Skip to content

The Problem with Too Much Cleverness

According to Phil Agre’s “How to be a leader in your field,” the first step to disciplinary domination is to “Pick an issue.” This, it turns out, is so very hard that he devotes the majority of his paper to this important decision. One of many issue-spotting techniques is this:
(m) Ask yourself, what is the [...]

Out of Iraq

George McGovern’s plan to stabilize Iraq:
Step 1. Leave
Step 2. Deputize Iran (and other Arab states)
Step 3. Pay for our Mistakes (just like Iraq pays Kuwait)
I’m not sure what I think of this, but there it is. Leaving is a tossup: either the destabilized regions continue with their ethnic cleansing by scaring all the different people [...]