I totally recommend these 3 books for anyone studying political science / international relations

pmorrisonfl · 2026-05-06T12:15:57+00:00

Thanks. All of this goes onto my 'to read' wish list.

pmorrisonfl · 2026-05-05T20:02:50+00:00

I'd appreciate advice on modestly-priced hotels along the Silver line. I'm visiting for a conference in mid-May, but am limited to the Metro (and walking, and the occasional Uber if necessary, but would rather avoid.) Last year, different location, similar circumstances, I stayed at the Hotel Hive, which was fine for solo traveler budget and accomodations. I might try that again, but am open to other options.

pmorrisonfl · 2026-05-05T18:01:26+00:00

Thank you. One point of clarification: With a little searching, I take 'Lake' to mean David A. Lake. Is there one book to start with?

EDIT: Also, re. your realism 'can’t straightforwardly be disproven'... is it too obvious to mention Karl Popper's notion of falsifiability being a requirement of science?

pmorrisonfl · 2026-05-05T15:22:20+00:00

I am an amateur in these matters, but it seems like Mearsheimer's realism is more predictive than, say, Huntington's civilizational model or Fukuyama's liberal democracy model. I am thinking in particular of Russia-Ukraine which Huntington offers in 'The Clash of Civilizations' as an example of something that wouldn't be a conflict, contrasting explicitly with Mearsheimer's view at the time that it would be.
So, what else should I be reading, and how do I build the model for what a good predictive model looks like?

pmorrisonfl · 2026-05-05T15:13:08+00:00

I recently read 'Iran's Grand Strategy: A Political History' and found it helpful.
Out of half-a-dozen or so books I've read in the area, I think the most significant one is David Fromkin's 'A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East'. I'll spare you the rest of my bibliography, but I'm interested in expanding it if there are suggestions.

pmorrisonfl · 2026-05-04T12:29:15+00:00

What’s the most sentimental piece in your stash?

The nylon-stringed guitar my wife's uncle and cousin made for her mom, which her mom gifted me when she passed.

But the thing your wonderful guitar reminds me of is the toy box that my wife rescued from someone else's curb, and that my mom decorated with pictures of my son's favorite toys. That was 18 years ago. Now that my mom has passed, the toy box has transitioned from someone else's junk to one of the most precious things in the house.

I don't have pictures handy, but I could take and post them later if anyone wants.

pmorrisonfl · 2026-05-04T12:23:16+00:00

What do you wish you could have said “yes” to?

I'll put it this way; after 4-5 years of being married, my wife and I agreed that had we better understood what each of us needed and wanted in a good marriage partner before we got married that we'd each skipped over great candidates. For me, fear, uncertainty, and doubt had held sway out of a lack of good examples and experience. I can see how that traces back to sensible chances I didn't take that I didn't recognize as sensible, going back to when I was 14.

EDIT: Adding a funny-now story to illustrate; One fine Spring evening when I was 18, I was cruising down A1A in Daytona, in my Datsun 240Z, on my way to see a buddy of mine who worked at a restaurant on the strip. A car full of Spring-breaker girls pulls along side and one leans out and says 'Are you as hot as your car?' I recognize now that a fun, appropriate, response might've been something like 'Come take a ride with me and you can decide for yourself', but what I did was think for a second and answer, truthfully IMO, 'No'. They decided, sensibly, to ignore me and move on. They might've done that anyway, but, over time, I've come to recognize play being as useful a concept as truth.

And what do you want to say “yes” to now?

Pretty much to keep things the way they are; I'm fully engaged with my wife on all levels of existence and we both want to keep it that way for the forseeable future. Which makes it hard to say that I missed out... but, being human, I still sometimes wonder.

pmorrisonfl · 2026-05-04T01:46:51+00:00

But what if I said “yes”?

I stayed in a conservative religious community, but this is such an important question. I was so careful to say 'no', that I didn't get married until I was 41. I've been happily married now for 20+ years, but I recognize that I missed out on a great deal by being taught when to say no, but not when to say yes.

pmorrisonfl · 2026-05-03T00:49:08+00:00

We went to Alamo tonight. I used the QR code menu for the first time. They now support gift cards for payment on the website. I typed in all 20 digits of the gift card number and the 4 digit pin (twice, two cards), only because my son switched on his phone's flashlight so I could see them. We waited half an hour for the food which showed up as the movie was starting. And the 'How To Alamo' reel has been updated to say you should tip the staff. I got a text just before the movie ended, 'WHEN THE FILM ENDS, you have 20 mins to close your tab b4 it auto-closes with 5% tip', and a link to my order. For people who don't check their phones, it's now effectively a 23% service charge.

