Reading through this series of reports makes me glad that the border is mostly closed. But ideal regional setting for the Olympics, eh?
Author Archives: Doug Merrill
A Little More Finalité
Thanks to everyone who commented on the Finalité Revisited essay. So much substance in the discussion that I wanted to highlight some of it in a post, instead of just replying in comments.
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I Don’t Care if I Never Get Back
Once upon a time, before it became the Paris printing of the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune published its late sports editor Dick Roraback’s ode to baseball’s opening day each year.
Under the fold, “The Crack of the Bat.â€
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Finalité Revisited
Shortly after the big round of EU enlargement in 2004, I took a look at future prospects for enlargement. At the time, I called prospective members, “largely a collection of the poor, ill-governed and recently-at-war.” Most of them are much less recently at war, many of them are better governed, and almost all of them are less poor, yet for all but a few prospects for EU accession seem to me more distant than in 2004.
What has happened?
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Pre-dropped
Kevin Drum makes the mistake of reading McArdle and writes “I have to admit that ‘gigantic earthquake in Japan’ was not on my list of possible flash points for the global economy. And in the end, I don’t think it will be.”
It certainly shouldn’t be, if only because Tokyo Earthquake is probably the most widely used wildcard in any sort of future/scenario planning. Sure, it was a low-probability event at any given time, but over longer terms it had a non-trivial likelihood of coming to pass. From financial markets to supply-chain managers, they all should have a file at hand marked Tokyo Earthquake, and the work — for people far away — now involves dealing with how reality diverges from what was planned. Maybe some international actors will be exposed as having neglected to answer this most obvious of what-ifs, but most will have worked through the possibilities.
A Rare Thos. Friedman Moment
So I was listening to a taxi driver yesterday and this morning, about other taxi drivers. People with cars complain about the traffic in Tbilisi, but it’s not nearly as bad as it could be. For the capital of a medium-income country, a capital that moreover accounts for upwards of two-thirds of the country’s economic activity, getting across town doesn’t take as much time as one would think. A vigorous campaign of minor physical improvements over the last year has also partly curbed some of the bad habits that used to cause bigger backups. Better infrastructure and easy availability of alternatives make for fewer cars on the roads.
Public transport isn’t bad, but the key components of transport in Tbilisi are the shared taxis, known locally as marshrutki. Continue reading
Who’s Next?
Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigns as Germany’s defense minister, regrets heeding career advice from Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky
Helen Pidd of the Guardian writes that the now ex-minister was widely tipped as a future chancellor, but I can’t imagine who was doing the tipping. Bavarians don’t get elected chancellor in Germany: a career at the federal level in Berlin (and previously in Bonn ) takes them too far away from the maneuvering needed to put or keep them atop the CSU, while a stint as Minister-President of Bavaria takes them too far away from Germany’s mainstream to get elected chancellor.
More on Ireland
Henry Farrell has a post explaining many of the ins and outs of the upcoming (February 25) election in Ireland. Comments are good, too, if sometimes very insidery on Irish media.
Taking Stock of 2010: Books
Undemanding reading, with one or two exceptions, appears as the hallmark of 2010. Belated reaction to the economic crisis? Lack of initiative after spending several months with Count Tolstoy in 2009? Hard to say.
The exceptions: Armenian Golgotha by Grigoris Balakian, a survivor’s testimony from the time of his arrest in 1915 in Istanbul to his eventual escape into Central Europe in 1918; and in a completely different vein The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley, a retelling of Arthurian legends with the Grail quest a nuisance, all of the swordplay off-stage, and the men in general of secondary interest.
Most-read author this year just passed: Alexander McCall Smith. Authors new to me I want to read more of: John Biggins, Raymond E. Feist, Jo Walton, Hillary Mantel. Books read aloud to the eldest child: should be obvious from context. Best tale of the Austro-Hungarian navy: Tomorrow the World by John Biggins. Disappointment from a Nobelist I otherwise quite like: The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk. Best novel of first contact in medieval Germany: Eifelheim by Michael Flynn. Books in German read: none, for the first time in many years.
Full list is below the fold, links are to earlier Fistful posts on the title or author. See also 2009, 2007, 2006.
An End to Conscription in Germany
Germany’s Defense Minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, announced on Monday that conscription for the country’s armed forces will come to an end in the summer of 2011. The all-volunteer Bundeswehr will have approximately 185,000 persons, down from the current 240,000. That is roughly in line with the current number of volunteers serving.
I wonder whether anyone will say that the change has come too soon, or that preparations have been rushed. That’s because I flagged it as on its way, oh, more than six and a half years ago. Embarrassingly enough, I used the phrase “sooner rather than later” in the previous post, and this qualifies as “sooner” only by the very generous standard usually reserved for EU institutions. Nevertheless, it is a welcome and necessary change, for all the reasons I outlined in January 2004.