"Wars usually begin when two nations disagree on their relative strength, and wars usually
cease when the fighting nations agree on their relative strength. Agreement or disagreement emerges from the shuffling of the same set of factors. Thus each factor is capable of promoting war or peace... When nations prepare to fight one another, they have contradictory expectations of the likely duration and outcome of war. When those predictions, however, cease to be contradictory, the war is almost certain to end." - Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War (1988)
September 2009 Archives
Well, it's been a light few weeks on posting in these parts, and I figured it was time to try to get something up here, before the legions raise up and feast on my entrails or more probably, disappear into the wilds of the internet never to return again. There was a solid six month run there where we had a Burning Violin up on schedule every Wednesday. Oh I cheated sometimes and gave you a chapter out of "Katorga", but that was justifiable since it got a few people to click that magical button on the top right and order their very own copy of my novel. HINT: you can still do this. You won't be disappointed. The novel actually does your taxes for you and can be plugged into any outlet in your house to convert your home to solar energy. It may or may not perform sexual favors for you and cook you dinner. Do truth in advertising laws apply on the internet, you might be asking yourself right now? Coincidentally, my novel also is artificially intelligent and has passed the bar in Tijuana so it can act as your attorney, therefore if you order it, it will be able to tell you whether or not you can sue me for lying.
In any case, here's the deal. I started graduate school a few weeks ago, a PhD program in political science. I have to read about a thousand pages a week in addition to various papers and just for fun, learning statistics and Russian. Oh and I get to grade 300 papers since I'm a TA also. So ... [scratches head] ... time is a lot tighter than it was the last six months. A lot of what I am reading and writing is fairly relevant to the Burning Violin rants on politics and economics and such, which is how I ended up on this route in the first place, so I'm building up a decent pile of content that could be adapted for the site. The problem is that at the moment it doesn't make much sense out of the context of whatever class it was for, so I can't just cut and paste. I'll do my best to get something up here once a week to keep y'all sated. "A Fire in their Eyes" will continue to go up on schedule (though I might make it MTWTh instead of MTThF since Wednesday is my busiest day of the week and least likely at this point to get an actual Burning Violin) since it is completed and already loaded up into the system.
Writing these bits of madness and seeing some of your fine feedback is one of the things I am most proud and satisfied of in this little life of mine.
Just to not leave you hanging, I thought you might be interested in this bit of video that I picked up from Stats class, which shows both how intuitively useful numbers can be in understanding the world of politics and how much the world has changed from our preconceived notions of Developed, Developing.
In any case, here's the deal. I started graduate school a few weeks ago, a PhD program in political science. I have to read about a thousand pages a week in addition to various papers and just for fun, learning statistics and Russian. Oh and I get to grade 300 papers since I'm a TA also. So ... [scratches head] ... time is a lot tighter than it was the last six months. A lot of what I am reading and writing is fairly relevant to the Burning Violin rants on politics and economics and such, which is how I ended up on this route in the first place, so I'm building up a decent pile of content that could be adapted for the site. The problem is that at the moment it doesn't make much sense out of the context of whatever class it was for, so I can't just cut and paste. I'll do my best to get something up here once a week to keep y'all sated. "A Fire in their Eyes" will continue to go up on schedule (though I might make it MTWTh instead of MTThF since Wednesday is my busiest day of the week and least likely at this point to get an actual Burning Violin) since it is completed and already loaded up into the system.
Writing these bits of madness and seeing some of your fine feedback is one of the things I am most proud and satisfied of in this little life of mine.
Just to not leave you hanging, I thought you might be interested in this bit of video that I picked up from Stats class, which shows both how intuitively useful numbers can be in understanding the world of politics and how much the world has changed from our preconceived notions of Developed, Developing.
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