financial cycles

In The Atlantic, article "The Quiet Coup" does a good job contextualizing the US's current crisis as the same one the IMF has dealt with in many emerging economies over the past decades. Basically, oligarchs gamble during a boom, get bailed out by the government, and the costs are pushed onto the lower classes until the whole system breaks down. Once the government is willing to cut loose at least some of its oligarchs (it's a game of musical chairs, really), then the IMF steps in with loans.

Other aspects that are well explained:

the American financial industry gained political power by amassing a kind of cultural capital—a belief system. Once, perhaps, what was good for General Motors was good for the country. Over the past decade, the attitude took hold that what was good for Wall Street was good for the country. The banking-and-securities industry has become one of the top contributors to political campaigns, but at the peak of its influence, it did not have to buy favors the way, for example, the tobacco companies or military contractors might have to. Instead, it benefited from the fact that Washington insiders already believed that large financial institutions and free-flowing capital markets were crucial to America’s position in the world.

Plus, of course, the fact that everyone in charge of the Treasury is or was on the Goldman payroll.

generational theory of Obama

Morley Winograd and Michael Hais have ripped off the Strauss-Howe generational thing and are pimping their own generational theories about American politics. It sounds so great until you look into it... then it becomes way too simplistic and massaged to fit the narrow reality of the late 20th century.

This WaPo op-ed might make interesting assignment for its practical applications. ("The Boomers Had Their Day: Make Way for the Millennials") Even if it is idiotic:

Nor does the millennials' rhetoric reflect the cynicism and alienation of Generation X, whose philosophy is, "Life sucks, and then you die."

Thanks, boomers. Way to swallow a stereotype you created and think it's true. Part of the problem with hyping the Millennial Generation's takeover at this moment in time is that we GenXers get our turn at bat first. What happened to us? Oh, I guess our boundless cynicism removes us from the equation altogether. We are "reactive" "nomads" who don't trust anybody, are just out for ourselves, and I suppose can't be bothered to get involved in politics at all.

The whole project is just so fuzzy on terms and definitions as to make it worthless... just like the "historical" model it's based on.

Everything was better when you were twelve

Cyclical history in Tom the Dancing Bug.

photo juxtapositions

Cool "convergence contest" at McSweeney's -- lining up two photos from different historical eras, which makes an implicit link between the two. The best one, and saddest, is the anti-Nazi poster describing the Lidice massacre ("this is Nazi brutality") with one of the Abu Ghraib hooded inmates.

There's also this cool one of a brain and a subdivision. A lot of these are convergences of natural and man-made forms. How man mimics nature without even realizing it. These might also be good for an early lecture about building and man's alteration of environment.

UPDATE: I just can't stop with these! Contrast Goya's Saturn devouring one of his sons with a picture of Bush kissing a baby in the same position. Hilarious!

Another one converging a row of Iraqi prisoners being led away for questioning with Singer Sergeant's Gassed, one of my favorite paintings of all time. Could use this in the last lecture, as students will have seen Gassed in the WWI lecture.

Time magazine's deliberate convergence of their "X-ed out Hitler" cover of May 1945 with al-Zawahiri... As the editor notes:

The design of the more recent cover raises some interesting sets of questions:

1. Are they really comparing al-Zarqawi to Hitler? As nasty a character as he was, it seems like a bit of an overstatement to compare his death in terms of significance to that of the architect of the Holocaust, the man who sent the whole world to war. Plus, the death of Hitler, announced by the first cover, brought about Germany's surrender and the end of the war in Europe. Is Time, therefore, declaring the war in Iraq over, and victory for al-Zarqawi's opponents? Doesn't seem likely.

2. For whom was the second cover designed? Hardly anyone alive today would remember the Hitler cover, so the "historical resonance" factor is virtually nil. Only unusually dedicated followers of Time covers (Timeheads?) or Time employees—and even in that case only Time employees who have poked around the archives or who have made studies of past cover designs for their own work—would "get" this reference.

So it seems like an internal wink, then: a deliberate convergence by Time magazine for Time magazine. They would have had to wait this long, as anyone who remembered the first cover would also be pretty outraged at the comparison. It will be interesting to see who Time decides to X out 60 years from now.

This one comparing devastation in Beruit and Warsaw could be good for the lecture on cyclical theory of history (as could all of these - would be a good addition).

The works of man mirror nature -- Swedish logging site looks like a tree itself, from the air.

Trippy.