James Zaworski's Blog

The Most Impressive Gecko I've Seen in Macau.

2026-10-31T02:11:07.206-07:00

On my way home on Friday, I spied a sizeable gecko perched on the wall above the sign at the light rail station of my university. I managed to snap a couple of photos before it scurried off. My first impression was that this was Tarentola mauritanica. If so, this would be a new record and not without the realm of possiblity as there is a big shipping depot next to the light rail station, and it is also next the airport.

Consulation with iNaturalist's AI and Good Gemini's Argon AI, the determination is that this is Hemidactylus brooki, but I am skeptical.

Since I could not catch the gecko (as it was some 4 meters up on the wall), I couldn't examine it more closely.

Here are some photos.

How Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) Got Me Interested in Shakespeare.

2026-10-29T22:21:42.810-07:00

I am very saddened to hear that Sir Patrick Stewart passed away. He was a fantastic actor who embraced the stage, big screen, and television screen, and beyond. It was Patrick Stewart's performance as Captain Jean luc Picard who got me interested in Shakespeare in the late 1980s.

I remember it well; I took an introduction to Shakespeare course at the university I was attending as an interesting elective course. The professor was kind of dull. I had read Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet in high school, but the topics and the language seemed to be a bit remote. It was Patrick Stewart's performances in Star Trek, The Next Generation, as Captain Picard (as well as the various "Masterpiece Theater" performances where Stewart had appeared, such as "I Claudius" and "King Lear" as well).

When Stewart, as Captain Picard, quoted Shakespeare (especially Henry V), or appeared on the holodeck as an actor in the same play, opposite Lt. Commander Data, and his performances struck a deeper chord which inspired me to read more and to watch more performances of Shakespeare's plays (lots of BBC performances and on the big screen that year, Branagh's version of Henry V came out).

Suffice it to say, Patrick Stewart succeeded where my father had failed: to inspire me to embrace Shakespeare.

I always felt that his performances were authoritative, eloquent, and memorable.

Today is a sad day, as we lost one of the great actors of our time. Rest in Peace, Sir Patrick Stewart.

I Miss October in the Chicago Area.

2026-10-29T08:43:52.711-07:00

Autumn is my favorite season. Growing up in the Chicago area, the days of autumn, with their relative warmth, and the crisp, cool evenings, are among my fondest memories. The change in color of the leaves, the abundant crunchy and crispy leaves which fall, and raking them into piles and jumping into them, with their scent and aroma, haunt my memory as well.

It is the season of Halloween, and those moonlit nights, with the nearly naked skeletons of the deciduous trees, casting scant shadows in the light of a full moon, on the quiet with nothing heard but the crunch underfoot of the twigs and dead leaves, and the call of the great horned owl, always filled me with that magic feeling of both dread, and familiarity, during this time.

I am exiled in Asia, in Macau. I have not witnessed an autumn season in the Chicago area for about 20 years. I do miss it, and remember it here with this collage of the big and venerable sugar maple tree which was my view from my window of my childhood home.

What Would Frank Zappa Say About Trump’s America?

2026-10-27T20:24:59.473-07:00

What Would Frank Zappa Say About Trump’s America?

Frank Zappa wasn’t shy about expressing his opinion about politics or society. He criticized each and every administration, Democrat or Republican, with stinging sarcasm and insightful pique. If Frank Zappa were alive today—sitting in his Utility Muffin Research Kitchen studio with a cup of black coffee, a cigarette, and an eyebrow cocked at the cable news cycle—he almost certainly wouldn't be surprised by the state of American politics. Disgusted, perhaps. Amused in that dark, sardonic way of his, definitely. But surprised? Not a chance.

Decades before Donald Trump descended the golden escalator, Zappa was already writing the soundtrack to the modern American political circus. Through a sprawling discography of avant-garde rock, biting satire, and relentless social commentary, Zappa spent his life dissecting the exact cultural ingredients that eventually produced the Trump era. To ask what Zappa would think of the United States under Trump is to realize that Zappa spent the 1970s and 1980s warning us that this very moment was on the horizon.

