Weeknote
Weeknote 49, 2023
§1 A song lyric “You can put your cards out on the table But if nobody wants to play Well, you haven't got a game, you got a mess” -- Patty Larkin
Latest
History
Air superiority and the American way of war
The last 3 times the US armed forces went into combat for a campaign without air superiority were: The Philippines 1942 (largest surrender of US forces outside of the US Civil War) Guadalcanal 1942-1943, (First months of the battle, US forces dont have air supremacy and have to hold
Weeknote
Weeknote 48, 2023
§1 An evolving understanding of evil As a kid, Twilight Zone episodes scared me, but Perry Mason episodes didn't. As a 50-something, it's the other way around. §2 A writing prompt If you'd been the kind of person to save the leather jacket,
Weeknote
Weeknote 47, 2023
§1 “Listening” The Southern Poverty Law Center doesn't listen to me when I ask it to take me off its mailing list. Why would I think it would care about any survey response I sent back? §2 Quotation “Being cool is the enemy of doing cool.”—Wayne Coyne
Weeknote
Weeknote 46, 2023
§1 I'll Have What This Is Giving A great New Wave throwback from the British band Wooze. §2 Quotation “The authors of research papers have no obligation to share their data and code, and I have no obligation to believe anything they write.”—Andrew Gelman §3 Consider the
Weeknote
Weeknote 45, 2023
§1 The humility of the solver Working a crossword puzzle can be humbling. There is simply no way around the fact that if I knew Subject X as well as I thought I did, then I could easily fill in the answer given that clue. §2 Who's the
Economics
The fate of Marxist historiography
[I]n response to complaints on the right that the crimes of right-leaning authoritarian regimes are somehow over-taught and left-leaning authoritarian regimes are under-taught [...] I should note that I took my Russian and Chinese history courses at the University of Massachusetts located in the beautiful People’
Weeknote
Weeknote 44, 2023
§1 Der Kommissar Having learned that "Der Kommissar" was the title of a cult-favorite German TV series several years before it was a song title (in German and English), I now wonder if the TV series inspired the song. (Side note: If someone wanted to write a
Media
The NYT crossword archive
The best part of my New York Times subscription is access to not just the last 30 years of its daily crosswords (about 10,000 puzzles in all), but to a well-designed interface for solving them online. I have started from the start and am playing my way forward.
Weeknote
Weeknote 43, 2023
§1 Quotation “I’m not interested in doing research and I never have been, I’m interested in understanding, which is quite a different thing.”—David Blackwell §2 Everything is a Remix Kirby Ferguson's "Everything is a Remix" is every bit as good as advertised as
Weeknote
Weeknote 42, 2023
§1 Autumn in New York Allison Young and Josh Turner perform a delightful rendition of one of my favorite American Standards songs. §2 Typists (Part 1) A lesson I learned during Usenet days is that some people think before they write and some people just type. An exchange with a
Politics
Tu quoque machines
[A] predictable rhetorical patterning […] haunts not just American but global discussions of Israel and Palestine. There are people wholly devoted to one side or the other who are essentially tu quoque machines who go into particular overdrive when they’re sure that their own side is morally less odious in