Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

Google tells me there's a video torrent available of Tom talk at the NDU back in August. If you know what a torrent is and have the software to get it, by all means, check it out ;-)

(If not, I'm not prepared to do the tutorial right now, though I probably can later. Or maybe someone can comment some tips. Or you could Google it ;-)

ARTICLE: Stock Sell-Off in China Hits Wall Street: Dow Tumbles 3.3% in Biggest Loss Since '03, By David Cho and Tomoeh Murakami Tse, Washington Post, February 28, 2007; Page A01

That is a new world when stock sell-offs in China ripple into our markets.

Steve Flynn writes a great book about how America's in dire need of infrastructure upgrades WRT civil defense and disaster response.

Steve DeAngelis invents himself an enterprise resilience maturity model approved by Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute (where he's a visiting scientist), gets himself a fistful of patents for the associated technology, and signs a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement with Oak Ridge National Lab (where he's also a visiting scientist) to turn their famous SensorNet into the next-generation ResilienceNet, profiled in Esquire's December "Best & Brightest" issue.

And yeah, Steve's working on a book of his own.

Cool to diagnose.

Cooler to fix.

And yes, that's why I'm with Enterra and not some think tank.

ARTICLE: "Persian Shrug," by Edward N. Luttwak, Wall Street Journal, 27 February 2007, p. A16.

A simplistic argument based on a simplistic read of history. Luttwak claims detente with Sovs "propped up" the regime and Reagan puts a stop to that and kills USSR in short order. So he advocates skipping any opening up with Iran and simply pushing them hard for internal collapse.

There is no soft-kill without some connectivity, in my mind. Without it, there is no way to prepare the follow-on regime, to let it develop and emerge.

Reagan's challenging was well timed because detente had lured the Sovs well down the path of economic and social connectivity with the outside world (the whole infiltration of "hard currency," or dollars with actual monetary value that illuminated how worthless so much of the Sov economy was, plus the growing realization of how Moscow was being ripped off by energy subsidies to Eastern Europe (something Putin's still correcting to this day).

We have some vulnerability on oil revenue with Iran today that Saudi Arabia seeks to exploit, but just causing pain there won't get us regime change. Instead we're likely to get more repression with some secretive temporizing on nukes (like NK).

Luttwak's history is bad and dangerously misrepresentative. You have to set up the soft kill, otherwise one dictator's fall sets up the next.

+ Remember when Tom briefed Obama's foreign policy guy? Sounds like the message got through: Obama: Iraq Strategy Strengthened Iran.

+ Bernanke shrugs off globalization, but heads into the unknown: may have to throw out his beloved rule book.

Anyone want to weigh in in the comments on how globalization changes the Fed's job?

Tom got this email:

Dr. Barnett:

I thoroughly enjoyed your series of interviews on the Hugh Hewitt show. Thank you.

In Iraq, we are engaged in asymmetric warfare. Why are we so quick to accept the premise that we must be engaged in this type of battle? Either Max Boot or Colonel Peters recently wrote about fighting on an equal footing with insurgents in Iraq as an ill-conceived strategy. But, they never explained why we are so quick to adopt it. Is it due to our aversion to any civilian casualties? We certainly did not fight WWI or WWII in this fashion....we firebombed Tokyo, Dresden, Berlin....why the change in military doctrine? Why now?

The 2001 Bush doctrine stated that we could preemtively strike any country that supported terrorists and exported terrorism. After Sadaam fell, what changed?

Sam Grier, CFA

Tom's answer:

We fight for very different goals. That's why.

To win, we need to leave the environment more connected than we found it--our opponents, the opposite. So we can't escalate on them, just deny them their resources: disaffected, disconnected foot soldiers. The classic insurgent is not the classic terrorist (middle-class, educated) who comes to play on our connected turf. That at-risk pool we shrink by extending economic connectivity (our biggest challenge right now in Iraq is unemployment).

When jobs are your exit strategy, you cannot bomb your way to victory.

Selling big ideas in a sound bite age

I just lived every author's dream. No, Oprah didn't call to tell me she's picked one of my books for her reading club. But ego-wise, I got the next best thing: an amazing series of eight, one-hour interviews on a nationally syndicated talk radio show to discuss my 2004 book, "The Pentagon's New Map" - chapter by chapter!

You have no idea how gratifying that is for an author who's spent years summing up 150,000-word books in more three-minute TV and radio appearances than I can remember.

