No Graceful Exit to This Situation
Before playing tennis this morning, I entered the Porta-John next to the courts, latched the door, and then realized there was a giant wasp inside the enclosure with me (and while I escaped without being stung, I will admit to doing some flailing).
No Graceful Exit to This Situation
Before playing tennis this morning, I entered the Porta-John next to the courts, latched the door, and then realized there was a giant wasp inside the enclosure with me (and while I escaped without being stung, I will admit to doing some flailing).
Dave Naps While His Children Labor
Since we have returned from our two vacations, our family is on a strict budget (until my wife and I get paid again in September) and I'm enjoying this frugal starving time, as it gives me an excuse to do things I enjoy that are free or already paid for: run, go to the library, read, listen to podcasts, eat rice and beans, nap, wake up early, rollerblade, play tennis, acupuncture, go to the gym, etc. and there are no other options to distract me from these simple, wonderful things-- but my kids weren't taking as well to the spartan life and so (with the help of my wife) they have taken matters into their own hands--literally-- and they've been doing manual labor for anyone and everyone who will hire them; I've never seen them so motivated or get along so well; they have a little notebook with all the addresses and times for their jobs, and they've been mowing lawns, carrying boxes, assembling basement floors, weeding, and doing any other odd job they can manage . . . despite the family economic shutdown, they've already earned enough to buy a Nintendo Switch and Smash Bros (so refusing them to buy a video game system beyond the Wii has really turned out well for me, I've never seen them so driven and organized, I didn't have to shell out for a new system, and they're bickering far less than normal . . . they're too busy counting their money to fight).
Dave Naps While His Children Labor
Since we have returned from our two vacations, our family is on a strict budget (until my wife and I get paid again in September) and I'm enjoying this frugal starving time, as it gives me an excuse to do things I enjoy that are free or already paid for: run, go to the library, read, listen to podcasts, eat rice and beans, nap, wake up early, rollerblade, play tennis, acupuncture, go to the gym, etc. and there are no other options to distract me from these simple, wonderful things-- but my kids weren't taking as well to the spartan life and so (with the help of my wife) they have taken matters into their own hands--literally-- and they've been doing manual labor for anyone and everyone who will hire them; I've never seen them so motivated or get along so well; they have a little notebook with all the addresses and times for their jobs, and they've been mowing lawns, carrying boxes, assembling basement floors, weeding, and doing any other odd job they can manage . . . despite the family economic shutdown, they've already earned enough to buy a Nintendo Switch and Smash Bros (so refusing them to buy a video game system beyond the Wii has really turned out well for me, I've never seen them so driven and organized, I didn't have to shell out for a new system, and they're bickering far less than normal . . . they're too busy counting their money to fight).
Dave Stays in Wyoming (Because Jersey Sucks Right Now)
I'm charging to the finish of Craig Johnson's fifth book in the Longmire series, The Dark Horse, and after reading two of these, I'm noticing some patterns-- snow, cold, wind, cowboy stuff, horses, guns, damsels that might not be in as much distress as the knights think, Clint Eastwood-style fistfights, drunks, and Walt Longmire taking the brunt of it all . . . and I'm enjoying fantasizing about the bleak chill of Wyoming so much, as I sit inside during the Jersey heat wave, that I actually checked out a C.J. Box mystery from the library today-- a Joe Pickett novel called FreeFire, which is also set in Wyoming . . . so there's going to be a head-to-head match up of Wyoming detective mysteries, I'll let them duke it out and elect a winner later in the week.
Dave Stays in Wyoming (Because Jersey Sucks Right Now)
I'm charging to the finish of Craig Johnson's fifth book in the Longmire series, The Dark Horse, and after reading two of these, I'm noticing some patterns-- snow, cold, wind, cowboy stuff, horses, guns, damsels that might not be in as much distress as the knights think, Clint Eastwood-style fistfights, drunks, and Walt Longmire taking the brunt of it all . . . and I'm enjoying fantasizing about the bleak chill of Wyoming so much, as I sit inside during the Jersey heat wave, that I actually checked out a C.J. Box mystery from the library today-- a Joe Pickett novel called FreeFire, which is also set in Wyoming . . . so there's going to be a head-to-head match up of Wyoming detective mysteries, I'll let them duke it out and elect a winner later in the week.
