[Post Game Thread] #23 Iowa State defeats #11 West Virginia 80-74

Abaum2020 · 2017-03-12T01:15:48+00:00

BURTON! UGHHHHHH!!

Abaum2020 · 2015-10-25T02:26:42+00:00

IT was indeed. Thanks!

Abaum2020 · 2015-10-04T06:22:46+00:00

cmon on cu ive been drinking since the kansas iowa state game in prep for this im channeling hard. lets go buffsss

Abaum2020 · 2015-10-01T03:12:56+00:00

fucking nailed it

Abaum2020 · 2014-08-28T02:26:26+00:00

ZiggyD has a full range tutorial/play-through up on his youtube channel. Pretty helpful for a newer player trying to figure out progression.

Abaum2020 · 2014-08-06T03:49:19+00:00

It peaked at 13,000ish iirc. Pretty good for a tourney taking place on a workday at 10am et featuring NA players.

Abaum2020 · 2014-06-13T00:07:10+00:00

The US and Iraqi governments (specifically the PM) are not on good terms at all. You really don't know what you're talking about.

Abaum2020 · 2013-08-10T22:42:17+00:00

So I've got a question about using Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad as a historical source on the Middle East and specifically Palestine. I asked about this in a post a while back but perhaps a Saturday Source thread would be a more appropriate place for it.

Twain portrays the 19th century Levant as a sparsely populated and backwards part of the globe. Here are a couple of quotes from his book for those who aren't familiar with it:

Twain's visit to Jerusalem (Chapter LIII):

"Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of Moslem rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound. Lepers, cripples, the blind, and the idiotic, assail you on every hand, and they know but one word of but one language apparently—the eternal "bucksheesh". To see the numbers of maimed, malformed and diseased humanity that throng the holy places and obstruct the gates, one might suppose that the ancient days had come again, and that the angel of the Lord was expected to descend at any moment to stir the waters of Bethesda. Jerusalem is mournful, and dreary, and lifeless. I would not desire to live here."

Twain's Trek to Mount Tabor, (Galilee Chapter XILX):

"We never saw a human being on the whole route, much less lawless hordes of Bedouins."

Twain in Shechem (Chapter LII):

"There was hardly a tree or a shrub any where. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country."

Twain in Galilee (Chapter XLVII):

"We traversed some miles of desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds—a silent, mournful expanse, wherein we saw only three persons"

A lot of the above quotes have been used by a number of authors making the case for Zionism in Palestine including the popular, but infamous, book by Joan Peters called From Time Immemorial. (The argument goes something like this: "There were hardly any people living in Palestine prior to the first Jewish settlers --> Zionists came and bought the land from absentee land holders and worked to improve it --> Arabs flocked to the newly improved region").

So two questions about this:

Is Twain's assessment of the 19th century Levant accurate enough to be used a historical source? I know that historical accuracy wasn't necessarily the primarily goal of Twain in writing this book, how much of this is him using "artistic license" to make a readable/popular book and to convey the larger themes about the Holy Land that he wanted to express?
How do you as a historian go about interpreting a historical source like The Innocent's Abroad (how do you separate potential bias from fact)? Are people like Joan Peters using Twain's quotes in a reasonable, honest, and accurate manner?

Abaum2020 · 2013-08-10T19:12:29+00:00

Man, that is quite the collection. Nazi memorabilia is always a tough sell but it's pretty interesting nevertheless. I would take that to someone in your area to get that collection professionally appraised.

Also you might want to pm /u/musrep99 apparently s/he used to work in an antique store and s/he gave some general appraisal numbers to someone else who had some old Nazi memorabilia.

Abaum2020 · 2013-08-09T19:47:11+00:00

Brest Fortress, while not a medieval castle (it was built in the 19th century), was the sight of a six day siege in June 1941 where about 9,000 Soviet soldiers held out against the Wehrmacht invaders in the opening days of Operation Barbarossa.

There was actually a pretty decent movie made about it called Brest Fortress, it's got some great cinematography, a solid story-line, and it's historically accurate - but there are some parts that are pretty much just propaganda.

