SubscribeThe Post-American World
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The Post-American World
by Fareed Zakaria - Publisher: W. W. Norton
- Year: 2008
- Pages: 288
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- What is 52 Books in 52 Weeks?
- №69
This book briefly flared into the limelight this campaign season when Barack Obama was seen reading it. It also inspired yet another dumbshit chain email asserting that the book was “a Muslim’s view of a defeated America!” Like most of the dreck which comes out of this specious subculture of conservative email forwarding, it’s utter nonsense.
In defense of open models
Andrew Keen has no idea how open models work.
In his latest article, he pontificates that the recent economic downturn is a death knell for community-supported or community-built programs/sites/&c.
So how will today’s brutal economic climate change the Web 2.0 “free” economy? It will result in the rise of online media businesses that reward their contributors with cash; it will mean the success of Knol over Wikipedia, Mahalo over Google, TheAtlantic.com over the HuffingtonPost.com, iTunes over MySpace, Hulu over YouTube Inc., Playboy.com over Voyeurweb.com, TechCrunch over the blogosphere, CNN’s professional journalism over CNN’s iReporter citizen-journalism… The hungry and cold unemployed masses aren’t going to continue giving away their intellectual labor on the Internet in the speculative hope that they might get some “back end” revenue. “Free” doesn’t fill anyone’s belly; it doesn’t warm anyone up.
There are really two broad fallacies that need addressing here. The first is Keen’s use of the word “open source,” which here is a misnomer. He never mentions Linux, Apache, or other open source programs which always have and will continue to have a dedicated base of programmers, most of whom work on it in their spare time, without any remuneration except personal pride and the esteem of their peers. It need hardly be noted that an economic downtown is likely to increase interest in open-source software, as it likely reduces operating costs for businesses.
Wednesday’s Word LI
- mortgage
- n. A special form of secured loan where the purpose of the loan must be specified to the lender, to purchase assets that must be fixed (not movable) property such as a house or piece of farm land. The assets are registered as the legal property of the borrower but the lender can seize them and dispose of them if they are not satisfied with the manner in which the repayment of the loan is conducted by the borrower. Once the loan is fully repaid, the lender loses this right of seizure and the assets are then deemed to be unencumbered.
With all the national hullabaloo lately about America’s economy going down the shitter, Wall Street brokers rending their garments and gnashing their teeth, and the term “subprime mortgage” acquiring an opprobrium usually reserved for choice monosyllables with a surplus of dentals and velar plosives. But “mortgage” has been one of those words that is surprisingly unknown in an etymological sense.
Old French morgage, from mort gaige, literally means “dead pledge.” Mort is easy enough, traced back to the Latin mori, “to die.” Gage is a slightly less obvious root that came to Old French through Frankish from P.Gmc. *wadiare. This is the same transformation which produced our modern “wage,” which is literally a pledge to pay (a salary).
Our English “pledge,” however, is from an entirely different origin. It’s from the 14th-century plege, meaning a “surety” or “bail,” once again from Frankish (*plegan) and ultimately from Germanic. It had early connotations of a promise made by drinking, though ironically it later became (“The Pledge”) a term of Temperance.
Republican logic
See if you can intuit this one:
- A bailout plan, created in the White House and pushed extensively by President Bush, is sent to Congress.
- A majority (≈60%) of Democrats voted for the bill.
- A majority (≈67%) of Republicans voted against the bill.
- “Republicans blamed [Nancy Pelosi]… for the vote’s failure.”
What?
Our Dumb World
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Our Dumb World
by The Onion - Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
- Year: 2007
- Pages: 256
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- What is 52 Books in 52 Weeks?
- №13
The Onion has long been known as one of the snarkiest satirical rags around, first in its print form, and later as a website. They also put out damn books damn near yearly, either archives or original compilations of new material. Their latest, Our Dumb World is a fictional atlas.
