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The Long View

The Long View: For Want of a Nail

Another counterfactual history, but this time one meant as entertainment. I haven't read this book, but I may get around to it at some point. “I care only if it is effective on the page. I agree with the late Ernest Newman: a great score is more finely

The Long View: Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals

An early book review by John of a collection of alternative history edited by Niall Ferguson. I think alternative history and historical fiction are fun ways to explore the structure of history, and help give you concrete hooks to provide a mental map or structure that will allow you to

The Long View: The Dark Imperium

Here is an old essay of John's on Satanic eschatology. I'm sure there must be all of 50 people in the world who are interested in this subject, but for the rest of you, this essay is also a window back into time, when the Internet

The Long View 2003-05-29: Weapons of Mass Destruction

Unfortunately for John's posthumous reputation, the answer to his question is: they didn't exist. Weapons of Mass Destruction Where are those weapons of mass destruction, you may ask? Well, I certainly don't have them. The question is what happened to the Iraqi WMD inventory,

The Long View 2003-05-22: What this Country Needs....

John said in 2002 that no century in modern times had produced less intellectual history than the twentieth. Another way of putting it might be that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The quoted WNYC story in this post from 2003 is by now clearly right.

The Long View 2003-04-16: Slayage

I never was into either Buffy or the West Wing, so I don't have much to add to John's comments regarding either. I do think the Matrix Reloaded didn't live up to the first Matrix, but that was a hard act to follow. It

The Long View 2003-05-12: A Flowering of Frauds

I hadn't thought about Jayson Blair in a long time, which is probably for the best. Like Stephen Glass and Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the temptation to tell a story we think people want to hear is sometimes just a little too tempting. John also commented on the stock