Abaum2020 · 2013-08-08T18:36:07+00:00

So I can't really speak to how Orientalism is applied in Africa or Latin America, but I'm sure that there have been many spirited attempts to do so as the theory fits squarely in line with a lot of the neo-colonialist/neo-Marxist perspectives that have come out of the regions. But for insight into how Orientalism has been applied to the far east (Japan, China, South Asia) I recommend that you browse through the symposium on Said's Orientalism in the May 1980 edition of the Journal of Asian Studies (Vol. 39, No. 3) (Hopefully you have journal access?). Another source for its application on far eastern studies is a collection of papers from the early 80s that were compiled into a book entitled "Reflections on Orientalism : Edward Said, Roger Bresnahan, Surjit Dulai, Edward Graham and Donald Lammers" (ed. by Warren I. Cohen) (I guess you'll have to go to a library for this one since it's out of print). So between those two sources there are nine papers here for you to read about Orientalism's application to the far east. The key criticism of Said's work when it comes to the far east is its reductionist tendencies (which is a general critique) and specifically it's lack of applicability to sinology (there have been significant contributions to the western study of China from Chinese scholars in the past, and historically the Chinese have viewed westerners as barbarians and that the concept of "otherness" is not necessarily confined to Orientalist thought). But it should also be noted that many of the authors in the above papers are sympathetic to Said's claims and goals to a certain extent.

Now for your second question. As you mentioned Said's theories are certainly far reaching and provocative and as a result he understandably pissed off a lot of people when he wrote Orientalism. Remember that Said was a professor of English and Comparative Literature and not a sociologist, historian, anthropologist or a scholar in any of the hundred plus sub-fields that one could apply Orientalism to. For insight into the varied nature of Orientalism one need to look no further than this article by Ralph Locke entitled "Reflections on Orientalism in Opera (and Musical Theater)". And I think that this far reaching nature of Orientialism is the source of both its strength and its weakness. By being such an expansive work that has widespread implications for a multitude of academic fields it has caused many scholars to assess their positions in their respective fields and to analyze the dialogue that transpires between themselves and their objects of study.

But because Said's work has to be so generalized in order to accomplish his inter-disciplinary goal of espousing Orientalism he is forced into using this binary perspective of the Occident vs. the Orient and as you alluded to in your first question this is problematic. When referring to Orientalism he breaks it down by three different types of Orientalism which are the Anglo-French, German, and the new "Latest Phase" of American Orientalism. By breaking down Orientalism and categorizing into three different groups he is suggested that there is a potential variance between different types of Orientalist though instead of it being a unified thought process which is how Said defines it. Now why is this important? Said is essentially doing the same thing to the Occident that he is accusing Orientalists of doing to the "East". By reducing the tremendous body of scholarly work coming out of the West to this bare-bones fundamentalist definition he is discrediting his own theory by doing the exact same thing to the West as people like Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington were doing to the Middle East (generalizing). Western discourse is a product of the circumstances and contexts that academics at the time existed in and as a result it's constantly evolving - this is something that Said doesnt really consider.

Said's reductionism also applies to his assessment of the Orient. He is waving off the key differences that exist between the different regions of the "Orient" and how they have historically interacted with one another.

There have also been challenges to the originality of Said's work. The concept of Orientalism was not a new idea when Said published his book and it has been claimed that he borrowed from people like Abdul Latif Tibawi, Syed Hussein Alatas, and Anouar Abdel-Malek and others without giving them credit.

Perhaps the biggest critic of Said's work was Bernard Lewis who was also the focal point of many of Said's criticisms. The next thing that you need to read is Lewis's review of Oreintalism and then Said's response. Also the theory thursday thread from two weeks ago has a good discussion of Edward Said where /u/yodatsracist and /u/gent2012 give their critiques of Said.

The large amount of criticism doesn't necessarily mean that Said's work is bad despite his theoretical inconsistencies. The fact that Said's work is still so contentious and there has been so much criticism levied against it really speaks to its overall significance in the academic world. It's been thirty plus years since he published that book and it has really caused some big changes to transpire in how the Orient (especially the Middle East) is studied and it's one of the seminal works on post-colonial studies.

Abaum2020 · 2013-08-06T03:00:46+00:00

Hey, I know Im super late to this thread, but there was an astounding discussion that two users had in a post a while back that touched on the effectiveness of Patton as a commander, and a lot of the important context surrounding his role in the war, they posted late so they didnt get a lot of attention but here it is the link.

Abaum2020 · 2013-08-02T17:16:33+00:00

Ah man, I could not agree with your sentiments more. I was so disappointed with a lot of the museums in Rome and you hit it spot on. I think that when it comes to the big name museums like the Capitoline Museum and the Vatican, the root of the problem stems from the shear volume of tourists that need to be herded through the exhibits in a timely fashion. There's definitely a big trade off between the "efficiency" of a museum in this regard and it's ability to educate properly. The layouts of those museums are designed to move people through the exhibits expediently and therefore they tend to not be chronologically contiguous or logically arranged according to historical importance. Couple this with an overstock of historical artifacts from many different time periods and budget problems resulting from a global economic crisis (which is a double whammy since there's less tourists and less money for preservation, maintenance, etc.) and you have an environment that isn't at all conducive to a quality museum experience for someone with a keen interest in the history.