Read on at KnoxNews

ARTICLE: Army Secretary Is Ousted in Furor Over Hospital Care, By DAVID S. CLOUD, New York Times, March 3, 2007

I know Fran Harvey and think he was a great secretary who should have been given the chance to fix this problem rather than being ritualistically sacrificed. Firing the local Reed commander struck me as enough. Making the Army go without a secretary for several months and then enduring a new person for just the tail end of the administration might have felt good on the Hill, but it's pointless and counterproductive to an Army under huge strains right now. Harvey was a solutions-based guy, so he's the type you'd want on such a problem.

But since I don't know details of how Harvey's being connected to this, I won't say more. I just think it's sad because I know him to be both competent and a person of real honor, and I know that missing your secretary never helps a service under stress, so I just wish it had gone a different way, even as I understand the political outrage (very natural) over the shabby conditions at Reed. But war exposes this sort of stuff, showing yet again how it draws on resources that would otherwise feed the Leviathan beast with high-tech programs.

So expect even more shifts of resources to those services with the heaviest loads in the Long War.

Since Tom's a little out of pocket, and since our content's a little limited, and since I've already given you two great posts today... ;-)

I'm going to do my usual Tom around the web on Sunday tomorrow. Stay tuned! ;-)

+ ubikcan notes that Tom gets a whole chapter of criticism in the new book 'Violent Geographies'.
+ Newshog links Bush can take a good turn here (though he doesn't think the good will happen).
+ ShrinkWrapped linked More good signs from Iran.
+ Phatic Communion linked I've just about had it... (and also from Dreaming 5GW). Looks like Curtis is going to TypeKey-registered comments.
+ Chapomatic linked Tom's last appearance on Hugh's show (but, alas, the post disappeared).
+ Soob is a third of the way through BFA.. (And, wow, what an interesting comment thread, including a proposed battle royale between Tom and others! ;-)
+ Hot soup in my eye linked Pulling plug out of the question,
and linked Tom on 'energy independence'.
+ Dafydd at Big Lizards things he can condense PNM down to two sentences,
and writes about The Birth of the Functioning Core.
+ Indistinct Union calls Tom 'a 3rd way radical center approach'.
+ Spyral Notebook recommends BFA,
and references Tom in a post on 'Imperial Grunts'.
+ There Is No Second Place reprinted Tom on Hugh part 6.

More coming tomorrow...

+ Mind in the Qatar (Great play on pronunciation, BTW ;-) recommends PNM, Hugh's series with Tom, etc.
+ Movies , Books, Quotes, and Quirks quotes from PNM.
+ Murderati interviewed Tom's publisher, Neil Nyren, naming Tom as one of Neil's authors.
+ Jonathan Gurwitz calls PNM 'brilliant'.
+ Theory and Analysis references Tom on China.
+ Elect Romney in 2008 notes that Tom's not real worried about Russia.
+ NonParty Politics linked Tom's 8th appearance on Hugh's show and The presidential "start-up" that is Obama.
+ There is no second place reprinted the week 7 transcript from Hugh's show.
+ My Learning Curve hasn't mentioned Tom in a while, but he has talked about him quite a bit over the life of his weblog.
+ Opposed Systems Design tried to run Tom's theory through an old Barry Posen paradigm.

Still one of the best captures we've got of the Brief. Lots of great resources including 2 PDFs, 243.5 MB of video (!), a .zip file of all of the videos, and a full mp3.

I've said it before, but one of the things I really like about this Brief is that Tom's humor comes through and, after a while, the audience warms up to him and there's a pretty good dynamic there.

(BTW, if you're just wanting to download the mp3, here's the address.)

Since Tom's production is down this week, I planned to reprint some past posts or point you to stuff you might not have seen before. I still might.

But it occurred to me that it would be a lot more fun to have y'all suggest the posts you have liked in the past (especially after the great job you did on How did you convert to Tom?! (Which ended up at 86 comments, BTW!)).

And if you can't quite find it, click here to search the site.

I plan on linking some from a subsequent post.

So comment away!

Was it something I said? Somehow, the floodgates did not open ;-)

But thanks to Brandon for playing along. He picked Thoughts on Sunday morn, saying:

nice nuts-and-bolts explanation of how our system works, and and a serious reminder that more than anything, the Long War demands our patience. Tough in the age of 5-sec soundbite politics, and all the more necessary because of that.

Let's see... Ah yes, I was quoting this post just the other week:

I know, I know, you lose lives and you want everything to change on a dime. But in reality, we like our military slower than our politicians and our politicians slower than our titans of industry. That's how Hamilton and Madison set it up: commerce rules, politics adjust, military protects.

