WeBlog

Who would want to be writing a weekly news magazine at the moment? It’s bad enough for the newspapers you wake up every morning and another twist or turn has occurred. So how does the Economist respond? Well in the only way it can, giving the historical perspective. History doesn’t change, and all you have to do is identify the relevant issues and write stuff well.

The Economist’s piece of the history of modern finance is excellent in giving this perspective. It should be good reading for anyone trying to get their head round the present financial situation.

The Economist has an interesting review of a book by Michael Rose, the former British General called "Washington's War: From Independence to Iraq".

Essentially he is arguing that George III and George Bush both have the same kinds of flaws that led them to failure in America's War of Independence and fighting the insurgency in Iraq.

"Like King George and his advisers, Mr Bush and his lieutenants misunderstood the nature of the problem facing them in Iraq and underestimated its scale. Both imperial Britain and modern America failed to commit enough troops early on. Nor could they resolve the dilemmas of counter-insurgency: how to wage military action without alienating the local population; and how to isolate the insurgents.

He compares Britain's former mastery of the seas with America's mastery of the air and George Washington's harrying tactics with ambushes of American supply convoys in Iraq. He also finds similarities between Washington's loss of New York in 1776 and Saddam Hussein's loss of Baghdad. He casts Iran in France's 18th-century role as the vital ally of the insurgents. "

A thought provoking thesis, and certainly one that bares closing investigation. However, I won't be reading the book, as the Economist review is less than complementary. However, it is a thought that I might turn to in the future.

Follow up : I see Michael Rose is also plugging his book on Start the Week on 30th April - Have a look here .

Read an article on Social Networking in the Economist. You can read it here .

It is refering to a new IBM tool called Lotus Connections that is to be released soon "that lets company employees post detailed profiles of themselves, team up on projects and share bookmarks. One manufacturer testing the software is using it to put inexperienced members of its customer-services team in touch with the right engineers.".

Certainly looks interesting. I think it also links to the idea of producing innovation hot-spots, see my entry "Hotspots — the way to manufacture genius in the workplace ". If you can create interactions that would not normally occur in the physical world then you create more opportunity for innovative interactions.

Durham are hosting what looks to be a very interesting conference entitled "Darwin, Science and Belief". Looks like a very good collection of speakers, including Dennis Alexander whose  book Rebuilding the Matrix on Science and Faith in the 21st Century is a good and informative read.

It's on the 19th April 2007 hosted by the Anthropology department. I'm not sure if I can attend, but I would certainly encourage others to.

http://www.dur.ac.uk/ias/events/thematic/darwin_science_and_belief/

A thought provoking article by Fukuyama in which he argues that western libralism is failing to stand up for itself.

The end of history appears again!
"Multiculturalism, as it was originally conceived in Canada, the US and Europe, was in some sense a "game at the end of history." That is, cultural diversity was seen as a kind of ornament to liberal pluralism that would provide ethnic food, colourful dress and traces of distinctive historical traditions to societies often seen as numbingly conformist and homogeneous. Cultural diversity was something to be practised largely in the private sphere, where it would not lead to any serious violations of individual rights or otherwise challenge the essentially liberal social order. Where it did intrude into the public sphere, as in the case of language policy in Quebec, the deviation from liberal principle was seen by the dominant community more as an irritant than as a fundamental threat to liberal democracy itself."

However, I think the thing he misses in his call for greater integration is that you attract bees better with honey than with vinegar. If integration and building of diversity is more successful than division, then we should integrate as individuals and we will do better. In doing so this model of integration will appear to others to be successful leading to emulation.

However, if integration is not the right way to go then perhaps this method will allow us to see that too.