At Fran's sort-of-request :)

I don't follow German media all that closely but it hasn't escaped my attention that Obama's upcoming visit is getting considerably more coverage than Bush's trip in June. Sunday newspapers devoted much attention to Obama. Tomorrow, major German TV stations are expected to broadcast Obama's speech live.

Not surprisingly, Chancellor Merkel's statement that Obama should not speak in front of Brandenburg Gate received considerable attention in Germany. While the Chancellor does not decide where in Berlin Obama can or can't hold speeches (the city of Berlin does), Obama understandably did not want to upset Merkel, and the agreed upon solution was to set up the stage not at the gate but close enough that it will be seen in photos and TV shots.

There is some speculation as to why Obama picked Germany to deliver a major speech and hold talks with the Chancellor, while planning relatively low-key visits to France and the UK. I am not going to engage in this speculation.

German media follow the US election campaign quite closely (especially compared to the non-attention German politics gets in the US), hence it's not surprising that the weeklies and magazines are spending a lot of ink on Obama's trip.

The latest issue of Der Spiegel has a cover story on Obama - the title is "Germany meets the Superstar", a riff on "Germany seeks the Superstar", the German version of American Idol. Rather appropriate I thought.

Spiegel Online has an article on Obama's visit, of which I unfortunately can't find an English translation. The title is "Berlin speech has Obama aides worried"; the article talks about a fear of gaffes (especially since Obama is followed by so many US journalists) and Obama's difficult balancing act in pleasing the Europeans without offending Americans and vice versa. After all, it's American votes that Obama needs, not German ones.

Tomorrow we'll know if Obama's German visit was a success... my own gut feeling is that it will be - not that that's worth anything.

A short review of a book by Jared Diamond.

Guns, Germs, and Steel is not a new book - it was published in 1997 and even won a prize or two at that time. But for numerous reasons, I missed it back then. I saw the book being mentioned at TPM during discussions about Diamond's more recent works, but when two friends independently mentioned Guns, Germs, and Steel to me several weeks ago, I decided to buy the book and read it for myself. I did not regret that decision.

The informal subtitle of the book is A short history of about everyone for the last 13,000 years, which is highly appropriate. Guns, Germs, and Steel is a high level view of human history; it's not a view from 50,000 feet, it's a view from space.

Diamond is looking for the answer to a big question: why did human history happen the way it happened, and more precisely, why did the Western European civilization end up taking over the rest of the world instead of being taken over by, say, the Chinese or the Aztecs - especially when Europe wasn't even the most advanced continent until roughly 1,500AD.

The author starts examining human history about 13,000 years ago because that coincides with the rise of food production, domestication of plants and animals, and a move from simple tribal hunter-gatherer or nomadic societies towards more hierarchical village- and later city-based societies. Diamond gives very compelling explanations for why food production arose in the Fertile Crescent and few other areas, but not for example Australia or California.

These reasons have nothing to do with what kind of humans lived where (there is a thread of anti-racism winding through the entire book) and everything to do with facts of geography and climate. For example only several large mammals can be domesticated... and none of them happened to live in North America or Australia.

With food production and more complex societies came a positive feedback cycle involving higher population densities, more complex societies, and especially technology. This development independently started in several parts of the world, but was often brought to an abrupt halt by European colonists. We can only speculate what eg. Mesoamerica would look like in the year 2,000AD if the Europeans hadn't arrived.

Diamond builds a strong case for Eurasia being by far the most "lucky" continent due to its size, climate, and quite importantly, East-West orientation of the continental axis (in contrast to the Americas and Africa). Exchange of crops, animals, and technology sped up the development of both European and Asian civilizations.

The author provides compelling explanations for his theses, as well as a number of small case studies of human populations developing along diverging paths due to different environments. The book is generally very light on dates and names and is instead focused on general trends. However, there is a number of interesting examples of historic events, such as the conquest of South American and Mesoamerican civilizations by a shockingly small number of well armed and almost insanely daring Spaniards.

The reference to guns and steel in the title may be obvious, but what about germs? World War II was the first large war in history where humans managed to kill more humans than diseases and epidemics did. Especially the conquest of the Americas by white Europeans was greatly aided by the germs they (unintentionally) brought to the New World. Again, the author explains why it was the Europeans infecting the American Indians with nasty diseases rather than vice versa; read the book if you want to know the explanation.

For a book that is primarily a scientific work, Guns, Germs, and Steel is surprisingly readable. There is a substantial amount of information and the book contains a number of supplementary maps, tables and photographs, but the writing isn't dry. The reasoning is easy to follow and the explanations make good sense.

