A Modest Construct

Posts tagged `essays`

¶ Two-Factor Theory

See this in PDF format; revised 21 October 2008.

The relatively inglorious origins of organizational behavior as a field of study began as little more than queries into potential ways to improve productivity and reduce human variability—this at the advent of mass production as practiced today, with Henry Ford’s mechanized production line leading the charge. By the middle of the 20th century, organizational behavior as a codified field of study began to shift to a sort of organizational psychology, dedicated not to eliminating or marginalizing the human factors associated with production, but rather controlling and tempering them. The idea that employees were not only human, but complex persons with the capacity for actualization, began to some degree with the work of Elton Mayo (Pugh & Hickson, 2007, p. 217), but realized some shade of its existing form after World War II, lead by researchers such as Frederick Herzberg.

¶ Hanging Babylon: Functionalist policy and the war in Iraq

Alternatively, read the PDF format

Several weeks ago, the War in Iraq entered its fourth year—despite the official “end of major combat” that the codpiece-sporting President announced mere months after it began—and the steady sectarian violence pursuant to the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party shows no encouraging signs of abatement. It has been a busy four years, with opponents of the war criticizing its planners for the endless stream of seemingly empty motivations, the President and his closest associates maintaining the need to finish stabilizing the region, regardless of cost, and a growing swell of political moderates noting the sour taste that the whole affair has left in their mouths. To a reader in 2007, it seems silly—almost masochistic—to read accounts like Anne Garrels’ Naked in Baghdad: the book chronicles the NPR correspondent’s time in Iraq from just before to less than a month after the United States’ invasion, and its message seems congruent with the cries that have been heard since 2003, the truth falling somewhere in between the most stringent rhetoric from either ideological side. This is old news—no pun intended.

Garrels’ fragmented narrative does not coalesce into an overarching parable about preemptive war or the human cost of conflict, nor does it fall prey to maudlin sympathies. The most important “string”—to borrow one of Garrels’ own metaphors—to be found in the story of Iraq’s fall is the similarities to the ailing Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Not only is Russian language and influence pervasive in the Middle East—Garrels notes this, citing the Soviet Union’s own intrusions into the region during the 20th century—but the parallels between Saddam Hussein and some of the former U.S.S.R.’s less illustrious leaders, and between the two countries’ essential dissolution into chaos and mob rule during regime change, is a pressing allusion.

¶ Love, Poverty, and War

Love, Poverty, and War by Christopher Hitchens: Publisher: Nation Books; Year: 2003; Pages: 475

Anyone who’s frequented my blog to any significant degree knows that I am (mostly) a fan of Christopher Hitchens. I find him an excellent journalist, as well as a man of scruples, a great lover/scholar of literature, an iconoclast of the highest order, and an all-around interesting writer. Most importantly, he neither requests nor offers any alliances except to the principles he holds dear: liberty, civil liberty, intellectual vigor, and the rooting out of corruption.

Of late, you might know Hitchens for his unapologetic support of the invasion of Iraq. He’s been a talking head on a variety of networks—FNC included—to proffer his justifications for the war. But Hitchens has been around a long time: you might recall his screed against Mother Teresa, his contempt for Bill Clinton, or his struggle to oust and prosecute Henry Kissinger for war crimes (all three of this subjects have been tackled in books by Hitchens). He’s written in a variety of contexts—more than I ever realized—and this collection of essays seeks to offer a decent cross section of that canon.

The book, as the title might indicate, is divided into three sections.

