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anonymous

Ten Common Fallacies Everyone Should Know - 2 views

www.chopcow.com/...fallacies.php

criticalthinking Logic argument

shared by anonymous on 11 Jul 11 - Cached
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 13 Jul 11
       
      Yeah. Some of the others discussing this article had some valid nit-picks about some of these items. It coulda used another editing pass, but who am *I* to talk about that, right? :)
  • anonymous on 11 Jul 11
     
    Fallacies: Incorrect or misleading beliefs or opinions based on inaccurate facts or invalid reasoning.
  • Erik Hanson on 13 Jul 11
     
    Note, of course, that a logical fallacy is not always a rhetorical mistake.
anonymous

Rand & Aesthetics 20 - 2 views

aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com/...rand-aesthetics-20.html

objectivism criticalthinking

shared by anonymous on 13 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • It is like a moment of rest, a moment to gain fuel to move farther. Art gives him that fuel; the pleasure of contemplating the objectified reality of one’s own sense of life is the pleasure of feeling what it would be like to live in one’s ideal world.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 13 Jul 11
       
      Quote by Rand
  • I suspect that this statement explains more about Rand's aesthetics than any of Rand's specific theories about art.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 13 Jul 11
       
      Which is at the heart of what passes for her methodology.
  • Now while anyone may have as narrow (or as wide) aesthetic tastes as they please, in a philosopher of aesthetics, such prejudices are deeply problematic. How can a philosopher provide insights on aesthetics applicable to all (or at least most) individuals when their tastes are so confined within the narrow bounds of their own narcissistic agendas?
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Don Quixote is a malevolent universe attack on all values as such. It belongs in the same class with two other books, which together make up the three books I hate most: Don Quixote, Anna Karenina, and Madame Bovary.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 13 Jul 11
       
      A general rule of thumb: Any books Ayn Rand hates are very likely classics worthy of your attention.
    • Erik Hanson
      Erik Hanson on 14 Jul 11
       
      Where is the "like" button on that note?
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 14 Jul 11
       
      Hah. Thanks. I know my Rand-bashing is probably old to some of my peeps. I try to keep most off the radar, but as a recovered Objectivist, this is all very cathartic.
  • And by implication, anyone who admires and enjoys these three novels is also evil. Rand was not content merely to state her own likes and dislikes, however narrow and prejudiced these might have been; but she also had to attack and disparage those whose tastes differed from her own.
  • In going through Rand's aesthetic judgments, one can't help noticing how often Rand conflates her personal tastes with objective truth
  • Her "Objectivist" philosophy is really the most subjective of philosophies. It's all about her: her tastes, her emotions, her wants, her needs, all writ large in platonic letters across the heavens.
  • The standard of truth and morality in Objectivism is not "reason" or logic or fact; it is Ayn Rand herself. What Rand said is true is true, despite what all the great thinkers and scientists said before her. What Ayn Rand said is good or evil is good or evil, regardless of whatever natural needs may exist elsewhere in the universe. This explains, perhaps more than anything else, why Objectivsm so quickly degenerated into an Ayn Rand personality cult.
  • Rand claim to found her philosophy on the axiom existence exists; but it is really founded on the (implicit) axiom that equates Rand's thoughts and judgments with objective truth.
  • anonymous on 13 Jul 11
     
    Succinct, scathing, and a hell of a read. It's Ayn Rand as the brooding teenager figuring the universe out via scribbling passionate post-its and arranging them on a corkboard. She had it all figured out... It begins: Art as "fuel." For Rand, one of the primary objectives of art was to serve as a kind of spiritual sustenance or "fuel"
anonymous

Norway: Lessons from a Successful Lone Wolf Attacker - 2 views

www.stratfor.com/...-successful-lone-wolf-attacker

geopolitics norway terrorism

shared by anonymous on 30 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • While Breivik did not express any anti-Semitism in his manifesto (something he has been heavily criticized for on U.S. anti-Semitic websites), clearly the anti-immigration and anti-Marxist ideology of the PCCTS has been influenced more by white hate groups than by al Qaeda.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 30 Jul 11
       
      Meanwhile, the U.S. media bends over backwards to portray this as "inspired" by Al Quaeda.
    • Erik Hanson
      Erik Hanson on 17 Aug 11
       
      Sorry for just getting to this, but anyone who doesn't see Oklahoma City in this is blind.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 17 Aug 11
       
      No need to apologize. This notion of terrorism as something *other* people do is really faulty.
  • anonymous on 30 Jul 11
     
