Online discourse in this country

I should be marking, but this piece -- or rather, the comments on it -- caught my attention. Let me say from the outset that my secondary-school self was never especially fond of Ong Teck Chin (or Drong, as we used to call him) as a person. But his resignation, welcome though it may be, isn't the issue here. The issue is just how ridiculously bad some of the comments on the piece are. I won't dignify them by citing them, but they run the gamut from tangential homophobic rants to blatant factual errors to unsubstantiated accusations to...well, see for yourself. To be fair, there are a couple of sensible posters, but in situations such as these, the trolls always tend to win.
Posted by kungfuzi at 7:59 pm | 0 comments

  Andrew Preston

Seth Jacobs, America's Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and US Intervention in Southeast Asia, 1950-1957 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004) on American Catholics' support for Diem.
Posted by kungfuzi at 6:20 pm | 0 comments

  American Adventurism Abroad

Michael Sullivan's concise and straightforward volume categorises and describes America's involvement in the affairs of other states big and small since the end of WWII, starting with Greece in 1947, moving through infamous and not so famous episodes in Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, and ending with Haiti in 2004. The book's central thesis is that intervention aimed primarily at securing America's hegemony over the global capitalist system rather than promoting democracy. My main issue with the book is that only the latter, i.e. negative, claim is convincingly substantiated through the multifarious examples of anti-Communist Third World dictators installed and propped up by the US. The former claim isn't really directly sustainable in places like Laos, Yugoslavia, and Grenada, which is perhaps why Sullivan declares at the start that US intervention was more about "upholding the economic system: the idea of capitalism itself" than protecting specific business interests.

And what about security as a motivation for intervention then? The book could have done with a more in-depth exploration -- perhaps a chapter -- of America's "principles" of intervention. Why do they remain consistent over multiple presidencies (save Carter, whom Sullivan hails as a noble exception to the rule)? These are questions a historian would ask.
Posted by kungfuzi at 6:37 pm | 0 comments

  Writing

Although you'll probably never guess this, I've always found writing difficult, probably because I don't like re-writing (which all style guides recommend) and am a perfectionist when it comes to my own prose. I often end up agonising over individual words, getting distracted by something else, and then returning to the original piece of writing with my train of thought lost.

I do find, however, that writing comes more easily to me when I've been writing a lot; it's a bit like warming up before you go for a run. Take this blog post, for instance. The final product doesn't do justice to how rapidly it was composed (by my standards). This is probably because I've been writing testimonials for the past week or so. They have been a pain to write because of all the artificial constraints imposed upon them. The Testimonial is a very very very minor literary form, although slightly higher in my estimation than the Official Bureaucratic Response ("Dear sir, we thank you for your feedback...").

Now that I've distracted myself with this little post -- the first in ages -- I shall return to testimonial writing, in the hope of getting all done by Monday.
Posted by kungfuzi at 11:36 pm | 0 comments

  Speculation

No, not currency speculation, transfer rumours. This Twitter site that I've been following for the past few weeks claims to provide genuine insider information from Anfield and says that Liverpool will be signing Silva AND Villa after Alonso goes. Sounds too good to be true. What about the central midfield vacancy then, or is Rafa going to drop Gerrard back to midfield and hope that the Davids form a more potent attacking combination than Torres-Gerrard? And how on earth are we going to afford David Villa?
Posted by kungfuzi at 7:01 pm | 0 comments

  Reunion

A little underwhelming, alas, with not as many familiar and interesting people as I expected, especially among the house '04s. Plus, the planned activities have been lame (stargazing anyone?) and it's the weekend, so the profs aren't around. Still, I ran into my thesis advisor on Friday and updated him on my plans. Will be seeing another professor tomorrow for breakfast, and then heading back to Boston for the tail-end of this trip. I guess there's still lunch at Chez Panisse Cafe to look forward too.
Posted by kungfuzi at 3:15 am | 0 comments

  Graduate school

I have found a way of synthesising my undergraduate thesis, current teaching experiences, and "life story" into my statement of research interests (to be written at some point of time in the future). All this while ensuring that these interests are realistically within grasp given my linguistic proficiency (which can be improved upon).

Fundamentally, I intend to specialise in 19th and 20th century international history from an Anglo-American perspective. I am particularly interested in the circulation of Anglo-American ideas and their reception in the non-Western world, especially China and Southeast Asia. What mechanisms and institutions existed to help transmit these ideas globally, and how did local conditions -- cultural, political, and economic -- influence how these ideas were received and subsequently modified to suit domestic demands? What were the consequences of these "flows" for both Anglo-American and non-Western peoples?

(There, I'm sounding so grad student already.)

Prester John, of course, was also a global history in some sense of the term, as it examined the influence of non-European ideas on politics and culture in medieval Europe, and revealed that the boundaries which defined Western Europe were perhaps more permeable than we think. My interest in transmission processes also stems in part from the thesis: how did the legend pass from East to West?

Teaching contemporary Southeast Asian history and politics, in particular the histories of nationalism and nation-building, has sparked my interest in the influence of Anglo-American ideas on global politics. What's fascinating is how these ideas were appropriated and modified to suit local contexts: how Sukarno, for instance, adapted nationalist thought to Indonesian demands, or how early 20th century Vietnamese reformers grappled over the fate of the monarchy and the pressures of French colonial rule.
Posted by kungfuzi at 11:40 am | 0 comments

  I Am Charlotte Simmons...and Thomas Mann

A compelling read -- I couldn't put it down and finished it in four days -- but upon reflection, not a great book. Funny, but too clever by half. Perfect teen movie material. The characters, with the exception of Charlotte and perhaps Adam, are flat and hugely unsympathetic, the plot's predictable and heavy-handed, and Wolfe tries a little too hard to show us that he "gets" how college students (and administrators) think, speak, and behave.

I did, however, completely fall for Charlotte. Which, for people who know me, should come as no surprise.

Thomas Mann, on the other hand, is just fabulous. Out of the collection, I've thus far only managed Death in Venice and Mario and the Magician, but am looking forward to more once I get back to San Francisco. Maybe I should re-read The Magic Mountain.
Posted by kungfuzi at 11:17 am | 0 comments