I would recommend the book to anyone with the slightest interest in history (and that should be everyone). Again, Guns, Germs, and Steel is not a typical history book; it examines the broad patterns of human history rather than any specific periods, countries or personalities.

Perhaps this is also an opportunity to mention other, somewhat similar books I have read... A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson - exactly what the title says. A far more general book, concerned with the history of the entire Universe and Earth, less so with the history of humankind. The Science of Discworld by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. Highly recommended for any Discworld fans, even though the title is misleading - this book is really about our world. The first volume deals with the Universe and Earth, the second volume (The Globe) focuses on the evolution and history of humans from prehistory to possible future. The third volume (Darwin's Watch) I haven't read yet and hence cannot report on. I should also mention A Study of History, a single-volume work by Arnold J. Toynbee and Jane Caplan, a book that is somewhat similar to Diamond's in scope but providing a much closer view of the history of world's civilizations.

And as always, I'm interested in hearing about which similar books I might want to be reading next...

The BBC has a very interesting article today, written by a historian who researched the Cuban Missile Crisis in great detail.

As it usually is, he found that things were not quite as they seemed, or as we were told. The most interesting - and important and scary - aspect is that even the American and Soviet leaders themselves did not necessarily have timely or accurate information.

Luckily, Kennedy at least was smart enough to realize that this was likely to be the case, and took it into account. Money quote:

Fortunately, Kennedy did not believe his own spin. His own prior
experience - both as a US Navy lieutenant in World War II and the Bay
of Pigs fiasco in 1961 - had taught him to react sceptically to the
assurances of the military brass.

Kennedy knew that letting the crisis escalate would be extremely dangerous, because things were almost guaranteed to get out of control.

The Crisis happened long before I was born, so I don't remember any of it. Maybe some of you do? If so, what was it like? Was it really something that people were taking very seriously at the time? Did everyone breathe a sigh of relief when the crisis was over?

The BBC has an interesting article titled Is the American Dream in Business? which takes a brief look at the not-so-bright prospects of contemporary Detroit.

I left the US in late 2006 for the brighter skies (economically speaking) of the Old World. At the time, things were still going pretty well in the US but you could see the gathering clouds on the horizon. The dollar was already sliding, oil prices were creeping up, and there were some signs that the house price bubble was going to burst.

Things have clearly taken a turn for the worse since then. People fear a real economic crisis, and the American Dream does not seem quite as bright and shiny as it used to. What's it looking like from where you are?

I'm really wondering how this will play out in the general election campaign. Will it be all about the same old irrelevant nonsense? Or will things get so bad that it will be simply impossible to ignore the harsh economic realities? And if so, will that play into Obama's hands, since the Republicans will have very hard time arguing that they're not responsible for the current state of the economy?

We Can... talk about something other than FISA!

Yes is the name of an English progressive rock band formed in 1968, forty years ago. Apart from a short pause in the early 1980s, the band has been active all those years.

When I was born, Yes was already famous, and some might say past their zenith. The first time I recall hearing about Yes was in 1990 on late night music radio. A year or two later I was staying at a friend's house over the summer and while browsing through his vinyl collection, I came across Close To The Edge, an album with strikingly simple light green sleeve and beautiful, haunting music. But the summer ended and with it ended my acquaintance with Yes, at least as far as the 1990s were concerned.

Fast forward 15 years; iTunes finally arrives to my laptop. Looking around the iTunes store I found Yes and remembered the green cover. After expending a modest amount of dollars I discovered that I liked the music just as much as I had fifteen years ago.

I like British prog rock music (Pink Floyd, Van der Graaf Generator) so naturally I started exploring Yes. And I liked what I saw, or rather heard. Relayer, Going for the One, Keys to Ascension, Magnification, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Tales from Topographic Oceans, even the first eponymous album from '69.

The music of Yes is... well, for one, not pop music. It's almost an anathema of pop music with long tracks (many around 20 minutes), extended instrumental sequences, high dynamic range, and somewhat impenetrable lyrics. Definitely not suited for radio play and possibly something of an acquired taste. Plus a lot of it sounds like it was made in the 1970s... because it was.

I find much of the Yes music very compelling and fascinating. I'm no musician but even I can tell that many of the Yes compositions are structured exactly like classical music, with clearly identifiable movements and main themes, yet sound so unlike classical music.

I always wonder what the music of Bach or Vivaldi or Tchaikovsky would look like if they lived today. Maybe some of it would sound a lot like Yes.

Worth mentioning are also Yes cover versions of songs by other artists, for instance Every Little Thing by the Beatles and America by Simon & Garfunkel. In both cases, it takes a bit of careful listening to realize what the originals are, but the Yes covers are different and beautiful in their own way.