    On the afternoon of July 22, a powerful explosion ripped through the streets of Oslo, Norway, as a large improvised explosive device (IED) in a rented van detonated between the government building housing the prime minister's office and Norway's Oil and Energy Department building.
anonymous

The Gen-X Nostalgia Boom - 2 views

www.nytimes.com/...the-gen-x-nostalgia-boom.html

generations nostalgia Gen-X

shared by anonymous on 04 Aug 11 - Cached
  • We bristled when we heard them wax self-congratulatory about ending segregation and war
  • We resented their monopoly on cultural space, realizing that “boom” also described what their collective voice would always be, compared with our demographically feeble squeak.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 04 Aug 11
       
      I was a late bloomer in this regard. When I finally had a small degree of cultural awareness, I began to note things. Mainly that my music sucked, we sucked, and everything was better before I was around.
  • And when they did briefly notice us, in the Generation X media frenzy of the mid-1990s, it was only to reduce diverse people and experiences to catchwords like “slackers” and “grunge” and dismiss paralyzing economic and ecological anxiety as privileged extended-adolescent angst.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 04 Aug 11
       
      I had that TIME Magazine. I used to read P.J. O'Rourke bitching about my generation. I bristled at being called a gen-x'er (I only ever tolerated grunge). As quickly as that media fascination came, it went. I guess maybe we were 'dealt with'.
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • I would say we were marked by two traits: our dislike of nostalgia and our irritation whenever our barely formed narratives were appropriated and marketed back at us.
  • it brings on something of an identity crisis to see Gen X’s formative years become part of the cycle of retro revivalism
  • Meanwhile MTV is exhuming “Beavis and Butt-head” and “Pop-Up Video,” while Nickelodeon is offering a 1990s-themed block of late-night programming with old shows like “The Adventures of Pete & Pete,” presumably to help herbally sautéed 20-somethings regress in giggly reminiscence.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 04 Aug 11
       
      With our beer bongs and our hula hoops.
  • Most kids who entered college this year weren’t even born when grunge broke. If it’s too soon, you’re too old.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 04 Aug 11
       
      Ouch.
  • But of course we are not just the unwilling victims of the 20-year cycle of resuscitation. We are its architects, as a few of us have been able to wrest culturally influential posts away from baby boomers.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 04 Aug 11
       
      S&H would (probably) argue that this is because Gen X is a reactive one (like Silents). 
  • One of The Onion’s most biting headlines this year: “Winona Ryder finally agrees to sleep with Generation X.”
  • This is the sting in the rising buzz of 1990s nostalgia: It feels like retroactively giving in to those reductive media representations.
  • At that time, the sharpest articulation of generational pique was found in The Baffler
  • Now we’ll get to see how The Baffler dissects the rise of Gen-X-Squared
  • age can prompt even the most cynical to realize not only nostalgia’s sickly-sweet temptation but also its usefulness.
  • What is nostalgia good for, then?
  • it runs search-and-rescue missions against the disposability of consumer capitalism
  • And it raises exception to the great leveling effect of the Internet
  • In intimate terms, nostalgia is a glue that reinforces bonds of solidarity and shared experience
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 04 Aug 11
       
      And that's one reason why, as much as I railed against the Gen X label, I certainly was part of a peer group with shared experiences.
  • Today’s Birthers and Tea Partiers seem less apocalyptic if you remember that the last time a Democratic president battled Republicans over health care and federal budgets, he was being smeared as a conspiratorial murderer.
  • So how can an anti-nostalgic generation honor its past without becoming the thing it hated?
  • One answer is the old standby: Gen X’s endemic, possibly pathological, sarcasm.
  • Rather than the 1990s being, as the demoralizing claim went, the “end of history,” it turned out to be more like a mix-tape pause of history between the fall of the Berlin Wall and 9/11, a kind of break from big convulsions while humankind mainly figured out how to work the Internet.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 04 Aug 11
       
      That's a great bit.
  • There’s a model here for nostalgia that doesn’t wish away the distance between past and present; doesn’t romanticize the past as tragic and heroic; and doesn’t simply trivialize it (as so much 1980s nostalgia did) as trite and silly.
  • anonymous on 04 Aug 11
     
    Long before we had much life to look back on, North Americans my age knew that nostalgia was a sickness. It's not that we were aware the term was coined to describe the crippling melancholia that overcame many 17th-century Swiss soldiers when war took them away from the bucolic mountain landscapes of home. It was that, being in our teens and 20s in the early 1990s, we had grown up in the penumbra of the great eclipsing nostalgia of the baby boomers
  • Erik Hanson on 17 Aug 11
     