The "Practical Conservative" vs. Modern Populism

To understand how Zappa would view the current administration, one first has to untangle Zappa’s own politics. He famously described himself as a "practical conservative"—a label that trips up anyone trying to map 20th-century definitions onto 21st-century partisan tribalism. By "conservative," Zappa meant he favored fiscal responsibility, individual liberty, minimal government intrusion, and a strict adherence to the U.S. Constitution.

He was a fierce defender of capitalism as a mechanism for independent enterprise (he fought tirelessly to own his master recordings and run his own business), yet he detested corporate cronyism and political opportunism. Back in 1989, when Trump was the reigning poster boy for 1980s Manhattan excess, Zappa actually mentioned him in an interview, viewing the public’s idolization of the real estate mogul as a symptom of a failing American education system and skewed cultural values. Zappa valued competence, nuance, and things that actually worked. A political movement built on grievance, loyalty tests, and economic protectionism via sweeping tariffs would have struck Zappa not as conservatism, but as theater for the gullible.

The Marriage of Convenience: Politics and the Pulpit

Nothing drew Zappa’s ire quite like the intersection of religion and government. Throughout the 1980s, during the rise of Ronald Reagan and the Moral Majority, Zappa repeatedly went on television programs like Crossfire to warn that the Republican Party was steering the United States toward what he called a "fascist theocracy". He dedicated entire album sides to mocking televangelists who used faith to extract money and political power from their followers.

Looking at the Trump administration’s symbiotic relationship with Christian Nationalism—from the appointment of conservative judges to the rhetoric surrounding cultural and reproductive policies—Zappa would see the culmination of his darkest 1980s prophecies. What would fascinate Zappa the satirist, however, is the sheer irony of the arrangement: that the evangelical movement chose a brash, thrice-married New York billionaire as its ultimate champion. For a man who wrote songs like Dumb All Over and Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk to highlight religious hypocrisy, the modern alliance between the pulpit and the Mar-a-Lago podium would have provided enough lyrical ammunition for a quadruple album.

Television, "The Slime," and the Reality TV Presidency

Perhaps Zappa’s most prescient cultural critique was his obsession with how mass media molds a compliant, uncritical public. In his 1973 track I'm the Slime, he personified television as a manipulative force oozing from the screen to regulate the viewer's mind. Later, in 1991, he noted in an interview that in a democracy, a major menace could easily get voted into power purely due to media saturation, declining literacy, and social desperation.

Trump’s rise—first through the curated boardroom drama of The Apprentice and later through an instinctive mastery of cable news algorithms and social media outrage—is the ultimate validation of Zappa’s media theory. Zappa once remarked that politics is simply the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex. Under Trump, the barrier between governance and entertainment didn't just blur; it evaporated. Zappa would view the constant spectacle, the rallies, the nicknames, and the 24/7 digital outrage machine as the natural evolution of a public trained to prefer spectacle over substance.

Foreign Policy, Ego, and the First Amendment

On the domestic and foreign policy fronts, Zappa’s reaction would be rooted in his lifelong anti-authoritarianism. Having served as a cultural liaison to post-communist Czechoslovakia at the request of President Václav Havel—a genuine admirer of Zappa’s music—Zappa had a deep appreciation for fragile democracies emerging from the shadow of strongmen. Watching an American administration express admiration for authoritarian leaders abroad while questioning traditional democratic alliances would have appalled his pragmatic, freedom-oriented worldview.

Furthermore, Zappa’s defining political battle was his 1985 testimony before the U.S. Senate against the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), where he fiercely defended the First Amendment against government censorship and moral panic. He believed that in a democracy, the citizens own the government, not the other way around. Any administration—left or right—that attacks the press as the "enemy of the people," threatens broadcast licenses, or attempts to police cultural expression in schools and libraries would find itself squarely in Zappa’s crosshairs.

The Equal-Opportunity Cynic

It is worth noting that while Zappa would have reviled the Trump administration’s policies and persona, he wouldn't have offered the Democratic Party a free pass either. In the 1960s, while other rock stars were romanticizing the counterculture, Zappa was mercilessly mocking hippies on We're Only in It for the Money for being just as conformist, superficial, and phony as the establishment they claimed to hate.