A Good Way to Visit Wyoming
A Cold Dish by Craig Johnson is a great book to read if you're stress-free and hardly-working-- which is the state I'm in right now-- it's the first in the Longmire series, and while it rambles a bit for a mystery novel, that's to be expected because the main character of the book is Wyoming-- which is a state that rambles on and on and on-- with Walt Longmire a close second (and various guns-- modern and antique-- a distant third) but Johnson seems to hit his stride better in the the fifth installment, The Dark Horse, which is a much faster read (and I tried the Netflix series, just because, and that's not too bad either).
A Good Way to Visit Wyoming
A Cold Dish by Craig Johnson is a great book to read if you're stress-free and hardly-working-- which is the state I'm in right now-- it's the first in the Longmire series, and while it rambles a bit for a mystery novel, that's to be expected because the main character of the book is Wyoming-- which is a state that rambles on and on and on-- with Walt Longmire a close second (and various guns-- modern and antique-- a distant third) but Johnson seems to hit his stride better in the the fifth installment, The Dark Horse, which is a much faster read (and I tried the Netflix series, just because, and that's not too bad either).
Money Talks and Bullshit Walks (Toward Nassim Taleb?)
Nassim Nicholas Taleb is smart-- and he won't let you forget it-- and while there's some fascinating stuff in his new book Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life, it's hard to know what to believe and what not to believe, and the book is definitely abrasive and fragmented, but he will get you thinking, you're just going to have to do more research to flesh out what he's saying . . . here are a few things that struck me:
1) Taleb prefers the Silver Rule to the Golden Rule . . . the Silver Rule is sort of the Negative Golden Rule: "Do not treat others the way you would not like them to treat you," and Taleb prefers it because it is more Libertarian and less restrictive-- the Silver Rule encourages you to mind your own business-- you're not doing things unto others and guessing what they would like . . . it lines up nicely with our First Amendment rights;
2) Taleb really hates Steven Pinker and all the non-mathematical non-stock-trading intellectuals associated with him, and while Taleb claims there are major statistical problems with Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature, this claim doesn't seem logical and more of a sour grapes character assassination attempt and Pinker has a reasoned and rational rebuttal to Taleb's jealous and rather weird claims . . . Taleb wants to apply his "Black Swan" reasoning to Pinker's thesis but Pinker has already anticipated this in his book . . . it's a fairly strange obsession and I don't really get his hatred of intellectuals, aside from the fact that he considers them the ultimate evil because they make pronouncements without having "skin in the game" and contribute to the "monoculture" of thought;
3) Taleb thinks we should take a more statistical, skin-in-the-game look at politics offers a great reminder of how important scale is in determining our values and morals:
"A saying by the brothers Geoff and Vince Graham summarizes the ludicrousness of scale-free political universalism . . .
I am, at the Fed level, a libertarian:
at the state level, Republican;
at the local level, Democrat;
and at the family and friends level, a socialist . . ."