    And here I could swear I've been toying with nostalgia my whole life. Mind you, it was always nostalgia for previous countercultural movements.
anonymous

Study of the Day: As It Happens, the Gen-Xers Turned Out All Right - 2 views

www.theatlantic.com/...247152

shared by anonymous on 28 Oct 11 - Cached
  • anonymous on 28 Oct 11
     
    New research from the University of Michigan shows that most members of Generation X are happy, active, and not full of angst.
  • Erik Hanson on 31 Oct 11
     
    So quit whining and try to make a positive difference, already! Sincerely, The Oldest Gen Y
  • anonymous on 31 Oct 11
     
    Damn straight.
anonymous

Occupy protests trigger envy, ire in Generation X - 2 views

online.wsj.com/...b5d0242b49324069e8806f94a.html

generations

shared by anonymous on 05 Jan 12 - Cached
  • anonymous on 05 Jan 12
     
    "The generation that gave the term "slacker" new meaning is looking with measures of rivalry, regret and tart bewilderment at a movement its successor mobilized in the name of "the 99 percent." For some members of Generation X, the cohort sandwiched between the Baby Boomers and the so-called Millennial age group of many Occupy Wall Street protesters, the demonstrations represent a missed opportunity in their own youth to take up the cause of combatting economic inequality."
  • Erik Hanson on 10 Jan 12
     
    It's probably because I was born on the time divide between generations, but I definitely see the connection. You can't be a fan of The Clash (or even the pro-union Dropkick Murphys) without at least picking up some of these notions.
anonymous

Possible Russian Counters to U.S. BMD in Poland - 2 views

stratfor.com/...russian-counters-us-bmd-poland

shared by anonymous on 07 Feb 12 - Cached
  • anonymous on 07 Feb 12
     
    BMD means a physical U.S. military presence in the region, showing Washington's security commitment to Central Europe against a strengthening Russia. The United States claimed that the systems are intended to counter the rising threat from Iran, so in response, Russia offered to integrate its BMD system with NATO's system. According to Moscow, such integration would strengthen Western defenses across Eurasia -- indeed, all the way to East Asia. However, Washington rejected the offer, thereby confirming Moscow's suspicions that the BMD system is more about Russia than the Iranian threat. Accordingly, Russia made threatening gestures against the United States and its allies, ranging from support for Iran to the deployment of missiles on the borders of Central European countries. 
  • Erik Hanson on 08 Feb 12
     
    Side note: Poland maintains that it is in "central Europe," via geospatial calculations that put the dead-center of the continent within Poland's borders. There's always a little rhetorical charge to characterizations one way or the other.
  • anonymous on 08 Feb 12
     
    You ain't kidding. I'd imagine that whether it's a part of _central_ or _eastern_ Europe depends upon what a major power wants to frame (and do to) it.
anonymous

Repulsive progressive hypocrisy - Salon.com - 2 views

www.salon.com/...singleton

politics partisan hypocritical

shared by anonymous on 08 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 08 Feb 12
     
    "During the Bush years, Guantanamo was the core symbol of right-wing radicalism and what was back then referred to as the "assault on American values and the shredding of our Constitution": so much so then when Barack Obama ran for President, he featured these issues not as a secondary but as a central plank in his campaign. But now that there is a Democrat in office presiding over Guantanamo and these other polices - rather than a big, bad, scary Republican - all of that has changed, as a new Washington Post/ABC News poll today demonstrates" Thanks to Erik Hanson for the pointer.
  • Erik Hanson on 09 Feb 12
     
    I don't know that this was me. My take on this whole thing is that liberals mostly feel that Obama has let them down by being too centrist, but that they'll still vote for him over Rom-tor-rich anyday.
  • anonymous on 09 Feb 12
     
    I coulda sworn you did...sorry. And I share your sentiment. That's the kind of trap left-centrists and leftists have. I surely don't hate Obama. I think I understand that presidents make concessions. But when you made such a big, _big_ stink about it during the race, at the very least, don't... say... _increase_ drone strikes. The crux, though, doesn't have anything to do with this stuff. It's about rhetorical inconsistency. Someone yesterday remarked "This is why I think Obama is not the lesser of evils." Keeping Guantanamo open and increasing drone strikes is exactly the kind of thing that self-described Conservatives *supported* during G.W.'s administration. But, we're really not that different after all. Once 'our man' gets the office, we make retroactive justifications. Isn't it fun to be a human animal?
anonymous

