Demosophia

Blog Buddies

I'm plumb tuckered, after a long day grappling with the vagaries of the job search. But my blog buddies Bravo Romeo Delta on Anticipatory Retaliation and Rusty Shackleford on My Pet Jawa have some interesting posts up.
BRD has a two part think piece on race that's well worth the time investment: part 1 and part 2. A sample graph:

I still encourage respondents to read this article. For the more significant problem is that race has turned into a societal Cold War. For all the same hideous and problems associated with peacekeeping have found their distant cousins in the language of political correctness and race-based this, that, and the other thing. All these efforts to be inclusive and diverse have simply stopped the melting pot from mixing and preserved segregation in new and inventive forms. These notions of creating a Potemkin reservation of ethnic identity in the US are, at worst, a recipe for Balkanization, and at best, Jim Crow segregation with new paint.

Rusty has a post up demonstrating that Italy is no Philippines and a fascinating account of prisoner abuse resulting from John Kerry's 1971 "Winter Soldier" testimony, from an upcoming documentary.

Jane has a post on an issue I'd have said something about, if I were a bit more animated. It concerns the chanting that attempted to stop the 200 meter finals in the Olympics, motivated by an anti-American Greek press that has been sewing conspiracy theories about their doped up lickety-splitter, Cantinflas. (Well, it was something like that anyway. Close enough.) The US response to the insult was to sweep all three medals.