Anybody else have a favorite post? Or do I need to change the question? ;-)

Man, y'all don't have very long memories ;-)

Jarrod Myrick writes in to say his favorite post was You're unconvertable!. To wit:

classic stuff here: inside the creative process--director's commentary; therapeutic for me; 'false friends' + bad teachers really resonates.

More soon. Thanks for playing my reindeer games ;-)

Ok, y'all are noting some good posts in the comments of 1st favorite post.

+ Chuck agrees with Brandon on Thoughts on Sunday morn.
+ Alan says his favorite post is Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
+ Allen says 'Who can pick?' (but he kind of likes the smackdowns ;-)
+ nykrindc likes Islamism is what goes with globalization.
+ CN's favorite post is Blowback on another military-only strategy.
+ Tom Mull likes the Sunday morning post and In a nutshell, my "problem" with global warming.
+ Ares likes Earth is doomed! Doomed I tell you! and When did Daily Kos turn from bully pulpit to just plain bully?
+ Tricia's favorite post was Grand strategy is not the Kiplinger Report. (Incidentally, Tricia's the one who wrote an editorial in The Aspen Times.

Got an email on Google Gapminder, which we have covered before. The title is calling it 'The Gapminder World 2006, beta. Any interesting applications?

Just back from a week in East Africa running around on invite from Central Command to do some close-up advising and to give an apparently big-time address (specially tailored brief) to a slew (about 50) of Africa's best and brightest generals currently enrolled in Kenya's National Defence College (I may be exaggerating a bit, but it seemed a big deal as both our side (coalition) and their side (KNDC) exchanged plaques, plus Kenya's minister of defense, as well as the service chiefs of their navy, air force, and army were in attendance).

How did the invite get triggered? One of their top officers caught me at our National Defense U a bit back.

Naturally, a lot of material will arise from this very privileged series of exposures. Next week's column will focus on one unusual observation of my personal life made by a Kenyan brigadier general, but the bulk won't be out for a while (I have other things on my plate right now).

When I get it worked up, rest assured I will post my 10K-word diary of the trip on the blog. Til then, this cat stays in bag.

Hakuna Matata! (which really is a Swahili phrase meaning "no worries").

Nice to be back. 24 hours of either flying or car or high-speed boat to make it back from Kenya.

Will try some blogging soon, but no promises.

Also shot about 300 photos. Will figure out how to share some of those too eventually.

Was in some pretty remote places, but came through just fine. Had all my shots and took all my pills and geared up accordingly.

Did get spooked by some baboons once at night coming back from head and some spider monkeys coming outta shower one early morn. Got pix of latter on the spot and former during daylight.

My only direct hit suffered was some tough African crows crapping on me.

Also burned my emerging hair "gap" nicely after being on tarmac too long (can't wear hats due to safety).

Bit humbling, that.

Made a ton of contacts. I've gotta go with Steve someday soon. Turning him loose on Africa, where he's made deals happen previously in his career (90s) would be fun, especially in emerging Kenya, which not only reminds me of much of China, but has plenty of Chinese already running around.

ARTICLE: Featured Embedded Report: Chris Muir from Iraq, The Fourth Rail

Good evidence of the SysAdmin's continued emergence and the crying need for a Department of Everything Else.

In the 3Ds (defense, diplomacy, development), the short leg of the stool is Foggy Bottom.

Thanks to CitSAR for sending this.

ARTICLE: S.C. may cut jail time for organ donors, By SEANNA ADCOX, Associated Press Writer

Reconnecting our prison population "gap" by the lure of shorter time thanks to organ donations.

This one is a creepy bit of Michael Crichton-like fiction predicted years ago by one of my wife's profs at Madison.

My point?

We're seeing the rise of this sort of--what to call it?--exploitation of the Gap's more financially desperate populations all the time on medical testing.

I guess this just shows we're willing to do it to our own Gappers.

Thanks to Vonne Barnett for sending this.

ARTICLE: US-Brazil deal to boost bio-fuels, BBC News

Indeed. Score one for Mark from Texas, as reader Michael Griffin notes.

POST: Wen Jiabao Weighs In

Very nice post by Steve on China. Worth a read.

And as you do, remember that Wen is 4th Generation and that the 5th gets basically teed up later this year at the party congress. So if the 4th exhibit this level of pragmatism, how much more might we soon expect from the 5th given its college educations in Europe and the U.S.?

From the April issue with Hilary Swank on the cover, p. 178 (almost at the very end), Esquire now does a preview of the next issue, and right after "63 Things Worth Shortening Your Life Over," you get:

On a totally different subject, Thomas P.M. Barnett Esquire contributing editor, defense strategist, and author of The Pentagon's New Map, offers us his brief on the state of the world 2007--the good news, the very bad news, and the wild cards. [arrow points from the words "wild cards" to a picture of Dick Cheney]

A very topical piece from someone who usually looks far ahead. Bit risky, that, but fun. I had imagined it like an updating of the country profiles from the original PNM map.