How Myanmar Liberates Asia, by Robert D. Kaplan - 2 views

www.stratfor.com/...liberates-asia-robert-d-kaplan

myanmar asia

shared by anonymous on 21 Mar 12 - Cached
  • Geographically, Myanmar dominates the Bay of Bengal. It is where the spheres of influence of China and India overlap. Myanmar is also abundant in oil, natural gas, coal, zinc, copper, precious stones, timber and hydropower, with some uranium deposits as well. The prize of the Indo-Pacific region, Myanmar has been locked up by dictatorship for decades, even as the Chinese have been slowly stripping it of natural resources.
  • Think of Myanmar as another Afghanistan in terms of its potential to change a region: a key, geo-strategic puzzle piece ravaged by war and ineffective government that, if only normalized, would unroll trade routes in all directions.
  • if Myanmar continues on its path of reform by opening links to the United States and neighboring countries, rather than remaining a natural resource tract to be exploited by China, Myanmar will develop into an energy and natural resource hub in its own right, uniting the Indian subcontinent, China and Southeast Asia all into one fluid, organic continuum.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The salient fact here is that by liberating Myanmar, India's hitherto landlocked northeast, lying on the far side of Bangladesh, will also be opened up to the outside.
  • But while the future beckons with opportunities, the present is still not assured. The political transition in Myanmar has only begun, and much can still go wrong. The problem, as it was in Yugoslavia and Iraq, is regional and ethnic divides.
  • Myanmar is a vast kingdom organized around the central Irrawaddy River Valley. The ethnic Burman word for this valley is Myanmar, hence the official name of the country. But a third of the population is not ethnic Burman, even as regionally based minorities in friable borderlands account for seven of Myanmar's 14 states. The hill areas around the Irrawaddy Valley are populated by Chin, Kachin, Shan, Karen and Karenni peoples, who also have their own armies and irregular forces, which have been battling the Burman-controlled national army since the early Cold War period.
  • Worse, these minority-populated hill regions are ethnically divided from within.
  • Myanmar, it is true, is becoming less repressive and more open to the outside world. But that in and of itself does not make for a viable institutionalized state. In sum, for Myanmar to succeed, even with civilians in control, the military will have to play a significant role for years to come, because it is mainly officers who know how to run things. But given its immense natural resources and sizable population of 48 million, if Myanmar can build pan-ethnic institutions in coming decades it could come close to being a midlevel power in its own right -- something that would not necessarily harm Indian and Chinese interests, and, by the way, would unleash trade throughout Asia and the Indian Ocean world.
  • anonymous on 21 Mar 12
     
    Myanmar's ongoing liberalization and its normalization of relations with the outside world have the possibility of profoundly affecting geopolitics in Asia -- and all for the better.
anonymous

Technology - Ian Bogost - The Cigarette of This Century - The Atlantic - 2 views

www.theatlantic.com/...258092

shared by anonymous on 06 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Today, all our wives and husbands have Blackberries or iPhones or Android devices or whatever--the progeny of those original 950 and 957 models that put data in our pockets. Now we all check their email (or Twitter, or Facebook, or Instagram, or...) compulsively at the dinner table, or the traffic light. Now we all stow our devices on the nightstand before bed, and check them first thing in the morning. We all do. It's not abnormal, and it's not just for business. It's just what people do. Like smoking in 1965, it's just life.
  • anonymous on 06 Jun 12
     
    In January 1995, a year and a half before Hotmail launched the world's first web-based email service, a landmark California law banning smoking in most public places went into effect. Back then smoking was already on the decline, especially in California, but it was probably still more common than having an email account.
anonymous

Terrorism and the Not-So-Exceptional Individual - 2 views

www.stratfor.com/...-not-so-exceptional-individual

shared by anonymous on 21 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 21 Jun 12
     
    "It is easy to dismiss novice militants as inept, but we should keep in mind that if some of these individuals found an actual terrorist facilitator rather than a federal informant, they probably would have killed many people in an attack. Richard Reid, often referred to as the "Kramer of al Qaeda" after the bumbling character from the television series Seinfeld, came very close to taking down a jumbo jet full of people over the Atlantic Ocean because he had been equipped and dispatched by those more capable than himself. Working under the leadership of exceptional individuals, even al-Hamzi and al-Midhar ("Dumb and Dumber") helped hijack American Airlines Flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11."
  • Erik Hanson on 21 Jun 12
     
    I don't think that answers the question of coercion and entrapment, though. Certainly a federal official was able to convince a few bumblers to commit to fake terrorist plots, but there can be no certainty that those "caught" in this fashion would have otherwise committed a real terrorist act.
  • anonymous on 21 Jun 12
     
