Some Neat Things

Just some neat things I’ve found recently randomly surfing.

Near-perfectly preserved traditional Russian wooden houses with elaborate woodwork. I think these actually predate the Soviet era. 

“Drawings” I guess you would call them, created only by folding paper. 

The world’s 20 most beautiful libraries. 

Sculptures made by revealing the interiors of books. I’m a little conflicted about this art. I like the results but I have a visceral aversion to defacing books. Still, I would like to have the anatomy one.

Quote of the Day

Personally, I think Ricks is thinking about the problem the wrong way. The “political breakthrough” he speaks of could never have occurred under Saddam. But in a larger sense I think Ricks is right to warn about failure in Iraq. OIF was meant to send a signal to the despots of the Middle East to mind their manners; to avoid supporting nonstate terror actors; to avoiding seeking weapons of mass destruction. But the dominant meme to emerge from the last six years has almost been the exact opposite. That it is hopeless, except in the sense of buying them off, to deflect Middle Eastern despots from their schemes; that it is equally impossible, and possibly even immoral to stand forcibly in the way of those who seek nuclear arms. Obama is not entirely, as Ricks argues, the hapless victim of the policies of the last six years, rather he is the expression of a point of view that believes they are a failure.

-Richard Fernandez, Iraq, Victory or defeat?

I think the past six years should be seen as a controlled experiment. When we attacked the terrorists and their patrons directly, made them personally accountable as we did the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, they and their allies and emulators backed off. But when we hesitated and temporized and appeased we lost ground. Israel had similar experiences. Its assassination campaign against Hamas leaders was highly effective in suppressing terror attacks, but its negotiation attempts, precipitate withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza, and irresolute handling of the 2006 Lebanese campaign helped to energize its enemies. In this context, Obama’s attempt to gain the favor of the Iranian regime rather than undermine it seems like an effort to replicate some of our and Israel’s recent strategic errors.

Service Interruption

Chicagoboyz may be out of service intermittently tonight as I perform system maintenance.

Thanks for your patience.

UPDATE: Done!

UPDATE2: Character-encoding issue is fixed.

How Faddish Leftism Kills: Part 2,658,893

While people in Zimbabwe starve, Robert Mugabe’s [sic] “consumer rights group” raids stores that sell genetically modified food. In Zimbabwe, GM plants provide basic staple foods that the country must import. Their loss seriously depletes the food supply.

This is a case in which the intellectual fads of western leftists in rich countries mutate into something lethal in the less sophisticated political systems of the 3rd world. In this case, the hysteria over genetically modified foods promoted by revenue-seeking, activist-corporations (e.g., Greenpeace) in the developed world provides the moral justification for a thug like Mugabe to kill people.

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