4) Taleb likes to throw around the fact that he's Lebanese and grew up in Lebanon, and he frequently mention the many religious groups and sects that live there and in Syria-- I find this interesting because I lived there-- but I can see how the explanation of the dynamics of the Druze and the Shi'ites might grow tiresome to some audiences . . . I think he likes these examples because he's a big fan of the "the Lindy effect," he likes rules and institutions and foods and objects that have survived a long time-- the Lindy effect is the "theory that the future life expectancy of some non-perishable things like a technology or an idea is proportional to their current age, so that every additional period of survival implies a longer remaining life expectancy" . . . so things like the cup and the Ten Commandments are going to be around a long time because they've been around a long time . . . these are the kinds of rules and books and thoughts that Taleb trusts-- including advice from your grandmother and superstitions-- because they have weathered the test of time . . . he's not a progressive and he loves the fact that Trump got elected, confounding all the liberal, pseudo-intellectual types;
5) Taleb is at his best when he's talking about probability . . . he explains (hypothetically) that while terrorism and people falling down in the bathtub may take the same number of lives in any given year, why we have to treat terrorism so much more seriously . . . because it would take an incredible statistical anomaly to double bathtub deaths, but it only takes a major event or two to exponentially increase the deaths from terrorism . . . terrorism has the potential to reveal "unknown unknowns" or "black swans" or whatever you want to call them, but things can happen on the long tail that take many many lives . . . so he gets into the idea of how much tolerance we should show the intolerant, and when it comes to Salafi Islam, he believes we should be showing them no tolerance, because they have the potential of creating those kind of black swan events that pseudo-intellectuals-- who are too liberal-- don't assess with the correct amount of risk . . . it's something we all have to think deeply about, and it's the most important part of his reasoning;
6) on a more positive statistical note, he argues against Thomas Piketty's extreme take on economic inequality, and uses an idea called "ergodicity" to show that people move all over the map as far as where they lie in the income ladder over the course of time . . . so any one person might be in the top ten percent in one part of their life, then in the middle, then maybe at the bottom; I'm not sure I understand all the math, but it's an interesting take . . . although it seems that salary isn't the real culprit in income inequality, it's acquired wealth-- which is why I like Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax . . . I would never want to put words in Taleb's mouth, because he's so unpredictable and irascible, and I doubt he would like a wealth tax, but it does fit more into his worldview that acquired wealth doesn't have any risk to it, so it might as well be taxed and used for infrastructure or schools or clean energy or something interesting;
7) in the end, I wish there was more math and less railing against some imagined intellectual class with no skin-in-the-game . . . Taleb really believes that entrepreneurs should be venerated and I agree with him . . . it's much easier to be a salary-slave and the longer you do it, the more skin-in-the-game you have to protect your job and your reputation, but that doesn't mean you can't do good work; it's worth reading Taleb's books, but you just have to take everything with a grain of thought and take your time with each page and idea and think about what he's saying and if it really holds water.
1) Taleb prefers the Silver Rule to the Golden Rule . . . the Silver Rule is sort of the Negative Golden Rule: "Do not treat others the way you would not like them to treat you," and Taleb prefers it because it is more Libertarian and less restrictive-- the Silver Rule encourages you to mind your own business-- you're not doing things unto others and guessing what they would like . . . it lines up nicely with our First Amendment rights;
2) Taleb really hates Steven Pinker and all the non-mathematical non-stock-trading intellectuals associated with him, and while Taleb claims there are major statistical problems with Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature, this claim doesn't seem logical and more of a sour grapes character assassination attempt and Pinker has a reasoned and rational rebuttal to Taleb's jealous and rather weird claims . . . Taleb wants to apply his "Black Swan" reasoning to Pinker's thesis but Pinker has already anticipated this in his book . . . it's a fairly strange obsession and I don't really get his hatred of intellectuals, aside from the fact that he considers them the ultimate evil because they make pronouncements without having "skin in the game" and contribute to the "monoculture" of thought;
3) Taleb thinks we should take a more statistical, skin-in-the-game look at politics offers a great reminder of how important scale is in determining our values and morals:
"A saying by the brothers Geoff and Vince Graham summarizes the ludicrousness of scale-free political universalism . . .
I am, at the Fed level, a libertarian:
at the state level, Republican;
at the local level, Democrat;
and at the family and friends level, a socialist . . ."
