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Cliopatria

  • Mar 2, 2005

    Another Time Suck Brought To You By Rebunk

    by Cliopatria

    Because Rebunk wants to do its share to limit American productivity, here is another game that will absorb much of your time. A warning -- this is a game that plays on our President's less than sterling command of the language and may not be for everybody. But I find it amusing (and frustrating). The gist is that you are trying to drop a brain into Bush's head. Each time you do, you get a recording of one of his gaffes. Good
  • Mar 2, 2005

    No More "All New Blue"

    by Cliopatria

    Last night ended the twelve-year run of the television cop drama NYPD Blue, quite possibly my favorite show of all time. It is the only drama I have ever followed religiously as the oft-asserted, rarely true, “must-see tv” on prime time for more than a few years (The Simpsons wins the comedy category). I saw the first episode in 1993 and I saw the last one last night, and I rarely missed the ones in between if I had any power over it at all.

    The most remarkable aspect of

  • Mar 2, 2005

    Carnival of Bad History #1

    by Cliopatria

    .. is up at archy. Apparently, in the absence of other nominations, everything I submitted made the cut. Because there was no" cut" to speak of.... The other articles are worth reading, though. McKay's post on the bad analogy between post-invasion Iraqi insurgents and post-Hitler"Werewolves" is quite good, and Orac's post on Holocaust denial is a classic. Bora Zivkovic's post on Lysenko's"science" and i

  • Feb 28, 2005

    Observations from the Spectator

    by Cliopatria

    Columbia's student newspaper, the Spectator, this morning published an editorial chastising the New York Sun for"vitriol,""yellow journalism,""biased reporting," and having"taken the focus of the debate away from the University community" regarding the crisis in Columbia's MEALAC department.

    Pretty serious charges, especially given that the Spectator cites not even one factual err

  • Feb 28, 2005

    Historical Lessons, Hyperbole, and the Crying-Wolf Phenomenon

    by Cliopatria

    Every time I see some analogy between the present and an extreme historical moment, I think, "Now how can that person expect anyone to take them seriously when the present really does get extreme?"

    (This is an intentional use of the third-person plural pronoun as the third-person indefinite singular. Sooner or later, our grammarians will concede this common usage as potentially correct. I'll declare myself a part-time amateur grammarian, and take my stand.)

  • Feb 28, 2005

    Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and Black Power

    by Cliopatria

    Ralph Luker’s farewell to Nathan Wright, Jr. emphasizes the paradoxical thought of this lifelong Republican, who challenged racial segregation in the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation and his leadership of the National Conference on Black Power in 1967, during which he termed racial integration “an insult on its face.” Without underestimating the complexity or sincerity of Wright’s ideas, the twenty-year gap between the two actions might just as well be a century, given the drastic evolution that s
  • Feb 28, 2005

    Development, Colonialism, Statism, and the Like

    by Cliopatria

    Over yonder in the blogosphere, James Dunnigan is raising some relevant questions about NGO's and development. As an Africanist, a number of my fellow academics either chose career paths in development (including one close friend who recently ended years of work in Angola and Serbia and made the wise move of taking a posting in Fiji) or frequently worked with NGO's or government agencies as a sideline.

    By and l
  • Feb 27, 2005

    "Sudden"... really?

    by Cliopatria

    "What else can history teach us? Only the vanity of believing we can impose our theories on history. Any philosophy which asserts that human experience repeats itself is ineffectual." -- Jacques Ellul
    David Brooks is talking about Kuhnian paradigm shifts; Thomas Friedman is talking about tipping points; things are changing quick
  • Feb 26, 2005

    More Noted ...

    by Cliopatria

    There are interesting exchanges at the Weekly Standard's letters page. Thomas E. Woods, Jr., and Max Boot play"I am more conservative than thou." Let's be clear: the NYT's review of Woods' book got it wrong. Woods is a paleo-conservative. Paleo-s and neo-s don't see eye to eye on many things, including our history. J. Tucker Martin repudiates Stephen Schwartz's harsh obituary in
  • Feb 26, 2005

    You Are With Us or You Are Against Us

    by Cliopatria

    As I write this it is 4:42 am Central Time. I ought to be in bed. God knows my girlfriend thinks so. Yet I cannot sleep right now.

    More young people are dead tonight in a nightclub in Tel Aviv. Young people, out for nothing more than a few drinks, a chance to dance, perhaps a chance to fall in love or get laid. Twenty-one years old, or maybe twenty-four. Too young to die. Far too young too die in an explosion i

  • Feb 25, 2005

    After 1942 People Knew About the Holocaust

    by Cliopatria

    Letter to the Editor of the NYT (2-25-05):

    To the Editor:

    Nicholas D. Kristof ("The Secret Genocide Archive," Op-Ed, Feb. 23) writes that unlike the current slaughter in Sudan, "during past genocides," like the mass murder of European Jews by the Nazis, "it was possible to claim that we didn't fully know what was going on."

    In fact, verification of the Nazi genocide was provided by the Allied leadership early in the Holo