    The article focuses on actual Al Qaeda supported terrorists, but when I started reading I was put in mind of what you're referring to. Which is quite real and very annoying The FBI and DHS appear to handhold lone-wolf bumblers, entrap them, and then point and say "see, we're catching terrorists!" which is, of course, bullshit. Those people couldn't catch a cold. The DEA is noted for doing the same thing and tricking people that are either small time or aren't even drug abusers into becoming easy prey for the institutional-justification-machine.
anonymous

The Spark File - 2 views

medium.com/8d6e7df7ae58

shared by anonymous on 11 Sep 12 - Cached
  • There are a number of ways that your memory can get in the way of a good writing session when you're in the middle of a project, mostly because you've remembered too much. But when you're just starting out on a project, when you're in that early stage where you're still trying to figure out what you want to write in the first place—at this stage, it's the frailty of memory that causes problems.
  • This is because most good ideas (whether they're ideas for narrative structure, a particular twist in the argument, or a broader topic) come into our minds as hunches: small fragmentsof a larger idea, hints and intimations.
  • The problem with hunches is that it's incredibly easy to forget them, precisely because they're not fully-baked ideas.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • for the past eight years or so I've been maintaining a single document where I keep all my hunches: ideas for articles, speeches, software features, startups, ways of framing a chapter I know I'm going to write, even whole books.
  • There's no organizing principle to it, no taxonomy--just a chronological list of semi-random ideas that I've managed to capture before I forgot them. I call it the spark file.
  • Now, the spark file itself is not all that unusual: that's why Moleskins or Evernote are so useful to so many people. But the key habit that I've tried to cultivate is this: every three or four months, I go back and re-read the entire spark file.
  • But what happens when I re-read the document that I end up seeing new connections that hadn't occurredto me the first (or fifth) time around: the idea I had in 2008 that made almost no sense in 2008, but that turns out to be incredibly useful in 2012, because something has changed in the external world, or because some other idea has supplied the missing piece that turns the hunch into something actionable.
  • But this kind of inventory doesn't quite convey the most interesting part of the experience, which is the feeling of reading through your own words describing new ideas as they are occurring to you for the first time. In a funny way, it feels a bit like you are brainstorming with past versions of yourself.
  • The key is to capture as many hunches as possible, and to spend as little time as possible organizing or filtering or prioritizing them. (Keeping a single,chronological file is central to the process, because it forces you to scroll through the whole list each time you want to add something new.) Just get it all down as it comes to you, and make regular visits back to re-acquaint yourself with all your past explorations. You'll be shocked how many useful hunches you've forgotten.
  • anonymous on 11 Sep 12
     
    "Looking back at all the tools and techniques that I've developed over the years as a writer, it occurs to me that most of them are, in one way or another, grappling with two critical mental forces: the power (and weakness) of human memory, and the sometimes overwhelming drive to procrastinate."
anonymous

The World in 2036: New era, new god, says Paul Saffo - 2 views

www.economist.com/...17509358

shared by anonymous on 11 Sep 12 - Cached
  • Our current religious order formed in what Karl Jaspers termed the “axial age”—that extraordinary period between 800BC and 200BC that witnessed monotheism's move into the mainstream with Zoroastrianism, the appearance of Buddhism, the establishment of Confucianism and the efflorescence of Greek humanistic philosophy.
  • Jaspers's axial age shares close parallels with today. It was a time shaped by innovations in government, transport and communications.
  • Three technologies have brought us to the edge of another axial shift today.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Air travel has given entire populations unprecedented mobility.
  • The intermodal container has delivered a cornucopia of products to every corner of the globe.
  • And cyberspace has become a promiscuous, meme-spreading hotbed of ideas.
  • anonymous on 11 Sep 12
     
    A short, interesting (and...god, *short*) bit of wordmaking: "Over a century ago, Nietzsche observed, "Almost 2,000 years and no new God!" Indeed, though hundreds of new religions appear and disappear every year, it has been centuries since a truly new great religion has appeared on this planet. We are overdue for a new god."
anonymous