4) Taleb likes to throw around the fact that he's Lebanese and grew up in Lebanon, and he frequently mention the many religious groups and sects that live there and in Syria-- I find this interesting because I lived there-- but I can see how the explanation of the dynamics of the Druze and the Shi'ites might grow tiresome to some audiences . . . I think he likes these examples because he's a big fan of the "the Lindy effect," he likes rules and institutions and foods and objects that have survived a long time-- the Lindy effect is the "theory that the future life expectancy of some non-perishable things like a technology or an idea is proportional to their current age, so that every additional period of survival implies a longer remaining life expectancy" . . . so things like the cup and the Ten Commandments are going to be around a long time because they've been around a long time . . . these are the kinds of rules and books and thoughts that Taleb trusts-- including advice from your grandmother and superstitions-- because they have weathered the test of time . . . he's not a progressive and he loves the fact that Trump got elected, confounding all the liberal, pseudo-intellectual types;
5) Taleb is at his best when he's talking about probability . . . he explains (hypothetically) that while terrorism and people falling down in the bathtub may take the same number of lives in any given year, why we have to treat terrorism so much more seriously . . . because it would take an incredible statistical anomaly to double bathtub deaths, but it only takes a major event or two to exponentially increase the deaths from terrorism . . . terrorism has the potential to reveal "unknown unknowns" or "black swans" or whatever you want to call them, but things can happen on the long tail that take many many lives . . . so he gets into the idea of how much tolerance we should show the intolerant, and when it comes to Salafi Islam, he believes we should be showing them no tolerance, because they have the potential of creating those kind of black swan events that pseudo-intellectuals-- who are too liberal-- don't assess with the correct amount of risk . . . it's something we all have to think deeply about, and it's the most important part of his reasoning;
6) on a more positive statistical note, he argues against Thomas Piketty's extreme take on economic inequality, and uses an idea called "ergodicity" to show that people move all over the map as far as where they lie in the income ladder over the course of time . . . so any one person might be in the top ten percent in one part of their life, then in the middle, then maybe at the bottom; I'm not sure I understand all the math, but it's an interesting take . . . although it seems that salary isn't the real culprit in income inequality, it's acquired wealth-- which is why I like Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax . . . I would never want to put words in Taleb's mouth, because he's so unpredictable and irascible, and I doubt he would like a wealth tax, but it does fit more into his worldview that acquired wealth doesn't have any risk to it, so it might as well be taxed and used for infrastructure or schools or clean energy or something interesting;
7) in the end, I wish there was more math and less railing against some imagined intellectual class with no skin-in-the-game . . . Taleb really believes that entrepreneurs should be venerated and I agree with him . . . it's much easier to be a salary-slave and the longer you do it, the more skin-in-the-game you have to protect your job and your reputation, but that doesn't mean you can't do good work; it's worth reading Taleb's books, but you just have to take everything with a grain of thought and take your time with each page and idea and think about what he's saying and if it really holds water.
Late Night Learnin'
Last night was a very educational Pub Night . . . here are a few of the things I learned:
1) there is an app called TouchTunes which allows you to control the pub jukebox from your phone;
2) "Love Potion Number 9" is one of the worst songs on that jukebox;
3) The Park Pub has a drink special, which is only advertised on the TouchTunes app . . . the special is "Buy Two / Drink Two . . . All week";
4) eating a White Rose burger after the pub wreaks havoc on my digestive system . . . I've already learned this lesson, but every three years or so, I have to relearn it;
5) I also learned a bunch of little things which are too numerous to list, but here a re a few: Paul can make a little Mexican pizza in five minutes; back in the day, Linda Carter was really hot; everybody loves to sing "Suspicious Minds"; and you should watch Barry season 2 episode 5, even if you haven't seen the show.
1) there is an app called TouchTunes which allows you to control the pub jukebox from your phone;
2) "Love Potion Number 9" is one of the worst songs on that jukebox;
3) The Park Pub has a drink special, which is only advertised on the TouchTunes app . . . the special is "Buy Two / Drink Two . . . All week";
4) eating a White Rose burger after the pub wreaks havoc on my digestive system . . . I've already learned this lesson, but every three years or so, I have to relearn it;
5) I also learned a bunch of little things which are too numerous to list, but here a re a few: Paul can make a little Mexican pizza in five minutes; back in the day, Linda Carter was really hot; everybody loves to sing "Suspicious Minds"; and you should watch Barry season 2 episode 5, even if you haven't seen the show.
