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Annals of Ahistorical Thinking

daelnorwood

Or, This is Why We Can’t Have Smart Things

White Horse

Here’s Andrew Sullivan, on Beast Books, the current bête noire of professionally nostalgic media entrepreneurs.

I miss the days when books were written because an author simply had something to say and took her time to say it well.

May I propose a thought experiment to see whether Sullivan’s nostalgia is just lazy thinking or a justified use of the world-weary declension card? When was that golden age? When books were written by disinterested Serious People, for pure thought, seriously? Precisely, I mean. I’d like dates.

Perhaps Sullivan is referring to that one golden afternoon of September 25, 1965, or perhaps those madeleine-encrusted years between 1913 and 1927. But probably he dates the true end of the golden age to October 10, 2006, no?

Somehow, I doubt any precision will be forthcoming. One hears lots of talk about the dangers of scientific ignorance, but I think ignorance of historical thinking is a problem that goes to the highest levels, too. If even our paid thinkers don’t understand how to think historically, what then? Goodness me, wreck and ruin, I suppose.

Pointless nostalgia will out, though. Écrasez l’infâme!

Update: links fixed.

Image cite: cybertoad, “White Horse,” Flickr, CC License

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Interesting Interconnections of Indelible Importance

daelnorwood

Fake Palm Tree

Link roundup time, folks:

Feign, Feign, Feign
Via Prof. Hacker, some thoughtful comments on “imposter syndrome” through the lens of Michael Chabon’s new book on being a dad.. Apparently, as in parenting, so on the tenure track: Fake It ‘Til You Make It. h/t

AAS Blog
The American Antiquarian Society, a much loved research center in dear Worchester, MA now hath a blog. It appears to have started up recently, and they’ve already hit a wonderful slightly snarky but erudite stride:

“The stories that America made up.”
Via hotel boredom and Boing Boing, Robert Wuhl’s comedic retelling of American history. The tagline (above) makes it worth a look. Caveats: A little dated (it’s pre-election, and very borscht belt), and mildly nsfw (fer cussin’).

File Under Love
Finally, an oldie but a (new to me) goodie: the ribald back channel twitter feed from this past summer’s ALA conference. Yes, librarian gossip. Main topics: sex, sex, and how poor some librarians’, uh, presentation skills are. h/t.

purlpletwinkle, Not fooling anyone…,” Flickr, CC License

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Dizzying Array of Dazzling Detritus

daelnorwood

Teefbross

It’s Friday, I’m dissertated out, so here’s some links:

  • Tim Burke has some smart things to say about Google’s recent sketchy shenanigans, and fairly sums up, I think, the general consensus among the digerati humanists w/r/t the current state of the Google Books project: Do Not Want.
  • He also has some fair gripes about the awful balkanized state of other textual databases. Welcome to my life: I got 99 UIs, but a completed search ain’t in one, folks.
  • There’s a new episode of CHNM’s Digital Campus out. We learn that Google Wave is apparently great for discussing Google Wave, but otherwise distracting as hell. A very good, and useful episode, even in non-google aspects.
  • Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s new book Planned Obsolescence: Publishing Technology, and the Future of the Academy is up, and has lots of interesting things to say about the future of publishing and peer review. Perhaps the best work on these subjects I’ve read (and I’m only halfway through!). Highly recommended.
  • Finally, because every Friday post should end with some contemplation of past, present and future, here’s Thomas Cole’s most serious series of paintings exploring political economy (which I might get to see this weekend!).

Happy Weekend!

Image cite: Krossbow, “Flotsam and Jetsam,” Flickr, CC License

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Unabashed Brain Picking

daelnorwood

Or, a bleg

Brains
Folks, I have a problem.

I’m trying to describe how American policy makers, as a group, moved from thinking and acting as if China was the (pre-1969) moon, to thinking and acting as if China were a real, reachable place where the U.S. had national interests and, importantly, the ability to protect or advance those interests in China.

(Analogous situations might include the climate change issue — where we are not quite yet at the turning point — or, indeed, the post-Sputnik shift in talking about landing on the moon.)

Here’s the problem: right now, all I can think to say is that China “became real” or China issues “became concrete.”

This is unacceptable — not just because those are ugly circumlocutions, but also because I’ve got a hunch that there is probably an actual (poli sci? soc?) term for this kind of phenomenon.

So I turn to you, dearest colleagues of the world wide interwebs. Any thoughts? Am I fretting over nothing?

Image Cite: Curious Expeditions, “Brains,” Flickr, CC License

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Duly Noted

daelnorwood

In the (b)Log

ChainLinkage

Folks, I’m in the middle of backing up The Establishment here in Washington, and preparing to open up shop In Merry Ole soon, with stops at the someday-hopefully-an-alma-mater, so nothing substantive for the moment. But just so you don’t think I don’t love you, here are some Links To Amuse:

Unnatural Lincoln-Calhoun hybrids
I’m fairly surprised at the compositor’s (ideologically and morally) bizarre choice. I am emphatically not surprised that the first Cowen/Tabarrok co-production was about the public choice theory of the Marxist of the master class.

(Bonus! In the comments, someone declares Calhoun “a good looking man,” further demonstrating to what heroic lengths some people will go to be wrong.)

Ranke and his Archive of Truth gets the History of Science Treatment (nb: paywall for non university folks)
(h/t to Historiography Lab)

Three series of historical iconographyof the Tower of Babel.
Fascinatingly variable, apparently. (h/t)

The State as a nexus-of-contractors
A really interesting idea from one of the brilliant orgtheorists, which I wish I had time to think about a bit more fully, but don’t right now. Seems esp. relevant to the early 19th century, when the American federal state, was largely contractors.

Image cite: Max Klingensmith, “Chain Linkage,” Flickr, CC License