Now Leaving Flyover Country

We are leaving Flyover Country behind. Did you notice?

A map metaphor works well with history in a number of situations. There are different views you can use, depending on whether you care about what people do or what has changed or what has stayed the same. Whatever there is has to be at a useful scale. 1:1 maps aren't of much use in any way.  A globe isn't helpful for getting to the grocery store, but is great to see how the continents are shaped. For a long enough trip, you may need a wide country-to-country view along with specific directions to get to the final address. With history, too, if we're trying to make sense of what's around us, the effective result is similar: There are these close and crowded districts that anyone can discuss easily, separated by long, wide, boring stretches that nobody ever asks about. Flyover country.

Big sections of history are flyover country. Sumer and Ur are the first civilizations, but everyone remembers the Egyptians. Rameses and Tutankhamen are 4000 years ago, but there's nothing interesting after that until Greece 1500 or so years later - flyover country. It's good to know about the Romans - until the death of Christ, anyway, at which point who cares about them?  Turns out they are still the only interesting thing for roughly another 1500 years, when the Renaissance happens.  There, everyone pays attention again...but it's kinda flyover country too, once you've seen a few of the paintings. At least until Columbus shows up, when people start paying attention again.

We've just left another of those sections, if the generational view is right at all, The period of time we left a few years ago - perhaps as much as ten years, now - is a time that will be treated in history books as less important, even least important, compared to the big wars that are easily managed.  From Reagan's re-election until 2008, nobody is really going to comprehend what happened. They might understand why he was elected in the first place, but why was it so divisive? What did Clinton do that was different? There will be conjecture about 9/11 and the market meltdown and the Great Recession, and dissection of why different policies were exactly right and completely wrong and extended and helped quickly resolve the problems....for anyone who really wants to dig into it,  and most folks probably won't, any more than most people can discuss what happened between 1928 and 1939.

(It's not certain that 2016 will be like 1939, of course, but (if you'll forgive further map metaphors) it feels like that's the direction we're heading, in approaching years.)

And it's too bad people won't think of it.  If you lived through it you know that there was a lot to like about the time since the mid-1980s. It was exciting and vibrant and things were changing. There was the Web and full-immersion video games and computer generated graphics. Cell phones became smartphones, information went everywhere, digital media became streaming, solar cells went from spacecraft to rooftops.  There is probably a way to make sense of some parts of it, along the way.   There's no story, though, that has a beginning and ending, that ties video games and the web into the financial crisis and what's happened since.

That's probably because, for this little while, people individually did what they thought was important and worthwhile. Whether they are fought for just causes or not, wars require a lot of people moving in the same direction and agreeing on what is to be done. Individual efforts get lost in the larger    pushes - one person invented the World Wide Web, but many people were involved in getting the U.S. into WWII. Those individual threads don't tie together as easily as larger government-supported efforts.

Now, though, people are getting tired of the government not doing much. While there's disagreement about what should be done, support for outsiders like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump point to a desire that the government should start being effective in a way it hasn't been. I'm not sure exactly what it will be, but I do think that people tired of confused foreign policy and unhelpful domestic policy will start demanding that the government do its job properly.  There are good things and bad things that government can do, if this widespread support is real. Everybody will probably find something they don't like about how it's done.

Keep it in mind. We're leaving flyover country. It's going to get interesting again soon.

Christmas Songs

At Hollywood  and Highland today, heard the song It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. Very cheerful and uplifting.

Which doesn't fit the mood of the day at all. Where are our depressing Christmas songs? We're solidly in our Crisis, so where is our White Christmas?

Was that really a Crisis tune, though, or did it just become famous then? When was it actually composed? The answer is (according to Wikipedia), nobody really knows. It says, though, that the first performance was Christmas Day, 1941 - also known as a few weeks after Pearl Harbor.  They'd really earned their hopeful-but-not-happy Christmas song.

What other not-quite-happy ones are there? There's The Christmas Song,  although that's more solemn than depressing. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, certainly counts, though - it's all about how your life can only get better from here. Both of those were from 1944 -  when the War was ongoing, that is, even if there was some hope that it would be done in Europe soon.

Maybe that happy one was from the same time, though? Nope, 1963. Probably released a month after  JFK, but still sounds like the cheery post-war period.

Crisis Resurgent

This is about the Crisis. Nothing more nor less.

I was looking forward to an observation about the Regeneracy, which is a proposed mechanism in the generational model for how people start to take control of the Crisis period. The thought was that decisions in renewable energy - electric cars and solar on rooftops - indicated that we were no longer interested in solutions to terrorism that required violence.

And then Paris happened.

I've waited a day to write, and a day to post, and then another day to consider some more. I'm going to do my best not to make policy recommendations, or to blame, or to suggest that If Only X Then Not Paris. Not that it has really helped.

There are a limited number of reactions, to the current situation in Europe - and, if you like, the world.