Today, Zappa would likely skewer performative progressive activism, corporate "wokeness," and the linguistic policing of modern cancel culture just as gleefully as he would dissect MAGA hats and Golden Sneaker merch. He despised groupthink in every costume it wore.

Ultimately, if Frank Zappa were looking at America today, he wouldn't tell us to put our faith in a politician or a party to save us. He would do what he always did: set up a booth at his concerts to register people to vote, tell us to read the Constitution for ourselves, and remind us that the only real antidote to political absurdity is critical thinking—preferably accompanied by a very loud, very complicated guitar solo.

Remarkable Pharaohs #41: Sheshonq I and the Libyan Dynasty.

2026-10-26T12:12:17.335-07:00

Sheshonq I and the Libyan Dynasty.

By the dawn of the first millennium BCE, the imperial glory of the Egyptian New Kingdom had faded into memory. During the 21st Dynasty, Egypt functioned as a fractured state: the pharaohs ruled Lower Egypt from the northern delta city of Tanis, while the High Priests of Amun operated as a de facto independent theocracy in Upper Egypt from Thebes.[^1] Into this divided landscape stepped Sheshonq I (reigned c. 943–922 BCE), a powerful military commander and the Great Chief of the Meshwesh—a prominent tribe of Libyans who had settled in the western Delta over generations and thoroughly assimilated into Egyptian society.[^2]

Upon the death of the last 21st Dynasty ruler, Psusennes II, Sheshonq ascended the throne and founded the 22nd Dynasty, often called the Bubastite Dynasty after his ancestral delta power base of Bubastis.[^3] Ruling during the early Third Intermediate Period, Sheshonq I was not merely a chieftain of foreign descent; he was a shrewd statesman who unified Egypt's fractured administration and launched an ambitious foreign policy designed to establish administrative footholds and monopolize lucrative Levantine trade networks.[^4]

Domestic Policies: Consolidating a Divided Kingdom

Sheshonq’s primary domestic challenge was ending the centuries-old division between the northern crown and the southern priesthood without sparking a civil war. Rather than dismantling the Theban theocracy by force, he neutralized its independence by absorbing its highest offices into his immediate family network.

In a masterstroke of dynastic politics, Sheshonq broke with the established tradition of hereditary succession among the Theban priesthood and appointed his own son, Iuput (also rendered Iuwelot), as the High Priest of Amun at Thebes, alongside holding the post of commander of the southern armies and governor of Upper Egypt.[^5] By placing a royal prince at the head of both the religious hierarchy and the military forces of the south, Sheshonq ensured that Thebes answered directly to the throne. To further cement loyalty among the proud Theban aristocracy, Sheshonq arranged strategic marriages between his royal house and the entrenched elite families of Upper Egypt.

Administrative structure under Sheshonq blended traditional pharaonic bureaucracy with Libyan tribal decentralization, allowing for the parallel existence of regional leaders bound to the king by blood and marriage. While he governed from the northern delta centers of Bubastis and Tanis, he placed his sons and trusted tribal allies in key military and religious posts throughout the Nile Valley—most notably appointing another son, Nimlot, as army commander at the strategic choke point of Herakleopolis Magna in Middle Egypt.[^6] Economically, the integration of Upper and Lower Egypt restored the smooth flow of internal trade and allowed the crown to redirect regional tribute and taxation into ambitious state building projects.

Foreign Policy: Imperial Ambition, the Megiddo Block, and the Copper Trade

For generations, Egypt had retreated from international affairs, losing its New Kingdom Levantine empire and allowing smaller Iron Age states to flourish along its northeastern border.[^7] Sheshonq I reversed this isolationist posture, launching the most aggressive foreign policy Egypt had seen in centuries to reassert hegemony over trade arteries and neighboring polities.[^8]

His diplomatic strategy began with political subversion before turning to military force. Early in his reign, Sheshonq harbored political refugees from the United Monarchy of Israel—most notably Jeroboam, a rebel fleeing King Solomon. Following Solomon’s death and the subsequent fracturing of the Hebrew kingdom into Israel in the north and Judah in the south, Sheshonq capitalized on the regional instability. In the second half of the tenth century BCE (traditionally dated around 925 BCE), he led a massive military coalition into the southern Levant.[^9]

