Realpolitik: "but by blood and iron"

With all this chit-chat about Civ IV, I finally broke down and got the Civ III CD from where I'd hidden it away. Fortunately, this was well-timed to occur during the (drum roll) Fall Break. It's a week-long lacuna, during which your scribe has evidently been too busy building the envy of the world and fighting wars of aggression defence and, from time to time, condescending to read his Safarevic and recall his old forbidden configuration problems -- not to mention the squirrel-like scrounging -- to communicate with the Outer World.

These people are break happy, but I guess you have to do something about your woefully misplaced Thanksgiving holiday. (I believe it's the week after the midterm exams.) Since many students have taken the opportunity to ditch this joint, it's relatively quiet; but there are still us local globe-travellers who must endure the fardels heaped during this time when the weather is temperate and no one ostensibly is here: the film crews, the steam system maintenance, the absent dining service, though in deference to the squirrel analogy they've continued to serve breakfast throughout.

Well, I guess this is about what I learned this week:

• Bismarck definitely is responsible for World War One.


• If you can't have desert power, at least have air power.


• If you don't have iron, you're going to have blood. (In this way history diverges from biology.) No wonder Rome eclipsed Egypt et al.


• Railroads built the world. Thanks, Cornelius Vanderbilt, despite being a shift competition-ransacking robber baron.


• When in doubt, analyse the group of locally mimsy borogroves modulo globally mimsy borogroves. You'll learn a lot about jabberwock lairs.

I hear it's snowing or about to back in the various parts of the old country. I don't know what it's like here. Still sunny but I couldn't tell you the temperature -- the university newspaper doesn't print during the break.