Ville Ahola

Being Alexander Lukashenka

Revisado: 10-09-23

This book is not a general history of Belarus. It's a recounting of every attempt to dislodge the Belarusian president-for-life Alexander Lukashenka from power. The book also presents a prehistory of modern Belarus that concentrates on regional power struggles. Some of the material seems to have been included merely to provide ammo against Lukashenka's conceptions of Belarusian nationhood.

There is a noticeable shift in tone in the new chapters. In contrast to the dry prose of the original chapters, the language is emotional. Everything the Belarusian government does is labelled inept, fake, and fraudulent. Everything the opposition does is lavished with praise. I don't know if this reflects a change in public discourse in general or US foreign policy messaging style in particular. The book also dates itself in two ways. First it provides a play-by-play of the then-current opposition political campaign in what is in hindsight clearly unwarranted level of detail. I'm sure that the Twitter battles felt really exciting at the time. Secondly it criticises Lukashenka's gung-ho response to COVID-19. The public health theatre of the time with its "social distancing" and other bizarre rituals ironically now make Lukashenka seem like a level-headed statesman in comparison.

While Russia's meddling in Belarusian affairs gets coverage in the book, the United States is conspicuously absent from the narrative. It's an accomplishment to talk about geopolitics without bothering to include in the picture the reigning global hegemon. The book occasionally compares Belarus to Ukraine. US influence in the affairs of the latter are well-known, yet in the book the omerta is kept diligently.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

A Conservative Takedown

Revisado: 07-29-21

If anyone is looking at the young people itching to topple statues of historical figures and wondering what went wrong with their education, this book provides the answer. Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States pushes a simplistic comic book narrative where Europeans bad, everyone else good.

In this book Mary Grabar shows how Zinn has fabricated his narrative using misquotes, misrepresentations and flat-out fiction. As the book's title suggests, the attack isn't confined to just the book and its issues. Grabar goes over Zinn's personal history and has even managed to dig up evidence suggesting that parts of Zinn's book have been plagiarised from other leftist writers.

The discussion gets more muddled the closer we get to present day, with the part about the Vietnam War basically rehashing the same undead debate we've had for 50 years now. When discussing Zinn's take on WW2 Grabar starts veering off towards apologism. The nadir is perhaps her treatment of the Japanese-American internment camps, where Grabar uses arguments eerily similar to holocaust deniers, which is ironic considering that she compares Zinn's book (in terms of quality of research) to holocaust denier David Irving's production. Grabar relies a noticeable amount on Victor Davis Hanson for arguments against Zinn's accusations.

In the end, the most disquieting aspect of Grabar's book is the revelation that the academic activists pushing Zinn's book onto the curriculum know that it's hogwash. They're fine with filling young heads with nonsense if it's politically expedient, denying them the quality of education that they were privy to themselves. Sad!

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 1 persona

The Libertarian Chomsky?

Revisado: 07-21-21

Having enjoyed The Progressive Era by Murray N. Rothbard, I've been slowly going through all things Rothbard on Audible. This audiobook is a collection of short columns from the late 60's and early 70's. During this time Rothbard seemed to have broken off with the more conservative and statist right, and found a seemingly promising new home with the more anarchist New Left. He lauded the 1968 student protests at Columbia University and railed against the Vietnam War and the draft.

Many of the pieces concern the war in Vietnam. Rothbard wanted the war to end immediately and thought already in 1969 that the US had lost the war. He was surely completely out of his depth in his analysis of the war's proceeding, even going so far as to contradict the opinions of generals. Rothbard's willingness to throw the Vietnamese under the bus to reach an ideological goal would eventually culminate in his deeply embarrassing piece The Death of a State, published in Reason magazine in 1975, where he celebrated the communist takeover in South Vietnam and Cambodia. The Death of a State is not included in this audiobook. Reminiscent of Chomsky, Rothbard seemed to justify his position by invoking "American imperialism." He got on his moral high horse and rained down thunder at those who had to deal with the actual reality on the ground.

There are other curious hot takes sprinkled into the mix. Rothbard tried to call the 1972 election and got it completely wrong. His rhetoric here was eerily similar to present day progressive political commentators, especially the way he talked of "the people" from his apparently quite lofty ivory tower. In another nugget of wisdom, Rothbard concluded that the US government didn't rule by consensus but by guns because the White House was being guarded with machine guns following the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination and the subsequent Washington, D.C. riots. In the next piece he mentioned that it's alright to defend youself with violence. Perhaps Rothbard didn't extend that right to government employees.

I ended up viewing Rothbard through the lens of Thomas Sowell's Vision of the Anointed. Rothbard was a Libertarian intellectual (by Sowell's definition someone whose work begins and ends with ideas). He was selling the libertarian vision as an abstract ideal, and would use it as a tool with which to measure reality. If a government action didn't measure up to his standard, the action would need to cease regardless of consequences. I'm now concerned whether this also colors his historical work.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Episodes from history organized by molecule

Revisado: 03-08-20

Most of the chapters in this book center around one particular molecule. Each chapter tells the story of the molecule's discovery and impact on society. For many of the gases most of the story is set hundreds of years ago and involves a cast of eccentric gentlemen who bob and weave in and out of the stories as the chapters change focus from gas to gas and re-tread the same time period multiple times.

As the book progresses the stories start involving the 20th century more and more. After getting past the gas warfare of the first world war, the book starts talking about atom bomb experiments. I feel that the atom bomb stuff had a tenuous link to the book's theme. I was waiting for the atom bomb diversion to be tied up in a bow at some point, but that never really happened. After a small eternity of reading about neutron chain reactions, Sam Kean talks about sound channels in the atmosphere, and then about chaos theory, mainly in the context of predicting weather. These topics felt more in keeping with the theme.

Finally Kean moves onto the future, writing briefly about pure scifi stuff. The conceit is that Earth is becoming inhospitable and we must either "engineer" it back to some kind of artificial equilibrium, or escape to a new planet. It may be a matter of taste, but I usually don't find futurist predictions all that interesting.

Besides the atom bomb digression and the scifi, I have two problems with the book. The first problem is that Kean makes a habit of taking potshots at 18th and 19th century scientists for working with scientific theories (or hypotheses) that were later either falsified or otherwise abandoned. If only those goofballs had had 21st century chemistry textbooks at their disposal! The other problem is that even though the book clearly includes multiple examples of reductionist hubris and the downfall that follows, any caution goes out the window when Kean starts covering more recent developments like climate science, not to speak of the scifi predictions about "climate engineering." It's like we learned nothing from the stories in the book.

Besides the nitpicks above, I think this book would be enlightening to most people. It's not just about chemistry, but also about the people who dabbled in it over the centuries. Kean clearly tries to pick "sensationalist" episodes for the telling, so the stories shouldn't be too dull for the general reader.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Bizarre computer translation

Revisado: 12-27-19

This audiobook covers two subjects: Kaizen and Kanban. The part about Kaizen seems to be fairly normal.

The Kanban part on the other hand seems like the narrator is reading a computer translation. Many established terms are synonyms of the actual ones, e.g. the Scrum "sprint plan" has become "run conjecture." The script is full of these. Word choices are odd in general, "complex task" has become "confounding errand" or "mind-boggling work." It's fairly clear that no human judgment was involved in choosing the words.

Another issue I have with the audiobook is that there are step by step instructions on how to use Trello to practice Kanban. Besides the comical suggestions to "snap ok", the script refers to figures that the listener obviously cannot see. The instructions don't work too well in audio format.

I wouldn't recommend this audiobook to anyone looking to learn about Kanban. The poor translation job is so confusing.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 3 personas