A.We can accept that asymmetric warfare is a fact of life, that it's too clear that a single person can have an extreme impact, and therefore that every few years a dozen or a hundred or so will die for political causes. We will expect our government forces at all levels to do what they can to reduce such, but accept that they won't eliminate them. And if that means increased surveillance and drone strikes and  low-level combat, so it goes.

B. We can let other countries handle their own problems, and accept that they may have honor killings, destroy important cultural artifacts, and generally be unpleasant to the locals, potentially resulting in massive emigrations. We keep our nose out of such problems, and when someone points out that life sucks in Xlanistan, we can point to the results of these last 15 years for why we aren't going to do anything about it.

C. We can hold state or non-state actors responsible for actions they take responsibility for. If destroying them means destroying the other 90% of the country they currently occupy, then that's an unfortunate but unavoidable fact. Ignoring the Nazis for several years didn't bring World War II to a close any faster. We would have to mobilize in a real way to bring the problem to a resolution. While air strikes might be a part, boots on the ground, and lots of them, would have to be the goal, from the start and to the end.

Option A is the status quo, where we are now.  It's a pragmatic option, although it does imply ubiquitous government involvement in your life. You may need to send some of your offspring into harm's way, and/or they will be at risk of being in the dozen or hundred who die on occasion.

Option B should appeal if you like your own freedom and don't expect you can help with anyone else.  And it's really what we've done with problems in sub-Saharan Africa: Endless bloodshed and child armies? Make blood diamonds a thing and then ...  and people will forget about the rest. The idea that we can starve the beast by using renewable energy (i.e. not oil) supports this one. Although if we reduce the money flowing into the Middle East significantly, short-term disruptions might make the problems worse for a while. And it doesn't help with the emigration problem.

Option C, though, feels like the way things are headed. It may not occur without a really massive attack, and some will certainly say, like Pearl Harbor, such an attack could be a false flag in some way. Daesh is managing to push too many buttons, finding ways to make liberals and conservatives unhappy, that it will have to happen.

(Which seems so obvious, that couldn't there be a reason they are doing it? Do they believe that chaos is in their best interest? Attacks on the Muslim world getting Pakistan's nukes on the market, perhaps?)

Concerning which, notes of the sort "Where's the outrage on Lebanon/Baghdad/Kenya/Nasty Incident in Country Z" implicitly support Option C. If France is attacked because they are in Syria, then France can decide on a response. If everyone is being attacked everywhere, then it would seem a more unified resolution is called for. The clearer it becomes that this is a worldwide problem, the more it will require a forceful unified solution.

Not that I like the idea. It would mean, as David Kaiser noted, that the Crisis isn't going in a direction any of us might prefer. And it seems like what will happen next.

In 1991, Generations predicted that we would be in a Crisis period by now, and that the peak would start in 2020. That was a distant future date at the time, but is only half a decade away now. And a lot can happen in five years - I was thinking today how Pearl Harbor was only five years after Jesse Owens appeared in the Olympics in Berlin. Don't see how any of the options get better any time soon. 

Today in Crisis

Haven't done this in a while:

Crisis: Something new since last time: The migrant crisis in Europe, as Syrians attempt to leave their country and go anywhere that isn't torn apart by, well, by the kind of mess that Syria is right now.

Collapse:Not much, actually - some structural failures of various sorts, including one that killed a man who had noted safety issues at his worksite. Also, the president of France note the danger of a "collapse" of the Schengen border area because of the migrant crisis.

Apocalypse: Mostly about the upcoming X-Men movie, still. Although one story about how a meteor over Thailand brought fears of an "asteroid apocalypse."

Cloverfield: Nothing, really - a recent story from someone who liked the movie.

Maybe things are a little better. For a little while.

The Next Day

September 3, 1945, was a Monday - Labor Day, in fact. Japan's surrender had been signed the previous morning, and it was the first day of the post-World War II era.

Eleanor Roosevelt's daily article was about Labor Day. Not too surprising: she certainly had written many things ahead of time and it was probably not worthwhile to swap them out.  It doesn't mention the surrender of Japan or atomic bombs or anything about the war - perhaps, if you like, the tone suggests that she knew it would be over shortly

Trinity had been on Monday as well, exactly 7 weeks earlier - 49 days from that to the day after the end of the war. A lot had happened even in that short period of less than two months. It can be helpful to consider history in these smaller pieces, to realize how short or long some periods of time really are. They can make momentous events that much more comprehensible. 

George Orwell reviews Mein Kampf

Found on Twitter: Cory Doctorow posted a review of Mein Kampf by George Orwell. The date is given as March 1940 - which is to say, about six months after the invasion of Poland,  perhaps two before the invasion of France, during a period called the "Phoney War." While Hitler is recognized as the enemy of Britain, the review is almost matter-of-fact in tone, even when describing how Hitler's plans and philosophy appealed to the millions of (formerly) unemployed Germans.