Collected articles for weeks in December and January, based on Mark Warren's proposal of the piece, then wrote it fast one long weekend. Been diddling with it ever since. Completed just before leaving for Africa--and I means minutes before leaving. Lotsa drawings/pix. Very modular.

You know, I come back from Africa more jacked than ever about the piece I wrote for Fast Company about China (dropped in a management shuffle for not being business-y enough). Reading that When Nixon Meets Mao book, I'm more psyched than ever about making the argument at this point in history. The big thing I get from that book is that the visionaries know where they are in history and know when they're making history. In fact, that's the essential buzz the visionary provides: that sense that what's being argued is history in the making. Unless you're willing to operate on that plane, with all the attendant risks and requirements, there's no sense in engaging in grand strategy.

So I guess I'm disappointed not to see the "State of the World" piece and the China piece hit the streets simultaneously, because the first one says where we are in history and the second argues for the best way to make history right now--preemptively.

Like Nixon said, "give history a nudge."

We shall see.

China's males: looking for war in all the wrong places

Strategists prefer to project, futurists love to extrapolate, and demographers will tell you their data are pure destiny. But, just like history, the future tends to repeat itself by consistently delaying our dreams (my long-overdue flying car) while constantly denying our doomsdays (remember overpopulation or the impending ice age?).

Humanity confounds us prognosticators primarily by being so inventively responsive to all the grand challenges that we so deterministically throw its way. Nowhere will we witness such innovation more in coming decades than in China, slated by confident futurists - take your pick - for both world domination and suicidal self-destruction.

Tom notes:

Original: they can go abroad and . . . you know . . . marry a broad.

Changed to: they can go abroad and, you know, marry overseas.

I am somewhat surprised the humor didn't pass. Is a "broad" considered that slanderous that "family newspapers" can't print?

Ah well. You give them a funny line ...

Tom then later notes, given some typos in the Cincy Post version ("wan" instead of "wane" and "20202" instead of "2020"):

Weird. KNS certainly caught my "wan" (I honestly think I have a touch of dyslexia like two of my brothers who both had it seriously, although I never tested positive for it, but then, it's a way subjective test--especially back in the 1960s when the whole concept was just being discovered; note--I went through all the exercises anyway just because the two suffering brothers were just above and below me in birth order and hey! The exercises seemed fun). I don't remember any 20202, but that would be a simple finger slip.

Anyway, if KNS caught both (neither appear in its version), then how did Cincy get it wrong? Since the Scripps version is messed up too, all I can imagine is that KNS passed on the typos but then later fixed their own version.

Note the Atlantic City version is corrected. So I guess this whole thing speaks to how well individual papers scan their outside inputs. Scripps apparently didn't, or just missed it this time (Scripps has offered very adept editing suggestions in the past), and then some papers repeated the mistake, while others did not.

Me? I will please being very tired and writing this in the United VIP lounge in Ohare after driving 4 hours in scary weather at high speed (my flights over to Africa were a complete mess, due to tornados here in the States last Thursday).

So investigating to make sure I understand how this happened and how to prevent it in the future. My first guess is to take up Sean's offer that I run all columns through him for an edit.

Read on at KnoxNews
Read on at Scripps Howard

Early column sighting: Good ol' Press of Atlantic City

Neil Nyren is THE MAN. In the world of bestsellers, he is the King Kong. Ain't no arguing. His record speaks for itself.

I had no idea who he was prior to his buying PNM. Now he seems like this looming figure in my career, which he is. Neil picking me changed everything, like everyone else who picked me before. If there's one thing I've learned in this career, it's that the visionary can "pick" the future, but what really matters is who picks him. There is no "go yout own way" nonsense. You are completely the product of others in terms of your access and renown. You just create the content, so know your place and appreciate the cast of thousands involved in making the vision happen (and don't even get me started on the implementation!). The visionary is all about connecting to others. The grand strategist is imagined as the solitary figure, figuring it all out on his own, but it's a complete myth. If your vision is that everything is connected to everything else (not exactly a new thought, eh!), then so is your career.

When you meet Neil, you can't help but be a bit underwhelmed, because his professional stature is so huge, but then he's this very normal looking guy who comes off as very unassuming and wonderfully soft-spoken (you expect him to be in Prada or something, yelling at everyone; in fact, you're tempted to say, "No, really, go and get me Neil Nyren! This isn't funny!"). He's just so relaxed and wry, instead of high-strung and outsized, you just want him to snap at somebody about getting him some coffee, or copy, or Tom Clancy on line 1!