Late Night Learnin'
Last night was a very educational Pub Night . . . here are a few of the things I learned:
1) there is an app called TouchTunes which allows you to control the pub jukebox from your phone;
2) "Love Potion Number 9" is one of the worst songs on that jukebox;
3) The Park Pub has a drink special, which is only advertised on the TouchTunes app . . . the special is "Buy Two / Drink Two . . . All week";
4) eating a White Rose burger after the pub wreaks havoc on my digestive system . . . I've already learned this lesson, but every three years or so, I have to relearn it;
5) I also learned a bunch of little things which are too numerous to list, but here a re a few: Paul can make a little Mexican pizza in five minutes; back in the day, Linda Carter was really hot; everybody loves to sing "Suspicious Minds"; and you should watch Barry season 2 episode 5, even if you haven't seen the show.
1) there is an app called TouchTunes which allows you to control the pub jukebox from your phone;
2) "Love Potion Number 9" is one of the worst songs on that jukebox;
3) The Park Pub has a drink special, which is only advertised on the TouchTunes app . . . the special is "Buy Two / Drink Two . . . All week";
4) eating a White Rose burger after the pub wreaks havoc on my digestive system . . . I've already learned this lesson, but every three years or so, I have to relearn it;
5) I also learned a bunch of little things which are too numerous to list, but here a re a few: Paul can make a little Mexican pizza in five minutes; back in the day, Linda Carter was really hot; everybody loves to sing "Suspicious Minds"; and you should watch Barry season 2 episode 5, even if you haven't seen the show.
Fumble! At 45 mph
I am guessing a fair number of automobile accidents are caused by various kinds of balls- particularly tennis balls . . . although my nemesis today was a little orange foam football-- when they roll from one part of the car to the driver's side, and interfere with the gas pedal, the brake, and the driver's concentration (because when there's a loose ball, you've got to get down on the floor and grab it).
Fumble! At 45 mph
I am guessing a fair number of automobile accidents are caused by various kinds of balls- particularly tennis balls . . . although my nemesis today was a little orange foam football-- when they roll from one part of the car to the driver's side, and interfere with the gas pedal, the brake, and the driver's concentration (because when there's a loose ball, you've got to get down on the floor and grab it).
The Wildest West
I'm sure I've been radicalized and brainwashed by a leftist-socialist-environmentalist media sphere, but Leah Sottile's sequel to Bundyville-- this "season" of podcasts and articles is subtitled The Remnant-- is once again an exceptional and compelling portrait of religious/anti-government/apocalypse/white-supremacist/conspiracy-theorist/hyper-patriotic/gun-toting militia folks that is so outside my purview it seems like science-fiction; this fits right into Tara Boyle's world of Educated . . . a much wilder West than most of us liberal Easterners can imagine-- and while the piece starts with an explosion in Panaca, Nevada and eventually finds itself in the "American Redoubt— the nickname survivalists and preppers have given Eastern Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming"-- the real home of this piece is the internet, where fact-free-fringe-theories and conspiracies persuade and propagate . . . a place that our President panders to . . . and while Sottile finally meditates on the intractable paradox:
how much tolerance do you afford the intolerant?