For the purpose here, though, what's unexpected is how current it sounds. For example:

The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. 

Or perhaps this assessment of the gap between progressive goals and human reality:

... [human beings] also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. 

Other similarities are left as an exercise for the reader. Even if we aren't quite there yet, echoes are in the wind.

Capitol Investment

Here's a picture of the U.S. Capitol dome currently:

Here's one from 1861 - Lincoln's inauguration in March:

Crisis is a time for investment of all sorts, a time to repair and handle problems long put off. And here it is again.  Evidently there has been some significant damage to the dome since the last major restoration 55 years ago.

Although you have to think that the South should have seen that - a major addition to the existing government buildings for aesthetic reasons despite the pending conflict - and reconsidered secession...

Lana del Rabbit

Listening to Lana del Rey the other day, the idea that she was a Civic torch singer reminded me of Mrs. Jessica Rabbit.  Had anyone else thought of that idea? Well, yes - and fairly recently, at that.

Jessica Rabbit is the unexpectedly sultry wife of Roger Rabbit, in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The movie is set in 1947, just after World War II. In addition to the persecution of Toons, it relies on post-war corruption as part of the tale.  Although her age is not precisely given, she appears to be in her 20s - perhaps early 30s -  which would have her born around or soon after 1917 - a solid Civic herself.

(Although, as a color Toon, she must be younger than Betty Boop, of course...)

In any case, Lana del Rey has been covering the Peggy Lee tune that Jessica Rabbit sang quite memorably. And she's been dressing up like her, as well.

Don's Monitor Top

Watching Singing in the Rain the other day and noticed that Gene Kelly's character, Don Lockwood, has a Monitor Top refrigerator in his kitchen. Which didn't seem anachronistic, necessarily, but didn't seem right, either.

Well, it's fine:As that earlier post noted, they were in production starting in 1925, a couple of years before The Jazz Singer came out.

Happyish Curmudgeons

I'm working on a separate blog with a goal to focus on stories - film, television, literature - and how it changes through the Saeculum.  And as such, this article about a new series, Happyish, would be a great fit with it. However, it kept hitting so many Crisis touchpoints that it seems worthwhile to list them here, anyway:

• "A curmudgeon creates a curmudgeon" and Xers are the new curmudgeons, like other Reactive/Nomad generations.
• The idea that the change to this current turning is very much starting to creep into how people view the world, as the lead character tries to understand his Millennial co-workers and their different perspectives on life.
• The character's name is Thom Payne, and references to Common Sense are called out in the article and presumably on the show as well.
• The ads juxtapose a standard-for-advertising happy family with a mushroom cloud. And really, isn't that how life feels right now?

Unfortunately, initial critical response appears to be negative.

Boyhood

In the film Boyhood, there can be a tendency to view the product closeups as being intentionally shown to indicate a point in time - Game Boys and Halo on Xbox and iPods and iPhones.  Usually, of course, that's just what such things are - and indeed, in this case they are again. The twist is that the shots had to be set up when those products were actually being used, because the film was done over the course of 12 years. There was no need to go back and find those products so they could be included: The shots were done then and there, or they were not. Similarly, nobody had to craft how Ethan Hawke's Dad was railing against Bush and Iraq and McCain so that it sounded as if it fit in that time: It already would have, because nobody would have known a different way to talk about them.

It makes the film its own special kind of time capsule, showing how the world changed over a specific decade. In this way it's similar to The Best Years of Our Lives. That film came out right after World War II ended, and can't have shown how folks viewed the war upon further reflection. It had to show attitudes that were already prevalent. Nobody was going to come from the future and tell the filmmakers about the Cold War or McCarthy or revisionism in Japan. Or, for that matter, about how people 70 years later might see the ubiquitous smoking as an indicator of the time period, rather than just What People Did at that time.

The First Clash

Finished reading The First Clash by Jim Lacey today, a history of the battle of Marathon. As the author notes early on, people know Thermopylae better lately because of the movie 300...and maybe because 300 vs. 300,000 is cooler than 10000 vs. 60000. (Rough numbers, all around - I don't feel the need to get exact about them, since for every one - except the 300 Spartans - nobody else seems 100% sure either.)

He makes the good point that, without Marathon, Thermopylae wouldn't have happened. Athens gets taken over, all the other city-states submit to Persia, Sparta holds out for a while... but the best case there is a glorious but decisive defeat. By showing that the Persians were not invincible - not by a long shot - the Greeks had some expectation that a battle held the possibility of victory.

This appears, of course, to be a Crisis period, at least for the Greeks. It's not clear whether Thermopylae 10 years later is the final culmination of the Crisis, or if it was a relatively minor issue
 to the Greeks, so indicating that this was more of a First Turning war than a Peak Crisis one.  At the least, though, Lacey refers to the men at Marathon as a "Greatest Generation" indicating that, whatever side of the Crisis they were on, those who were there were the Heroes of their day.

