The flap of our generals

Saw the movie "The flag of our fathers" about the battle of Iwo Jima (from the US point of view), and was somewhat disappointed. Its the counterpart to the movie [Letters from Iwo Jima][1], which tells the story from the Japanese point of view. I was not crazy about Letters from Iwo Jima but it was better than this movie.

So, why I am wasting your time? As the wikipedia entry [explains nicely][2] the whole battle was probably a waste of life, resources and energy from the US point of view. But the movie never mentions this, because, well, it would make it less convenient to watch.

The conclusion is not to learn your history from movies (or wikipedia).

Which brings me to an **excellent** book I just read on the civil war: "Battle Cry of Freedom", by James M. McPherson. Which is a line taken from a song, also involving [flags][3]. And so the cycle closes (for people obsessive about closing cycles), with a much grandeur story of heroism, incompetence (of politicians and generals alike), symbolism, success and failure. The great success of this book, is that it leaves you with much better understanding of how complicated the whole affair was. There are no short easy answers, and no easy lines. It is not even clear what were the reasons why the south lost the war (yeh, there are a lot of reasons, but as the book discusses, none of them tells even a large fraction of the story).

And that is what great telling of history is all about - it leaves you much more knowledgeable but with fewer certainties. This book reads much more like a suspense book than a history book (although you know the end [the butler did it, of course]) - I found myself skipping ahead when reading this book and then going back.

And you ask yourself, why should I waste my time reading about the civil war? Well, if you want to understand the US realities of here and now, you need to understand the story so far, and the Civil war is a large fraction of this story. Of course, you dont have too, ypu probably already understand everything about it, because you already saw all the relevant movies…

[1]: http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/blog/?p=603

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Iwo_Jima

[3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Cry_of_Freedom

URL: http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/blog/?p=613

Bush and Clinton forever

[Bush & Clinton forever][1].

[1]: http://bushclintonforever.googlepages.com/

URL: http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/blog/?p=609

Made it to Israel

After 40 hours of traveling. Not too bad, overall. Slept a bit, but I am still recovering. The first buisness of the day is to read the weekend newspapers.

URL: http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/blog/?p=595

[Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity] Comment: "Did you know that..."

New comment on your post #575 "Did you know that..."
Author : Sariel Har-Peled (IP: 74.134.236.181 , 74-134-236-181.dhcp.insightbb.com)
Comment:
Now it all makes sense:
<img src="http://www.bestweekever.tv/bwe/images/2007/10/PEOPLE_dumbledore_ImGay.jpg"/>

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Quote

> Then you must begin a reading program immediately so that you man understand the crises of our age," Ignatius said solemnly. "Begin with the late Romans, including Boethius, of course. Then you should dip rather extensively into early Medieval. You may skip the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. That is mostly dangerous propaganda. Now, that I think about of it, you had better skip the Romantics and the Victorians, too. For the contemporary period, you should study some selected comic books."
>
> "You're fantastic."
>
> "I recommend Batman especially, for he tends to transcend the abysmal society in which he's found himself. His morality is rather rigid, also. I rather respect Batman."

-- **A confederacy of Dunces**, _John Kennedy Toole_

URL: http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/blog/?p=551

[Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity] Comment: "Generalissimo Sariel"

New comment on your post #535 "Generalissimo Sariel"
Author : mrc (IP: 74.136.206.4 , 74-136-206-4.dhcp.insightbb.com)
Comment:
this is what happens when sariel emails me the morning after i've seen The Last King of Scotland -- which i highly recommend. the fine dictator-wear is courtesy of Idi Amin, in the mid-seventies (google-image-search the nice man, it's on the first page of results).

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Comment on Korea 13 - Only a pawn in their game by Sariel Har-Peled

It might be a lie, but it is also seems to be a generally accepted fact that North Korea helped the communists in China during the civil war. See for example the wikipedia [entry][1]:
_North Korea also played an important role, with 30-40 thousand Korean troops from Soviet-occupied North Korea were provided[6] in addition to allowing the CCP to use North Korea as a sanctuary in general,[7] and repairing Manchurian railroads and bridges which were used by Mao.[8]
_

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_War

URL: http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/blog/?p=532#comment-27807

[Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity] Comment: "Korea 4 - My name it is nothing"

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Author : Sariel Har-Peled (IP: 143.248.226.189 , dor226189.kaist.ac.kr)
Comment:
Well, hopefully you are not Korean...

But really, every "letter" is made out of (up to) three characters, so the alphabet is in fact reasonably easy to learn.

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The decisive Hamlet

Hamlet (of the to be or not to be fame) is usually criticized for his indecisiveness. He is the ultimate flip-flopper that can not make up his mind, and end up killing everybody (including himself).

But let us consider the alternative **decisive Hamlet** - he sees the vision of his father telling him that his mother conspired with the current king to kill him, and he immediately goes and kill them both.

One advantage of the decisive Hamlet is that the play would have been much shorter, a thing that generations of students would have been thankful for. But if you consider the moral ground that the Decisive Hamlet stands on, one would realize that it is a swamp. Indeed, motivated by a delusion he goes and kill his mother and the current king. One might consider such a person to be delusional, murderer and insane. Definitely not a moral person.