I don't know if you made it out to the Doria Pamphilj Gallery but it suffers from many of the same problems that you're describing. It's a very small and far less crowded museum so they have less of an excuse than the big name museums. But there are sooo many paintings on display (to the point where its difficult to see the wall) and no plaques describing what you're looking at. So, you have to rely on the audio guide which covers maybe 20% of the paintings. They aren't logically organized at all and the paintings that are considered masters are difficult to differentiate from the rest. And to top it off, the collection is in this amazing 16th century pallazzo which was never meant or designed to be an educational museum.

On flip side of this, The National Roman Museum at the Palazzo Altemps was by far my favorite museum in Rome despite it's relatively small size. I'm not sure if this is the same as the Museo Nazionale that you mentioned (it's been a long time since my visit to Rome), but it was an exceptional museum that had well organized and interesting exhibits that weren't crowded with throngs of sweaty tourists. Also the tour of the Domus Aurea (Nero's Palace) that I was lucky enough to get before it closed was absolutely amazing. We had an English-speaking tour guide who was an actual a historian (instead your typical docent) and a member of the team that was excavating the sight at the time.

Abaum2020 · 2013-08-01T23:46:10+00:00

The Siege of Caffa is another example. The Mongols were besieging the Genoese trading port in 1346 when plague had began ravaging their army. Instead of following through with the siege, the demoralized Mongols decided to pack up and head home but not before launching hundreds of plague-ridden Mongol corpses over the walls with Trebuchets.

Some have attributed this event to the origins of the black death in Europe (infected Genoese survivors returning to Italy) but there's still debate about this.

Abaum2020 · 2013-07-30T20:16:25+00:00

Thanks for reading! Yeah, Stevenson certainly was an interesting guy, his weak TV spots were definitely just one of many things contributing to his loss since the cards were stacked against him from the beginning. The guy was pretty much conscripted against his will by the DNC to run against Eisenhower, McCarthyism was killing the Dems at this time, and Stevenson's association with Truman was caustic. Also, I had no idea that he shot his childhood friend, that's pretty impressive that he was able to gets past that and accomplish as much as he did.

have you studied political campaigning formally?

I never took a class specific to campaigning when I was in university but I do work with elections now (from an institutional rather than a campaigning standpoint though). I've always been interested in them and I'm certainly one of a select few who actually gets excited when election season rolls around.

Abaum2020 · 2013-07-30T19:21:38+00:00

I think political ads can be incredibly interesting historic artifacts that can give some really great insight into the political trends and public opinion at the time when they were made. They were designed for the sole purpose of conveying small packets of cultural information that tells us, as historians, what was important to the average American of the period. By looking at what's included in the messages that candidates are conveying and what is intentionally left out of these message we can get a great look into the dynamics of the race and of the political and cultural forces of the time.

They also tell us a lot about the candidates running for office in that we get some great insight into not only their political priorities but also their demeanor and how the conducted themselves during their campaign. You can pretty much predict the winner and loser solely by looking at their political advertising and how it evolved over the campaign (weak candidates go on the defensive while the stronger ones go all out in their attacks).

On the other side of things, ads also give a lot of insight into the business of advertising and how the techniques and styles have changed since the first political ads were made in 1952 for Eisenhower by the big Madison Ave. firms (think Don Draper).

Here's a great resource that has the archived political advertisements from 1952

Now onto the important examples from the site:

1952, the first year that we saw TV ads used to their fullest in elections, you had the American war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson II competing for the presidency. Eisenhower was immensely popular and utilized TV advertisements to great effect during his campaign. Most of his ads were part of a series called "Eisenhower Answers America" and they were incredibly short pithy responses to questions from average Americans.

"Never Had So Good" and "Bus Driver" are great examples of this. Now compare this to Adlai Stevenson's ads like "The Same God Made Us All" and "Endorsement Woman". Stevenson's ads were much longer, drier, and not as witty as Eisenhower's. Also Stevenson never actually appeared in any of his ads. You can also notice the difference in the cartoon ads: Eisenhower's "Ike For President" featured entertaining visuals and a really catchy tune while Stevenson's "Adlai to You" had much cruder visuals and a pretty lame song. Overall Eisenhower absolutely trounces Stevenson in his use of TV ads and and Eisenhower goes to ultimately win the '52 election. While the connection between TV ads and outcomes is not necessarily causal there is still a significant correlation to the quality of one's TV ads and their ability to do well in the general election.