1973, Then and Now

Opinion piece in the Times this week about ending the abortion wars.

It's an opinion piece, of course, so it naturally supports the points its trying to make. And for that matter, it's of interest here because it supports the points made here: As the Crisis takes hold, and the Hero generation becomes dominant, fights over moral issues like abortion stop being the most important political question. And nobody is likely to miss them.

When setting up The Grid, 1973 was a very tempting year to consider for the latest Awakening, specifically for Roe v. Wade. It's a line drawn with words, a battle between ideas. memorable, significant, with two sides who are both always absolutely certain that their side was the only right one. That it had a hefty religious and spiritual component is overkill.

And it may, eventually, be incomprehensible as well. Why that case and this cause was the major one of the last 40 years could be as difficult for schoolchildren to understand as Henry's motivations or the goals of the Free Silver movement.

Crisis, Apocalypse, and Cloverfield

Sometimes it seems like it's all staying the same:

Crisis: Climate Crisis, Greek Crisis, Crisis in Mexico, Crisis in Ukraine.
(Pretty standard, really - not difficult to look those up yourself.)

Apocalypse: How Democrats and Republicans see their chances in apocalyptic conditions; A show about a conspiracy concerning apocalypse; A movie about Australia being wiped off the map; and just because this bullet point has ended up about cultural touchstones, The Last Man on Earth started last Sunday.

Cloverfield: New Spiderman movie uses someone from Cloverfield, and Harrison Ford crashes a plane that took off from Santa Monica Airport - formerly known as Clover Field. (No coincidence: The movie Cloverfield took its name from the Santa Monica street Cloverfield which is named after the airport.)

The Old-Fashioned Way to Mess with Putin

A Slate article on U.S. strategy for Ukraine caught my interest in part because it includes a fundamental point from my original Crimea post: There are no U.S. vital interests in Ukraine that justify the risk of a shooting war with Russia.

Beyond my point about it not likely the main Crisis hotspot, Fred Kaplan suggests that the best victory there is helping Kiev win economically. Support their economy, make them more successful than Russia, and then ... actually, it's not clear what then, except that Putin wouldn't like it. Although it wouldn't be as easy to say the country is a Western puppet if the main support is Apple computers - much less affordable in Russia anymore - rather than Boeing munitions.

The extra fun part of that, of course, is the replay of the Reagan Cold War strategy, this time against Russia rather than the USSR: Make them see that their way leads to a crappy life, and they'll give it up on their own. It's like the fable of the sun and the wind, who had a bet to see who could get a man's coat off. The more the wind blew, the harder the man held on; when the sun shone, he took it off himself.

If we're going to get involved, we should aspire to be like the sun.

A Quick Thought on ISIS

There are people around talking about how Chamberlain is agonizing again, knowing from his current vantage that we are re-making his mistake.

I'd say, though, that this doesn't feel like Munich. There's no appeasement - indeed, anything that ISIS does seems to make their situation worse. The United States staying out of it is a matter of realpolitik,  not cowardice or misguided optimism.

There is a resemblance, though, to Bleeding Kansas - well-meaning changes in the political situation causing law and order to take a quick downward slope. Evidently skirmishes continued in the area until the Civil War started. Which doesn't mean they stopped, then, just that they were less significant by comparison.

If that is the appropriate analogy, what's next? We can expect ongoing fighting in area, until the decision comes to make these "skirmishes" irrelevant.  Unless it turns out this was never the real battlefield for the United States at all, and the REAL Crisis will come from a different direction. Which seems quite possible.

A Slow Crisis Day

Under Crisis, we have mostly repeats: Japan hostage crisis, Ukraine insanity crisis, a call-back to the financial crisis (noted there as starting in 2007) and eventually a reference to the Ebola crisis. Plus this Brian Williams controversy or crisis or whatever people want to call it.

A number of items under Cloverfield, mostly about the movie itself or people related to the movie. And a callback to the K-cup issue previously noted.

Apocalypse is staying about the same: the X-Men movie, again, plus the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moving the doomsday clock up another minute.

Shouldn't mind it though. We've had enough days where every day it is something new.

Pick Your Crisis

Here at the end of January, there is no end to the available Crisis stories:

• Russia has its ongoing economic Crisis
• Ukraine has its ongoing Russian Crisis
• Greece has initiated a Crisis for the European Union by electing a "radical left" party with a platform of not continuing with austerity measures originally intended to rebuild the economy.  And this is not intended as a smear: SYRIZA contains former elements of the Greek Communist Party,along with other parties like International Workers that appear communist in all but name, while using red as a main color in their presentations and rallies, so it shouldn't be controversial to say that they really are Communists. 
  
• As far as oil producers are concerned, the steep drop continues to be a Crisis, as well.
• Japan has a hostage crisis, too.

Hardly have to look up anything else. Although there is an anti-Keurig campaign that's done a promotional video based on Cloverfield.