This campaign provides one of the earliest historical synchronisms between Egyptian monumental records and the Hebrew Bible, where Sheshonq is identified as King Shishak in 1 Kings 14:25–26 and 2 Chronicles 12:1–9.[^10] While the biblical account focuses strictly on Shishak marching on Jerusalem and extracting the treasures of the Temple and royal palace as tribute from King Rehoboam, Sheshonq’s own topographical list at Karnak reveals a far wider strategic sweep across Canaan.[^11] Rather than a purely destructive raid, recent archaeological debates demonstrate that Sheshonq's campaign was a calculated effort to establish northern administrative centers and reorganize the southern copper economy.

The Megiddo Fragment Debate: Stela vs. Architectural Element

At the strategic northern city of Megiddo—listed as town No. 27 on the Karnak relief—excavations in 1925 unearthed a large limestone fragment inscribed with Sheshonq I's royal cartouches in an earlier excavation dump.[^12] For nearly a century, scholars followed Clarence Fisher and Yigael Yadin in reconstructing this stone as part of a three-meter-tall, free-standing royal victory stela erected atop the burned ruins of "Solomonic" Megiddo (Stratum VA–IVB).[^13] However, this created a major stratigraphic and logical paradox: Egyptian pharaohs erected monuments in active administrative centers where vassals and resident officials could view them, not in abandoned piles of ash.[^14] Furthermore, radiocarbon-based "Low Chronology" models lowered the destruction of Stratum VA–IVB into the ninth century BCE, associating the modest, unburned Stratum VB—or the initial construction of VA–IVB—with Sheshonq's era.[^15]

A physical re-examination of the stone by Shirly Ben-Dor Evian and Israel Finkelstein overturned the victory stela hypothesis entirely. Measuring over 50 centimeters thick with rough, undressed side and back facets, the block is physically incompatible with free-standing Egyptian stelae; instead, it functioned as an inscribed architectural element—such as a monumental doorjamb or lintel—built directly into the wall of an official structure at Megiddo.[^16] This architectural integration proves that Sheshonq did not obliterate Megiddo, but rather established an enduring administrative foothold there to oversee the northern valleys and international trade routes.[^17]

The Negev Ḥăṣērîm and the Wadi Arabah Copper Trade

Equally transformative are the archaeological debates surrounding the southern sector of Sheshonq’s campaign. More than half of the preserved toponyms on the Karnak relief (~80 out of ~150 names) refer not to major urban centers in Israel or Judah, but to small pastoral enclosures and hamlets (ḥăṣērîm) scattered across the Beersheba Valley and the Negev Highlands.[^18] While earlier scholarship assumed Sheshonq annihilated these desert settlements, archaeometallurgical excavations at Khirbet en-Nahas (Wadi Faynan) and Timna in the Wadi Arabah have demonstrated that industrial copper production actually intensified and reached its technological peak right around 925 BCE, immediately following Sheshonq’s campaign.[^19] Facing a severe shortage of domestic copper in Egypt during the Iron Age, Sheshonq marched into the south not to destroy the desert economy, but to co-opt and streamline the flow of Arabah copper toward Egypt and the Mediterranean ports.[^20]

Two competing archaeological models explain how this Sheshonq-backed copper network operated:

The "Tel Masos Gateway" Model: Proposed by Israel Finkelstein and Alexander Fantalkin, this model argues that the large sedentary site of Tel Masos in the Beersheba Valley functioned as a "gateway community" and desert chiefdom.[^21] By pacifying the region and placing Tel Masos under Egyptian patronage, Sheshonq encouraged local pastoral nomads to sedentarize in the Negev Highlands and manage the westward transport of copper toward the Philistine coast and Egypt.[^22]
The "Nomadic Polity / Early Edom" Model: Championed by Erez Ben-Yosef and Thomas Levy, this model contends that the mines at Faynan and Timna were directly ruled by a powerful, archaeologically semi-invisible nomadic confederacy—identified as early biblical Edom.[^23] In this view, Sheshonq’s campaign acted as an external catalyst that spurred the nomadic tribes to unify politically and standardize their smelting technologies to meet Egyptian trade and tribute demands, a connection corroborated by the discovery of tenth-century BCE Egyptian scarabs (including one bearing Sheshonq I's name) and amulets at Faynan.[^24]

