Michael Kevane

And so, in the end, Lean In may be a book not about a social movement, but about Sandberg’s own movement from Harvard to Google to Facebook, and now into her self-appointed role as leader of Lean In. The book advocates “lean in” circles for women in corporate environments. The circles are now being advocated by the book’s corporate partners like American Express, Amazon, and Bain, with her book as their guide. As memoir, it is instructive regarding Sandberg’s successful career trajectory, and provides some helpful advice for young women in how to follow her. But as a manual for navigating the workplace, it teaches women more about how to serve their companies than it teaches companies about how to be fairer places for women to work.

via Feminism’s Tipping Point: Who Wins from Leaning in? | Dissent Magazine.

a nice review of the album is here:

Robert Nozick, somewhere, wondered why older people didn’t sacrifice more for the common good.  He meant, I think, being prepared for really heroic events involving likely death.  Their lives were nearing the end, so the opportunity cost of great sacrifice was perhaps low while the wisdom to choose a meaningful (as opposed to fruitless) act was high.  I wonder about this, at this stage of my life.  Makes me think of the Brecht line, “Unhappy the land that has no heroes; no, unhappy the land in need of heroes.”  In an era where battle and assassination are plainly no longer meaningful (thanks, Bradley Manning, for that), what would great sacrifice look like, at age 75?

I didn’t realize this film War Witch (Rebelle) was one of the nominees for best foreign film; to be honest it looks too excruiciatingly sad for me to watch. I have a long-standing principle to put down books for adults about children who die or suffer awful fates: to easy to feel emotions that should not be felt, and then feel that one has cheapened the emotion, by turning the movie off, getting a sandwich, and tlaking about how great the movie was…

Film Clip: ‘War Witch’ by WSJ_Live

Reading Charles Jones and Dietrich Vollrath’s Introduction to Economic Growth.  Great book.  But.  “Gender” and “women” do not appear in the index.   Nor do they appear in the text, even in the chapter on fertility and population growth.  But gender does make an appearance, on page 258: “If Microsoft had not expected to be able to charge more than the tiny marginal cost of Windows 8, he would not have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in creating the first copy.”  As the Supreme Court recently ruled, corporations are men too!

Plus surprenant : une pelleteuse fait partie des prises de guerre. Celle-ci permettait aux jihadistes de creuser des tranchées pour se dissimuler.

via Mali: la photo qui fait dire au Tchad que Belmokhtar est mort – Mali / Tchad – RFI.

frampton’s lemma from dan browne on Vimeo.

Philosophy by Light from Roman Palchenkov on Vimeo.

Scary stuff.  The video is below.

Facts regarding the unauthorized storage and disclosure of the 12 July 2007 aerial weapons team or AW team video.

During the mid-February 2010 time frame the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division targeting analysts, then Specialist Jihrleah W. Showman discussed a video that Ms. Showman had found on the ‘T’ drive.

The video depicted several individuals being engaged by an aerial weapons team. At first I did not consider the video very special, as I have viewed countless other war porn type videos depicting combat. However, the recording of audio comments by the aerial weapons team crew and the second engagement in the video of an unarmed bongo truck troubled me.

As Showman and a few other analysts and officers in the T-SCIF commented on the video and debated whether the crew violated the rules of engagement or ROE in the second engagement, I shied away from this debate, instead conducting some research on the event. I wanted to learn what happened and whether there was any background to the events of the day that the event occurred, 12 July 2007.

Using Google I searched for the event by its date by its general location. I found several new accounts involving two Reuters employees who were killed during the aerial weapon team engagement. Another story explained that Reuters had requested for a copy of the video under the Freedom of Information Act or FOIA. Reuters wanted to view the video in order to understand what had happened and to improve their safety practices in combat zones. A spokesperson for Reuters was quoted saying that the video might help avoid the reoccurrence of the tragedy and believed there was a compelling need for the immediate release of the video.

Despite the submission of the FOIA request, the news account explained that CENTCOM replied to Reuters stating that they could not give a time frame for considering a FOIA request and that the video might no longer exist.

via Pfc. Bradley E. Manning’s Statement for the Providence Inquiry.

House of Cards preposterous… I stopped watching after this execrable storytelling.

En route to his goal, we saw just how ruthless and ambitious he was, culminating in his murder of Peter (the one really shocking moment in the show, although I do wonder why the police wouldn’t investigate a supposed suicide in which the victim is in the passenger seat of the car).

via House of Cards – End of Season Review | London Culture Blog.

Another show that hooked me for 10 episodes and then just dried up completely in terms of storytelling was the Seattle-set murder show The Killing.

Not over yet, perhaps by a long shot… northern Mali before was virtually ungovernable, hard to see how presence of French troops will change that.  If Darfur was any lesson at all, it is that UN force can do very little.

Le marché de Gao, communément appelé le marché Washington, tourne au ralenti. Les bouchers, par exemple, se font rares, et les femmes vendeuses de légumes ne sont pas plus nombreuses.

On vit ici dans la crainte d’un attentat, on vit la peur au ventre, avec une question : « Les jihadistes ne vont-ils pas à nouveau infiltrer la ville, ne vont-ils pas attaquer ? », s’interroge un enseignant.

À la mi-journée, les boutiques et magasins ferment portes et fenêtres. La principale pharmacie de la ville n’a pas ouvert depuis 72 heures. Les gares routières sont désertées. L’administration ne fonctionne toujours pas.

via Mali: à Gao, l’euphorie de la libération a disparu – Mali / Reportage – RFI.

Richard Lipsey (theory of second best) was married briefly, apparently, to Assia Wevill. Now, second-best that.