It can’t be helped; I adore this book: Modernization and Postmodernization, by Ronald Inglehart.

It’s chockfull of data and analysis of peoples around the world, looking for signs of their emergence into, through and beyond modernity. It’s highly predictive, showing trends for socioeconomic emergence. Just check out the chart above – what a lot it says!  There's scads of this kind of stuff in this book 

The only drawback is that the text is based on surveys made between 1981 and 1990. We’re talking pre-internet here – sure, it existed during that period of time, but not as we’ve known it since the mid-1990’s.

Which does lead me to wonder about many things: what has happened to the peoples of the world in the wake of the internet? Did 9/11 have an impact on the rate of emergence of the U.S. and of the rest of the world? What new trends appear in similar, current surveys?

Fortunately we can poke around at a couple of websites for more current information:

http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/ -- World Values Survey, where the results of more current studies can be found, including the colored map you see here above in next post*;

http://wvs.isr.umich.edu/ -- Prof. Inglehart’s site at University of Michigan, with more links.

What’s your take on the data? Where do you think the U.S. and the rest of the world are going over the next ten years?

(*oops, won't fit in a single post with the other chart!) 

4:34:30 PM    comment []

Oh. My. God.

I can’t think of one thing that went right on that fateful day save for the efforts of passengers on board the doomed flights.

Read this.  It’s the most detailed timeline I’ve seen of the morning of 9/1l.  Over the last two years I’ve read those sanitized versions the media put up at their websites; I'm sure many of you have too.  They are wholly inadequate.

The author(s) ask many excellent questions, more than likely the same kinds of questions asked by the 9/11 Commission and the survivors of the deceased.  I will point out that comments about Ted and Barbara Olson are a bit over the mark, although the intent is not lost on me.  Many people who’ve made statements about the events that morning have questionable memories or have altered their statements.  The author questions the integrity of statements made by Ted Olson in particular and makes less than charitable observations that may not be germane about the events in question; yet it is entirely possible that Ted Olson’s remarks are not accurate, whether because of shock and grief or because of a desire to protect others.

It's only too apparent that people who should have known better, were elected, hired or appointed or nominated to act on our behalf, botched up or did not execute their duties as we the public expect.  There are enormous holes that are completely unwarranted in the space of this timeline, holes in which concrete and effective action should have taken place and did not.

We will never be entirely certain what happened that horrible morning – but we know enough based on this timeline that we were failed every step of the way.

All the way to the top.

And not one person has lost their position for their abject failure to the passengers and crews, the victims on the ground, to the American public.

Not yet.
 

10:58:42 AM    comment []