*a link; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer; see also the about post and the archive of miscellany or notrehta posts
updated 2022-02-28 with the latest PDF
"Do not underestimate the destructive power of lies ... do not ever imagine that your world cannot collapse." Lessons from a Holocaust survivor to our generation, published in 2018 but every bit as relevant. https://t.co/O0wcbp1Nv2
— Julie Vitkovskaya (@Julie_Vit) February 10, 2020
Perhaps it is because I was only a child that I did not notice the storm clouds that were gathering, but I believe that many who were older and wiser than me at that time also shared my childlike state.
If disaster comes, you will find that all the myths you once cherished are of no use to you. You will see what it is like to live in a society where morality has collapsed, causing all your assumptions and prejudices to crumble before your eyes. And after it’s all over, you will watch as, slowly but surely, these harshest of lessons are forgotten as the witnesses pass on and new myths take their place.*
archived*From blondies to quesadillas, Tim Dowling's feature covers breakfast, lunch and dinner ideas with peanut butter, not forgetting yummy snacks. Some great suggestions here. No wonder peanut butter sales are soaring in the UK. https://t.co/8TcFpC06p4
— APC London (@USA_peanuts_UK) July 8, 2020
1/n Re-upping post, on two levels:
— James Fallows (@JamesFallows) June 30, 2020
-Back in 2004 I did Atlantic piece called “Blind Into Baghdad” https://t.co/rC3zwPeVgr
Its point was that risks, consequences, and blowback of US "victory" in Iraq were not just foreseeable but had been foreseen, in detail, by military planners
Over the past few months I interviewed several dozen people about what could be expected in Iraq after the United States dislodged Saddam Hussein. …
Merely itemizing the foreseeable effects of a war with Iraq suggests reverberations that would be felt for decades. If we can judge from past wars, the effects we can't imagine when the fighting begins will prove to be the ones that matter most.
—James Fallows, archived*
1/n Re-upping post, on two levels:
-Back in 2004 I did Atlantic piece called “Blind Into Baghdad”
Its point was that risks, consequences, and blowback of US "victory" in Iraq were not just foreseeable but had been foreseen, in detail, by military planners2/n
US Army War College, in particular, had laid out a detailed timeline of what was most likely to go wrong (eg, riots and looting as soon as Hussein was overthrown) and how to anticipate and minimize it. And biggest mistakes to avoid (eg, don't disband the Iraqi army.)3/n
Reading those pre-war assessments of what *not* to do, was eerily and nauseatingly parallel to reading post-war accounts of what US actually did, to disastrous effect.
US debacle in Iraq all the worse because US leaders had been warned...4/n
--but Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bremer, et al wouldn't bother to listen or learn. "Stuff happens!" in Rummy's deathless phrase.5/n
The new article I have in the Atlantic is essentially that same story about our current debacle, the pandemic.
1/ “Coping with a pandemic is one of the most complex challenges a society can face,” @JamesFallows writes. “It is a challenge that the United States did not meet.”
— The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) June 30, 2020
What went wrong? To answer that question, Fallows turned to his background in aviation. https://t.co/k4Kf7MQ57x
For what it’s worth, this is completely irrelevant.
— James Fallows (@JamesFallows) July 2, 2020
The US government knew enough, early enough, to help contain the disease *within* China, despite the Chinese govt’s coverups.
Details here:https://t.co/VfRorRZ8IG https://t.co/vcKMFyVcO0
“I am a practicing Christian but not a believing Christian.”
— George Atherton (@notrehta) June 28, 2020
—Freeman Dyson https://t.co/GOfqISQDOm / quote not in BI but cited here: https://t.co/XVJ912vPpK
I am myself a Christian, a member of a community that preserves an ancient heritage of great literature and great music, provides help and counsel to young and old when they are in trouble, educates children in moral responsibility, and worships God in its own fashion. But I find Polkinghorne’s theology altogether too narrow for my taste. I have no use for a theology that claims to know the answers to deep questions but bases its arguments on the beliefs of a single tribe. I am a practicing Christian but not a believing Christian. To me, to worship God means to recognize that mind and intelligence are woven into the fabric of our universe in a way that altogether surpasses our comprehension.
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.source: Freeman Dyson in the same piece as above*
… there can be no general rule. But for all, the gateway to reality, by whatever road one arrives at it, is the sense of ‘I am’
—Maurice Frydman: Nisarga Yoga (!?)