Warren's like that too. A couple of guys who really live in their skin, very down to earth.

Anyway...

A lot of people sent me this interview with Neil on the website Murderati. Neil's interviewed there because he has so many huge mystery writers. The part everyone gets excited about is the intro to the interview (which is worth reading because you get some interesting glimpses into how Neil thinks and how the business works), where I get mentioned in the stable.

The authors list is simply lifted from the "about us" page on G.P. Putnam's Sons, which is basically the same description one would offer for Neil himself, since he's been with Putnam for a while (since 1984 and Putnam's unrivaled run began about a decade later, meaning it takes a while to build up the stable), so the reputation of both are really one in the same at this point in history.

Here's the list in the Murderati interview:

Neil S. Nyren is senior vice president, publisher and editor in chief of G.P. Putnam’s Sons. He came to Putnam in 1984 from Atheneum, where he was Executive Editor. Before that he held editorial positions at Random House and Arbor House. Some of his authors include Tom Clancy, Clive Cussler, Jack Higgins, W.E.B. Griffin, John Sandford, Dave Barry, Daniel Silva, Ken Follett, Randy Wayne White, Carol O’Connell, James O. Born, Patricia Cornwell and Frederick Forsyth; nonfiction by Bob Schieffer, Maureen Dowd, John McEnroe, Linda Ellerbee, Jeff Greenfield, Charles Kuralt, Secretary of State James Baker III, Thomas P.M. Barnett, Sara Nelson, and Generals Fred Franks, Chuck Horner, Carl Stiner and Tony Zinni.

Here's the bigger bit from Putnam's page:

For the past fifteen consecutive years, G.P. Putnam's Sons has led the publishing industry with more hardcover fiction and nonfiction New York Times bestsellers than any other imprint in the publishing industry. Its impressive list of award-winning, bestselling authors is well-known around the world. With its rich history and unrivaled bestselling track record, G.P. Putnam's Sons continues to be one of the most respected and prestigious imprints in the industry. Today, Putnam has broadened its list with outstanding works that reflect contemporary interests. Among the distinguished roster of bestselling fiction authors Putnam publishes are: Dave Barry, Lilian Jackson Braun, Tom Clancy, Robin Cook, Patricia Cornwell, Catherine Coulter, Clive Cussler, Barry Eisler, Frederick Forsyth, Sue Grafton, William Gibson, W.E.B. Griffin, Jack Higgins, Jayne Ann Krentz, Steve Martini, Kate Mosse, Robert B. Parker, Ridley Pearson, Amanda Quick, Karen Robards, J.D. Robb, Nora Roberts, John Sandford, Daniel Silva, Amy Tan, Kurt Vonnegut, Randy Wayne White and Stuart Woods. In nonfiction, authors published by the imprint include Dr. Peter J. D'Adamo, Lance Armstrong, James Baker, Thomas Barnett, A. Scott Berg, Maureen Dowd, Goldie Hawn, T.D. Jakes, Spencer Johnson, Bob Schieffer and Neale Donald Walsch.

Funny, but the association I get the biggest kick out of is Ken Follett, because I'm such a WWII nut.

Anyway ...

It's nice to be on the list. By contract, I have to give Neil the first look on the proposal to Vol. III. Doesn't mean it'll work for him. It just means I get a nice, serious look.

I've got to get a bunch of material off my skull by mid-April, then I plan on writing up the proposal (short version) for Neil and sending it through Jenn Gates, with all her natural inputs. If that fails, I'd need a bigger proposal to send to other houses (not the same relationship, so more explaining), but no matter what, I think I write the beast, almost for mental health reasons (gotta clear the brain) late this summer. Worse comes to worst, I'd settle for less because I just want this marker down personally. I think Vol. III will be simultaneously more about me and less about me than anything I've ever written, but I think I need to write it before I can go on to other things (like editing the book about Emily that I penned years ago). There's just this sense of intellectual sequence, like I've gotta go through it or suffer the consequences.

And I guess that's the artist in me, which I indulge, because I honestly believe the whole visionary/grand strategist thing is more art than science, so it runs a bit more on the internal subjective than the external objective. That might seem counter-intuitive, and it is given the material, but there's what it is and then there's how it gets created, and like war v. peace, you have to be able to disaggregate those things.

Rode in some in Africa last week. First time in, I thought the door was locked somehow and I couldn't figure how to open.