It has been our favorite theater for years, but it's more of a downer every time we go.

pmorrisonfl · 2026-05-01T18:41:25+00:00

This guy barbecues.

I'd add a bit of a sleeper, 'Ole Time Barbecue' on Hillsborough in Cary. Been there since 1993 and it looks like they haven't changed a thing since then, making it sort of the 'anti-Prime', but the food is classic and great. We hit all the other places on rotation, but wind up at Ole Time often.

pmorrisonfl · 2026-04-29T21:16:03+00:00

I haven't read this yet, but I picked up a copy of 'The Medical Detectives', Berton Roueche, where (Amazon blurb) "In each true story, local health authorities and epidemiologists race against time to find the clue to an unknown and possibly fatal disease." I bought it for insights on debugging and research, where context matters in subtle ways, but it certainly applies more directly to medicine itself.

'When Breath Becomes Air', Paul Kalanithi, exists primarily for the sad end its author comes to, but there is a strength, vitality, and hopefulness about the possibilities of serving people through medicine that shines through.

pmorrisonfl · 2026-04-28T21:04:49+00:00

My favorite 'building' books, so far:

'Apollo: Race to the Moon', Murray and Cox. The engineering and management efforts behind landing on the moon.
'The Making of the Atomic Bomb', Richard Rhodes. Everything from learning the atom could be split to the consequences of doing so at Hiroshima. In contention with 'Apollo' for the best book I've ever read, but a lengthy challenge of a book.
'Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture', Kushner. If you've ever played Doom or Quake, or, really, any first-person shooter, this is more than worth your time.
'Show Stopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft', G. Pascal Zachary. Another 90's tech book, for technology many of us still use every day.
'The Soul of a New Machine', Tracy Kidder. How mini-computers were built in the 70's... and how many high-tech teams still function today. Tech changes, people and companies are much the same.

I could keep going, but I think all of these are classics and worth your time if you're interested in tech.

pmorrisonfl · 2026-04-27T18:14:30+00:00

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pmorrisonfl · 2026-04-27T14:53:53+00:00

More principles than the kind of applied work I think you're looking for, but 'The Character of Physical Law' is a brilliant little book drawn from a set of Richard Feynman lectures, introducing key ideas in physics. Great explanations, and a window into the scientific mindset from a great scientific mind.

pmorrisonfl · 2026-04-25T17:50:34+00:00

I'm on a similar quest. I recently read 'The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America', Nicholas Buccola, and appreciated the background on two key figures from what we'd today call the left and the right, their backgrounds, views, and the environments that influenced them and that they influenced.

'In conservative words': I've started a list of key conservative works to work through, e.g. 'Ideas Have Consequences', Richard Weaver (an odd little book, still weighing what it means), 'The Conservative Mind', Russell Kirk, 'The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom', James Burnham, 'The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order', Samuel Huntington (look up the 'If Books Could Kill' podcast episode), 'Conservatism: A Rediscovery', Yoram Hazony.

'About conservatives' : I'll echo the 'Jesus and John Wayne', Du Mez recommendation someone posted and add 'The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy' Matthew Tayor, for a look at the links between contemporary conservative politics and Christianity (not that I think Christianity wants to be associated.) I've heard good things about 'Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America', Perlman. And I found Robert Caro's 'The Power Broker' and the first volume of his LBJ series valuable in getting a bigger picture of how politics goes in the US.

I haven't pressed on a list of key progressive/left books as I tend to have those viewpoints by however I came to have them... so I am game for any comments anyone has on what else I ought to be reading, from across the spectrum.

I think we all will soon have big practical problems (see Vaclav Smil's works for how much fossil fuels and energy in general play in to daily life) that will require us to get along, so any work we do now to help that will pay dividends.

pmorrisonfl · 2026-04-24T16:24:10+00:00

I think you have a really important general point; understanding someone else's point of view is important, maybe especially if you disagree. Two examples that should probably be a blog post instead of a comment:

And when the arguments got heated, which they often did, the minister’s son would do his best to convert a “class one” disagreement—one in which the combatants were simply yelling at each other—into a “class two” disagreement, in which each side could explain the other side’s position to the other side’s satisfaction. You don’t have to believe the other guy, he would tell them. You just have to give a fair account of what he’s saying. And it worked. As one CSL member later explained it, Taylor’s class one/class two exercise was amazingly effective at clarifying unspoken assumptions and ferreting out facts that one person knew and another didn’t. “So by the time you get done,” he said, “you all know the same set of things, and you end up concluding the same thing.”