It is probably wholly coincidental that Yes is also the name of a track on the latest Coldplay album, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. Compared to Yes, Coldplay is much poppier and easier to listen to. Coldplay music is colorful, sweet, mellow, inoffensive, bright, glittery, attractive, soft. It's difficult not to like Coldplay, which is probably a good reason for musical snobs to hate them.

Viva la Vida is very well produced and compared to the previous releases, it's more of an album and less a collection of independent tracks. This is also reflected in slightly longer tracks, with two around the seven minute mark.

I rather like Viva la Vida and in my opinion it's a notch above the earlier albums. I doubt anyone would claim that it's a step back for Coldplay. Certainly the charts show that Coldplay hasn't lost its fans - not that I think the charts mean anything.


If I had to guess which music will be more popular 20 years from now, Yes or Coldplay, I'd be hard pressed to make a choice. Yes has already proven its worth and while Coldplay might be a fad, I don't think it is. Coldplay is more accessible but then again, the fact that the music of Yes is more challenging is also what makes it worthwhile. We'll just have to wait and see.

As always, I'm interested in hearing recommendations of other similar music.

Time for a little Sunday book review...

The first thing that throws people off about Sandman is that it's a graphic novel, also known as a comic book. But that only determines form, not content.

The main - but not always central - character is Sandman, more often referred to as Dream or Morpheus. There is a main story arc with many branches and subplots. Sandman is a collection of stories inspired by a great number of sources. Greek, Egyptian and Norse mythology, Bible and Christian myth, Shakespeare, old African and Arabian stories, modern urban myths, plus a number of original stories. There are of course occasional hat tips to comic book heroes, but not too many of those.

Dream and his siblings are the Endless - far older and more powerful than gods, although not omnipotent (after all, having more than one omnipotent entity inevitably leads to trouble). They are, roughly in order if seniority, Destiny, Death, Dream, Desire, Despair, Destruction, and Delirium (formerly Delight).

Death is one of the more prominent characters in Sandman - she is Dream's older sister and she's... rather unorthodox. She's not evil or even threatening, she's actually very nice - if inevitable. And she usually looks like a goth chick, although like the other Endless, she can look any way she wants to if she wishes to blend with the crowd.

Many of the stories are about humans, from purely mythological (Orpheus) to real historical personages (Emperor Norton). Much of the plot is set in contemporary (ie. circa 1990) America and Britain, as well as in the Dreaming, the domain of Lord Morpheus. There are plenty of excursions to other times and places, both real and imagined.

The stories were all written by Neil Gaiman, but the drawing and coloring was done by a number of different artists. The main characters are always recognizable, and the distinct visual styles add to the variety.

Originally, Sandman was published by Vertigo as monthly issues between 1989 and 1996. There are ten volumes total, each encompassing about 10 issues. Some of the volumes contain a single storyline, others are collections of very loosely connected stories.

Sandman is clearly meant for adult readers. To fully appreciate the stories, it helps to have at least cursory knowledge of the many sources it draws upon. The stories are - like most of Gaiman's work - quite original and unpredictable, even when the author recycles well established characters and plots. Definitely not what might be called conventional.

That is no doubt part of the reason why Sandman won many accolades and is reportedly the only comic book to have made it to the NYT hardcover bestseller list to date. Norman Mailer is quoted describing Sandman as "a comic book for intellectuals".

The only drawback is that the entire Sandman, either hardcover or paperback, is outrageously expensive. I don't know if it's just a rip-off or if full color printing is really that costly.


I should also mention another book by Neil Gaiman (text only, no graphic novel) called American Gods. Compared to Sandman, American Gods is structured very differently with far tighter storyline (it wasn't written and published over the period of eight years, after all) but is similarly packed with myth. The premise of the book is that all immigrants to America brought their gods with them... and the gods are still around, disguised as ordinary people.

The book is also a kind of a road trip across America, no doubt inspired by Gaiman's own travels (Neil G. lives in the US, but is British). American Gods is truly a pantheon, with characters based on Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Egyptian, Indian, Slavic, and West African mythology (and more).

Interestingly, there are several puzzles - or clues - hidden in plain sight. The names of several characters give them away, if you know how to decode eg. "Mr. Wednesday".

In my opinion, American Gods is longer than it needs to be but not at all bad, and certainly chock full of myth and a good read overall. Recommended reading for anyone interested in myth, especially blending of ancient and modern myth.

Discuss.

Short review of a trilogy by Philip Pullman.