Bridging both models, petrographic analyses of coarse handmade pottery from the Negev Highlands revealed that the vessels were deliberately tempered with crushed copper smelting slag originating from the furnaces of Wadi Faynan.[^25] This confirms that the inhabitants of the Negev ḥăṣērîm targeted by Sheshonq were directly integrated into the Arabah copper extraction and transport apparatus.[^26]

Beyond the southern Levant, Sheshonq reinforced his economic reach by reviving diplomatic and commercial ties with the Phoenician port city of Byblos, where the local ruler Abibaal erected a statue of the pharaoh.[^27] To the south, Sheshonq secured Egypt's frontier in Lower Nubia, re-establishing access to southern gold and luxury trade routes.

Impact on Ancient Egyptian Culture and History

Sheshonq I left an indelible mark on Egypt’s monumental landscape and historical trajectory, funded largely by the plunder, tribute, and copper revenues secured during his foreign campaigns.

At the Temple of Amun in Karnak, he commissioned the massive Bubastite Portal and a grand forecourt, marking the first major royal construction at the site in generations.[^28] On the exterior wall of the portal, he had his famous Triumphal Relief carved—a colossal topographical list depicting the god Amun handing the pharaoh bound captives representing the conquered northern cities and southern Negev ḥăṣērîm.[^29] He also initiated construction on a temple complex at el-Hiba in Middle Egypt and adorned his ancestral home of Bubastis. Because he died shortly after his return from the Levant after a twenty-one-year reign, several of his grandest architectural visions at Karnak remained only partially decorated.[^30]

Culturally, Sheshonq’s reign legitimized the fusion of Libyan and Egyptian identities. While he and his successors retained their non-Egyptian ancestral names (such as Sheshonq, Osorkon, Nimlot, and Takeloth) and organized the military along tribal chiefdom lines, they presented themselves in art, religion, and royal titulary as completely orthodox pharaohs.[^31]

Historically, however, Sheshonq’s political system carried the seeds of its own eventual undoing. The practice of granting high regional offices and military commands as quasi-feudal fiefdoms to royal sons worked effectively under Sheshonq’s strong personal authority. Yet within a few generations, those regional posts became hereditary among competing branches of the royal family, ultimately fracturing Egypt once again into rival petty kingdoms and paving the way for the Kushite conquest of the 25th Dynasty.

Even so, Sheshonq I stands as the defining monarch of the early Third Intermediate Period.[^32] By bridging the divide between north and south, establishing an architectural seat of authority at Megiddo, reorganizing the Arabah copper trade, and revitalizing the monumental heart of Thebes, he proved that the ancient pharaonic institution could be fiercely renewed by those who once stood outside its borders.[^33]

Bibliography

Ben-Yosef, Erez. "The Architectural Bias in Current Biblical Archaeology." Vetus Testamentum 69, no. 3 (2019): 361–87. https://doi.org/10.1163/15685330-12341370.

Ben-Yosef, Erez, Brady Liss, Omri Yagel, Ulf Linnemann, Andreas Hofmann, Mohammad Najjar, and Thomas E. Levy. "Ancient Technology and Punctuated Innovation: Immediate Emergence of Slag Tapping in Late-10th-Century BCE Copper Smelting of the Southern Levant." PLOS ONE 14, no. 9 (2019): e0221967. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221967.

Evian, Shirly Ben-Dor, and Israel Finkelstein. "The Sheshonq Fragment from Megiddo: A New Interpretation." Bulletin of the American Society of Overseas Research 390 (2023): 97–111. https://doi.org/10.1086/727430.

Fantalkin, Alexander, and Israel Finkelstein. "The Sheshonq I Campaign and the 8th-Century BCE Earthquake—More on the Archaeology and History of the South in the Iron I–IIA." Tel Aviv 33, no. 1 (2006): 18–42. https://doi.org/10.1179/tav.2006.2006.1.18.