The New Millennial Film Era is Almost Here...Again

We are due for the start of a new era of film, one with a Millennial flavor.

A recent Los Angeles times summary of Sundance suggests that the time is almost here. Even if most of the folks mentioned are Xers, still - like last time, when the talk was all about danger.

Which is to say, it's - still, like last time - almost here.

Still, the article specifically mentions moving away from Boomer stories. Not in the expected direction, necessarily: The most striking images are of Silents, such as Chuck Norris (b. 1940),  Evel Knievel (b. 1938), and Stanley Milgram (b. 1933) - who I initially confused with a different famous experiment run by someone born in the same year. Although there are a few Xers and even Millennials as subjects in some cases. The new era is on its way.

The N-1 and the Failure of the Chief Designer

Was the failure of the N-1 the Soviet Union's equivalent of the Challenger Disaster?

There's a lot to draw together here, so pay attention...

In 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded soon after liftoff. It was later determined to be due to hot gases leaking from the solid-fuel boosters due to the failure of an O-ring. This failure was due to an unexpected sensitivity to cold that prevented a proper seal. Then-current administrative culture at NASA also made it difficult to recommend aborting the mission, even though there was evidence of the danger.

...Which made it similar to another disaster 64 years earlier, when the crew of the mighty Titanic ignored warnings and continued at high speed into an area where icebergs had already been seen. Walter Lord, writer of the seminal Titanic history A Night to Remember, specifically pointed out the similarities in the two disasters. Both were considered wake-up calls about the limits of technology and the risks of hubris.

Titanic and Challenger happened near the start of their respective Third Turnings, and might even be considered THE starting point of each. If it is common for this lesson of hubris to be learned at this time, we should expect to see it happening in other Third Turnings for other cultures - and the N-1 might be an example of that.

There are some definite problems with this interpretation.  The N-1 failed in 1969, which would have to be more near the end of the USSRs Third Turning. In addition, the news was not widespread until the fall of the Soviet Union over twenty years later - which would prevent it from having a cultural impact.

Except that such a large effort had to have had a large number of workers who all would have known or guessed what happened. And even if the fate of the N-1 was unknown, that the Soviet Union had fallen behind in the space race, despite having a massive lead at the start, must have had some impact on the people of the USSR.

Oh What The Heck - Today in ....

Apocalypse: X-Men, again - without Patrick Stewart or Ian McKellen, though. Sigh.

Cloverfield: American Sniper beat its January opening.

Crisis: Some concern over a new European currency crisis. And the Russian economy, too, of course.

Collapse: I-75 overpass collapse. And, well, yeah, the Packers.

Brunelleschi and the Duomo

"Brunelleschi". On the street next to the church he helped complete, literally looking up at the dome.
 Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

There's a NOVA episode about the Florence Cathedral, Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. It's also known as the Duomo, because of its massive dome,  designed by Filippo Brunelleschi in the early 1400s. The importance of the architect to the building is repeated (as he is named) successively, which suggest that it's a Third Turning event - that is, during period when people stand out compared to organizations.

Is it correct? Unfortunately, the dates of designing and building the dome cover such a wide period that it would depend entirely on which of them were chosen. Plus, the timing of the 15th Century Saeculum in Italy isn't easily found, so it could be gamed that way.  Although if 1492 is accepted as its end throughout Europe, it would make sense that the Fourth was roughly 1470-1492 and the Third 1448-1470.

Significant dates include:

• 1294: Cathedral design, including a requirement for a massive dome,  is approved by the Florence city fathers
• 1296: First stone is laid down.
• 1377: Brunelleschi is born.
• 1380: Nave is complete.
• 1401: Competition for new doors for the Baptistry. Ghiberti is victorious over the other competitors, including Brunelleschi.
• 1418: Cathedral is complete...except for the dome. Competition is held to find an architect to build it.Ghiberti and Brunelleschi are the main competitors: Brunelleschi wins.
• 1420: Work begins on the dome.
• 1436: The dome is completed.
• 1446: Brunelleschi dies.

By the earlier date range, the dome's building must be solidly in the Second Turning. If we wanted to infer the Saeculum based on the other events here, we could say that 1294 is clearly a First, with a major infrastructure build being approved and initiated. It seems likely that 1401 is also a First, being just more than a century later (one full Saeculum, that is), and with another government-sponsored infrastructure event. If that's the beginning of the First, furthermore, it lines up well with the earlier estimate of the Saeculum dates. (And implies that 1380-1400 was a Crisis period. If so, its start would line up with the Revolt of the Ciompi, short-lived though it was.)

It doesn't appear, that is, that he's known because it's a Third Turning.

Hamlet at Wittenberg

Hamlet wants to return to Wittenberg. It's one of the first things he says to anyone else. Called home to Denmark by the untimely death of his father, and with the crowning of Claudius giving him no reason to stay, he quite reasonably is ready to leave. It probably doesn't help that his girlfriend has unexpectedly stopped talking to him. (It's tempting to call Ophelia his "hometown girlfriend," but then again he probably isn't a girl-in-every-port kind of guy.) Nothing better to do than go back to school.

