The Phonetic Alphabet

The 'names' for the letters. You know 'papa' for 'p,' 'Bravo' for 'b,' though a commenter says it used to be something else. It is more masculine to say 'b as in bravo' than 'b as in boy.' Anyway the military standards to specify the letters. Did you know that out word 'alphabet' comes from our names for the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta?

I saw a lot of carping over at Brad DeLong's site about Memorial Day. I guess the implication might have been felt that those who didn't volunteer have to rescue a narcissistic deficiency on that day. My sister was saying recently that the happiest time in our parents lives was when my dad was in the Army. he worked at the Medical Nutrition Laboratory, return address MedNutlab, at Fitzsimmons in Denver. I recall looking up at the hospital from my bike while Ike was there with an MI. Anyway for those of us who want to look at the holiday critically I suppose there is always the song, The Streets of Laredo.

The link for contributing to the burned city of West.

A lesson from the KGB

Yuri Andropov, KGB chief during the VN period, reportedly said their propaganda victory during the VN war was their greatest achievement. It was seamless in its strategy. On the one end, in VN toddlers would be set to walk to American soldiers with bombs set to detonate or women in distress apparently needing to give an infant with a timed explosive device to a new soldier. The infants might be shot and explode or thrown off a bridge and explode as the Americans defended themselves. This created a predicate for the charge that the soldiers were baby killers. As Andropov as General Secretary gave us Gorbachev who gave us the end of Russian communism, perhaps we could console ourselves and see VN as a Pyrrhic defeat leading to Russian hubris. This is not to say there were never crimes on our side, but this was part of the context, as a commenter noted, 'context' for a discussion on Bill Ayers.

An essay on Keynes by his admired biographer.

An essay called 'words of wisdom' by Greg Mankiw, Economics, Harvard.

How Dallas Got Its Name

Repairing obscured history reminded me of the interactive map of the 1860 Census in the NY Times. One of the icons in the map shows that Dallas County, Alabama was a 77% slave county in 1860. The soil there is described as a rich, black soil, good for growing cotton. This band of soil extends to an area of Texas called Dallas. Dallas, Texas was the second biggest collection point for cotton in the world in the 1880s. The reason for calling the Texas city and county Dallas is obscure but perhaps it was originally to signal that it was a good place to have slaves and grow cotton. In a twist of fate or, more honestly, public relations, Dallas subsequently may have found other explanations for its name.

Rod Stewart, via Brad Delong, covers 'Black Friday' music. Awesome!

Brad DeLong's post on Cuba, a cry with me for Cuba piece, reminded me of Luis Garrigo, M.D., a refugee from the Revolution, who landed in Dallas for a while. He was a psychiatrist who seemed not at all distracted by his work or responsibiliies to being open to others. In regard to criticism of pre-revolutionary Cuba he might considerately respond yes but the present state was worse and, on other occasions but it would apply there too, with the Latin phrase, 'Festina lente,' which he would translate as 'Hurry slowly.'