Russia's Growing Resurgence - 1 views

www.stratfor.com/...408_russias_growing_resurgence

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 10 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Not coincidentally, members of the interim government that the opposition began forming on Wednesday have lengthy and deep ties to Russia. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was not only quick to endorse the new government, but he also offered the opposition Russia’s support — financial or otherwise.
  • There are many reasons why Russia decided to target Kyrgyzstan. The country lies in a key geographic location nestled against China and Kazakhstan, and surrounds the most critical piece of territory in all of Central Asia: the Fergana Valley. Whoever controls Kyrgyzstan has the ability to pressure a number of states, including Kazakhstan, China, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
  • Russia’s main goal within that struggle is to have Western influence pulled back from its former turf — especially in the former Soviet states — and for the United States to accept Russian pre-eminence in the former Soviet sphere. But Russia is not just waiting for the United States to hand over its former turf. Instead, it has been actively resurging back into these countries using a myriad of tools.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • As of Wednesday, Russia has now added to its repertoire of tools used in the former Soviet states the ability to pull off its own style of color revolution with the toppling of the Kyrgyz government.
  • Now and going forward, Russia will tailor the type of influences it uses to each country it wants to control.
  • anonymous on 10 Apr 10
     
    By StratFor on Friday, April 9th, 2010.
anonymous

Sun Could Set Suddenly on Superpower as Debt Bites - 1 views

www.realclearworld.com/...power_as_debt_bites_99088.html

generations geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 28 Jul 10 - Cached
  • We have been raised to think of the historical process as an essentially cyclical one. We naturally tend to assume that in our own time, too, history will move cyclically, and slowly.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Jul 10
       
      Really? I had thought that we all assumed a linear-time-frame. Strauss & Howe's cyclical view doesn't strike me as common main-stream thought.
  • Yet what if history is not cyclical and slow-moving but arhythmic, at times almost stationary, but also capable of accelerating suddenly, like a sports car? What if collapse does not arrive over a number of centuries but comes suddenly, like a thief in the night?
  • Complex systems share certain characteristics. A small input to such a system can produce huge, often unanticipated changes, what scientists call the amplifier effect.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • What are the implications for the US today? The most obvious point is that imperial falls are associated with fiscal crises: sharp imbalances between revenues and expenditures, and the mounting cost of servicing a mountain of public debt.
  • There is a zero-sum game at the heart of the budgetary process: even if rates stay low, recurrent deficits and debt accumulation mean that interest payments consume a rising proportion of tax revenue. And military expenditure is the item most likely to be squeezed to compensate because, unlike mandatory entitlements (social security, Medicaid and Medicare), defence spending is discretionary.
  • It may not have escaped your notice that China now has the second-largest economy in the world and is almost certain to be the US's principal strategic rival in the 21st century, particularly in the Asia-Pacific.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Jul 10
       
      This is conventional thinking. StratFor disagrees, though. I can't wait to see what *actually* unfolds. One or another could be wrong. Moreover, *both* could be wrong.
  • But what if the sudden waning of American power that I fear brings to an abrupt end the era of US hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region? Are we ready for such a dramatic change in the global balance of power?
  • anonymous on 28 Jul 10
     
    A counter-argument to Strauss & Howe's generational view of the world - with particular regard to global power-politics. By Niall Ferguson at RealClearWorld on July 28, 2010. Hat Tip to Matt Eckel at Foreign Policy Watch (http://fpwatch.blogspot.com/2010/07/again-on-empire-and-punctuated.html).
anonymous

Pakistan and the U.S. Exit From Afghanistan - 1 views

www.stratfor.com/...kistan_and_us_exit_afghanistan

geopolitics gwot

shared by anonymous on 28 Sep 10 - Cached
  • But while the military’s top generals and senior civilian leadership are responsible for providing the president with sound, clearheaded advice on all military matters including the highest levels of grand strategy, they are ultimately responsible for the pursuit of military objectives to which the commander-in-chief directs them.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Sep 10
       
      Which is why I scratch my head when I read or hear (as I did at a recent family function) "Obama is just leaving because of political reasons." Of course he - I mean *we* are - we got into it for political reasons and we'll leave that way. At its core, war is political. I'm amazed at how ridiculously basic a concept that is, and yet its lacking from many person-to-person narratives.
  • The strategy of the guerrilla is to make the option to withdraw more attractive. In order to do this, his strategic goal is simply to survive and fight on whatever level he can. His patience is built into who he is and what he is fighting for. The occupier’s patience is calculated against the cost of the occupation and its opportunity costs, thus, while troops are committed in this country, what is happening elsewhere?
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Sep 10
       
      See also: The rise of conventional powers during this decade-long overmagnification on one region.
  • The occupation force will always win engagements, but that is never the measure of victory. If the guerrillas operate by doctrine, defeats in unplanned engagements will not undermine their basic goal of survival.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • While the occupier is not winning decisively, even while suffering only some casualties, he is losing. While the guerrilla is not losing decisively, even if suffering significant casualties, he is winning.
  • There has long been a myth about the unwillingness of Americans to absorb casualties for very long in guerrilla wars. In reality, the United States fought in Vietnam for at least seven years (depending on when you count the start and stop) and has now fought in Afghanistan for nine years. The idea that Americans can’t endure the long war has no empirical basis.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Sep 10
       
