August 2005

Have we learned the lessons of Vietnam?

This President expects the nation to be unwaveringly stoic in war—for parents and loved ones
of soldiers and marines to hold tight as they watch their children kill and be killed, and for soldiers to tough it out as they return home maimed and riddled with guilt that they are among the survivors.

Stoicism is critical in wartime, but it has its limits. A soldier fights in the most
honorable and brave way when he believes in the cause and conducts himself justly with
the best tactics and weaponry available. But many on the ground are wondering just what
war they are fighting, and whether they have they have the right armor and weaponry to
face this brand of insurgency.

The Undercover Economist

Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist, due out in November, just finished a guest-blogging stint at Marginal Revolution. As he is wont to do, Harford treated a raft of subjects ranging from devaluing airline miles to the history of randomized medical trials. You can also find Harford posting almost daily at this blog, or […]

“The Tuniit”

By about 8,000 years ago the Arctic environments of North America were as extensive as they are today, and animal populations had moved northwards to establish themselves on lands and in sea-channels recently freed from glacial ice. Although ancestral Indian groups made summer excursions northwards across the tundra, probably following the caribou as Dene and […]

Rogue Regime review in the Times

Rogue Regime by Jasper Becker was reviewed in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review section. A few key paragraphs from the review: After his father’s death in 1994, Kim Jong II transformed North Korea from an odious totalitarian regime into something actually worse, “a Marxist Sun King” state that was ready to oversee an unparalleled […]

On relativism

If relativism, then, is often just a distraction, is it a valuable one or a dangerous one? I think it all depends. Sometimes we need reminding of alternative ways of thinking, alternative practices and ways of life, from which we can learn and which we have no reason to condemn. We need to appreciate our […]

Jill Quadagno responds to comments

I want to respond to Terry’s comments on my earlier post, “A critical national competitiveness issue” (Click here to read full post and comments.) You wrote: “Which nation is more competitive [than] the US that has universal health care? When has socialism been more efficient at providing a service people need? Socialism? That’s the same […]

A Human History of the Arctic World

The passage below is from The Last Imaginary Place by Robert McGhee. Harper’s Magazine accurately describes McGhee’s book as “enthralling.” I once spent a few hours in the Ice Age. It was a brilliant July day, the sun’s heat comfortably tempered by a cool wind sweeping down from the frozen ocean beyond the ranges to […]

Beginnings of Sudanese conflict – Berlin, 1884

When the colonial powers gathered in Berlin in 1884 to finalize their partition of Africa, they paid little
heed to the religious divide that stretched across the continent from Guinea in West Africa to Kenya in East Africa. Not only Nigeria but other West African states, as well as Chad, Sudan, and Ethiopia to the east, found themselves with regional-cultural contrasts fraught with problems. In the process, the colonial powers created a regional problem whose consequences they could not foresee. The Islamic Front has become a zone of conflict that threatens the cohesion of countries and facilitates the actions of terrorists and insurgents.

Instapundit reviews Electing Justice

Glenn Reynolds, blogger of Instapundit fame, reviewed Electing Justice by Richard Davis in the NYPost on Sunday. Davis notes that there have been various proposals for reform but thinks that radical surgery is called for. He suggests that Supreme Court justices be elected by the public for a single 18-year term with no possibility of […]