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Cliopatria

  • Oct 12, 2005

    Iowa Political Flashbacks

    by Cliopatria

    Iowa has had only three governors since 1968, so Tom Vilsack's announcement that he wouldn't seek re-election is a critical event in the state's political culture. Republican frontrunner Jim Nussle would be the state's most conservative governor since the early 1960s, meaning that the Dem primary may very well choose the next governor.

    Last week, the majority of Democrats in the state legislatu

  • Oct 11, 2005

    Ferrer's Flops

    by Cliopatria

    A Marist poll out tonight shows Fernando Ferrer's support plunging, with the Dem mayoral nominee now trailing Mike Bloomberg by a 59-32 margin. Ferrer's campaign has almost no money, and virtually no presence in Brooklyn, where he would need to be competitive to have any chance of an upset.

    In a sign of desperation, a handful of Ferrer's council supporters today accused Bloomberg of deliberately inflating l

  • Oct 11, 2005

    Tierney and Zywicki

    by Cliopatria

    Behind the firewall in this morning's Times, John Tierney discusses the irony of journalists and legal scholars"decrying 'cronyism' and calling for 'mainstream' values when picking a Supreme Court justice," when they seem oblivious to such concerns in"picking the professors to train the next generation of journalists and lawyers." Recent studies suggest that the faculty of j-schools and law schools are almost as one-sided as that of the nation's undergraduate colleges and universities.

  • Oct 11, 2005

    William Grimes: Review of Victor Davis Hanson's A War Like No Other

    by Cliopatria

    What the First World War was for Europe, the Peloponnesian War was for the ancient Greeks. It was also their Napoleonic Wars and their American Civil War. The protracted, ruinous conflict between Athens and Sparta, which dragged on for nearly 30 years (431 B.C. to 404 B.C.) prefigured, in one way or another, nearly every major conflict to come, right up the present war on terror.

    The "war like no other," as Thucydides called it, continues to fascinate because it always se
  • Oct 10, 2005

    Earthquake Relief

    by Cliopatria

    The devastation from the earthquake is hard to fathom right now. I spend a good part of my youth in those mountain towns north of Islamabad - esp. Mansehra and Balakot. Balakot, is especially heart wrenching. Here is a good one-stop inform
  • Oct 10, 2005

    Terraforming the New Frontier

    by Cliopatria

    Here’s a long article from the New York Times on the bright side of global warming. The quick summary: there’s money to be made, land claims to fight over, and a good time to be had by all—or at least all the newcomers. It’s a new frontier. Yee haw!

    It depresses the hell out of me.

    To some extent it’s the reporter’s stump dumb assertion th

  • Oct 10, 2005

    History Carnival

    by Cliopatria

    The next History Carnival will be hosted by Eric Scott Kaufman at Acephalous on Saturday 15 October.

    Email your nominations for recently published posts (preferably since the last carnival) about history to the host: scotterickaufman [at] gmail.com or acephalous [at] gmail.com.

    The History Carnival is not just for academics and specialists and entries don't h
  • Oct 10, 2005

    Additionally Noted

    by Cliopatria

    James Atlas,"My Subject, Myself," New York Times, 9 October, claims that the United States has yet to produce a biographical tradition to compare with Great Britain's.

    John Kelly,"A Meal Fit for a Nightmare," Washington Post, 7 October, is satire about American University's embattled pres

  • Oct 10, 2005

    The End of the World Is Nigh!

    by Cliopatria

    No, not really. But the deadline for sending me [dresner at hawaii dot edu] nominations for the inaugural Asian History Carnival is rapidly approaching. That is to say, I'm going to get it up sometime tomorrow (10/10) so you've got about fifteen hours until it's too late!

    This is a unique opportunity, because, as the first, I'm not limiting submissions to recent posts: this is a chance to put your very,

  • Oct 9, 2005

    More Noted Things

    by Cliopatria

    Reports of the death and devastation centered in northeastern Pakistan and Kashmir, but coming from India to Afghanistan, are breathtaking. There are no reliable numbers, but the press is reporting 20,000 to 30,000 deaths and over 40,000 injuries. Our colleague, Manan Ahmed, has been in touch with family in Pa
  • Oct 8, 2005

    How the White House Discovered Television

    by Cliopatria

    Coinciding as it did with the partition of Palestine, the drafting of the Marshall Plan, and the birth of the Cold War, President Harry Truman's speech on October 5, 1947, urging Americans to save wheat made little impression on the history books. And Truman didn't even mention it in his memoirs. But it began something that shapes American politics to this day: It was the first televised Presidential speech ever.

    And wheat was actually a crucially important issue. Truman took to the
  • Oct 7, 2005

    The Feather Circle

    by Cliopatria

    The diversity movement in higher education has focused on the positive educational and social ramifications of exposing students to undergraduates of different backgrounds. It’s rather difficult to square this justification, however, with the celebration of self-segregation by these same diversity advocates. The AAC&U, for instance, has recently published a study arguing that colleges should seek to create interracial fri
  • Oct 6, 2005

    Struggle in Context

    by Cliopatria

    President Bush's speech to the NED contains two bits that are particularly interesting to historians: a comparison of the current struggle to the Cold War (which is quite effective, I think) and a decontextualization of terror attacks (which is historically suspect).

    The core of the speech, though the reportage has largely been about the"ten serious Al Qaeda terrorist plots" t