      This is another one of those fascinating bits of conventional wisdom that's completely wrong. Another is the idea that Afghanistan is the *graveyard of empires*. Both these misconceptions feed our basic need for explanatory stories, but they do so at the expense of realistic observation.
  • Far more relevant than casualties to whether Americans continue a war is the question of the conflict’s strategic importance, for which the president is ultimately responsible.
  • Washington’s primary goal at the initiation of the conflict was to destroy or disrupt al Qaeda in Afghanistan to protect the U.S. homeland from follow-on attacks to 9/11.
  • STRATFOR has long held that Islamist-fueled transnational terrorism does not represent a strategic, existential threat to the United States. While acts of transnational terrorism target civilians, they are not attacks — have not been and are not evolving into attacks — that endanger the territorial integrity of the United States or the way of life of the American people.
  • They are dangerous and must be defended against, but transnational terrorism is and remains a tactical problem that for nearly a decade has been treated as if it were the pre-eminent strategic threat to the United States.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Sep 10
       
      Initial criticisms of the GWOT is that you can't have a "war" on a method. I believe that criticism still stands. It's certainly an untenable basis for conducing national security.
  • disrupting and degrading it — to say nothing of destroying it — can no longer be achieved by waging a war in Afghanistan.
  • The strategic problem is that simply terminating the war after nine years would destabilize the Islamic world.
  • The political problem is domestic. Obama’s approval rating now stands at 42 percent. This is not unprecedented, but it means he is politically weak. One of the charges against him, fair or not, is that he is inherently anti-war by background and so not fully committed to the war effort.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Sep 10
       
      To which I respond: Presidents are not the same as partisan constituents. They may enter office with one perspective, but the reality of the damnedable profession changes you. Being "anti-war" is a sort of childlike triviality once you've had to manage the unweildy apparatus of the state.
  • The American solution, one that we suspect is already under way, is the Pakistanization of the war. By this, we do not mean extending the war into Pakistan but rather extending Pakistan into Afghanistan.
  • In the past, the United States has endeavored to keep the Taliban in Afghanistan and the regime in Pakistan separate.
  • The Pakistani relationship to the Taliban, which was a liability for the United States in the past, now becomes an advantage for Washington because it creates a trusted channel for meaningful communication with the Taliban.
  • The United States isn’t going to defeat the Taliban. The original goal of the war is irrelevant, and the current goal is rather difficult to take seriously. Even a victory, whatever that would look like, would make little difference in the fight against transnational jihad, but a defeat could harm U.S. interests.
  • Therefore, the United States needs a withdrawal that is not a defeat.
  • Bob Woodward has released another book, this one on the debate over Afghanistan strategy in the Obama administration.
  • anonymous on 28 Sep 10
     
    "Bob Woodward has released another book, this one on the debate over Afghanistan strategy in the Obama administration. As all his books do, the book has riveted Washington. It reveals that intense debate occurred over what course to take, that the president sought alternative strategies and that compromises were reached. But while knowing the details of these things is interesting, what would have been shocking is if they hadn't taken place." By George Friedman at StratFor on September 28, 2010.
anonymous

Middle school is when the right friends may matter most - 1 views

www.labspaces.net/..._right_friends_may_matter_most

shared by anonymous on 13 Jan 11 - Cached
  • Having pro-social friends and staying away from deviant peers proved more effective for academic payoffs than simply being friends with high-achieving peers.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 13 Jan 11
       
      Duh? Certainly with regard to academics, there are no surprises here, but it's interesting that improvement is correlated with avoidance-of problem kids not hanging-with high achievers.
  • This new study -- conducted by Marie-Helene Veronneau and Thomas J. Dishion of the UO Child and Family Center -- focused solely on the role played by friendship on academic achievement.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 13 Jan 11
       
      And, like every damned study, take this with a giant grain of salt. Maybe, snowball sized.
  • A surprise discovery was that girls who already were struggling academically in sixth grade actually suffered later when their chosen friends were already those making the highest grades, Veronneau said. "We don't know the mechanisms on why it is this way for girls, but we can speculate that girls compare themselves to their friends and then decide they are not doing very well. Perhaps this affects their self-efficacy and belief in their own abilities."
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • For girls already doing well in sixth grade, however, there was an opposite influence. "It could be for these girls, having friends who also are getting good grades, school is challenging and stimulating, and they end up doing better than expected," she said.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 13 Jan 11
       