But why is he at Wittenberg? Why in particular did Shakespeare choose this place as the school Hamlet attends?

To start, of course, he doesn't belong there. The university had opened just barely 100 years before Shakespeare was writing, while the events in Hamlet belong several hundred years earlier. It had only been open for a few years, in fact, when Luther used it as a launchpad for his complaints about the church. Shakespeare appears to be using this history as a way to say something more about Hamlet himself and the play.

One proposal is that Shakespeare is saying something about the Reformation. There's a lot to say in 1602, and a lot to want to be quiet about. If one was a fiercely proud Protestant, one could speak out against a corrupt (and Catholic) king.  If one was a crypto-Catholic - a possibility that can be surmised based on the will that Shakespeare's father left -  one might want to subtly allude to the dangers of paying attention to someone from Wittenberg.

Another possibility is an attempt to be witty about the then-current advances in astronomy. Tycho Brahe also studied at Wittenberg, and his careful observations enabled the further advances of Kepler and Galileo - all contemporaries of Shakespeare. There are multiple astronomical allusions throughout the play, such as "that star closest to the pole."

We could infer that Wittenberg meant something to Shakespeare and his audience - if Hamlet is from there, he is some particular kind of person or has some particular attributes. Looking at it from a generational perspective, we could expect that Wittenberg had acquired a reputation similar to that of other college towns at the center of Awakening (Second Turning). That is, it was seen similar to how modern Americans might see Madison, Wisconsin or UC Berkeley, which were closely associated with the changes happening in the 1960s.  In this interpretation, Hamlet isn't a sympathetic character, but a too-cerebral elitist who makes moral pronouncements that nobody else accepts.

Today in Crisis and Cloverfield

Seems calmer today, somehow.

From the Wall Street Journal: Qatar helps Venezuela weather oil Crisis.

An editorial from the Los Angeles Times concerning a housing crisis.

The health care crisis in England is still generating some heat. (A&E is Accident and Emergency, so similar to concerns about overburdened emergency rooms in the United States.)

A euro crisis in Greece, a ruble crisis in Russia.


Cloverfield actually shows up a couple of times because the movie was released in January, and its opening numbers are compared with current releases.

Anonymous vs. the Attackers of Charlie Hebdo

A few years ago the Anonymous hackers collective announced it would be taking on the notorious Zetas cartel in Mexico. A member had been kidnapped, and in response dissemination of information about the criminal organization was planned for release. This did lead to the Zetas letting the kidnap victim go, but the Zetas promised retribution if there was a release, said retribution aimed at the victim's family.  Others simply considered Anonymous as overreaching and risking violent bloody death for something that would make no difference at all to the Zetas.

With this as background, the possibility that Anonymous might really do something about Islamic State or Al-Qaeda seems similarly ill-conceived. On further reflection, though, it might be a better match than initially perceived. While this might not be anything like the organizational analysis that might truly be needed, it goes to the differences between

• A state organization, i.e. a government, with defensive and offensive capabilities aimed at protection of the members of the state and pursuit of their common goals.
• A criminal organization based on a profit motive.
• A terrorist organization with ideological goals (which may be based on religious thought)
• Whatever organizational type one might assign to Anonymous, although their goals are ultimately ideological in scope.

To start, though, there's an important distinction already: The Zetas had an exploitable connection to Anonymous, namely the previously kidnapped member. Conversely, the reason Anonymous considered taking action was because of the kidnapping. This naturally weakens the anonymity that the group depends on. It would be like Batman starting his crime-fighting career by saying he was avenging the Waynes: It's too much of a clue to toss out there at the start. If, instead, information had appeared in public places with only a Guy Fawkes mask to show where it came from - and no connection to anyone - it might have been an effective method to weaken the cartel.

Although at least one commentator noted that the government is completely owned by the cartel, so releasing the info would do nothing helpful at all. Open source intelligence group Stratfor finishes their assessment with

Being identified and detained by Scotland Yard or the FBI is a far different situation than being identified and detained by Los Zetas.

In any case, without a focused assault on key nodes of infrastructure, you can't hope to eliminate all of them - and it only takes the attention of a few organized criminals to have the attention of them all. That is an advantage of having a hierarchical organization with well-defined and concrete goals: Someone starts messing around, all resources can be focused in that direction, and the only justification needed to do so is "are our goals in jeopardy." Anonymous depends on people using their computers to support the operations they want to support. They would not be able to apply sufficient force to the Zetas, because the methods of attack are too diffuse to affect the cartel's concrete goals of making money and acquiring power. While there is an advantage to anonymity, it's not clear that it makes any difference to this inherent imbalance.

