The Jared Diamond wars “have”:http://savageminds.org/2005/09/05/214/ “begun”:http://savageminds.org/2005/09/03/about-yali/ “to”:http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/09/in_deepest_anth.html “flare”:http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/09/in_deepest_anth_1.html “up”:http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/09/yalis_question_.html again. Of particular interest is this recent exchange between “Timothy Burke”:http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/?p=94 and “Fred Errington and Deborah Gewertz”:http://savageminds.org/2005/09/07/a-response-to-timothy-burke/ at _Savage Minds_. Tim objects that Errington and Gewertz’s critique of Diamond is itself guilty of that which it condemns.
It’s been a while since I posted one of these. Of course now that I have several immediate deadlines these things find their way to me again.
Not too easy, not too hard.
If you get stuck on Level 3 then try the hint here.
The hosting site has links to dozens of other games. I won’t even go there though (not now anyway). I really do have to get a lot done in the next few days especially since I just found out that I have to be orientating our incoming grad students on Monday.
For reasons best known to themselves the Havens Center staff have given the George Galloway tour higher billing on their website than the Chris Bertram tour (scroll down the first link for Bertram, he has lower billing). Don’t bug me about this, or about sponsoring gorgeous george — I had nothing to do with either decision (it would be silly to pretend I had nothing to do with the Bertram visit). I’m going to miss Galloway, for domestic reasons, but I haven’t the slightest doubt that Chris’s talks will be more interesting.
Ten days after the New Orleans disaster, the US has accepted offers of foreign aid totalling $US1 billion, but most of the assistance is not getting through because of red tape. The total amount given by the US government in response to the tsunami was $950 million (at a comparable point in time after the tsunami, the figure was $350 million).
As a further comparison, here’s a report from December 31, 2004 of aid finally reaching a city in Aceh, close to the epicentre of the earthquake/tsunami that struck 5 days previously. That’s for a more widespread disaster, in the middle of a war zone, in a Third World country, with few roads, and thousands of kilometres from the countries giving most of the aid.
Two trade unionists and paramedics from California who found themselves trapped in New Orleans have “written an account of their experiences”:http://www.emsnetwork.org/artman/publish/article_18337.shtml . (“Alternative link”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/sfsocialists/ ) A sample:
bq. By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was dangerously abysmal. As the desperation and despair increased, street crime as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and locked their doors, telling us that the “officials” told us to report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the City, we finally encountered the National Guard. The Guards told us we would not be allowed into the Superdome as the City’s primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole. The guards further told us that the City’s only other shelter, the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and squalor and that the police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked, “If we can’t go to the only 2 shelters in the City, what was our alternative?” The guards told us that that was our problem, and no they did not have extra water to give to us. This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile “law enforcement”.
(via “Bitch PhD”:http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/ – who has possibly the best background graphic in the blogosphere.)