Love • This section consists mostly of Hitchens’ passions—that is, reviews of famous literature or books or history. It begins with a lengthy essay about Winston Churchill (through the lens of several biographies and books and history) written for Atlantic Monthly. It continues along that vein, jumping from introductions of Huxley’s Brave New World to contextual criticism of Rudyard Kipling, to reviews of other literary criticism. It spans a wide gamut, but it’s a side of Hitchens that is rarely seen except to owners of n^th-anniversary reprints of select novels or subscribers to Atlantic Monthly or a ragtag collection of literary journals. It’s not the best lit-crit I’ve ever read, but it’s still damned interesting.
- Americana • As a postscript to the “Love” section is a series of articles dealing specifically with American culture. One long essay, I believe for Harper’s, recalls Hitchens’ journey across historic Route 66 in a Corvette, and reminds me more of Bill Bryon’s The Lost Continent than anything by Hitchens.
Poverty • This section is a catch-all for any of Hitchens’ polemics that aren’t Iraq-related. A screed against Mother Teresa, for instance, as well as an extraordinarily poignant piece about an execution he witnessed in Missouri (and of course capital punishment in general). These are some of his most reflective pieces, even if they contain at points a fair amount of ire. Remember that Hitchens isn’t one to pull any punches.
War • “War” is, as one might imagine, predicated entirely upon the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, although it is further bifurcated into a “Before September” section, which consists largely of early-90s pieces about the first Gulf War—and a notable argument about Montenegro during the conflict in Yugoslavia—, and an “After September,” which chronicles some of Hitchens more immediate responses to the attack, more measured pieces months later advocating military responses, and finally a few articles dealing with the invasion of Iraq.

I’m sorry to say that the final essay, for all its merits, strikes me as a somewhat jingoistic, “Iraq: A Country on the Move!” sort of fluff piece. It’s a soft end, I think, and not one that holds up well several years later, when prospects aren’t as bright and sunny as Hitchens makes them out to be. Still and all, one has to respect Hitchens’ clarity of argument—I find that my own opinions have been tempered somewhat by his writing—and the nuance and skill with which he approaches his subject. Love, Poverty, and War is a mere sampling of Hitchens’ incredible archives, but it’s the sort of compilation I’ve been looking for, since I’m not a regular reader of anything but his Slate articles. If you’re a Hitchens fan, or just want to see what he has to say, give this one a chance.

§1832 · April 22, 2007 · 1 comment · Tags: Book Reviews, books, Christopher Hitchens, essays, literature, Middle East, politics, reviews

¶ With Friends Like These: Developing countries in a war of political attrition

rev. 6 February 2007. Get the PDF

Though America’s days of colonization had been over for roughly half a century by the time two resounding explosions in the far east violently christened the Cold War, the newly-global political system set in motion a novel U.S. foreign policy of economic and diplomatic pressure in developing countries (though shared to varying degrees by both its allies and enemies) which would later be turned into the pejorative “cultural imperialism.” This phrase is not entirely without merit, but neither is it always applied fairly, for in many cases the influx of U.S. dollars was good for all parties involved, and a change in culture was predicated entirely upon a more stable economy and not a purposeful imposition of “Western” values. If America qua Imperial Power had been dormant for 50 years, then, whence the accusations of cultural imperialism? Read more…

§1717 · February 10, 2007 · (No comments) · Tags: essays, politics

¶ Around the Block: High-Performance *nix Filesystems

rev. 12 December 2006. Get the PDF.

The aspect of an operating system most often overlooked is its filesystem, the method by which data is stored to more permanent media—most often a magnetic hard drive. On any relatively modern Windows system, the only choice is NTFS, a complex, proprietary filesystem that provides excellent performance. Since variants of Unix—and Linux, which continues to gain market share, especially in the server market—are very popular, it is increasingly likely that IT administrators will have to choose a *nix filesystem for use on mission critical servers. There are many Free (libre) high-performance file-systems for Unix systems which, compared with the standard ext2/3 filesystem (Second or Third Extended Filesystem), provide faster access to data at the price of a higher risk of data loss. For configurations which can eliminate the points of failure that lead to this risk, high-performance file systems like XFS, JFS, or ReiserFS offer comparable or better benchmarks than Microsoft’s NTFS, without the vendor lock-in. Read more…

§1552 · December 18, 2006 · 4 comments · Tags: essays, Linux, open source, software, technology