But attacking Al-Qaeda in this way might work. Al-Qaeda has a de-centralized structure as well,  and could be said to lack key nodes - a successful attack on one node will normally have no effect on the overall organization. Any impact requires eliminating enough individual notes to degrade communication, operational effectiveness, etc.  Which means the winner will be the side that can eliminate nodes more effectively, by having more people and/or better skills. That could be Anonymous.

("Hey - Al-Qaeda has used diffuse tactics against the United States successfully!" Yes, but not against concrete goals of the United States.  "Money and power" can be broken down specifically for a criminal organization, since the goals are related directly to its leaders, who aren't responsible to anyone else. Any criminal organization will have to have particular areas it controls and areas it wants to enter.  This doesn't scale up to a state with millions of citizens, many of whom have differing opinions on what the purpose of government should be.)

The question would be relative advantage and alignment of purpose with ideology: Will there be more people attacking jihadist websites or defending them?  Will the defenders be more or less skillful than the attackers? Given equivalent forces, is the advantage to the defenders advantage or the attackers? (Probably the former - keep the site up, you win.) Who does anonymity help more, here? While hard to tell for sure, it seems like this would be a win for the attackers - that more people would align themselves to that side than the other.

Moses, Moses, Moses!

In their book Generations, in Appendix A, Strauss & Howe take a look a the story related in Exodus to show that the generational cycle had been around for a while. Moses  - a literal Prophet - is protected by his mother and takes on the powers that be; Joshua enters Canaan and leads a war against the local residents to take over the land.  This interpretation, though, requires looking at what happened in a different way than many people learn. Moses is not fighting to keep the Hebrew slaves alive in the face of Pharoah's cruelty, he is doing what he can to get them tossed out. Passover and the Exodus are not outward-facing Crisis events,  but inward focused Awakening.

It's a different way to look at the books in the Bible, not as a people young and old scrambling to escape, but as young and old departing on a gorgeous day, ready to take on anything for the glory of God.

Melting down the .... whatever

Hackers attacked a German steel mill. After getting network access in what sounds like standard ways, they used it to acquire control of the blast furnace. Hilarity ensued.

(In some network-based fields "melting down the database" can be used to refer to major issues that are impacting its usability. This is rather worse, of course.)

Although this isn't really a Data Wars item - it's more standard cyber-warfare, attacking infrastructure by taking advantage of our connected world. It's still impressive and a reminder of what the future world will look like. At least until it settles down and achieves a more steady state.

The Attack on Charlie Hebdo

Twelve were killed at a French satirical newspaper called Charlie Hebdo.  It was targeted by Islamic terrorists, because the staff published caricatures of Mohammed.

While this was far from the most deadly terrorist attack, it may turn out to be one of the most significant. Although the attack is much different from the Sony hack, it's inspiring a similar response: People aren't standing for it.

John Minchillo / Associated Press

As a society, we are not willing to die for freedom of speech - yet - but we are becoming very concerned about infringement on freedoms. Theaters not willing to show The Interview led to Sony Pictures pulling the film from distribution, which led to people objecting to it, which led to it being released anyway. And now this attack has led many more people to Charlie Hebdo's site, to what they do - to the very images which the attackers opposed.

This is also known as the Streisand Effect: Barbra objected to a picture of her house being included in a web-based survey of the California coastline. She threatened to sue, not wanting everyone in the world to know exactly what her house looked like. Unfortunately, this led to the lawsuit being published in newspapers, which led people to the survey, which led to many more people gaining access to this information. Sony says it won't show a movie, so everyone demands it be shown. And an obscure French satire site displaying pictures that nobody would really have cared about, is now getting . And those caricatures? Available all over the Internet, and soon to be on t-shirts.

The question comes up sometimes: How can the coddled, protected Heroes become the saviors of civilization? They've never known suffering, they don't have inherent moral strength, they never had to be strong and tough....but they do know what they have, and they trust in their friends, and they know their friends have their backs, too.  Millennials who have been able to express themselves - pamphleteers of everything they think or act or do - appear to take this seriously, perhaps enough to war against it. The war may be starting already.

Today in Apocalypse

Still lurking about?

Last time I searched the news for Apocalypse, all that showed up was a new X-Men movie. It still shows up - but not at the top of the list.

Today, "Apocalypse" gets you footage of the legendary CNN video planned for the end of the world.




Seems like cheating a bit, doesn't it?

Gremlins 2 has a bit of fun with this as well: The Turner-esque head ("Casablanca! Now in color! And with a happier ending!") of Clamp Cable Network has a similar video, which seems appropriate for the threatened gremlin invasion.

Because of the end of civilization, the Clamp Cable Network now leaves the air. We hope you've enjoyed our programming, but more importantly, we hope you've enjoyed... life.

Chapel

It is a perhaps deluded expectation that art can reveal the Turning in which it was produced.

At the risk of confirmation bias here is one example that worked :



This is the United States Air Force Academy Chapel.  For a place of worship, this is really quite radical architecture. For one at a service academy - what could be expected as a conservative bastion - even more so.

