Pax Americana and the New Iraq Fouad Ajami
An aside to put yesterday's discussion of Learning Patterns in perspective. It's tempting to dis the games mentioned below as 'memorization' (now a pejorative term), as regurgitating facts, as not serious learning.

Take not that path. Fact bits let us learn at a later date. They give us pause to ask questions later.



For example, were I to wax impatient at the slow progress of Iraqi democracy, four short data chunks ought tame my tongue.

The US revolution took eight years. It took us five more years to get a working constitutional government. It took another ninety to unify our nation on our foundational disagreement. Those four simple facts are recalled from K-12.