Fischer-Bovet, Christelle. "The Power of Statues: Constructing Imperial Narratives under the Ptolemies." The Journal of Hellenic Studies 144 (2024): 261–79. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0075426924000235.

Karlsson, Mattias. "People with Libyan Names in Mesopotamian Texts." Libyan Studies (2025): 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1017/lis.2024.12.

Levin, Yigal. "Sheshonq I and the Negev Ḥǎṣērîm." Maarav 17, no. 2 (2010): 189–215. https://doi.org/10.1086/mar201017205.

Luria, David. "Copper Technology in the Arabah during the Iron Age and the Role of Sheshonq I." PLOS ONE 16, no. 12 (2021): e0260518. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260518.

Martin, Mario A. S., Adi Eliyahu-Behar, Michael Anenburg, Yuval Goren, and Israel Finkelstein. "Iron IIA Slag-Tempered Pottery in the Negev Highlands, Israel." Journal of Archaeological Science 40, no. 10 (2013): 3777–92. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2013.04.024.

Martin, Mario A. S., and Israel Finkelstein. "Iron IIA Pottery from the Negev Highlands: Petrographic Investigation and Historical Implications." Tel Aviv 40, no. 1 (2013): 6–45. https://doi.org/10.1179/033443513X13612671397305.

Shahack-Gross, Ruth, and Israel Finkelstein. "Settlement Oscillations in the Negev Highlands Revisited: The Impact of Microarchaeological Methods." Radiocarbon 57, no. 2 (2015): 253–64. https://doi.org/10.2458/azu_rc.57.18561.

I am still in Macau, and Macau is still here, after all these years. (photos)

2026-10-23T08:46:56.563-07:00

I still live and work in Macau. The university I teach in is next to all these luxury casino/hotels. Sometimes I just bypass them and pay them much heed but sometimes I go in to look around or maybe have an occasional dinner there. These are just a few photos I snapped with my phone this week.

My Maternal Grandmother's Quote on Knowledge.

2026-10-22T09:32:50.086-07:00

"What I know, if I wrote it down in a book, would make a big book; what I don't know would make a bigger one."

My venerable grandmother, Laura Wolcott, lived from 1893 to 1989. She lived a full life, having three children and was the middle child in a family of nine. She lived through the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, The Korean War, The Vietnam War, and the Grenada War. She traveled by horse and buggy, car, railroad, aeroplane, and jet. She used a telephone, indoor plumbing, electric range stoves, microwave oven, radio, television, but not computers.

She read real books. She read real newspapers. She memorized poetry from the famous poets, such as Shakespeare and Poe. She could recite them decades later. She had common sense. She had little education beyond the twelfth grade.

From Court Jester to Leader of Ukraine: The Unlikely Heroism of Volodymyr Zelenskyy

2026-10-20T20:12:50.924-07:00

From Court Jester to Leader of Ukraine: The Unlikely Heroism of Volodymyr Zelenskyy

When the court jester becomes the king and defender of the realm, you definitely have an interesting story to tell. History occasionally hands the weight of the world to the most unexpected people. If you had told anyone a decade ago that a television comedian would become the face of democracy’s defense in the 21st century, they would have laughed. Yet, that is exactly the story of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy—a man who transitioned from writing punchlines to holding the line against one of the world's most aggressive military superpowers.

To truly understand Zelenskyy’s significance, one must understand the crucible of modern Ukraine. Since gaining independence from the collapsing Soviet Union in 1991, the nation has been locked in a relentless tug-of-war between its democratic, European aspirations and the enduring, heavy shadow of Russian influence. Through the Orange Revolution in 2004 and the bloody Revolution of Dignity in 2014—which culminated in Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of war in the Donbas—the Ukrainian people repeatedly took to the streets to reject authoritarianism and entrenched political corruption. Zelenskyy entered this volatile arena not as a traditional statesman, but as a reflection of a younger, post-Soviet generation. He represented a nation exhausted by the old guard of oligarchs and desperate to finally consolidate its hard-won democratic identity.

