We? Stupid?

In my preceding post, I mentioned that I was on my way somewhere else when I came across Gil Troy's post. Where I was going was the blog by Rick Shenkman on History News Network. HNN is a site by a number of historians who plan to comment on politics (obviously I wasn't awestruck by Troy's post), but their goals are good:

To expose politicians who misrepresent history. To point out bogus analogies. To deflate beguiling myths. To remind Americans of the irony of history. To put events in context. To remind us all of the complexity of history.

So HNN is worth checking out, and I'll be taking a closer look in the near future. In particular, I'll be reading the "sub-blog" of Rick Shenkman, which is titled Just How Stupid Are We?, and is connected to his new book, Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter. Since I often marvel at how decidedly ignorant Americans choose to be, I'll be seeing if Shenkman, an investigative reporter and history professor, offers new insight (I hope he can get names right in the future, as his current post misspells Gwen Ifill's name).

Follow these links

I don't often point out specific posts written by people in my Other Places list; that I've featured them there should be sufficient. In particular, I don't write about Joe Posnanski's blog, which is wonderful but mainly focused on sports (I love sports, almost any of them, but there are a lot of sports blogs out there), not surprising since he is a sportswriter for the Kansas City Star.

Joe, if I may call him that, started blogging as promotion for his remarkable book about Buck O'Neil, The Soul of Baseball. Quite honestly, even if you care nothing about baseball, this book is worth your time. If you want to get a taste of what's there, Joe posted an excerpt from his book on his blog - great story.

Another Joe post, only peripherally related to sports, relates three of his biggest mistakes, and they are quite funny (I know, my saying that is the kiss of death, read them anyway).

In the intro, Joe relates the time his bicycle was stolen, and how he felt better when he found out his friend's bike had been stolen the same day. In retrospect, he knew he should have felt worse, but "I think I felt a little less alone."

My story: My family moved to Michigan in the summer between 5th and 6th grade. I wasn't real happy about that, and the first day of school was tough for me. I remember the room was quite hot, I didn't know anyone, and time was just dragging - I couldn't have been more miserable.

Then, about an hour into the school day (seemed like a month), the door opened and the school secretary brought in a girl who had obviously been crying. On top of that, she was wearing a brown dotted dress with bells on the straps. That's right, little ringing bells, one on each strap.

And I instantly felt better. Someone else was new to the school, and whatever attention I might have drawn by being the new kid (almost certainly overstated in my mind) was taken away by the crying bell new girl.

Of course, within a couple of weeks Kathy was established as one of the generally popular kids, while I was more of a niche player, but for a few moments at least, I was not the most obviously out of place, and I felt immeasurably pleased. And, I, too, regret now (somewhat) that I took that pleasure in someone else's discomfort.

Yet another other place

I have added The Corporate Cynic to my Other places of interest. Once again, I was put on to this site by Carrie's Nation (she has some really good links). This blog is written by an experienced business hand who has some really incisive things to say about the current state of business (I prefer his posts to the hit-and-miss snark of Stanley Bing, whose books can be a bit of a slog). The only thing that will bother you is that he doesn't find the time to post more often (about once a week), but he's actually working (and his signal/noise ratio does remain high).

Full disclosure: about 99% of the paragraph above represents my sincere interest in his blog, the other 1% is due to his kindly citing yours truly in his most recent post (modesty precludes a direct link). I'm glad a comment can provide inspiration to a fellow blogger.

Anyway, read his site, and get some idea as to why the whole concept of "corporate efficiency" is severely flawed (as those of us who work already know, and the pundits, the press, and the ivory-towerers don't).

Why my other places interest me

It's occurred to me that I haven't talked about why I chose each of the "Other places of interest," those links to the right. I only have five so far, and I really should expand the section, but it might be of some interest as to why I chose the ones I have put there.

Economist's View is the blog of Mark Thoma, an economist at the University of Oregon. His blog is perhaps the best I've seen at providing links to topics of interest in economics, and his own opinions are always interesting. It's the place to go if you want to survey articles or themes that reach well beyond the business press.

From ship to shore is a blog by Jacky. Some personal background here: In late 2006, my wife and I took a cruise to Alaska. We generally take fairly active vacations, with hiking and driving madly from place to place, but, for various reasons, we decided to go a little more sedentary this time.

To my surprise, I greatly enjoyed the cruise experience on board the Statendam, a Holland America ship. We didn't take too many excursions, so we enjoyed a lot of shipboard activities, the games and trivia contests. The cruise directors worked quite hard to ensure that we had the best time possible. One of them was Jacky, and I stumbled across her blog last year. She doesn't update it very often, but I find it quite entertaining. Of more importance is that it was this blog which "inspired" the creation of my blog. For whatever reason, Jacky's blog was the one that convinced me I should start one of my own.

James Howard Kunstler is an author and essayist, and is one of the most pessimistic (and entertaining) authors on the Internet. He writes a weekly blog, the name of which I shan't repeat here, that is largely about the end of our oil-based system and the effect that will have on America's lifestyle. Even if you don't agree with everything he writes (I think the U.S. economy is a little harder to turn than he does, so I don't see total catastrophe looming, say, tomorrow), his thoughts on the extent to which our current social structure depends on the easy availability of cheap petroleum-based products will force you to take a different view of your surroundings.

Joe Posnanski is a sportswriter for the Kansas City Star, who also wrote one of the best baseball books I have ever read, The Soul of Baseball. (It's a remarkable account of Joe's time with the great Buck O'Neil, and is an antidote to all the negative news coming out of baseball these days. I guarantee that, if you feel your love for the game wavering, you will get it back when you, through Joe, spend time with Mr. O'Neil.) How he finds the time to write hundreds more words a week I don't understand, but his blog is a lot of fun. Not everything is baseball-oriented, but you probably won't get the most out of it if you don't love the game.

Political Animal, created originally as Calpundit by Kevin Drum, is now the official blog of Washington Monthly magazine. It's a liberal-leaning look at the political news of the day, but provides enough links to "real" news sources to allow a reader to use it as a starting point, even if one holds contrary opinions. It's written in a personal style that I envy, while still expressing opinion based on facts.