Iraq Progress Index

The State of Iraq: An Update (NYT) Read More......

A Gas Tax for Guzzlers

Thomas L. Friedman, one of my four favorite NYT columnists, begged Obama to brave public opinion and institute a gas tax. It's needed, he argued, because Americans are idiots when it comes to historically based reasoning. No matter how many gas crises they endure, as soon as gas prices fall, they trade in their Hondas for Hummers. And conveniently forget that a few months before, they were taking the bus because they could no longer afford the gas to drive to work in their SUVs (or as a dear friend once christened them: 'the mommy cars of the apocalypse'). And never mind that the funds they're dumping at the tank are going to nations that fund Islamic terrorism.

But it's a recession. Or maybe the word that rhymes with 'recession' but starts with a different consonant. And drastically raising the price of something that is a basic necessity for most Americans is not going to be popular. (This is the one drawback of democracy--and is also why you need an FDR to get on the radio once a week and convince us to suck it up).

Friedman suggests breaking Americans in gently, raising the tax per gallon by $0.10/month.

But I have another idea. Most gas-efficient cars have smaller tanks. So how about a tax that increases, or kicks in, with the tenth gallon? Start out taxing the first 10 gallons at five cents, and every gallon after that at twenty cents. Then gradually increase the tax on the first 10 by five cents more each month, and the tax on every gallon after that by ten. That will double the motivation to buy and keep those fuel-efficient cars--both to save funds at the pump *and* to benefit from the tax break. Read More......

File Under: Ancient People Were F&@king Smart

Granted, it's lacking binary code, but still...

Ancient Greek Computer Recreated (New Scientist). Read More......

It's Official

The last job on my 'academic dream job' list (Research-1, 2-2 teaching load, good institutional culture, great faculty you'd love to be colleagues with) asked other candidates for more materials. So I'm out of the running. Some places are starting to send rejection letters out as soon as they decide their short list, instead of stringing you along for months until the campus interviews are finished.

It's a little harsh, getting dinged during holiday season. But I'm starting to think that's more humane.

Sigh. Read More......

Superficia

I find myself singularly unable to get behind one of the latest fashion trends: vast, billowy pinafore-like tunics, frequently designed with empire waists, fluffy sleeves and loose pleating.

I've been searching myself as to why. Why do they always look blowsy and unattractive to me, no matter what airbrushed, stick-thin model is wearing one on TV?

I am just too old? It does seem that somewhere in my thirties, I unknowingly crossed the line between 'young and hip' and 'old and clueless'. Or does the tunic and tight pants style generally trigger too many dark flashbacks to the eighties? Honestly, I think my feelings about Pat Benetar are mostly positive.

I probed my associations with the style. There wasn't much, other than sexual infantilism and creepy Alice in Wonderland nightmares. Then it hit me: they're like especially shapeless maternity smocks, but without the bump to fill them, and without the glowing (or puking) aura of pregnancy to make them make aesthetic sense. And they're being marketed to--and modeled on--teenaged girls and young women who have no business (not to mention body fat) being pregnant.

Ah, mystery solved. I really feel we've made a breakthrough in this session...

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Severed Heads and their use as pedagogical stimuli

Today I stumbled across this 1970 article: The Severed Head of Charles I of England Its Use as a Political Stimulus. Loaded with great 17th & 18th century political images. Not much in the way of analysis, but I'm not an art historian. Perhaps the argument was too subtle for me to discern.

I stumbled on the article (rather than Charles's head) because today was The Day. The one day all quarter that we Western Civants lecture on whatever it is we actually love, know and study. In my case, 17th century England. Especially the middle bit of the century. You know. The bit where Diggers try to dig, Levellers try to level, and, yes, the anointed head of an anointed king gets the chop.

I had a long, conceptual love affair with English puritanism, one that lasted longer than any of my actual relationships. And whenever I have had to teach it--the English or New English kind-- it's always gone badly. I've rambled on, the kids have looked bored, and even slapping up an overhead showing a contemporary painting of Charles's severed head hasn't really helped much.

So this time around I dreaded The Day. I went back and forth on how to revise my old lecture. I dawdled and procrastinated (never a challenge for me, of course) on putting together the PowerPoints. When today arrived, my PowerPoints were a mess-- text-heavy, weighted down with bullet-points, and the only multi bit of media was a JPEG of the Magna Carta.

But I think it went well. The students were alert, oriented in time and place, answering questions and laughing at my jokes. I started with the Magna Carta and went through to the Triennial Act, telling the story of Parliament and emphasizing three factors: Property rights, Protestantism and its (invented) nemesis, Popery (I can never resist alliteration). They went a little dull-eyed at the beginning, but began to liven up with the developing English ideology that tied government participation via Parliament to Protestantism (and the demonizing of Catholicism that went with it--especially the demonizing of Catholicism that went with it). I pulled them with me through the exploration of how England differed from France, and factors that made it more difficult to transition to absolution-- no need for a standing army, no exemptions from taxation, Parliament's brief over both taxation and legislation--making it more of a challenge to Bourbonishly divide and conquer noble institutions, and the complexity of ruling both England and Scotland.

I managed a pretty simple summary of the differences between puritans and ceremonialists without ever mentioning surplices. And compared the way Charles and Laud shifted the episcopacy towards ceremonialism to the way Presidents can stack the supreme court with like-minded justices. When we got to the New Model Army, they were pretty much with me.

When I wrapped it up, I had an inspiration: I asked them if they knew about President Kennedy and his Catholicism. I went over how there were Americans in the sixties genuinely afraid that a Catholic president would sacrifice the nation's interests to the commands of the pope. Then I pulled them back to the English Bill of Rights, the idea of popery, the way Protestantism became associated in English minds with national loyalty and the freedoms of constitutional government, and the way we inherited both England's constitutional model & its protestant prejudices.

And that's the Survey Lecture Holy Grail for me-- tying the (relatively) distant European past to a (near enough) contemporary facet of the American present, and getting the students to make the connection. Here's hoping I can manage it again.

Or at least remember this particular shtick for next time.

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Good Lectures, Bad Lectures

Today was absolutism in early modern France. It didn't go too badly. This after a not fabulous lecture on the French Wars of Religion (during which one my best students this quarter raised his hand, and with a look of total bewilderment said, "Um...how many Henrys are there again?").

Why did it go well? I'm still such a novice at this. I think in part because it combined two elements: a) a conceptual theme, specifically, the rise of early modern absolutism and b) a concrete narrative, in this case the development of absolutist kingship under Henry IV and Louis XIV. I think it also helped that I started out with quick refresher on feudalism and the powerful noble houses it deposited into countries like England and France in the sixteenth century. Which, ideally, grounded them in previous material and then linked that material to the lecture.

Or maybe it was just the chocolate no-bake cookie I had right before class started.

And why am I randomly linking some history topics to Wikipedia (bane of many scholars, but also free), and not others? No bleeping idea... Read More......