HISTORY MAY BE FOR HEROES

men jag är ingen hjälte.

Hjältebloggen är från och med nu historia.

The End.

Jag jobbar med daaata

Is it possible that when today's teenagers enter the workforce -- and become tomorrow's historians, politicians and Pentagon war fighters -- that they'll have reclaimed the ability to think counterfactually? Will all those years of gaming have trained them to imagine the many different ways a crisis can evolve?

Frågar sig Wired.

Niall Ferguson, supertjärnehistorikern, har bara gott att säga om hur nyttiga dataspel är för historiker. Det har han upptäckt efter att ha spelat Making History, ett krigsspel som bygger på historiskt grundade scenarier.

As he played it, he realized the game was good -- so good, in fact, that it forced him to rethink some of his long-cherished theories. For example, he'd often argued that World War II could have been prevented if Britain had confronted Germany over its invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938. France would have joined with Britain, he figured, pinching Germany between their combined might and that of the Russian army. "Germany wasn't ready for war, and they would have been defeated," he figured. "War in 1938 would have been better than war in 1942."

But when he ran the simulation in Making History, everything fell to pieces. The French defected, leaving Britain's expeditionary force to fly solo -- and get crushed by Germany. His theory, as it turns out, didn't hold water. He hadn't realized that a 1938 attack would not leave Britain enough time to build the diplomatic case with France.
[...]
Ferguson discovered something that fans of war-strategy and civilization-building "god" games have realized for years: Games are a superb vehicle for thinking deeply about complex systems. After you've spent months pondering the intricacies of the weapons markets in Eve Online, or the mysteries of troop placement in Company of Heroes, you develop a Mandlebrotian appreciation of chaos dynamics -- how a single change can take a stable situation and sent it spiraling all to hell, or vice versa.

Though Ferguson couldn't figure out how to make his 1938 scenario work, there was a better expert who could: His 13-year-old son, who was a whiz at strategy games. Rather than rush out to attack Germany, his son carefully set up robust trade agreements with France first to make sure the country felt diplomatically obligated to go along with the fight. Presto: France fought, and Germany fell.

Ferguson är så imponerad att han nu ska vara med och bygga en uppföljare, som ska handla om kriget i Irak.

Tjohoo! Krigsdataspel är vår framtid!

Som om historia inte var grabbigt nog ändå.

Det ante mig

Alabama man, about Martin Luther King Day:
-Yeah, well, down in Alabama we don't celebrate his birthday, but the day he was shot.

Om att dö i fel ordning

Den här skribenten har inte mycket till över för den avgående brittiska premiärministern

History will judge him, says Blair. And so it will, but not before everybody else has. And it's remarkable how for Blair history is always something in the future. If he had a little knowledge of past history, he might have avoided his greatest error. This is a man for whom the Ottoman Empire is something to do with sofa government.

Och så klämmer han till med ett fantastiskt Bealtescitat: "[De roliga Labourpolitikerna] Robin Cook, Donald Dewar and Mo Mowlam; all now gone, leading me to believe that, as someone once said of the Beatles, Labour are dying in the wrong order."

Vem sa att historien inte var samhällsnyttig?

The Telegraph berättar att "Multi-racial Britain should unite behind a clear expression of the "British story" - enligt Jack Straw.

Det är alltså så bizzart när historien så uppenbart ska användas för att glorifiera nationalstaten på det sätt som Labour hot-shoten Straw förespråkar. Han menar att Storbritannien ska imitera USA:

"We should do the same, bringing out the freedom that lies at the heart of the story," Mr Straw writes in The World Today, journal of Chatham House, the foreign affairs think-tank.

"That means freedom through the narrative of the Magna Carta, the Civil War, the Bill of Rights, through Adam Smith and the Scottish enlightenment, the fight for votes, for the emancipation of Catholics and non-conformists, of women and of the black community, the Second World War, the fight after that for rights for minority groups, the fight now against unbridled terror."

Mr Straw says that growing integration increases the need for a national story of identity, one that should be expressed through the "core values of democracy: freedom, fairness, tolerance and plurality, for all to subscribe to".