Born in 1978 to a Russian-speaking Jewish family in the industrial city of Kryvyi Rih, Zelenskyy initially earned a law degree but never practiced. Instead, his charisma pulled him toward the stage. He co-founded the successful comedy troupe Kvartal 95, becoming a household name in Ukraine and across the post-Soviet world.

His ultimate pivot toward his destiny came through art. In the hit television series Servant of the People, Zelenskyy played a high school history teacher whose viral rant against government corruption unexpectedly propels him to the presidency. The show struck such a profound chord with a Ukrainian public hungry for genuine change that when Zelenskyy launched a real-life political campaign under the same name, life imitated art. In 2019, riding the wave of his country's anti-establishment fervor, he won the presidency in a staggering landslide.

Stepping into the presidency, Zelenskyy faced an uphill battle. Political elites, international observers, and even his own citizens initially struggled to take a former comedian seriously. Critics dismissed him as a populist lightweight who lacked the gravitas to navigate Ukraine’s treacherous geopolitical landscape, especially with an ongoing conflict in the Donbas region.

This skepticism compounded his first major international trial: navigating the first Trump administration. In 2019, Zelenskyy found himself at the center of a geopolitical firestorm when the U.S. administration temporarily withheld nearly $400 million in vital military aid. Zelenskyy had to perform an incredibly delicate diplomatic tightrope walk—trying to procure the weapons his country desperately needed to defend its eastern borders without becoming a pawn in American partisan politics. It was a baptism by fire that proved the "comedian" possessed a steely pragmatic resolve.

Everything changed in February 2022. When Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the world expected the government to fall within days. Western intelligence offered to evacuate Zelenskyy. His legendary response—"I need ammunition, not a ride"—instantly shifted the global narrative. By filming himself on the dark streets of Kyiv in his now-signature green t-shirt, refusing to abandon his people, the comedian transformed into a wartime icon.

https://www.president.gov.ua/en/president/biografiya

His masterful communication skills, once used for entertainment, became Ukraine's greatest weapon. Zelenskyy tirelessly addressed parliaments around the globe, eventually securing historic, unprecedented support from the European Union. The EU drastically reduced its reliance on Russian energy and opened its coffers, providing immense financial, humanitarian, and military assistance to keep the Ukrainian state afloat. Simultaneously, the Biden administration became a crucial pillar of support, rallying NATO and providing tens of billions in advanced weaponry and intelligence that allowed Ukraine to fight back against a massive invading force.

Today, Zelenskyy’s fight is more complex than ever. He is forced to navigate not only Putin's relentless military aggression but also shifting political winds in the West.

The return of Donald Trump to the geopolitical stage has brought renewed friction. Zelenskyy has recently faced intense pressure, including threats from the incoming U.S. administration to halt weapons procurement and cut vital intelligence sharing unless Ukraine complies with forced "energy ceasefires". It is a stark reminder of the lukewarm, and sometimes overtly hostile, reception he must navigate from leaders who view the survival of his nation through a transactional lens, complicated further by ongoing struggles to maintain continuous technological and military support.

Yet, amid the attempts by skeptical Western politicians to undermine him, Zelenskyy remains unbroken. Psychological and political analyses of his leadership style note his "courageous charismatic" profile—a unique blend of fierce ambition, outgoing communication, and conscientious diligence under fire. He continues to advocate fiercely for his nation's sovereignty, proving that true leadership isn't about traditional political pedigree. It is about showing up, standing firm, and refusing to surrender when the lights go out.

References & Further Reading

Vomacka, E., & Immelman, A. (2023). "The Personality Profile and Leadership Style of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy." College of St. Benedict / St. John's University.

Journal of Communication Management (2025). "Seizing the narrative in a global information war: examining president Volodymyr Zelenskyy's media communication strategy."

National Center for Biotechnology Information / PMC (2024). "Cyber warfare: a study of Zelenskyy's social media political communication strategies..."

Harvard Ukrainian Studies (2025). "From Servant to Leader: Chronicles of Ukraine Under the Zelensky Presidency, 2019–2024." ibidem Press.

Journalistic & Biographical Sources

Rudenko, Serhii (2022). Zelensky: A Biography. Polity Press.