      These two examples strike me as a kind of slope. Whichever side of the slope you find yourself on sort of reinforces itself.
  • "Puberty is taking place. The brain is changing rapidly. Kids' brains are almost wired to be reading the social world to see how they fit in, and the school is the arena for it."
  • In a previous longitudinal study, he said, he and colleagues looked at the impacts of peer relationships of young people at ages 13, 15 and 17 to look for predictive indicators of life adjustments at age 24. Those influences at age 13 -- going back to middle school -- were the most influential, he noted. While instruction is school is vitally important, he said, it may be that more eyes should be looking at shifting peer relationships.
  • "Parents should pay attention to what their kids are doing and with whom they hang out," Veronneau said. "If parents notice that there is a shift in a child's friendship network, they should try to get to know those kids, talk with teachers and communicate naturally with their own child about where they are going and when they will be coming home."
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 13 Jan 11
       
      This is a classic difference of broad generational differences in how children are raised. It's helicopter-ish, but I sure get it.
  • anonymous on 13 Jan 11
     
    "As adolescents move from elementary school into their middle or junior-high years, changes in friendships may signal potential academic success or troubles down the road, say University of Oregon researchers."
anonymous

The Death of bin Laden and a Strategic Shift in Washington - 1 views

www.stratfor.com/...and-strategic-shift-washington

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 03 May 11 - Cached
  • Together, the events create the conditions for the U.S. president to expand his room to maneuver in the war in Afghanistan and ultimately reorient U.S. foreign-policy priorities.
  • With the death of bin Laden, a plausible, if not altogether accurate, political narrative in the United States can develop, claiming that the mission in Afghanistan has been accomplished.
  • From Langley, Petraeus can no longer be the authoritative military voice on the war effort in Afghanistan. Obama has retained Petraeus as a senior member of the administration while simultaneously isolating him.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The U.S. political leadership faced difficulty in shaping an exit strategy from Afghanistan with Petraeus in command because the general continued to insist that the war was going reasonably well.
  • We are not saying that bin Laden’s death and Petraeus’ new appointment are anything beyond coincidental. We are saying that the confluence of the two events creates politically strategic opportunities for the U.S. administration that did not exist before, the most important of which is the possibility for a dramatic shift in U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.
  • Petraeus is now being removed from the Afghanistan picture. Bin Laden has already been removed. With his death, an argument in the United States can be made that the U.S. mission has been accomplished and that, while there may be room for some manner of special-operations counterterrorism forces, the need for additional U.S. troops in Afghanistan no longer exists.
  • anonymous on 03 May 11
     
    "Two apparently distinct facts have drawn our attention. The first and most obvious is U.S. President Barack Obama's announcement late May 1 that Osama bin Laden had been killed. The second is Obama's April 28 announcement that Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, will replace Leon Panetta as CIA director. Together, the events create the conditions for the U.S. president to expand his room to maneuver in the war in Afghanistan and ultimately reorient U.S. foreign-policy priorities. "
anonymous

The force that is Jon Stewart: Daily Show's ratings now higher than most of FOX News - 1 views

www.dailymail.co.uk/...s-ratings-higher-FOX-News.html

satire dailyshow

shared by anonymous on 06 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 06 Jun 11
     
    Jon Stewart is leaping ahead of one of his most popular targets: Fox News. The comic's TV program, The Daily Show, beat most of the entire Fox News network in terms of total viewers, according to the May Nielson ratings. Mr Stewart's show averaged 2.3million viewers, while most of the Fox News prime time and day time line up averaged only 1.85million viewers. Total viewership slid 10 per cent at Fox News, which lost viewers in the valuable 25-54 demographic in every prime time show. Bill O'Reilly's show was down 9 per cent, Sean Hannity was down 6 per cent, and Greta Van Susteren dropped 12 per cent. Glenn Beck's Fox show was  cancelled entirely last April, largely due to sliding numbers. Only one of Fox's shows, The O'Reilly Factor, managed to hold off Jon Stewart's surge in the numbers.
anonymous

India's Voluntary City - 1 views

marginalrevolution.com/...indias-voluntary-city.html

india government libertarian anarchism economics

shared by anonymous on 10 Jun 11 - Cached
  • anonymous on 10 Jun 11
     
    "Fascinating piece in the NYTimes about a new city in India, a new city of 1.5 million people and more or less no city government." The reference point for the NYTimes article. Marginal Revolution.
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