Then realized it was just that the door was so heavy I needed to lean into it a bit to get it started swinging open. If I just pulled the handle and didn't put any muscle into it, it was so weighty that it felt like it was still locked.

The things you learn.

Another thing I learned: when approaching a field strip, military aircraft--by routine--do a low flyover to check the field and then pull back up and out to do the real approach. Makes perfect sense, since no ATC to be looking over the whole thing.

But inside the plane, if you don't know that, it feels just like an aborted landing. Last time it happened to me was Atlanta due to birds on the runway. Scared the begeezus outta me.

On the C-130, which you can't see out of, I just figured it was something that made sense to the military so I rode it out casually, like all the officers around me. Since none of them spoke about it in real time, I just waited and asked somebody later.

And if you thought about it like a roller coaster, it's really pretty fun.

ARTICLE: Connecting the DOP Dots, By Sean Gonsalves, AlterNet, March 9, 2007

This article is surprisingly complimentary of Tom's vision and the need for SysAdmin if any 'Department of Peace' is going to be successful:

In Thomas P.M. Barnett's "Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating" -- a far cry from pie-in-the-sky pacifism and well-received among wonks and military officers -- he analyzes the "Core" states, like the U.S., and "failing" states who fill "the Gap."

"When a military intervention does occur, these adversaries simply do their best to lie low and wait out our mighty blow, knowing that they can do little about its impact ... in this way, they conserve their resources for the real fight ahead: our subsequent halfhearted attempts to impose peace and civil order."

That's what Gen. Petraeus was talking about last week when he said: "any student of history recognizes that there is no military solution to a problem like (guerrilla insurgencies) in Iraq."

Though I have deep disagreements with Barnett, he does offer some important observations. "As we take on new nation building challenges with regularity, our manpower requirements for waging peace will skyrocket."

If folks are serious about "shrinking the Gap" and winning this global war on terrorism, Barnett argues, then what he envisions as "our SysAdmin force" (peace-waging force) will have to "dwarf our Leviathan (traditional military) force."

Check out the question Barnett is raising: "Where will we find the civilians to join this SysAdmin force -- this pistol-packin' Peace Corps?... I seriously doubt that, absent a dedicated cabinet-level department, America's effort to shrink the Gap will succeed over time."

This "waging peace" talk also has striking parallels with Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen's 1999 book arguing for the need to see "development as freedom" in dealing with nations filling Barnett's "Gap."

Connect the dots. Shrink the Gap. Development as Freedom. Department of Peace.

That's how to get from 'here' to 'there.'

Antonymous sent this email to Tom:

Tom - just a quick question, maybe it's worthy of a blog post. I figure that now is the best time to ask, as you've just gotten back from your trip. The question is: how do you reconcile all the information that gets thrown at you constantly? I think many of your readers are probably into their own pet theories about how to Shrink the Gap and build a better planet, but there are so many nuanced subjects relating to these topics that it's difficult not to get caught up in them. I guess info might stick to your ribs more because you're out actively talking to flags and we're passively behind computers, but I read lots of articles too - just wondering if you have any good tips or tricks for unwinding your brain and sorting out info. I appreciate your use of the blog as a "dumping ground"! Thanks

Tom writes:

Big question.

Worth pursuing.

But I plan to save for VOL. III vice blog. Will take thousands of words to explain, me thinks.

But thanks so much for asking. I will spend serious time exploring between now and then.

Self-censorship (i.e., reading that which seems to comfirm only) is the big risk on reading.

My salvation?

Provocative nature of my analysis invites criticism, which I lack not. I am regularly called an "idiot," "fool," "dangerous ideologue," etc., in addition to all the good stuff.

I guess I also get a lot of independent confirmation, especially from military, mush of that is F2F. Constant briefing, I would add, exposes me constantly to naysayers. In fact, I don't know anybody else in my genre who so routinely briefs skeptical audiences.

Then again, I've always loved the lion's den. I have, as 8 of 9, that inner drive to prove my elders wrong!

But great question from this reader. I could spend a whole chapter in Vol. III on that. Methinks some list of rules will be required. I begin amassing immediately.

If readers can suggest some based on perusal of blog, I would be most grateful for the pointers.

So what do you say, readers? How does Tom process information?

Hope: that Mark and Dan, who both specialize in cognitive processes, will weigh in here.

Not a lot of links this time because Tom was out of town and I'm pretty well caught up.

+ Let's give pride of place to our old buddy Critt Jarvis. He working on some Grazr projects and using Tom's material for his subject matter: Two great tastes that taste great together! Check out his PNM: Widgets, Gadgets, and Gizmos! Oh, My!, The Pentagon’s New Map Glossary (in Grazr), and A Story of The Pentagon’s New Map.