After the success of Jon Stewart’s America: The Book, there is something to be said for humour books which explicitly take the form of education texts. In Stewart’s case, the form was a high school social studies textbook; in The Onion’s case, it’s an atlas, though lighter on maps and heavier on sidebars than a traditional atlas.
Grouped into sections like “North America,” “The Middle East,” and “Asia,” these regions are further divided into countries, and in the cases of America, even further into states. Each entry has a map with a meaningless legend, as well as meaningless text pointing to equally meaningless spots on the map. There is an introductory blurb of text, “Facts” at a glance, and a panel for the nation’s history, as well. In the top of the page are thumbnail images, sometimes accompanied by (humourous) explanatory text.
The Good: I’m blown away by the amount of effort it must have taken to compile this book; the image selection, the minutiae, the word choice. Since basically each single instance of text comprises a joke, it’s impressive that I don’t recall the writers ever specifically repeating a joke. This, in a book with what amounts to thousands of jokes.
Also, it’s funny. The Onion‘s writers have a mastery of satire and a keen grasp of the quirks of humanity.
The Bad: Some items got repetitive. Every entry in Africa, for instance, gave basically the same impression. The jokes were different, but the point the same. It is, in all likelihood, a valid point (i.e. many/most African nations are plagued by corruption, civil war, and poor infrastructure), but broad criticism delivered many times for individual constituents can get old. So can the tiny, tiny type, which began to give me headaches if I read too long.
The jokes could get pretty extreme. I realize they were always making a point (No “How can you fit 100 Jews into an ashtray” kind of jokes), and I was never offended, you might want to stay away if you’re got more delicate sensibilities. Actually, if you’ve got delicate sensibilities, you probably shouldn’t be reading anything by The Onion anyway, so perhaps the point is moot.
Condensed Knowledge
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Condensed Knowledge
by Will Pearson et al. - Publisher: Collins
- Year: 2004
- Pages: 345
- See the rest of this year's listings
- What is 52 Books in 52 Weeks?
- №12
My brother’s been reading mental_floss and its associated books for several years. Condensed Knowledge is, to the extent of my knowledge, the first of their [adjective] Knowledge compendia, essentially giant books of trivia. After having my appetite whetted by A.J. Jacobs (who, though is a contributor to mental_floss, does not have any material in this particular book), I decided to try my hand at one of these.
To be honest, Condensed Knowledge is a little hit-or-miss. Personally, I can’t quite figure out of it’s supposed to be a “Knowledge for Dummies” kind of book, or a “Bet You Didn’t Know…” kind of book. It’s organized into sections based on topic; e.g. “Condensed Religion,” “Condensed Geography,” “Condensed Art.” Each section contains a bunch of 1 or 2-page articles with a variable number of trivia. For example, “5 Famous Sculptors” or “7 Ancient Civilizations You Never Knew About.” Each subitem gets a little blurb.
Perhaps it’s just my own variable knowledge that made the book seem inconsistent. When I’m being told, somewhat condescendingly, about famous painters, I think to myself, “Why am I reading this again?” But when the books veers into the esoteric, like little-known painful rituals in history, it becomes genuinely interesting. Even within a section (each section being written by a different author or co-authors), there is remarkable inconsistency: religion, for instance, goes from the stupidly simple to the genuinely interesting.
Then, too, some of the authors seem to have a better grasp of neutrality than others. The author responsible for the philosophy section, for instance, really hates Jean-Paul Sartre, and made those feelings known on at least two separate occasions.
Remember, too, that the purposed of Condensed Knowledge is to tell you a little bit about a lot of things. There’s no in-depth analysis here; sometimes the author repeats a misconception or is so glib that they misrepresent their topic.
Despite its flaws, the book was a fun enough read. If nothing else, it should function similarly to Wikipedia: if you read a blurb that piques your knowledge, or that sounds suspicious, go research it. I know that happened with not a few topics in my case. In that respect, I suppose, the book has fulfilled its mission.
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The entire site isn’t down, but the index page is blank. The contact page is still up, though.
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