And this is where the original Hamlet wins - he dies a moral person. It is not clear that the Decisive Hamlet would have survived in the long run, living under the cloud of his own morality, as judged by himself and the world around him.

That does not imply that the Original Hamlet is to be admired. Certainly, there are infinite alternative Hamlets in between the Original and the Decisive Hamlets, and maybe one of them could have done much better. But the original Hamlet get trusted into a terrible situation, gets the original criminals punished, and dies with his morality intact. Maybe still a loser, but a respectable loser at that.

The real tragedy might be the failure to accept that there is no winning strategy to the situation that Hamlet is in. No victory is possible. A problem without an acceptable solution.

URL: http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/blog/?p=494

[Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity] Comment: "Korea 2 - ask not what your lemon can do for you - ask what you can do for your lemon "

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Author : Sariel Har-Peled (IP: 143.248.226.189 , dor226189.kaist.ac.kr)
Comment:
Me English small - impeccable my foot.

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Korea 1 - Arrival

Made it to KAIST, Korea. After uneventful flights from Delhi through Hong Kong to Seoul, I was picked up by Otfried from the new airport. Stayed the night over in Seoul and then continued by fast train to Daejeon (150km in about 50 minutes). My apartment in the guest house is quite nice. Except for the Korean alphabet (which is BTW very interesting), the place feels like a western country.

URL: http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/blog/?p=486

India 14 - Holi

>From the colors of war streaked on all faces around here, you would think that Indians took over the place - and you would be completely right.

[![Holi][1]][2]

The holiday has to do with the coming of the spring (and probably an opportunity to have some fun before the hot unbearable summer comes visiting). The official reasons for this holiday seems to be largely unimportant.

Since this holiday follows a Lunar calendar, similar to the Jewish calendar, it coincides with the Jewish holiday Purim. Purim is a holiday of remotely similar spirit, with the difference that the story itself is quite important. It is yet another quasi-existential story of the bad guys trying to kill the jews, and the jews escaping again from destruction. It is also the only holiday were you are suppose to get drunk, and unlike most other Jewish holidays it does not have a dark side to it. No need to repent, no celebration of a local success in a stupid rebellion that lead to total destruction. A simple holiday, almsot like Holi.

[1]: http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/~sariel/pictures/x/travel/07/03/04/all/LMG_7763.JPG

[2]: http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/~sariel/pictures/travel/07/03/04/all/

URL: http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/blog/?p=476

Comment on Gunpowder - an explosive history by Piotr

> And all the invasions of Russia by European forces failed.

What's wrong with borsch and perogis ??

URL: http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/blog/?p=468#comment-26860

Comment on Elections II by Sariel Har-Peled

Well, this is 12pt with standard spacing. If you mean the text itself should be broken into lemmas/claims/proofs/etc, I agree. But the issue now is just how to handle the figures. The text definitely needs work.

URL: http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/blog/?p=464#comment-26758

[Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity] Comment: "Elections II"

New comment on your post #464 "Elections II"
Author : Suresh (IP: 67.186.233.146 , c-67-186-233-146.hsd1.ut.comcast.net)
Comment:
To me the problem with page 14 (and page 12) isn't actually the figures. It's that the text is so dense otherwise, that the figures only add to the sense of being cluttered. I think that your problem is really with the text and not with the figures.

btw, I don't see how piotr can read between the lines when there's so little space.

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Comment on Elections II by Piotr

I would go for (D), but it is just because I dont like any papers of yours in general.

Cheers,

Piotr

URL: http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/blog/?p=464#comment-26689

[Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity] Comment: "India 11 - SirSir and YesYes"

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Author : Shripad Thite (IP: 86.80.206.194 , ip5650cec2.direct-adsl.nl)
Comment:
I'm glad the head waggle clarification was useful. Basically, the gesture has the same connotations and built-in ambiguities as "okay". :-)

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Comment on India 10 - quicky by Manoj

Cool, to think that now you have been to some places in Kerala I have never visited. How was it?

Thanks for all the cool photos. Btw, this one would explain how much I had to adapt to the traffic rules after coming here.

Talking about photos, you seem to have some dust in your sensor or lens (appears as a smudge towards the top left of the frame), but most of the time barely visible.

URL: http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/blog/index.php/archives/2007/01/09/india-10-quicky/#comment-22461

[Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity] Comment: "India 6 - A plumbing breakthrough"

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Author : grb (IP: 24.148.36.73 , 24-148-36-73.nwb-bsr1.chi-nwb.il.cable.rcn.com)
Comment:
HAHA! that is about the funniest thing I have read in a long time!

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Comment on India 7 - Deadlines, sickness and concerts by Chandra

Don't be modest to cover up your sins. I am serious in my admiration for your productivity.

URL: http://valis.cs.uiuc.edu/blog/index.php/archives/2006/12/10/india-7-deadlines-sickness-and-concerts/#comment-18255