Lost Tribes of Israel

European Jews are not the only Jews. Ever since the tribes of Juda split up into twelve different units, they spread out to all corners of the world. Here is a very interesting article about the Japanese Jews and their influence on Japanese culture.

Iraq

Iraq War/Censorship: Britain's former special representative in
Baghdad has been told he cannot publish a book that describes the invasion
of Iraq as "politically illegitimate". Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who has
retired as a diplomat but is still bound by Civil Service rules, has been
told by his former employers at the Foreign Office that The Price of War
will have to be substantially edited before they will allow it to be
published.

from the HNN Newsletter.

A curious thought that touches the system of politics right at its weakest point. Who is a sovereign? Where is the international centre of Power?
The build-up to the Iraqi-war was one of the ugliest political games in our young 21st century. It showed how the United Nations only works when the security council is united and it showed that the European Union is easy to set aside, as far as war-mongering. The United States lead an invasion into Iraq that put Sunni-dictator Saddam Hoessein out of power, and put American industrialists, Shia-parlementarians and Kurdish tribes into civil war. Let's hope the new Iraqi governement will be able to pursue the insurgents to join politics, but let's not forget Iran.

Red

Here is a very interesting article on a the Red Cross, the Red Crescent and the Red Magen David.

Chinese Chronology

I just found this fantastic overview of Chinese history. Enjoy

Gmail Groupmailing

Gmail is offcourse fantastic. You get loads of space, a comfortable GUI and fast service without too many ads in the way. Until recently I thought there was one problem: One couldn't send a group mail. But apparently there are solutions to all problems.

Read here

The fantasy that is history

Everything that has ever existed in the past is no more. All our archives and archeological founding are clues to give us some idea of the past, but there is no more past. It has become present, and glides into future. Historians have the job to reconstruct the past, in order to correct the sense of history, but in picking their subjects of research they are mostly adding their own sense of history. In this fashion history directly correlates with the present minds of historians. In imperialist times historians wrote national histories. In revolutionary times, historians wrote revolutionary histories and now we write world histories, gender histories and cultural histories. Still, governments pay historians to do this. Apparently historical research has some value.

Still, there is growing awareness of this historical subjectivity and more and more scholars define their field of research and point at it's shortcomings before they start their own exposition. But is it possible to bring this awareness to the people?

Even if there is any sense in evolution, it is a really hard job to prove it historically. The trick is to invent a thing called "Cultural evolution".
In NonZero. The logic of human destiny, Robert Wright explains how evolution as a whole, cultural and biological, is a forward-driven developement of information-transport. Memes, Genes, Writing, Printing Press and the Internet are all expresion of this drive in evolution. Information processing is what makes human being the most evolved species, but information technology is not a human invention, but a biological developement.

Robert Wright uses a lot of easy turns to clarify his logic to the reader, but nevertheless this is one of the most interesting books i have ever read.