Maps & Nice Things

Sometimes the last thing you saw is GREAT! Part 2 is the weirdness in some to find a reason to not celebrate.

Good+ — This month’s book is about maps and geography.

Weird — There is a lot of joy to behold. Many choose negativity.

The 2nd Tuesday of the month — another book discussion.

Last post (“That's Just Dumb”) led many into retreat and a dearth of comments. In the spirit of how ridiculous the post-Enlightenment religions can appear (Mao, Kim Il Sung & Scientology for example) I noted a news story this week where the North Korean regime guided their citizenry to take special care to protect their portraits of Kim Jong-un (the grandson of the God) as well as pops and grandpa in preparation for tropical storm Khanun. Portraits of the family dynasty adorn every home and office in the country, and people can face execution for damaging them, even by accident, according to NK News.

Guarding Against What’s New

Google says recency bias has been part of three of my posts (“Recent Wishcycling”, “6 ms”, and “Eggs”). Would my reviews differ if I waited three months to simmer?

I’ve mentioned recency bias three times (now four)

Wisdom of the Crowd

The author is a longtime foreign correspondent. We had seventeen on a warm summer night at the library to gauge and discuss it. Fourteen attendees and one remote member voted. The consensus of the group was 7.5 out of 10. Three did not complete the book.

My Take

My review of this book is colored by the last book I completed. “The World” by Simon Montefiore is epic in scope. The author shared 1262 pages before he ran out of gas. The author committed to telling the history of the world one family dynasty at a time. A novel approach. This month’s book was similar. The author explains how everything works through the context of maps, natural barriers, and geography. Neither proposal can be true in my eyes as I consider absolute thinking a fool’s errand. Tim Marshall manages the trick in only 275 pages. The book had too many predictions and conjecture for my taste but the raw content was EXCELLENT. When I weighed the positives and negatives, I rated the book a 9/10. This was noticeably higher than the consensus.

Geography As Destiny

Some readers felt the author was too wedded to the importance of geography as a means to explain the modern world. My sense is the US experience in Afghanistan is instructional. The British Empire abandoned Afghanistan in 1842. The Soviet Union did the same in 1988. The US made it official in 2021. All of them were world powers at their peak. Each of them failed and a large part of the story was unconquerable geography. It is remarkable to me the Mongols tried to unite the world in trade from China to the Middle East. Many have tried in the intervening period with the latest effort attributable to China’s effort to execute its Belt and Road initiative. My sense, informed by this book, is the effort will continue to be very hard to accomplish. Geography is a large element of national destiny.

Being trapped between great powers on the European plain without mountains and rivers as a buffer has led to great misery for both Poland and Ukraine who share a border. For those who might think geography is not so important, the examples of Afghanistan, Poland, and Ukraine are telling.

Prisoners of Geography

The three elements in my book review are (1) Did I enjoy the structure and writing (2) Did I learn new things (3) Were there maps to aid in the understanding? This book delivered all three. If you want to read more extensive reviews of the book, Goodreads is a great place to start. ”Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything about the World“ includes a lot of maps with accompanying explanations. The consensus of the group was yes, lots of maps — many of them were not very good or readable. I read the book but had my tablet nearby loaded with Google Earth. That solved the problem of inadequate maps. For the frugal, the hardcover maps were no better than the paperback.

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Nice Things

I enjoy the expression “…and that is why we can’t have nice things”. To me, it describes the animus, jealousy, and discomfort with self that can afflict all of us at times. Today’s example has a sports angle but the point broadly applies. I am fortunate to have a serially positive cousin in the Finger Lakes. My version of negativity kryponite.

The USWNT

This story began when I read a preview of the upcoming World Cup for Women’s Soccer back in June. At the time, the United States Women’s National Team (USWNT) has been a wonderful story for more than three decades. A great local sportswriter in the Twin Cities shares the expression “Soccer has been the game of the future for more than forty years”. His conclusion is humorous because he is talking about Men’s Soccer. Women’s soccer is an amazing success story for American soccer.

The Road to Equality

The Civil War ended in 1865. Discrimination continued unabated until 1964 and the Civil Rights Act (CRA) under LBJ. Title IX applied the concepts of the CRA and clarified it to include sex discrimination. At its root, Title IX recognized that we all pay taxes, half of us are women, and, FINALLY, we were all created equal. The American University system is the envy of the world. Title IX sought to ensure equal access for women. How has the experiment gone? In fifty short years, advanced education has tipped and now women are the majority of college graduates. Did women magically become better students??? I think not.

By any OBJECTIVE measure, the USWNT is a wonderful story of success. What floors me is that a story of success can be politicized and lines are drawn where they do not belong. This is why we cannot have nice things.

The USWNT was defeated in the Round of 16 by Sweden at the FIFA Women’s World Cup held down under in Australia and New Zealand. A curious and weird smattering of Americans seemed to celebrate their lack of success. This does not bode well.

The Poll and Music

Maps remind me of road trips and road trip music. Today I provide #1, and #2 by the same band.

Some comment prompts — make us all think or laugh:

1. What is your favorite road trip music?

2. Do you root for the home country in International sporting events?

3. Why do many Americans have so much animus for the USWNT?

4. I think lots of the same people who root against the USWNT don’t appreciate Lebron James — it’s about them. Agree or disagree?