she also hears from rational people who believe that the government does have too much power, that after 9/11 the fear of terrorism allowed federal and local law enforcement to ramp up violence and surveillance on suspects and that this is a cycle that will only be met with more violence-- Sottile and I both think the answer may be sunlight, we have to just keep shining a bright logical light on all these fringe-apocalypse-fundamentalist-religious-conspiratorial extremists and their words and logic until they shrivel and decay, we've got to talk it out and keep talking, the government needs to be up front about what it's doing and what is happening, and we have to understand that there's going to be some explosions along the way and some radical extremism, which is part of the cost of having a country with a strong First Amendment, checks and balances in the government, and a sometimes too-powerful federal presence . . . that presence can drive people, especially people ready to be radicalized, out to the fringe-- events like Waco, and the shooting of LaVoy Finnicum and the Ruby Ridge siege; for me, it was absolutely shocking to hear folks proposing an all-white, all-Christian 51st state where the chosen could live out their days training and praying, waiting for the end-of-times . . . but maybe I'm too sheltered, living here in a tame, intellectual, multi-cultural town in central New Jersey, and I need a dose of the real American West, which is wilder than ever; Sottile brings up the fact that, of late, right-wing extremists have accounted for the bulk of the terrorism in the United States, and The Atlantic breaks it down:
"From 2009 through 2018, right-wing extremists accounted for 73 percent of such killings, according to the ADL, compared with 23 percent for Islamists and 3 percent for left-wing extremists . . . in other words, most terrorist attacks in the United States, and most deaths from terrorist attacks, are caused by white extremists . . . but they do not cause the sort of nationwide panic that helped Trump win the 2016 election and helped the GOP expand its Senate majority in the midterms."
how much tolerance do you afford the intolerant?
she also hears from rational people who believe that the government does have too much power, that after 9/11 the fear of terrorism allowed federal and local law enforcement to ramp up violence and surveillance on suspects and that this is a cycle that will only be met with more violence-- Sottile and I both think the answer may be sunlight, we have to just keep shining a bright logical light on all these fringe-apocalypse-fundamentalist-religious-conspiratorial extremists and their words and logic until they shrivel and decay, we've got to talk it out and keep talking, the government needs to be up front about what it's doing and what is happening, and we have to understand that there's going to be some explosions along the way and some radical extremism, which is part of the cost of having a country with a strong First Amendment, checks and balances in the government, and a sometimes too-powerful federal presence . . . that presence can drive people, especially people ready to be radicalized, out to the fringe-- events like Waco, and the shooting of LaVoy Finnicum and the Ruby Ridge siege; for me, it was absolutely shocking to hear folks proposing an all-white, all-Christian 51st state where the chosen could live out their days training and praying, waiting for the end-of-times . . . but maybe I'm too sheltered, living here in a tame, intellectual, multi-cultural town in central New Jersey, and I need a dose of the real American West, which is wilder than ever; Sottile brings up the fact that, of late, right-wing extremists have accounted for the bulk of the terrorism in the United States, and The Atlantic breaks it down:
"From 2009 through 2018, right-wing extremists accounted for 73 percent of such killings, according to the ADL, compared with 23 percent for Islamists and 3 percent for left-wing extremists . . . in other words, most terrorist attacks in the United States, and most deaths from terrorist attacks, are caused by white extremists . . . but they do not cause the sort of nationwide panic that helped Trump win the 2016 election and helped the GOP expand its Senate majority in the midterms."
META-Meta-meta
John Scalzi's novel Redshirts begins as a schlocky and ersatz Star Trek style space opera, but if you're familiar with Scalzi's satirical sci-fi humor then the encounters with ice sharks and Borgovian ground worms don't really hold water . . . and the book soon dives into meta-sci-fi, meta-fiction, meta-narrative, meta-characters, meta-plotlines, and the metaphysical . . . I would say that the meat of the book is more fun, it's totally wacky sci-fi (and sci-fi parody) and the three codas are more philosophical (and also-- surprisingly-- a little touching) and if you're a sci-fi fan looking for something fun and funny then this is the book for you (and if you don't know what the title means-- I didn't-- then check out this video . . . but it's a spoiler).
META-Meta-meta
John Scalzi's novel Redshirts begins as a schlocky and ersatz Star Trek style space opera, but if you're familiar with Scalzi's satirical sci-fi humor then the encounters with ice sharks and Borgovian ground worms don't really hold water . . . and the book soon dives into meta-sci-fi, meta-fiction, meta-narrative, meta-characters, meta-plotlines, and the metaphysical . . . I would say that the meat of the book is more fun, it's totally wacky sci-fi (and sci-fi parody) and the three codas are more philosophical (and also-- surprisingly-- a little touching) and if you're a sci-fi fan looking for something fun and funny then this is the book for you (and if you don't know what the title means-- I didn't-- then check out this video . . . but it's a spoiler).
