Nationalism Rules - By Stephen M. Walt. What's the most powerful political force in the world? Some of you might say it's the bond market. Others might nominate the resurgence of religion or the advance of democracy or human rights. Or maybe it's digital technology, as symbolized by the Internet and all that comes with it. Or perhaps you think it's nuclear weapons and the manifold effects they have had on how states think about security and the use of force. Those are all worthy nominees (no doubt readers here will have their own favorites), but my personal choice for the Strongest Force in the World would be nationalism. It was nationalism that cemented most of the European powers in the modern era, turning them from dynastic states into nation-states, and it was the spread of nationalist ideology that helped destroy the British, French, Ottoman, Dutch, Portuguese, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian/Soviet empires.
Understanding the power of nationalism also tells you a lot about what is happening today in the European Union. Philip Pilkington: Neoclassical Dogma – : How Economists Rationalise Their Hatred of Free Choice. By Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer living in Dublin, Ireland What if all the world’s inside of your head Just creations of your own? Your devils and your gods All the living and the dead And you’re really all alone? You can live in this illusion You can choose to believe You keep looking but you can’t find the woods While you’re hiding in the trees – Nine Inch Nails, Right Where it Belongs Modern economics purports to be scientific.
It is this that lends its practitioners ears all over the world; from the media, from policymakers and from the general public. Yet, at its very heart we find concepts that, having been carried over almost directly from the Christian tradition, are inherently theological. We’ve all heard it before of course: isn’t neoclassical economics a religion of sorts?
Let us turn first to one of the most unusual and oft-cited pieces of contemporary economic doctrine: rational expectations theory. Rational expectations is indeed an obscure doctrine. Barbara Ehrenreich: Smile or Die. Hello there! If you enjoy the content on Neuroanthropology, consider subscribing for future posts via email or RSS feed. I just finished washing watching (!) The RSA Animate version of journalist and social critic Barbara Ehrenreich’s talk on the perils of positive thinking. It came out a year ago, but I found it as relevant now as then. We’re still not out of the economic crisis; positive psychology has continued to gain strength. The ideological side of positive thinking, of how it morphs into suppression and denial, a happy face for everything, is what Ehrenreich discusses, encompanied by the delightful illustrations of Cognitive Media.
Is there something wrong with a society that tells us we can have what we want if only we focus hard enough, adopt a relentlessly positive outlook, and really, really hope for it? You can see the original talk by Ehrenreich here, which presents a longer version of the same talk, including a discussion of breast cancer and the pink ribbon culture. Slumlands filthy secret of the modern mega-city. There is a long curve of water and, as far as the eye can see, there are shacks, garbage, washing, tin, bits of wood, scraps of cloth, rats and children. The water is grey, but at the edges there's a flotsam of multicoloured plastic rubbish. This is the Estero de San Miguel, the front line in an undeclared war between the rich and poor of Manila.
Figures emerge from creaky doors to move along bits of walkway. In the deep distance is the dome of a mosque; beyond that are skyscrapers. Mena Cinco, a community leader here, volunteers to take me in - but only about 50 yards. After that, she cannot guarantee my safety. At the bottom of a ladder, the central mystery of the Estero de San Miguel is revealed: a long tunnel, four feet wide, dark except for the occasional bare bulb.
We knock on the first one that's ajar. The room is eight feet by eight and forms their entire dwelling space. Why did he move? “But they're happy," Mena chips in. This is not an idle threat. Deep in the jungle? Health Now: A Provocation - The Chronicle Review. By Mark Edmundson A certain part of the American population now lives for nothing so much as it does for good health. There is protracted compulsive exercise, with a keen understanding of exactly how much cardio is necessary to reach maximum benefits. Weight training is crucial, of course, but never so much as to threaten injury. There is care for the diet, which must be rich in the right form of antioxidants, appropriately sparing of meat but not devoid of protein, and jungle-prolific with leafy greens.
Wine? Of course there must be wine, and red is the best. Everywhere you go in a certain segment of bourgeois America you see men and women dressed in childish togs trooping off to yoga class or heading to the gym for aerobics or jogging along—six, seven, eight miles, often at a toddler's pace—in the heat, dust, and traffic of the late afternoon. Why all the fuss? But the intensity of pursuit makes one pause and speculate a bit. This ought to be no surprise. Think Again: War - By Joshua S. Goldstein. "The World Is a More Violent Place Than It Used to Be. " No way. The early 21st century seems awash in wars: the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, street battles in Somalia, Islamist insurgencies in Pakistan, massacres in the Congo, genocidal campaigns in Sudan.
