Experimental Blog #53

Comments on "Living History" - by Hillary Rodham Clinton

"Where the lights are brilliant the shades run deep" and "Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind" are two aphorisms, the first one of unknown origin, the second one biblical, that could apply to Hilliray Rodham Clinton.
Hillary Rodham's first political activism was as a "fearless and stupid," she says, 13 year old volunteering for a Republican Party investigation for vote fraud in the 1960 election. She knocked on doors, alone, in a poor South Side Chicago neighborhood, and in one day, or less, uncovered at least a dozen apparently fraudulent voter registrations.
However, Hillary Rodham was "obviously" born to be, not a Republican, even a liberal one, but a very partisan Democrat, which she easily became when she met William Jefferson Clinton in 1970 at about 23 years of age.
Among other things, Hillary's book succeeds in making Bill Clinton a forgivable and likable human being, a naturally very sympathetic and charming man, who was, perhaps, beguiled and seduced by almost unlimited audulation and power to the point of losing his "better judgement," at times; actually a very common occurence. "Birds of feather flock together" is another aphorism that seems very appropriate to describe Hillary and Bill Clinton.
Many of Hillary's finest moments and speeches occur when she is working and speaking for children's and women's causes. It seems safe to say that Hillary Rodham Clinton was likely the most visible, influential, and controversial American First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt. She makes people think, and how can she do that without being controversial, or even offensive, at times.
However, Hillary shows her most narrow-minded and intransigent side near the end of this book when she expresses her views on the outcome of the stalled election of the year 2000. Here she seems most clearly incapable or unwilling to understand other people's different points of view.
How would she react to the opinion that Richard Nixon was, and so far remains, arguably the most significant and critical American President since Franklin Roosevelt, in spite of having acquired very early in his career the nickname "tricky Dick," and his several public "poor Richard" performances?
In the modern scientific age we may no longer be punished for our "sins," but we are all punished for our "stupidity", and it all turns out to be more or less the same in the long run.
Now, after having been a United States Senator from New York for 8 years, Hillary Rodham Clinton is our American Secretary of State. Her career continues, and she will surely write another book, or books, in the years ahead.

Experimental Blog #52

Comments on "Dreaming in Chinese" - Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language by Deborah Fallows

Some books come with many recommendations, and, sometimes it seems that they need them, for some reason or other. This book has 7 recommendations, but it does not need any such authoritative defenses. The author, Deborah Fallows, is a very impressive linguistic scholar. For outsiders, her little book is a very engaging introduction to the mysteries of the spoken and written Chinese language.
Among other things, this little journey into the Chinese language and people shows what differences and similarities 5000 years of continuous history and vast, or maximum, linguistic differences have produced among the hundreds of millions of Chinese people, and many of the other people of the world as well.
If these comments were authoritative, they might be an 8th recommendation.

Experimental Blog #51

Comments on "The Next Big Story" - My Journey Through the Land of Possibilities by Soledad O'Brien with Rose Marie Arce

Most people probably know the author of this book, Soledad O'Brien, as the well-known, always charming, news anchor and special correspondent. Not surprisingly, she has always been an exceptionally high achiever. Soledad is a graduate of Harvard University, as well as are all 5 of her high achieving sisters and brothers. Page after page of this book relate her seemingly inexhaustible energy, optimism, and successes.
Soledad O'Brien's stories about her family and hometown, and her reporting about the different news networks where she has worked, and about all kinds of people, such as Lou Dobbs, another news anchor and Harvard graduate at her workplace, are extremely interesting.
Most of all, however, she seems to concentrate on the events of Hurricaine Katrina and the massive earthquake in Haiti in January 2010.
She generally seems disappointed with and is disparaging about the efforts of the American government. However, it also seems that the nature of the American government and political solutions must derive from American sources; they can not be imported, at least for very long.
America has its own "political philosophers", such as, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and Theodore Roosevelt, to mention only 3. The best description, or most dependable in the longest run, of American government seems to be Abraham Lincoln's; that is, the conveniently somewhat ambiguous, "government of the people, by the people, and for the people." This description can impose limits on those people who want more American government as well as on those people who want less government.

Experimental Blog #50

Comments on "When a Billion Chinese Jump" - How China Will Save Mankind - Or Destroy It by Jonathan Watts

Right near the beginning of this book this British author, Jonathan Watts, declares that his book's "structure is polemical rather than geographic." The book is highly praised; there are 10 recommendations from other authors or executives of organizations of public education or opinion. However, the author's writing should not be accepted without any criticism, such as, he seems so determined in his polemic, or disputation, that he often gives the impression that he is contradicting himself, even if that may not be more strictly true. His stated "facts" are occasionally controversial, such as, he says that China has 3000 years of continuous history, the world's longest, while other authorities have usually, or often, given 4000 years, or even longer, for this figure. The author twice, first in the text and again in the end notes, seems to report, without sufficient comment, that China has converted carbon dioxide into hydrogen!

However, in spite of this frequent, or even continuous polemical overstating, this book is a very informative tour of some of China's provinces and territories and China's immense significance and problems, both for itself and for everybody else too.

Experimental Blog #49

Comments on "Wild West 2.0" - How to Protect and Restore Your Online Reputation on the Untamed Social Frontier" by Michael Fertik and David Thompson

Here are some disorganized thoughts provoked by reading this book.
It almost seems that the entire, at least 10,000 year, social history of human beings that happened before about the year 2000 might be thought of as something like "prehistoric," in comparison with the "Internet New Digital Frontier."
The technology described so well in this book applies mostly to the activated, up to date, and, mostly, younger population. However, this portion is truly global, very large, and is continuously and rapidly increasing.
The "Internet New Digital Frontier" society is described as "amoral," and has little or no government, and mostly limited "vigilante justice," at best.
Will this new society ever have more effective government or any religion? And where would these temporizing and self-controlling factors come from? How would they develope?