No Where to Go But Up (Down?)
I'm trying to improve my mile time, and I just ran my baseline timed mile (and I'm so sweaty that I'm barely able to type-- it's humid) and while my Runkeeper said I kept a 7:58 pace, I'm pretty sure it took me 8:04 to run the four laps around the track . . . so now I've got to do six weeks or so of long runs and speedwork, and see if I can knock my time down; I think I'll be able to do it, because I'm tipping the scales at a post-double-vacation 195 pounds, so if I lose a few pounds-- which I inevitably will-- I will naturally cut some time from my mile time (perhaps 2.5 seconds per pound).
Go East Young Man
Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads: A New History of the World resets the default narrative of world history, with Western Europe as the main character, and instead places the Mediterranean Sea at the center of the story; he argues that the most significant dynamic force in the last two thousand years has been the trade routes that connect the East and the West; this web of interconnected cities, ports, and trading hubs allowed for the flow of goods, services, ideas, religions, conflict, disease, technology, and tactics . . . his book combats what Edward Said termed "orientalism," the presumption that the Middle East and beyond is inscrutable and exotic, a place that lies outside of time, space, progress, and Western logic; the book is comprehensive, starting with the spread of Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism along the Silk Roads (before 600 A.D.) and ending with the West's modern political misadventures in Iran Iraq, and Afghanistan, and the economic rise of China, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, and Uzbekistan . . . over here in the West, we've got to strap ourselves in for a new world order, with the East becoming more significant than ever-- both economically and politically-- the British Ministry of Defense sums it up tidily: the period of time until 2040 "will be a time of transition" with challenges such as "the reality of a changing climate, rapid population growth, resource scarcity, resurgence in ideology, and shifts in power from West to East."
Go East Young Man
Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads: A New History of the World resets the default narrative of world history, with Western Europe as the main character, and instead places the Mediterranean Sea at the center of the story; he argues that the most significant dynamic force in the last two thousand years has been the trade routes that connect the East and the West; this web of interconnected cities, ports, and trading hubs allowed for the flow of goods, services, ideas, religions, conflict, disease, technology, and tactics . . . his book combats what Edward Said termed "orientalism," the presumption that the Middle East and beyond is inscrutable and exotic, a place that lies outside of time, space, progress, and Western logic; the book is comprehensive, starting with the spread of Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism along the Silk Roads (before 600 A.D.) and ending with the West's modern political misadventures in Iran Iraq, and Afghanistan, and the economic rise of China, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, and Uzbekistan . . . over here in the West, we've got to strap ourselves in for a new world order, with the East becoming more significant than ever-- both economically and politically-- the British Ministry of Defense sums it up tidily: the period of time until 2040 "will be a time of transition" with challenges such as "the reality of a changing climate, rapid population growth, resource scarcity, resurgence in ideology, and shifts in power from West to East."
The Mountains of Kentucky?
Last night was my first night sleeping at home in a while . . . we were on two vacations, back-to-back, and while they were both epic and excellent, it was good to wake up early to a quiet house; I did have a weird dream last night, and while I normally never talk about dreams, the significance of this one is so obvious that I have to summarize it-- but I won't go into all the surreal and stupid details: the dream began mirroring reality, we arrived home from our two vacations but then it veered into the absurd . . . I totally forgot we had planned another trip, we were heading to the mountain of Kentucky-- are there mountains in Kentucky?-- and it was going to be a ten hour drive and then there was a lot more driving during the vacation, and we had to pack lots of winter clothes, and there was snow . . . and I was really upset that I had planned another vacation after two straight vacations, and this vacation was pretty much all driving, in the mountains . . . and I'll readily admit that this is a real first-world-problem dream, where the monster under the bed is a vacation.
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