Pictured above is St. Paul’s, a 150 year old Catholic church located in Wilmington, Delaware. I used to drive past it every day on my commute to work. Between the exit ramp off the highway and the commuter lot in the commercial district where I worked there were a few blocks of gritty urban neighborhood to drive through, with this church planted in the midst of it, like a watchtower, or a fortress. This quick drive by provided a glimpse…
Someone at work left the company, which means the mandatory going away lunch happened. I remember at a previous position I was invited to a going away lunch in my first week on the job. It was just assumed that I knew that guy who was leaving. It was a strange way to start a gig, but of course I went along with it. Anyway, at my current job, you may realize if you are following this blog that I…
In January I posted a series of “Strategy Reviews” where I examined the thinking of several authors who analyzed the state of politics and war at the beginning of this century. These were Thomas P. M. Barnett with the Pentagon’s New Map that divided the world between Core and Gap, Philip Bobbitt and the market state as defined in The Shield of Achilles, and John Robb with his Brave New War fought in a networked world. Each author’s viewpoint provided…
In my most recent posts I looked at the strategic theories of two different authors. The first was Thomas P. M. Barnett, who divided the world into functioning, integrated Core states, and their danger-producing opposites, the Gap states. His mantra was “disconnectedness defines danger.” The second was Philip Bobbitt, who divided history into epochs in which different forms of the state ruled. He taught us that the nation state is on its way out, and the new market state is taking its…
It’s been two weeks since the election, and we now wait with dread for the MAGA regime to take over and reformat, or at least attempt to reformat, American society. I’ve already written one post – I called it an election post-mortem, but it was really more of a reaction to the gut punch, immediate thoughts post. Like many of us, I’ve been consuming tons of post-election content as we all process this historic event. Here are some deeper thoughts,…
aka: Barnett is back! Twenty years ago (was it really that long ago?) a geostrategist named Thomas P. M. Barnett pubished a book titled The Pentagon’s New Map. He introduced a new way of thinking about geostrategy in the post-Cold War era. Instead of seeing the world as divided between East and West – the old Soviet bloc vs. U.S. bloc – it made sense to see the world divided between the “Core” of functioning globalized states and the “Gap”…
Did you know that when you go the store and pick an item off the shelf, choosing among the myriad options on display, you are performing a theatrical act? That you are putting on a little play? Did you know that everything we do is a performance? Every choice we make and every action we take? It is just as the great bard wrote: All the world’s a stage,And all the men and women merely players; William Shakespeare, As You…
In front of our house there is a little round planter area which is full of tulip bulbs. They’ve done really well this year, as you can see from the picture to the right. They’ve created this lovely riot of pink blooms, with some red thrown in for highlight, which you can admire every time you step out front. They reminded me of this book I read a while back, called Tulipomania, about the infamous tulip bulb market bubble in the…
We’ve recently been watching Mad Men (available on Amazon Prime with our AMC+ subscription), a TV show about New Yorkers in the advertising business in the 1960s. It clearly is attempting to paint a portrait of what life was like in that bygone era, and how social mores were so much different back then. For example, everyone is constantly lighting up cigarettes, in any context, even in front of kids. The men unabashedly treat women like sex objects, and the…
Four years ago, a young woman gave a victim impact statement against a man convicted of criminal sexual conduct. It was a high profile case, because the criminal conduct had been ongoing for decades and involved hundreds of adolescent girls. The woman, Kyle Stephens, confronted her victimizer and made a powerful statement which included these resounding words: “Little girls don’t stay little forever. They grow into strong women that return to destroy your world.” It was a landmark moment in…