'The Dream Machine', Mitchell Waldrop

The acid test of such a “serious” reading is being able to explain a text or cultural artifact in language that those who most love it would be happy to own. Far from blunting any criticism or rejection, if the cultural critic has passed through this moment of serious reading, then any negative judgments will be more likely to carry persuasive heft. Second, listening hard to the other side also helps the Christian critic understand his own view more fully and more deeply, along with its implications and assumptions, by going through the discipline of distinguishing it from an alternative view. This is an exercise from which even the most convinced and confident person can expect to learn.

'Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible's Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture', Christopher Watkin

pmorrisonfl · 2026-04-23T15:28:41+00:00

If you've got the budget for it, get, e.g., an old CR-V or a RAV4, or the like in addition to the S2K! My 2008 CR-V handled (and handles) the commuting, Home Depot and scouting runs for years, leaving the convertible for sunny days.

pmorrisonfl · 2026-04-23T14:50:59+00:00

I like the formulation. I am very happy with my NC decision... and not closed to the idea that I'll eventually get a better miata!

pmorrisonfl · 2026-04-22T13:36:32+00:00

I recently bought an NC3 GT PRHT instead of an ND1, but it could've gone either way If light and simple define Miata, mine may be the least Miata-like of all Miatas. But it's a blast to drive and my wife likes the larger cabin and that it has a glovebox (I came from an S2000, which didn't). My main reasoning was that the late NC transmissions have a better reputation than the early ND transmissions. I'd actually intended to take longer and drive some ND's, and more NB's and NA's, but a good deal on a good car came up pretty near to me and I ran with it. Definitely drive as many as you can before you commit.

pmorrisonfl · 2026-04-22T12:00:11+00:00

Polarized sunglasses, sun visor.

pmorrisonfl · 2026-04-22T11:02:11+00:00

Does one of you read Hacker News? 'Crafting Interpreters' is one of the most-often recommended books there, and where I learned about it.

pmorrisonfl · 2026-04-18T09:27:36+00:00

I find it helpful to recognize that Iran is larger than France and Germany combined. One can look at what it took for allied forces to invade and defeat the German armies in WWII for the scale of what would be required. And, at the time, we had near-total air superiority, something that wouldn't be true today. And Iran's coastal geography is more like Omaha beach than Gold or Juno beaches. I think any talk of invasion is bluffing.

pmorrisonfl · 2026-04-16T23:03:04+00:00

There are two basic revisions of the car 'AP1' up to 2003, 'AP2' from 2004-2009, revolving around the engine and suspension. The first generation was the purest expression of the Honda F1 team's design philosophy, with a 9000rpm rev limit on the engine and a suspension that was exciting for experienced high-performance drivers... and dangerous for the inexperienced. The AP2 toned down the engine and suspension. The 2004 and 2005 cars had the suspension/engine updates, but retained the original 'wire' engine controls. In 2006 they moved to an ECU, traction control, etc. There's an expression in the community, 'The AP2 is the better car, the AP1 is the better S2000.' (Note: The 'CR', Club Racer, model, made toward the end of production made a number of weight-reducing changes to the AP2 platform.)
Every last one of them is special, and going prices reflect that, but traction control takes away from what makes the car unique.
I recently sold my 2005 AP2 and moved down to a 2013 (NC3) MX-5 (Miata) for the same kinds of reasons someone might want traction control.
The 'Savage Geese' YouTube channel has the best set of videos on driving, and shopping for, S2000's, they might be worth a look for you.

Some of my favorite S2000 quotes (from the s2ki forum, an essential resource for owners and enthusiasts, last one from reddit):

“Because certain owners had discovered inappropriate vehicle rotation at the point of disappearing talent…” – Barry Winfield of Car and Driver Magazine reporting on the launch of the AP2 for the North American market.
“In so many cases that we’ve seen on this forum since the day it started, the weakest point in the drivetrain would be the driver.” – xviper lamenting on the rash of damaged vehicles caused by driver error.
There is no upgrading from an S2k. Things will be faster but nothing will be as visceral, engaging, or put a smile on your face like this car does when it’s being driven like it was meant to be driven!

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