All in all, regular fighting is taking place in 18 wars around the globe today. Public opinion reflects this sense of an ever more dangerous world: One survey a few years ago found that 60 percent of Americans considered a third world war likely. Expectations for the new century were bleak even before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and their bloody aftermath: Political scientist James G. Blight and former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara suggested earlier that year that we could look forward to an average of 3 million war deaths per year worldwide in the 21st century. So far they haven't even been close. Armed conflict has declined in large part because armed conflict has fundamentally changed.
Getty Images Yes and no. Trust Issues. Essays Hartwick College didn’t really mean to annihilate the U.S. economy. A small liberal-arts school in the Catskills, Hartwick is the kind of sleepy institution that local worthies were in the habit of founding back in the 1790s; it counts a former ambassador to Belize among its more prominent alumni, and placidly reclines in its berth as the number-174-ranked liberal-arts college in the country. But along with charming buildings and a spring-fed lake, the college once possessed a rather more unusual feature: a slumbering giant of compound interest. With bank rates currently bottomed out, it’s hard to imagine compound interest raising anyone much of a fortune these days. A hundred-dollar account at 5 percent in simple interest doggedly adds five bucks each year: you have $105 after one year, $110 after two, and so on.
Modest, that is, at first. One suspects they’d have rather gotten a new squash court. Franklin’s plans soared beyond a mere century, though. And then it disappeared. Charles Darwin, Economist - Robert Frank. I was born in 1945. When someone my age forecasts something that will happen fifty or a hundred years from now, he needn’t worry about being teased by friends if it doesn’t pan out. Without trepidation, then, I offer the following prediction: One century hence, if a roster of professional economists is asked to identify the intellectual father of their discipline, a majority will name Charles Darwin. If the same question were posed today, of course, more than 99 percent of my colleagues would name Adam Smith.
My views about Darwin’s significance reflect no shortage of admiration for Smith. On the contrary, reading any random passage from the 18th-century Scottish moral philosopher’s masterwork, The Wealth of Nations, still causes me to marvel at the depth and breadth of his insights. I base my prediction on a subtle but extremely important distinction between Darwin and Smith’s views of the competitive process. The Competitive Process A case in point is the outsized antlers of bull elk. A Sociology of Steve Jobs - Kieran Healy. Steve Jobs had charisma. What does that mean? Narrowly, it means something about the force of the man’s personality and its effects on those who worked for him at Apple. More broadly, it has something to do with his gradual emergence as a cultural icon over the past decade. The wave of emotion that washed across the Internet following the news of his death is evidence of how important he was to many people.
Business leaders don’t often come to have that sort of cultural resonance. Apple’s storefronts became impromptu shrines and memorials, something we can safely say will not happen at gas stations or supermarkets when the CEOs of Exxon Mobil or Nestlé pass on. There has been a smaller but still noticeable backlash from those who found the scale and content of these initial reactions bizarre or repellent. Whichever way you see it, there is clearly more at work here than measured assessments of someone who excelled in maximizing shareholder value.
Charismatic Authority. Viewpoint: Is the alcohol message all wrong? 12 October 2011Last updated at 00:54 Concerns are high over binge drinking Many people think heavy drinking causes promiscuity, violence and anti-social behaviour. That's not necessarily true, argues Kate Fox. I am a social anthropologist, but what I do is not the traditional intrepid sort of anthropology where you go and study strange tribes in places with mud huts and monsoons and malaria. I really don't see why anthropologists feel they have to travel to unpronounceable corners of the world in order to study strange tribal cultures with bizarre beliefs and mysterious customs, when in fact the weirdest and most puzzling tribe of all is right here on our doorstep. And if you want examples of bizarre beliefs and weird customs, you need look no further than our attitude to drinking and our drinking habits. Clearly, we Brits do have a bit of a problem with alcohol, but why?
