Insomnia downloads of the week

two audiobooks for Conan fans:


Jewels of Gwahlur by Howard, Robert E

Hour of the Dragon, The by Howard, Robert E.

and for nature lovers:


On The Seashore by Smith, R. Cadwallader

if you really have trouble sleeping, try Herodotus:

1. Herodotus of Halicarnassus. "Herodotus' Histories Vol 1" · (readers)
2. Herodotus of Halicarnassus. "Herodotus' Histories Vol 2" · (readers)
3. Herodotus of Halicarnassus. "Herodotus' Histories Vol 3" · (readers)

but I also found a version on youtube




If you loved 300, well they stole the story from him.

That isn't on line, but this non fictional version is:

and This series of lectures gives a summary (at least until the copyright cops find it's there)

as I told Ruby yesterday, most of the "history' of ancient empires is told by the big shots and they only print the good parts. Only the Greeks and the Bible tell a more complicated story of what happened, including the bad stuff about their big shots, be it King David or Agamemnon...

Herodotus went one step furthur, and tried to tell both sides after talking to both sides.

Something to remember when you read today's papers.

Nearly all the papers are saying: The Iraq war was a mistake. Yet not one bothers to ask: What would have happened if the sanctions had been lifted (as looks likely since Saddam was bribing the French gov't to get the US to do this).

TPM Barnett discusses this on his blog today.
and adds:

And then the White House, chastened finally by the 2006 midterms, relabeled the conflict and rebranded the mission - and then we succeeded again.
But by then the public narrative had already been cast (Bush lied, too many deaths, too much cost).

Referenced from: http://thomaspmbarnett.com/#ixzz2ObIix0ZT

in other words, the press, hating Bush because Gore was supposed to have won, promoted the anti war lies and ignored the reality. Since then, a similar propaganda deluge led to Obama.

read the whole thing: one of the few American analysts who tend to get things right (although I think he underestimates the reaction of locals to China's land and sea grab).

One ongoing theme at StrategyPage is that the press is easily manipulated.
LINK  LINK