Marc | March 19, 2010
I am continually amazed at how “muddy” at lot of thinking is these days, and how this is reflected in a lot of the writing that I now read. I find myself yearning for the “Good Old Days”, which existed only in myth, where people would hold sensible conversations in their writing. Maybe I’m just [...]
Marc | October 23, 2009
I just stumbled across a wonderful blog called Work Matters run by Bob Sutton (hat tip to Mark Huselid and the HRDivNet mailing list). One of the terms Bob uses is “Jargon Monoxide” (originally created by Polly LaBarre). What a wonderful term, and one that I believe should enter the lexicon of those of us [...]
Marc | September 18, 2009
My friends Adam Elkus and Mark Safranski just released what is one of the more insightful, and scathing, critiques of US “Grand Strategy”. The short article is entitled Theory, Policy, and Strategy: A Conceptual Muddle (abstract | PDF) and focuses on one simple observation: grand strategy for the US is now being driven by operational [...]
Marc | July 15, 2009
If there is one thing bureaucracies, as collectives, cannot stand, it is the free flow of information. This observation was just reinforced when I got an email from a friend who told me that his organization just blocked out a site I had built for him because the host (sites.google) had too many phishing sites.
Marc | May 25, 2009
Joel Garreau at the Washinton Post has a very interesting article posted yesterday called TONGUE IN CHECK: With Translation Technology On Their Side, Humans Can Finally Lick the Language Barrier (hat tip to Adam Russell). The story is well worth reading for a number of reasons.
Marc | May 1, 2009
A couple of friends / colleagues are in the process of putting together an historical sourcebook on “terrorism” which, IMO, will be very useful. As a part of this process, I just got a copy of their draft introduction which has started me thinking that it is time to formalize some of my current thinking [...]
Marc | February 21, 2009
Last Thursday (Feb. 19th, 2009), Inside Higher Ed published an article by Dr. Adam Silverman called The Why and How of Human Terrain Teams. This piece, which is well worth reading, is one of the few that has come out by an HTT member describing their actions in the field – it also “enjoys” comments [...]
Marc | February 18, 2009
I’ve been thinking about the effects of ‘net interactivity on perception and the formation of meaning systems for a long time now (about 20 years). A lot of this thinking has been focused on population level, structural changes that have taken place, i.e. a shift from redistributive communications systems to reciprocity based communications systems [...]
Marc | February 10, 2009
Tom Ricks has a series of posts on the Battle of Wanat last summer over at Foreign Policy that is well worth reading for a number of reasons. First of all, Tom has done some excellent research and, unlike many, offers questions rather than answers (although he has a few of those). Second, his research, [...]
Marc | February 6, 2009
There are times when I get totally frustrated with computers. I had this post all ready to go with just some final edits to make on the 1st when my laptop died and I was stuck without a keyboard.
I have been thinking a lot, lately, about how the map-territory paradox applies to cross-cultural (mis)communications. And [...]
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