Hi, I'm david (b) hayes.

A Brief History of Humanitarian Intervention

Not quite sure why — perhaps because the topics been on my mind recently — but I feel compelled to link to Gary Bass’s passable summary of the concept of humanitarian intervention.

An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube

This has been going around for some time, and I never found an hour with which to watch it. Today I finally did, and I’m glad for that. It’s well done, and brings new weight to Robin’s question: “How is YouTube not the greatest art project ever?”

The 38 US States

Hidden in a rather good mental_floss post called “3 Controversial Maps” is an interesting idea:

If George Etzel Pearcy had his way, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s famous song would have been called “Sweet Home Talladego.” In 1973, the California State University geography professor suggested that the U.S. should redraw its antiquated state boundaries and narrow the overall number of states to a mere thirty-eight.

Pearcy’s proposed state lines were drawn in less-populated areas, isolating large cities and reducing their number within each state. He argued that if there were fewer cities vying for a state’s tax dollars, more money would be available for projects that would benefit all citizens.

Though there are a substantial number of reasons to immediately reject this proposal, I think I could get used to this new map.

Magic and Science

New research is looking into the way magicians are able to trick us to discover what insights that can give us into the nature of cognition. Cool.

The End of Globalization

It’s worth considering the fact that Paul Krugman is wrong. But it’s also worth considering his point that the Georgia-Russia conflict may be the dawn of a new era:

But as I was reading the latest bad news, I found myself wondering whether this war is an omen — a sign that the second great age of globalization may share the fate of the first.

The False Nobility of Victimhood

I’ve had mixed opinions about Ta-Nehisi Coates’s work in the past, but I really — really really — like this blog post.

Here is the thing — believing that you have fallen because of actions outside of your control, or the collective control of your tribe, rewards you with an unearned sense of the cosmic. It allows you to fashion yourself as heroic — a Hercules robbed by the smallness of Gods. It fills you with an anger which is, at its root, a sort of false power, a weak righteousness that turns your enemies into demons. It was thrilling to believe we’d been kidnapped by white interlopers, as opposed to knowing that, in the words of the great Robert Hayden, we’d been sold off for “tin crowns that shone with paste” for “red calico and German-silver trinkets.”

Julia Child, Spy

Some stories simply must be noted.

Why Revolutions Fail

When considering the under-noticed anniversary of Burma’s 1988 uprising, The Economist’s Asia.view column hits a sensible point I’d never considered:

No, the reason the revolution failed was simple: the army was prepared to kill as many people as it took to thwart it.

So long as a state apparatus is strong and remains cohesive, it’s hard to imagine how any citizen uprising can end authoritarianism.

American Internets

Andrew Chen used Google Insights to put together a pretty interesting comparison of what (web 2.0-y) internet sites are most popular in which US states.

(via Waxy)

Better With Age

Farhed Manjoo says that the future of gadgets is constant improvement. There’s certainly good basis for the argument.

But because music players, cell phones, cameras, GPS navigators, video game consoles, and nearly everything else now runs on Internet-updatable software, our gadgets’ functions are no longer static. It’s still true that a gizmo you buy today will eventually be superseded by something that comes along later. But just like Meryl Streep, your devices will now dazzle you as they age. They’ll gain new functions and become easier to use, giving you fewer reasons to jump to whatever hot new thing is just hitting the market.