On second view, though, it is also aspirational, pointing to the heavens and looking to the future. Perhaps it is more a product of an age when anything is possible.

And from that came the conclusion that it is First Turning, but late enough for the radical design to be accepted. (Note for comparison that the barracks are very functional and limited in appeal ... although they also can be seen as a version of mid-century modern.)

The answer, as it turns out, is that the Air Force Academy Chapel was completed in 1962 - near the end of the American High (First Turning), just before the start of the Consciousness Revolution (Second Turning).

Privateers of the Data Wars

How My Mom Got Hacked is a description of an attack using Crypto Wall, a type of malware that encrypts your files then demands a ransom to decrypt them.

It's another possible way a Data Wars scenario could play out. Encourage a bunch of your guys to set up offensive operations like this and...well, that's really about it. Privateers didn't need to pay back their letters of marque; those were a help to their issuing government simply by decreasing enemy resources. (That it carried a negligible cost to that government was another advantage.)

Evidently there was a requirement for privateers to treat those captured "courteously and kindly." For reasons straightforward, and not necessarily altruistic,  this is followed by the folks behind this aforementioned hack, too - when the payment was made just a little too late for reasons outside of Mom's control, the ransomers accepted it anyway, upon explanation.

1776: Adam Smith

"Nothing important happened today."

Purported diary entry of King George III on July 4, 1776 

The year 1776 has at least two important events: The Declaration of Independence of the American Colonies, and the publishing of The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith.

Note that one event refers to governments, organizations, while the other refers to a single person by name. Adam Smith is synonymous with capitalism and classical economics, where an "invisible hand" hidden within markets causes supply to handle demand and demand to regulate supply.  For the Declaration, Jefferson is known for drafting it, Hancock for his signature, Franklin for being, uh, himself...but mostly it's thought of as "what the Founding Fathers did." And that's likely because its impact goes beyond what was written - not just ideological ("we're independent because we can be")  but also military tactics ("so we're all-in on this war because we're going to be executed for treason if we lose") and diplomatic ("we are accepting help from any nation who wants to support freedom ... or annoy Great Britain.") Even if the writing was mostly one person, the implementation involved anyone involved in the American Revolution.

Which is a way of suggesting that in 1776, Britain was still in its Third Turning, while the United States was in its Fourth. This seems to correlate with the 1783 speech in Highlander, where historical figures are named with regard to Austria (Mozart) and France (the Montgolfier brothers), suggesting they are in a Third Turning. Meanwhile the United States as a group is referred to concerning the recognition of independence - a Fourth Turning indicator.

This could help to show that Europe and Britain and the Colonies had been drifting out of sync with each other for some time. The Colonies entered their Fourth Turning by 1773, while Britain (still in a Third) might have been unable to focus resources until they were too late to be of help.

Today in Crisis

Russia's financial crisis continues although the Russians are taking it in stride.

The UK's National Health Service in crisis ahead of what is expected to be a rough winter.

A review of a book on the coming retirement crisis (with a bonus "apocalypse" as well).

Greece in a political crisis  - or financial - or maybe both.

The Ebola crisis should be over in 2015. Or could be, anyway.

More variety in Crisis than has shown up recently.

Collapse isn't showing much, although there's a nice satire of what people are thinking on Forbes. And a surprising number of references to the Cotton Bowl. And a parcel delivery service called City Link, which is down for the count.

Nothing new for Cloverfield, incidentally.

Finishing the Grid

With a flurry of activity over the last week, I was able to finish up The Grid - which is to say, a system of dates and memorable events that enable context for most of the last 500 years of history. An additional advantage is being able to recreate it easily once the rules are known: Start from a known 4T/Crisis date, move along at about 100-year intervals to find previous and following crises; halfway between those dates you'll find 2T/Awakening events; and then split the remaining intervals to get 1T/High and 3T/Unraveling events.

This last burst was to finish up the Third Turning, which ended up mostly about technological advancement. Not too surprising, since its a way that individuals can distinguish themselves enough to be personally known. 

(It might be the case that Third Turning politicians also are well-known enough - we know Clinton and Bush; Coolidge and Hoover...the notion falls down before the Civil War, though.)

In any case, the final entries were

1752 - Benjamin Franklin experiments with electricity

1852 - Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Uncle Tom's Cabin

1927 - Lindbergh flies solo from New York to Paris

1990 - Tim Berners-Lee invents the World Wide Web

The largest gaps left now are about - well, the largest one is between 1629 and 1666, 37 years. The 3T items ended up being close to the 4T events, making them often distant from the 2T ones. Still, the distance between any potential event in these last 522 years is roughly 20 years. Which makes it possible to identify other events by their distance from one of these, and be generally within a couple of decades of a known item in the Grid.

Which is, hopefully useful, if only by allowing one to be aware of the larger flow of history while looking at specific happenings.