I kept hearing (mostly good things) about His Dark Materials for a long time; earlier this year I decided to finally bite the bullet and read the trilogy, all thousand pages of it. I even splashed on the hardcover edition.



The trilogy is billed as children's literature, but this is perhaps misleading. This is not another Harry Potter or Chronicles of Narnia.



The three books are called Northern Lights (The Golden Compass in the North American edition), The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. A powerful object of magical-like qualities ("compass", knife, spyglass) is central to the plot of each book.

The main character is a 12-year old girl named Lyra, inquisitive, uncontrollable, and more special than she knows. She lives in Oxford, but it is immediately clear this isn't the Oxford we know. For one thing, everyone has a daemon, a physical manifestation (in the form of an animal) of part of one's personality. For another, there's magic, there are witches, the Church is all-powerful. But at the same time, there is plenty technology in this world - firearms, airships, trains. Oh, and there are polar bears - fighting bears.

The first book's plot revolves about abductions of children, terrifying experiments performed on those children (not terrifying in the way you probably think of), and a quest to save them. There isn't anything all that special about the first book; it is well written and flows nicely, but its main function is to set the stage for the other two books.

The second book also starts in Oxford, with a 12-year old boy named Will Parry. Only this is the Oxford as we know it. Will gets mixed up in some sticky business and while trying to escape, he stumbles upon a pathway to a parallel world where he soon runs into Lyra.

Here the plot gets a lot more complicated. There is a number of parallel worlds and with proper equipment, it is possible to open pathways between them (but there is a cost...). Lyra and Will become, not unwillingly, pieces - definitely not pawns - in a grand game.

In the third book, yet more complexity gets thrown into the mix, with a healthy topping of religion and philosophy. Here the writing is much more for 'young adults' rather than 'children'. The events finally culminate in an Armageddon style of battle between good and evil. And no, I'm not telling you who won.

The trilogy is easy to read, but it's never dumbed down or predictable. I found it very enjoyable and even thought-provoking, fairly serious but never boring.

The books have provoked some controversy. The author was accused of being anti-Christian, which is something he does not exactly deny. The Church in the books is painted in an unflattering light; it's a parallel world, but there are enough similarities for the criticism to find its mark.

It is ironic that a book that isn't very nice to organized religion includes angels and even a god (but what's the point in believing them when plainly exist?), and the plot is clearly inspired by Biblical motives (Adam and Eve or Armageddon). His Dark Materials is an expression borrowed from Milton's Paradise Lost. In some ways, Pullman's trilogy is the anti-Narnia, set in a similarly magical world but drawing sharply different conclusions.

Pullman himself is an agnostic but his books aren't really against religion per se; what he criticizes is religious dogmatism and the belief that the ends justify the means (exemplified in the character of a padre who is an assassin).

All in all, His Dark Materials is a modern classic.

I'm interested in hearing what others thought about the books (or the movie, which I haven't seen). What similar books or authors have you read?

I would like to publicly thank the poster known as idiotic, whoever he/she/it really is, for a most valuable contribution to this primary season.

idiotic's EXCELLENT NEWS!!! has been the longest running joke I've ever experienced. The sparse economy and bold (I'm tempted to say capital) style of idiotic's humor has never failed to amuse. A work of comedic genius, idiotic's surgical strikes have not missed the mark once.

Imitators could not hold a candle to idiotic. Their posts never had the flair and razor sharp with of genuine idiotic. However, the EXCELLENT wave (dubbed the 'idiotic wave' by some) has taken idiotic's creation to the next level and provided a wonderful platform for teamwork and community building.

Thank you, idiotic. We are now eagerly awaiting EXCELLENT NEWS!! FOR MCCAIN!!!

If so - and since you're reading this, you are almost certainly a political junkie, so you should have - you should have no trouble with this little 2008 primary quiz over at BBC News.

I'm all for light to no moderation. A decent community is largely self-policing and will take care of itself - see TrollCritic 3K/4K.

Unfortunately, there's nothing the community can do about blatant spam by posters (professional spammers) like this one. I'm calling on the TPM powers that be to take care of this infestation.

It might make sense to have those "report abuse" buttons/links on blog posts. A sort of anti-recommendation. After a certain number of anti-recommends, a cleaner in authority could be notified, and would then evaluate the situation and take appropriate action. That way, no one needs to babysit the blogs but spammers can be booted off when necessary.

Let's pretend there's a mouse on this thread. All posters with cat avatars, please post here - and if you care, tell us your (cat's) name. You can play with the mouse before you pounce. Just don't drag the carcass it inside, okay?

