Carrying on...

    I've discovered a new way to manage money with Mint.Com.  It's free and put out by the same company that produces Quicken.  So far I like the site and the features as it allows you to bring all your financial information into one place - which is never a bad thing, having everything you need at your fingertips as it were.

    I've also reconnected with an "old friend."  Fareed Zakaria.  I have watched his show GPS (Global Public Square) on CNN many times but recently found an article he wrote that I found to be quite interesting and well thought out.  It brought home to me in no small way the idea that the American economy has changed not just for the moment but for good.  Business needs have shifted in this country and businesses are accomplishing the same results or better with less people.  An economic recovery will look very different today than it did twenty years ago and many of the jobs that have been lost will not be coming back.  It kind of puts the last three years of difficult job hunting into perspective.  The options then, it seems, are retrain for the new situation or flounder.  

    The situation reminds me very much of Ancient Greece.  Once a major power in the world by the time Rome came on the scene Greece was little more than a provincial outpost.  Of course the Greeks didn't see it that way.  But by that time the best the Greeks could hope for was to train (educate) the Roman elite and, perhaps, serve them in some way.  Which seems to be the road America is on - educating the world in their universities or serving (within a corporation) in China, the Arab world, India or other emerging economies.  I'd give it twenty years or so before people really start to see or feel it but that's my prediction given the current state of affairs and world history.  

    Still working on A History of the Arab Peoples.  I'm really taking my sweet time with this book, I know...  Some of the book is quite dense and there is a lot of information in it that I am unfamiliar with.  It is, in essence, a history of cultures and kingdoms with which I am unfamiliar.  I've studied Greece and (even more so) Rome from  as far back as I can recall.  Instances where Western and Eastern cultures interact are more familiar to me.  However, instances in history where East meets East to create a new East, not so much.  I have been quite fascinated by the sections on the Ottoman Empire and am almost saddened by the Western contribution to the Empire's downfall.  

    And the book makes me think quite a bit.  I like to think of myself as having a rather large vocabulary - but throughout my encounter with this work Hourani has used at least half a dozen words that I am unfamiliar with which promptly went into my "look this word up and get to know it" file.  And that is just the words in English.  The Arabic words are much more commonly unknown to me.  But this is all in the hopes of learning so I tend not to mind so much.

    Well, enough writing...  back to reading.