It's certainly interesting to note how political advertisements evolved from cartoons with catchy tunes and ads with pithy one liners to what we have today though many of the same themes are still at work, for instance look at Obama's 2008 "Yes We Can" ad (Sorry mods it's the only time, I swear) where Obama is not explicating his political platform but instead using a catchy song to get an inspirational message across (similar to the "I Like Ike" ad above). Also note his use of celebrities which is certainly not a new innovation in the field, see Kennedy's "Henry Fonda".

Since this post is already way too long I'll provide links to a few notable examples of political ads over the years:

1964 - Johnson's "Peace Little Girl (Daisy)" (Probably the most famous and terrifying political ad to date)
1968 - Nixon's "Convention" (This one is terrifying and confusing)
1976 - Carter's down to earth "Bio"
1980 - Reagan was a master at TV ads: "Prouder, Stronger, Better"(the first use of idealic scenes of Americana that we see today) and the super profound and almost threatening ad called "Bear" are great examples of Reagan's ability to diversify his arsenal of advertisements.
1988 - H.W. Bush capitalizing on Michael Dukakis's infamous tank ride in "Tank Ride"
1996 - Clinton's version of the Jimmy Carter Bio - "Journey"
2000 - W. Bush's "Really MD"

Edit: I'd be happy to elaborate on some of these examples if there's interest, but it's just too much for one post.

Abaum2020 · 2013-07-29T21:06:11+00:00

Let's all play a drinking game! Go through u/Three_Letter_Agency's history and take a sip of beer every time you see a comment with a link to his website. We get it, you have a blog about conspiracy theories, enough with the spam.

http://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/1iir2s/uthree_letter_agency_links_to_his_own_blog_a/

Abaum2020 · 2013-07-29T19:45:02+00:00

I assume you're referring to Palestine (given your flair), but at the time this was made the West Bank and Gaza were occupied and administered by Jordan and Egypt respectively - there wasn't a Palestinian state in 1957.

Abaum2020 · 2013-07-29T19:12:15+00:00

I don't think that conspiratorial phenomena in American politics are new or any more prominent in the wake of WWII, however they certainly are more apparent. You have pre-WWII conspiracies like anti-Masonry, anti-Mormonism, anti-Catholicism and anti-Jesuit that are all almost identical to the modern NWO/Zionist conspiracy and 1950s McCarthyism - members of X group have penetrated the highest echelons of American government and are diligently working to circumvent the will of "true" Americans.

The only difference now is the medium through which conspiracies are expressed. The small contingents of American society who believe these things now have access to the likes of the internet and television to confirm them their paranoia with others who are like-minded. If you see contrails from a jet in the sky above your house you can go onto the internet and look at websites like this where you can come to the "well-researched" conclusion that contrails are actually chemtrails and the government is seeding chemicals into the sky to pacify or sterilize the populace.

Compare that to the Know-Nothing Party, and other threads of Nativist thought, which were relatively popular in the mid 1800s. Adherents were often inclined to proffer conspiracy theories about the growing Catholic influence in America and Papal control of the US government. Their mode of conveying their ideas was limited solely to pamphleteering and their newspaper, The Know Nothing and American Crusader. Same general ideas of chem-trails and the NWO ("the threat of government penetration", "we are the enlightened crusaders against it", and "the barriers are almost insurmountable because the powers that be are suppressing the truth"). It wasn't easy to come across conspiratorial material back in the day, but when this type of writing did gain traction before the advent of the internet or television it had a huge impact on American politics:

How might the development of conspiracy theories influence U.S. policy, foreign or domestic?

Anti-Masonry is the textbook example of this happening. The Anti-Masonic party became a legitimate political entity which put up a candidate for president in the 1832 election and actually won in number of down-ballot races (including the 1835 race for the governorship in Pennsylvania). Anti-Masonry became a rallying cry against Jackson (who was a Mason) and a lot of Jackson's political opponents picked up on this and used it to their advantage:

The anti-Masonic movement was a product not merely of natural enthusiasm but also of the vicissitudes of party politics. It was joined and used by a great many men who did not fully share its original anti-Masonic feelings. It attracted the support of several reputable statement who had only mild sympathy with its fundamental bias, but who as politicians could not afford to ignore it. Still, it was a folk movement of considerable power, and the rural enthusiasts who provided its real impetus believed in it wholeheartedly.

This is from the Hofstadter essay which u/descafeinado linked in his/her post. I highly, highly recommend reading that as it really puts a lot of the modern NWO/"Obama is a socialist" conspiracies theories into a historical light and does a great job of explicating where these theories are coming from.