Tigers and other felines are invited. Other animal avatars are allowed. Everyone else, please keep out - or risk a close acquaintance with some fang & claw.

And no catfights!

The Clinton strategy is very simple; it's a war of attrition. The
recipe is quite straightforward and only requires a monumental amount of
chutzpah.



It works like this: Say something outrageous. People will protest
loudly. Back down a bit. After the outrage dies down, say the same
thing, perhaps with minor modifications. There will be outrage again,
but a lot less of it. Keep at it for weeks or months, or years if need be. Never admit that
you're wrong or anything silly like that.



The end result is that your opponents are worn down and tired. They no longer have the energy to argue or even protest. You can simply outshout them. They'll fold.

Not everyone can pull off this strategy. The user needs to be a fundamentally dishonest person, or at least brainwashed (the strategy can be used in both politics and religion). Intelligent and honest people are incapable of using this method because it goes against their principles. They are reluctant to lie and in some cases even believe that ends do not justify the means.

When this strategy is properly deployed, it is almost impossible to fight against. The opponents must be ever vigilant and have virtually inexhaustible energy. On top of that, they must withstand mind-numbing repetition. This is extremely difficult and therefore this method rarely fails.

I'm sure everyone can fill in examples of persons and groups who have successfully used this strategy in the past.

Short review of a book by Richard Dawkins.

Last weekend I finished Richard Dawkins's latest (2006) book, The God Delusion. I'm an agnostic on principle, though with atheist leanings. I often disagree with Dawkins's public persona because the man just doesn't know when to stop. Nevertheless, his books tend to be lucid, informative, well written. The God Delusion is no exception.

The book's central theme is trying to find out why people believe in god. It's written from the perspective of evolutionary biology (Dawkins's field) with frequent excursions to evolutionary psychology - memes galore.

In the early chapters, Dawkins skewers a few arguments for the existence of god and posits that not only isn't god necessary to explain the Universe, the (hypothetical) existence of god raises far more questions than it answers.

As in his earlier books (eg. The Blind Watchmaker), Dawkins presents a very convincing treatise on how and why evolution works, and shows how it can elegantly explain so many seemingly inexplicable facts of nature.

Dawkins also tries to answer the question of why religion has survived thousands of years if it's as bad for us as the atheists say. He does come up with several fairly convincing explanations based on side effects of evolution.

Chapter 6 is devoted to the question of morality. Dawkins shows that cultures around the world have remarkably similar morals, even if their religions differ wildly. From that he concludes that morality is not a product of religion.

The next chapter is perhaps the most interesting. One of the reasons why many "Christians" dislike Dawkins so much is that he's read the Bible from cover to cover, and he's not afraid to talk about it. His tour of the many contradictions and just plain awful parts of the Bible is as entertaining as it is scathing.

In the closing chapters, Dawkins looks at "Intelligent Design", the clash of religion and science, and explores a few avenues for minimizing the harmful influence of religion. He claims that religion needs a consciousness-raising similar to what race or gender got, in part because too often religion gets a free pass.

Throughout the book, Dawkins (a Brit) takes stabs at American religiosity and especially its excesses (Falwell et al.). He has no truck with "cultural diversity" as a cover for atrocious behaviour. Dawkins also decries the fact that a gay black woman is more likely to be elected US president than an atheist - even though most top-tier US politicians aren't in fact very religious at all.

In the appendix, a list of "friendly addresses for individuals needing support in escaping from religion" is given.

If you're an atheist or an agnostic, read The God Delusion to educate yourself and get some ammunition for arguing with your believer friends (if you're crazy enough to talk religion with them, that is). If you are a believer and want to stay being one, avoid reading this book.

I applaud the tireless and anonymous folks who pretend to be gotalife, fogu2 and other local celebrities. Right now gotalife has at least two "shadows" (possibly the same person), if not more. I don't know if this is an effective way to fight trolls, but it's definitely funny! Kudos.

There are also several entertaining more or less fictional characters, from five or eight versions of Hillary via MonicaL up to the current apogee, Edmund Crankypants. I wonder if their creators suffer from split personality disorder yet.

In the past, another event caught my eye - that was when so many posters spontaneously(?) acquired a middle name, Hussein. It was an effective way to push back against those ridiculing Obama's name.

Are people writing dissertations on the social dynamics of Internet discussion boards? If not, I'm sure that's coming shortly.

What the heck is Terry McAuliffe on? I just watched the Terrymania video over at the mothership and it was a bit disturbing. That guy has to be on some uppers or something even stronger. He's definitely not tethered to reality.

Or do normal people actually behave like he does? I'm glad to say I don't know anyone like that...