But we are wrong. There is enormous cross-cultural variation in the way people behave when they drink alcohol. End Quote. What happened to irony? Remember the scene in “Reality Bites” where Wynona Ryder is asked to define irony? “Irony. Uh … Irony. It’s a noun. It’s when something is … ironic. It’s, uh … Well, I can’t really define irony but I know it when I see it!” Irony is one of those terms that can be hard to define, particularly since it is often used interchangeably with other related (but distinct) terms like satire, sarcasm, cynicism and snark. Why is irony such a difficult concept to grasp? Philosophy professor Jonathan Lear sets out to answer this question in his new book, “A Case for Irony,” attempting to redefine and flesh out this term from the pat and the vague.
Lear spoke with Salon over the phone to discuss this obscured meaning of irony, its connection with erotic impulse, its usefulness in the political arena, and Lincoln’s smarting humor. You set out to define irony in this book and find that it has little to do with what is commonly understood by the term (i.e., wit and detachment). It’s very complicated. The barra bravas: the violent Argentinian gangs controlling football | Football | The Observer. Like many of those living in Villa Fiorito, one of Argentina's most dangerous slums, Jose Mendez takes his shots at glory when he can – like the day five years ago when he slung the shirt of a rival football club over his shoulder and paraded through the streets of his neighbourhood like a returning warrior.
Cigarette clamped between his teeth and basketball shirt hanging off his skinny frame, Mendez recounts the fight he waged to win his trophy: the crowded streets after a big match; the other fan putting up a struggle; Mendez, pumped up on chemicals and cheap beer, knocking him down into the street, smashing his face and kicking him until he could get the shirt off his back. "I took the shirt," he says. I put it over my shoulder and walked through the barrio with everyone watching. " He struts up and down the dirt path outside his family home, replaying his victory march.
"After that I was in, they knew how much I loved the club. I was one of them. " Mendez has a different story. 'Nudge' policies are another name for coercion - opinion - 09 November 2011. WE HAVE all cringed watching friends and family make terrible decisions, and been tempted by visions of the pain spared if we could only make them follow our advice. The same feeling motivates well-intentioned technocrats to take charge of the public: people are plainly making sad blunders they will regret. Economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein (now a senior policy-maker in the Obama administration) present the latest, and subtlest, version of this temptation in their influential work on "nudging" people into making wiser choices.
They argue that wise decision-makers should tweak the options and information available so that the easiest choice is the right one. For example, this can guide people to donate their organs if they die unexpectedly by making organ donation an opt-out rather than an opt-in choice. And it can encourage people to plan for their pensions by making pension contributions automatic for everyone who does not explicitly opt out of the system.
The FP Top 100 Global Thinkers. All revolutionaries want their stories told to the world, and no one has conveyed the hopes and dreams of Egyptians more vividly than Alaa Al Aswany. The dentist turned author rose to fame with his 2002 novel, The Yacoubian Building, which charted Egypt's cultural upheaval and gradual dilapidation since throwing off its colonial shackles. Aswany used his prominence to help found the Kefaya political movement, which first articulated the demands that would energize the youth in Tahrir Square: an end to corruption, a rejection of hereditary rule, and the establishment of a true democratic culture. For his political activism, Aswany was blacklisted by Egypt's state-owned publishing houses, and security officials harassed the owner of the cafe where he met with young writers.
How times change. Aswany was a fixture in Tahrir Square during Egypt's uprising -- he was almost killed three times, he said, during the running battles between demonstrators and pro-Mubarak thugs. John Ritter. The New Inquiry - The Resentment Machine. (Geoff McFetridge, via) The immiseration of the digital creative class The popular adoption of the internet has brought with it great changes. One of the peculiar aspects of this particular revolution is that it has been historicized in real time—reported accurately, greatly exaggerated, or outright invented, often by those who have embraced the technology most fully. As impressive as the various changes wrought by the exponential growth of internet users were, they never seemed quite impressive enough for those who trumpeted them. In a strange type of autoethnography, those most taken with the internet of the late 1990s and early 2000s spent a considerable amount of their time online talking about what it meant that they were online.
Yet for all the endless consideration of the rise of the digitally connected human species, one of the most important aspects of internet culture has gone largely unnoticed. It is, of course, possible to keep running on the wheel indefinitely. Cigarettes may be useful for distance runners?!? (or, How to prove anything with a review article) The Crisis in Clean Energy.
The myth of renewable energy. Is Child Sexual Abuse on the Rise? New Technologies Redraw the World’s Energy Picture. The Saving Game: Can Michael VanRooyen Build an Army of Super-Humanitarians? - Boston Magazine - bostonmagazine.com.