A rare groove
Dateline: above the garage, 5 March 2005
A day, nay a weekend, devoted to family affairs. My spouse is moving full force on reorganizing our household gear for showing the house and getting ready to move in the summer, and so a vast flow of unneeded goods makes its way to local charities and thrift shops. Meanwhile, I work the kids: Kevin's last BB game today, then haircuts for all the males on the base (got a day pass from a former colleague), then 5pm mass, then swimming at the Y, then McDonald's, then a movie in the basement. Tomorrow is Jerry's birthday bash with two friends at Fantasyland, a local indoor amusement park.
Tomorrow I will post a bunch of reviews, then I lapse into book mode again for probably at least three weeks, but maybe more, as Mark Warren and I start mowing through the chapters this week.
Thumbed through Jared Diamond's Collapse recently, and while I liked the environmental analysis for what it's worth, his take on politics and globalization is like looking through a soda straw. It always amuses me how hard scientists freak whenever soft scientists borrow from their fields, but then have no problem prognosticating like crazy about soft science fields like political science. For example, Diamond posts these two, amazingly self-serving maps on page 497. On top is the list of "Political Trouble Spots of the Modern World," and just below it is the map of "Environmental Trouble Spots of the Modern World." His two maps are exactly the same, hence his point that environmental problems accurately predict all political trouble spots is "proven." The list is Haiti, Madagascar, Burundi, Rwanda, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Indonesia, Philippines, Solomon Islands, and Mongolia. Yes, all but one state (Mongolia) sits within my Gap, but this is still one weird list of political trouble spots, ignoring North Korea, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Israel, the Central Asian republics, all of west Africa, all of southern Africa (especially Zimbabwe), and virtually all of central Africa save for Rwanda and Burundi. Haiti is it for Latin America, a virtual pimple on the ass of the western hemisphere's security environment. Instead we get Madagascar (which suffered a bad election and some minor social violence recently but that's about it), Bangladesh (provider of more UN peacekeeping troops than any country in the world), Mongolia (which is booming thanks to Chinese investment and commodity demands, and the Solomon Islands! I mean, geez, this is comically bad analysis.
Yes, I know I will have to cite his book on some level, otherwise (God forbid!) I'll have to endure all the academic reviews that decry my lack of respect for this pretty weak effort by the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Guns, Germs and Steel (where he was smart enough to stick to the past), but frankly, there is no reason for me to cite this book other than to assuage bibliophiles and academics. Yet, cite it I must, lest I be considered a "young man, narrowly read."
At 1pm today I'll do a live radio interview with a local station in Connecticut from above the garage. It'll be 18-22 minutes and it'll be on the book.
Here's the data on that one in case you just happen to be listening:
>When:Saturday March 5, 2005
>Time: 1:00PM EST
>Program: Special Edition Saturday
>Host: Larry Rifkin
>Media: WATR 1320 AM
>Duration: 18-22 minutes
I got an offer on Friday from a diplomatic journal in Canada to have the transcript of my talk there on Thursday posted in its entirety in their weekly magazine, that's how impressed the publisher was with my presentation (she was in the audience, although, for some reason, the regular working press was kept out). Nice offer, it was, but the problem was that I submitted no written record of my talk in advance, as I guess virtually all of the other speakers did. Why? I simply give my talk, whether it's 20 minutes or 6 hours, from memory. I have never written it down, except in PNM, of course.
Here's the daily catch from a combo of U.S. and Canadian papers:
■ Let's not be poor winners in the Middle East■ China's rapidly adjusting rule sets
■ Argentina's resetting the rules on sovereign bankruptcy
■ U.S. does right by women at the UN