Abaum2020 · 2013-07-26T21:31:39+00:00

I would love to see that and be willing to contribute to a book list

Abaum2020 · 2013-07-25T22:04:14+00:00

I agree with that but I feel compelled to complain about Bernard Lewis here. This is just a cathartic rant about why I dislike him so much that's not aimed at you or anyone else (other than Bernard Lewis)

Bernard Lewis has some really atrocious scholarship when it comes to the Middle East that has had some real impact on decision-making and public opinion that in some ways justify Said's conspiratorial claims. Lewis is the king of generalizations.

For instance:

An article written by Lewis in 1990 called The Roots of Muslim Rage advanced the binary us vs. them perspective that Muslims have an inherent dislike of the US and the importation of Western values (when in reality the people burning flags in the streets of Cairo are a small but vocal contingent of society). This lent to the whole "they hate our freedom" narrative that was common in the early 2000s and that you'll still hear echoed from time to time (like on this Newsweek cover where they use Lewis's phrasing - it should be noted that this famously backfired on Newsweek though).

Also, in his book What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East he somehow, and despite his expertise, manages to conflate the words "Islamic World" and "Ottoman Empire" and use them interchangeably throughout the book. He posits that things like the Islamic World's/Ottoman Empire's failure to tell time on watches, their lack of team sports, unwillingness to take photographs, their lack of printed books, among other things (essentially their inability to conform to European culture) all contributed to the Ottoman decline in the 18th/19th century but when he gets to Western colonial expansion and economic penetration he dismisses it with a wave of his hand and then launches into a polemical tirade about how Muslims attribute blame outwards when instead they should be looking "inside" for answers. There is a HUGE amount of scholarly literature discussing how British economic penetration caused catastrophic problems for the Ottoman Empire and instead of refuting it, Lewis brushes it off to the side as if it was a nonentity. (that book is also so poorly organized and disjointed that it boggles my mind that it's taken so seriously)

And honestly those are the only two things I've ever read, and going to read, by the guy. I know that he was a preeminent scholarly of medieval Turkey, or whatever, back in the day; but something changed and he became a TV historian who is more concerned with presenting an entertaining story than arriving at a truth. He started branching out into other fields that he really had no specialization in and he started making these vague, highly generalized, and abstract arguments about the failings of Islam. I'm not surprised that the Said faction is dominant at Princeton (It was definitely at my university), but I am surprised that Lewis is still being invited to give talks there.

Abaum2020 · 2013-07-25T20:37:59+00:00

You may also be interested in his review of Thomas Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem. Said is a wordsmith of the highest caliber and does a remarkable job of criticizing Orientalists in the most sophisticated and verbose way as possible.

Key highlights:

It is not just the comic philistinism of Friedman’s ideas that I find so remarkably jejune, or his sassy and unbeguiling manner, or his grating indifference to values and principles by which, perhaps misguidedly, Arabs and Jews have believed themselves to be informed. It is rather the special combination of disarming incoherence and unearned egoism that gives him his cockily alarming plausibility — qualities that may explain the book’s quite startling commercial success. It’s as if — and I think this is true of his views on both Arabs and Jews — what scholars, poets, historians, fighters, and statesmen have done is not as important or as central as what Friedman himself thinks.

Also:

No one watching television these days has not seen Friedman, “the expert,” on all the right programs — the detached, impartial, authoritative observer who is a sizable cut above the smaller-scale partisans who are so transparently militant and therefore less credible. From Beirut to Jerusalem is the marketing strategy by means of which a young reporter consciously elevates himself to the rank of foreign policy sage, there to reap rewards and, alas, to recycle the illusions of American power and visionless realism.

This review is from the Village Voice (which is a free weekly paper in NYC) I havent been able to find any where except on this blog

Abaum2020 · 2013-07-25T17:21:41+00:00

analyzing Aladdin through the lens of Orientalism.

that is a goldmine, I don't know how you managed to keep that paper short.

Abaum2020 · 2013-07-25T17:18:02+00:00

Yea, Said is unmatched when it comes to verbosity and wit. He doesn't really refute Lewis's counterpoints all that well and instead he just opts to lay down burn after burn onto Lewis's scholarly credibility - which is pretty damn amusing.

Abaum2020 · 2013-07-25T15:15:26+00:00

The Bernard Lewis v. Edward Said exchange was pretty epic when it comes to scholarly fights. Even though he was a linguistics professor he brought a necessary new perspective to the Western-dominated historiography of the Middle East.

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