But the notches on the blade.
ATTRIBUTION:The Death Feud. An Arab War-song

Though I'm certainly not condemning the Arab people, there are certainly worse practices than feuds in the world, I think it helps one get into the mindset of an Arab who is a cultural and religious fundamentalist. While distorting Islam and expounding upon this song the fundamentalist finds all the justification in the world. For them it is not moral relativism it is simply justice.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Obama considers linking Defense Dept. with NASA | Cutting Edge - CNET News

Obama considers linking Defense Dept. with NASA | Cutting Edge - CNET News


I have mixed feelings on this. As an agnostic I have the benefit of not making up my mind on anything. I'd like to point out that no one seems to have read Dan Brown's Deception Point. According to the book, NASA doesn't want to be apart of the defense establishment.

On the one hand, the military (in all countries) has been the source for countless scientific advancements. I do feel the need to point out the argument put forward in Mr. Brown's book, that we will never go to Mars if NASA is under the defense department. Unless, of course, we are fighting over it.

Something to keep in mind.
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