Är det liksom inte så uppenbart att det är ett godtyckligt urval? Hur kan man berätta om kvinnornas och de svartas strid för rättigheter som en del av "historiens kärna", utan att det de stred emot - de som INTE ville ge dem rättigheter - INTE blir en del av samma historias kärna? Hur blir "the emancipation of Catholics" en central del av Den Brittiska Historien om "The Terrible Oppression of Catholics" aldrig varit det? Det är som att berätta historien ur ett marxistiskt perspektiv utan att ta med bourgeoisin - bara för att man tycker mer om arbetarna.

"[I]t does not require individuals to give up distinctive cultural attributes, such as their religion," förklarar Straw, men "To be a British citizen, fully playing your part in British society, you must subscribe to that." Och det var precis så man tyckte när man skrev Magna Carta på 1200-talet. Och i det var precis det man gjorde i de koloniala koncentrationslägren i Kenya på 50-talet.

Någon slags historia är det väl?

BBC har listat kandidaterna till de sämsta popstroferna någonsin. Min favorit är nog nr 4. Så enkel i sin idioti.

1. ABC - That Was Then But This is Now
More sacrifices than an Aztec priest
Standing here straining at that leash
All fall down, can't complain, mustn't grumble
Help yourself to another piece of apple crumble

2. Snap - Rhythm is a Dancer
I'm as serious as cancer when I say rhythm is a dancer

3. Human League - The Lebanon
Before he leaves the camp he stops
He scans the world outside
And where there used to be some shops
Is where the snipers sometimes hide

4. Razorlight - Somewhere Else
And I met a girl
She asked me her name
I told her what it was

5. Duran Duran - Is There Something I Should Know?
And fiery demons all dance when you walk through that door
Don't say you're easy on me
You're about as easy as a nuclear war

6. Oasis - Champagne Supernova
Slowly walking down the hall
Faster than a cannonball
Where were you while we were getting high?

7. Des'ree - Life
I don't want to see a ghost
It's the sight that I fear most
I'd rather have a piece of toast
Watch the evening news

8. Black Sabbath - War Pigs
Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses

9. Toto - Africa
The wild dogs cry out in the night
As they grow restless longing for some solitary company
I know that I must do what's right
Sure as Killimanjaro rises like Olympus over the Serengheti

10. U2 - Elevation
I've got no self-control
Been living like a mole now, going down
Excavation
High and high in the sky
You make me feel like I can fly, so high
Elevation

Kan 4 timmar av dansande vargar ha fel?

Jag vet inte om han har rätt eller inte, men den här historikern, som går emot anspråken som Iroquois Indianerna ("the Six Nation natives") gör på vissa landområden i Caledonia i Canada, kan räkna med en jävla massa skit från ursprungsbefolkningkramande New Ageare världen över.

It's time for the politically incorrect truth to be told. In short, the Six Nations have no legal rights to the lands in question, and have had none for over a century.
[...]
The first myth is that the Six Nations Indians have a valid aboriginal claim to the subject lands, and the second myth is that the Six Nations were the aboriginal occupants of these lands at the time of first contact with European explorers, traders and colonizers.
[...]
As for moral obligations, a review of the history of the Six Nations Indians indicates that they are not innocent victims of land robbery by European colonizers, but are instead themselves the culprits who terrorized, conquered, and displaced many other Indian tribes whose lands and resources they sought to control.

Och smaka på det här från samma penna:

Thomas S. Abler of the University of Waterloo commented, in an article published in the journal Ethnohistory in 1980, upon “the contemporary Native political movement’s attempt to sanitize (remove all blemishes . . . ) from the aboriginal past.” He noted that numerous scholars had written of Iroquoian cannibalism in the past, and there is “no point in suppressing these facts . . . it is dishonest to consider Iroquoian torture and cannibalism without recognition of its cruelty.”

And cruel it was. Professor Barbara Graymont describes, in The Iroquois in the American Revolution, Iroquoian torture as “the most horribly excruciating death imaginable,” followed by cannibalism
[...]
It is out of respect for the many persons who suffered the terrifying experience of an Iroquoian torture that I risk my own safety today by recounting this history.

Men vanudå? Är inte Indianerna the good guys?

Och inte kan väl dom hota någons säkerhet?

Va?