Bloggasm

tdaxp: After a year working on my computer science thesis, A Computer Model of National Behavior, I needed a project to kill some time. I’m a South Dakotan, but I was teaching in Iowa, so there was not much to do. I had been reading a few blogs for a couple of months, and thought that I could do that, too. The result is tdaxp, and its motto reflects my interests: Beauty, Faith, God.

Currently I’m studying political science and psychology at the graduate level, but this experience has made me appreciate the blogosphere even more. There’s a lot of high-intensity thinking happening in the blogosphere. Not so much in academia.

Simon Owens: As we move into the 21st century with new technological improvements (including potential alternate energy sources) how much will geopolitics come into play?

tdaxp: Over the long time, geopolitics will matter less and less. Land is a good that is almost always more expensive to maintain than profitable to occupy. Xenophobic nationalisms, like Koreanism, may throw fits over specks of rock, but increased connectivity will eventually kill that stuff.

Likewise, natural resources will continue to decline in importance. They are most vital for low-technology countries, and least for high-technology companies. As Tom Friedman said, the richer a country, the less its industries “weight.”

In the short term, the shift off oil to hydrogen will decrease the power of the Saudis slightly, and increase the power of Russia slightly.

SO: As someone who reviews books on your blog, do you tend to focus more on the actual writing itself or the political arguments made?

tdaxp: I’m not a good book reviewer. I review based on what I got out of a book and what new things I can argue, not the material itself or the writing style. My review of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which dealt a lot with Quality and had only a few lines from the book, is typical of this.

SO: As a blogger, how much of your source material is obtained off the internet? Are bloggers still using off-internet resources?

tdaxp: As I’m a student right now, I would say most of my insights come from the university setting, but nearly all of my source material comes from the internet. Dead tree media contributes little, if anything.

SO: What are the five blogs everyone should be reading (besides your own)?

tdaxp: First, Mark Safranski’s ZenPundit. It is unimaginably good. Mark ties strategy, cognition, and everything interesting like no one else. Not only is Mark a first-class writer, he’s a deep thinker. If I knew how to practice thinking “more like Mark,” I would!

Second, Tom Barnett’s blog. He’s presentations, books, and posts have changed the direction of my life. Plus I admire how he is able to teach his philosophy by reflecting it off of daily news items.

Two more: One Free Korea and NKZone. Both are focused on the Korean pennensula, with OFK mostly dealing with South Korea and NKZ posts usually featuring the North. NKZone has some amazing writers, like Rebecca MacKinnon and Dr. Andrei Lankov, while OFK is blogged by a fellow South Dakotan (who now lives in DC).

The Last: I’ll cheat. For national politics, you can’t beat NRO’s The Corner. It’s funny, it’s self-critical, it’s live-blogging done right. For South Dakota politics, I use my RSS reader, Jim River Report.