+ Columbia University Military Community has Tom on their shortlist of links.
+ Hidden Unities linked Tom as promoting a 'hard kill' on North Korea.
+ The Penultimate Genius linked Tom's last talk with Hugh.
+ Dreaming 5GW made a couple of references to Tom.
+ Hot soup in my eye liked finding Google Gapminder over here and getting linked on Information processing.
+ New Yorker in DC references Tom's promotion of economic connectivity WRT Syria.

It's weird to skip papers for about 10 days and then pick back up. It's like getting a TV series in a season package: yesterday's conjecture-laden headline ("Will anything happen when Iran talks to Saudi Arabia") becomes the next day's ho-hum ("Nothing happens in talks between Tehran and Riyadh"). It's just so instantly grate-ifying ("Oh wonderful!" he says, between clenched teeth), like there's no waiting required, nor any cliffhangers to endure.

Show's over folks. Get your souvenirs right here!

And reading forward into days like that, mirroring my recent shifting of hours since 1 March (back one, forward six, forward four, minus one, minus two, minus seven, plus one [cursed daylights savings!], minus three--screw Waldo, I just want to find the sun!), I can't help but feel like the Bush post-presidency has begun to cannibalize itself.

You know how I've argued that, once Bush is gone, everyone's price for cooperation with America will be cut in half? Well, it's like the liquidation sale has already begun, with the bankrupt business conducting its own wake (sorry, the time shifts my metaphors).

It's like "Six Feet Under" and the corpse is not only carrying on, it's cozying up--to just about everyone.

"How come we never talked like this when you were alive?"

Bush tours Latin America to counter the hugely accurate perception that he's ignored the region his entire term. A new diplomatic push on Israel and Palestine, to counter ... you know. Ditto with the rest of the Middle East, Russia, North Korea--the whole shooting match.

It's like that game show with Howie Mandel (the name escapes) [Deal or No Deal - Ed.]: every few minutes another box is opened with meaningful randomness ("I like number six, because I've got that many toes on my left foot!" My daughter Em: "That's soooo random!") and the discounting begins. Bush's legacy will either be $100 or maybe $275,000, but the million-dollar baby seems long gone. We won the Iraq War in 2004 just like we won the Vietnam War in 1966. You just can't help the feeling that the massive correction is already well underway. Sure, most of the major pieces will be left to the next administration ("Bring on the solutions-based centrists--social whatevers be damned! [no, really, they will be damned]), but this White House is getting what pennies on the dollar it can, while the getting's mediocre.

Ironic, but a team so committed to restoring the presidency's power has done so much to diminish it's global standing. Hubris is self-correcting, after all.

As much as I like tidy endings, I fear few of these will be. Currency runs/panics begin when international money spots local money running scared on itself (shorting), and yet I don't think we're looking at anything too adventurous by anybody--save perhaps a Goddamn'er'um from a Dick Cheney with one foot stuck in ... wherever Bill Maher's sense of comedic timing disappeared (tragedy PLUS time, dear fellow-traveler).

In short, the timing seems good for intellectual recalibrations, as there's little sense you'll miss anything in the meantime (Wouldn't even an impeachment "crisis" seem like old hat? So why bother, Chuck Hagel?).

A big part of me just wants to disappear somewhere off-grid, only to return once the nominees are set, so the weird prelims can be superseded by the significant arguments and the serious end-of-termism that this weird interregnum only approximates.

Secretly (he types on his blog), I'd love to see Barack v. Rudy, or an almost purely post-9/11 fight (Barack has no record pre-9/11 worth arguing for or against, while Rudy was reborn on that date) that focused on solutions and skipped all the 90s-reruns (much less the Vietnam replays).

My time-shifting brain just wants a reset, I guess.

I knew the minute I saw Peter's comment that Tom would love it:

I wouldn't presume to make a list of Dr. Barnett's methods for processing information, but I can suggest taking a close look at an ongoing thread in the blog that doesn't seem to be given much acknowledgement: music.

Over and over he references his passion for music, particularly that of the Talking Heads (I wonder if anybody else has noticed just how many passing references there are to David Byrne lyrics in the blog over the years). Another big favorite is Kraftwerk, and I'm not sure there are any posts that were as much plain fun to read (at least for me) as the ones about hanging out with Brian Eno. One of the things the musicians mentioned have in common is that a large part of their compositional method was/is to create a basic structure which is then layered with elements that are frequently of a more intuitive and immediate kind. Brian Eno in particular formalized (although the formality is ironic) a method for composing and recording music (along with the late Peter Schmidt) that he called "Oblique Strategies". Which probably is as good a name for Dr. Barnett's method as could be found.

