Thursday, July 27, 2006

why

how come everytime you install something you have to reboot your computer. . . is it me or does that frustrate you too?
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things i hate about bloggin

well, for starters when i have a really good idea for a blog i'm never near a computer, and if i am i don't have enough time. Then i forget to write down the topic in my trusty notepad on google's homepage. if that wasn't enough, i forget the rest.
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Friday, July 21, 2006

Black America?

so i just wrote about reading Clash of Civilizations. And of course that has me think, well who am i. As an 'african america' i was thinking about what 'civilization' should i be aligning with. Of course i was born and raised in America, as were at least 7 generations of my family (what many af-ams don't realize and relish in), but i'm distinctively not american by the normal conception of who an 'american' is.

In the book Clash of Civilizations the author,i guess i should remember his name, harrington or something. . . no huntington is closer. . . anyhoo the author talks about the conflict between christian "Eurpoe" (which is really west asia) and Muslim Middle-East Asia. So that had me thinking about the religious and linguistic situation of Black Americans, and Blacks in the Americas.
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The Clash of Civilizations

i really wish i could be paid for being smart.So i'm reading "the clash of Civilzations" by som guy. It was written in 1996, so you'd think the stuff would be out of date. Actually, i heard about it before and i'm now mad i didn't read it before. In the past year or two i've read Thomas somone or other''s book The Pentagon's New Map and the more recent the Lexus and the Olive Tree. All three of them are good books in their own right. All three of them suffer from wanting to describe the 'one big ting' in international politics. But only clash of Civilizations comes close to identifying something meaningful.

The Lexus and Olive Tree seems to want everyone to think that with the world-wide communication systems being built that the world is going to be one big happy family. The Pentagon's new Map seems to think that the US should really become not only the world's police, but also its social worker, tyring to get everyone hooked up into the information age and employable. But both of these authors i think have read "Clash" (i remember Olive tree man saying so but i'm not so sure about Pentagon man) and try to put out their own point.

The thing i love about Clash is that it not only has great analyses of civilizational disputes, these disputes go back thousands of years, if not millenia. So the cultural analysis of conflict goes when core values of civilizations conflict. As a bachelored historian and a love of world history besides, i love this book. It does get a little redundant and you feel pressured into the abstract framework until he actually starts analyzing teh balkans, Turkey and other countries.

I guess i should finish the book before i go on. If i never mention it again, please read it anyway.
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Al Gore is a whimp, James Lovelock says Gaia is Dying,

While sailing on the Chesapeake (or however you spell it . . .and Kareem peep the 'metis' reference) i was listening to a radio program from canada, my gramps loves short-wave. There was an interview with James Lovelock, the person who came out with the "gaia" theory that the earth was an organism and it was getting sick.

If you remember back to the mid 90's there was a theory that if humanity stopped polluting, then the earth could reset its metabolism and heal itself in 75-100 years. In the interview he said that it's too late. He said the problem was that politicians are listening to green lobbies who advocate sustainable development, but neither of them are knowledgeable about the science that says the earth isn't healthy and is in fact dying.

He went on to say that the politicians should stop worrying about green development and start thinking about the massive migrations that are going to happen around the world due to the change in climate. For instance he said about 100 million Indians will need a place to stay when Bangladesh goes under when the ice caps melt. Got an extra room for Sandip?

So there you have it. Gaia is dying, from the horses mouth.

But the good news is that i'm going to save a lot of money on car insurance by switching to Geico.
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