Great Cover, Wrong Article, Part Trzy

From the comments on my first and second posts in what has become a series about the limitations of Globalization, it’s clear that some (read most) don’t really understand the point that Globalization’s dangers and threats are clearly starting to outweigh the benefits. This is a two-sided coin: the threats and costs of Globalization are growing, while the benefits are shrinking. I had, in the first post, listed many examples of this rejection of Globalization, primarily focusing on the threats and costs. However, the example cited below is a little different in two ways. First, it’s not a slogan on a sign at an anti-Globalization protest or a seemingly obscure indigenous group whose rights are being trampled–but an article published by Dani Rodrik, professor of Political Economy at Harvard.  Second, the article focuses on the dearth of benefits created by Globalization, not the costs and threats.  The article “The False Promise of Financial Liberalization” over at Project Syndicate notes:

Something is amiss in the world of finance. The problem is not another financial meltdown in an emerging market, with the predictable contagion that engulfs neighboring countries. Even the most exposed countries handled the last round of financial shocks, in May and June 2006, relatively comfortably. Instead, the problem this time around is one that relatively calm times have helped reveal: the predicted benefits of financial globalization are nowhere to be seen.

A note to readers, Kandinsky-Munter book, & SuSE 10.0 can be really cool

I’ve not been posting lately–I have been very busy with projects, including selling my house, buying another one, moving the accumulating detris of 12 years, which will happen later this month–but will have a couple of posts before then, but only a couple.

One will be about the complexity of competition and cooperation and the interaction between these two processes. Quite a lot to quote from, primarily Mutual Aid by Peter Kropotkin on the subject, and how it ties in with a really important work by Allen Scott (Scott, Allen J., “High Technology Industry and Territorial Development: The Rise of the Orange County Complex, 1955-1984.” Urban Geography, 1986, 7, 1, pp. 3-45). I don’t want to wing Kropotkin’s quotes, as its been nearly 25 years since I have read his works, and am unsure if my memory is imputing understandings from other sources.

Also just finished Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Munter by Annegret Hoberg, which is an edited compilation of Munter’s and Kandinsky’s correspondence from 1902 to 1914. Great book for reading on the train to work–each letter is so short. Very interesting if you are a big Kandinsky fan, and I came across this book while packing (you can see I am being very efficient-reading each book before packing it!), having forgotten I even had it. In any case, it has some of Munter’s paintings, I would think she is quite under-rated as a painter in her own right.

Thanks

Thanks readers. I hit 7,000 hits today, that’s 7,000 since I started this in late August. But things have really exploded recently, with 4,583 hits since Decemeber 2, 2006, about a month ago. So Thanks!

And here’s a map of readers:

Journey to the End of the Night (Seadrome Edition)

Looking through the overstock of my Grandfather’s bookstore, I have quite a number of Architectural Magazines, including many editions of “The American Architect,” “The Architectural Forum” (which actually covered Architecture, unlike today’s Architectural Forum, which almost no Architects read) and “The International Studio.” They cover the period from from the early teens to the late Thirties, but most fall between 1928 and 1934.

From the December 1930 edition of “The American Architect” there is an interesting article about Seadromes. Of course, no one today knows what a Seadrome is because they were never built, so this article is just about the only source I am aware of. There isn’t even an entry on Wikipedia. (Although there is a paragraph about them in the entry for Edward Robert Armstrong, the Engineer who had conceptualized and advocated the Seadrome concept.)