And I think a case could be made for the song "Listening Wind" from the Talking Heads "Remain In Light" album to be the most coherent succinct description of what Dr. Barnett's work is ultimately about.

...at least that's the view from out here in left field!

Tom wrote:

That gets very close to the soul.

I have that album memorized (a real turning point for me), and "Listening Wind" is a particular favorite, although my all-time fav line from the THs is:

"And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife, and you may ask yourself, 'Well, how did I get here?"

I have learned to let the days go by,
I have let the water pull me under.

My wife's-and-my song is "Naive Melody," the only love song Byrne ever really wrote, for his wife, who had a modest role in "Beetlejuice." I have no idea if they're still married, but Vonne remains, "out of those kinds of people," my "face with a view," and so "home is where I want to be."

So I guess I think that's a very interesting and accurate observation: my favorite music is layered, rhythmic complexity, and I think anyone who's seen me brief will attest for my penchant for layered visual complexity in slides coupled with a highly syncopated staccato-like delivery. When my brief goes well, it feels very musical, and when it goes badly, I feel like I've lost the beat.

A side note: as college kid in Madison in the early 1980s (back, as Nick Cages notes in "Raising Arizona": "when that sumbitch Reagan was in the White House"), my dream concert was the Heads (followed by Clash and Psychedlic Furs--all three of which I saw in Chicago). Come my junior year, the "Remain in Light" tour comes round. I invite my girlfriend of a few months, Vonne Meussling, to come with me and my best friends from my old dorm, Spike and Jeff. We all drive down to Chicago (outdoor theater, name escapes but West side) and Vonne doesn't handle the tail-gating well. Just as we're getting ready to walk from the car into the ampitheater, so collectively pumped at our dream come true we're walking on air, Vonne pulls me aside and says it's a no-go and can I stay with her?

Suffice it to say, I am stunned, but there's no question (who'd leave their woman behind?), so we hang in the car the entire concert , hearing the music distantly. At the very end, Vonne tells me she's okay and I should head in for the curtain call, so I catch the last song. Spike and Jeff are in nirvana when I reach them, I less so. Still, it dulled the psychic trauma a bit.

Vonne later said she knew I loved her and that I'd stay with her forever after that night. To this day I pray it wasn't some devious test!

Needless to say, Vonne wasn't invited to the "Speaking in Tongues" concert the next year, which was the King King of the Heads' run, and the one that yielded the Demme movie "Stop Making Sense." Wore that long-sleeved concert tee like the shroud of Turin for years on end. Still have the Rauschenberg limited-edition LP of that album in my closet.

Very strong memories.

Thanks for reminding.

Count me among the clear-headed Packer fans who'd weep for joy if GB landed Moss in a trade. Forget all the whiny nonsense about past transgressions, past his prime or even character issues. Make the trade!

Anyone like Moss instantly elevates the O and makes every team play us and Favre very differently. Plus, his jump-ball capacity is perfect for gun-slinger Brett, and Favre is probably the one guy who can both command his respect and mentor his resurrection (a long-time mutual admiration society).

If I'm Ted Thompson, I make this trade in a heartbeat if only to keep Favre in uniform 2-3 more John Elway-career-ending-like years.

The great tragedy of the past decade has been our inability to get any HOF offensive players around Favre (Green was close). This may well be the last serious possibility to do so. If Belichek and the Pats wanted him, good enough for us.

Gambling is called for while Brett still wears the green-and-gold.

ARTICLE: "A Chinese Orphan's Journey To a Jewish Rite of Passage," by Andy Newman, New York Times, 8 March 2007, p. A1.

Fascinating story my wife and I will eventually confront with our own Chinese daughter, Vonne Mei.

You don't want to run with the alien part too hard, because--hey--religion's going to be exploding all over China across the coming decades. And if a Jewish messiah in the Middle East can define my Irish Roman-Catholic faith, then I don't find a Chinese Jew to be particularly odd.

This story has additional twists (the parents are lesbians), but everything comes down to the same innate desire: a grounding in a shared past to forge personal connectivity in the present ("we are joined in this") that hopefully extends into a future involving still more people (when this child has children, how does she connect them back to her adoptive parents?).

It all seems very profound and philosophical, but a teenager is a teenager, and even if multitasking hurts homework, multiple and overlapping identities tend to be centering--additional grip holds on the steep ascent that is adolescence.

Me? I read the story and said: "We can pull that off if they can!"