Collins, Philip (2022). "A Message from Ukraine by Volodymyr Zelensky review – a winner in the war of words." The Guardian.

The Guardian (2026). "Starlink access still not fully restored for Ukraine’s military, says Zelenskyy."

Ray, Michael. "Volodymyr Zelensky." Encyclopedia Britannica.

https://www.president.gov.ua/en/president/biografiya

Thoughts on the Ukraine and Iran Wars: They Need to End.

2026-10-20T00:55:51.262-07:00

Both the Ukraine and Iran Wars need to end. Both wars were wars of choice which started without exhausting international diplomacy. Both wars were started by aggressor nations, Russia and the United States. Both wars were started with blatant overconfidence, underestimating the resolve of both Ukraine and Iran to defend themselves from foreign aggression. Both wars have been threats to the world order and have resulted in significant international economic troubles for the world.

The Ukraine War has been the longer lasting of the two and has been far more devastating, in terms of cost of both lives and purse. Ukraine has been a bountiful bread basket for the world with it's bountiful wheat harvests. While significant territorial gains have occurred by Russia, Ukraine retains the majority of its territory and has fought Russia to an effective stalemate. Innovative warfare techniques have been perfected by Ukraine, both repelling Russian drone attacks and coordinating Ukrainian drone attacks inside of Russia, significantly destroying infrastructure, including oil facilities. Of course, this has driven up the cost of oil and has also interrupted the supply of natural gas to western Europe, causing economic pain for the past few years. Other than an unrealistic goal of total victory, Russian President Vladamir Putin would rather not admit to the mistake of starting this war rather than admit to failure.

The Iran War has been shorter, but just as short sighted. The loss of life has been far less than in the Ukraine War, but the cost to the world economy has been immediate, and much more palpable. The short sighted war shows American leaders do not learn from the past: they couldn't win in Iraq and they couldn't win in Afghanistan. Air wars alone cannot win a war and boots on the ground would be extremely costly in terms of casualties for both sides. Rather than admit to a mistake, the President of the United States of America has no clear plan to end the war. The cost to the global economy, including the American economy, has resulted in inflation for pretty much every commodity bought and sold.

The leaders of Ukraine and Iran are to be commended on their David and Goliath courage. Both nations are recognized members of the international community and have the rights and privileges of having their territorial integrity maintained, and outside forces have no right to invade or attack them for whatever dubious purpose. It is the agreement of the international community to engage one another through diplomacy. War is only ever an action to undertake if it is just, and a last resort.

My Candid Photo from Beijing of a Qing Dynasty Cosplayer.

2026-10-19T04:06:09.732-07:00

I took this photo last June in Beijing just outside of the Forbidden City. There are a number of tourists who do cosplay here and get their photos taken. This particular Chinese young lady was posing for hers (with the gates of the Forbidden City behind her) and I snapped a candid photo. I remember it was really brutally hot that day. I was sweating so profusely that I could barely focus the shot.

A Lesser Asian Murder Hornet: The Lesser Banded Hornet (Vespa affinis), in Macau.

2026-10-15T21:51:13.085-07:00

I observed this rather substantial hornet at a light rail station in Cotai, Macau the other day. According to iNaturalist and Gemini AI, it is the lesser banded hornet, Vespa affinis.

Remarkable Pharaohs #40: The Fractured Frontier at the end of the 18th Dynasty.

2026-10-12T09:33:11.117-07:00

Remarable Pharaohs Supplement: The Fractured Frontier and the Golden Legacy

The reign of Tutankhamun was a pivotal moment for Egypt’s imperial standing. While the boy king was focused on internal religious restoration, the borders of the "Asian Empire"—encompassing regions of modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria—were under severe pressure.

The Asian Empire: A Shadow of Thutmose III

By the time Tutankhamun took the throne, the administrative grip of the 18th Dynasty had weakened. During his father Akhenaten's reign, the Amarna Letters (a vast archive of diplomatic correspondence) revealed a series of desperate pleas from Egyptian vassals in the Levant. These governors were being harassed by the Apiru (nomadic raiders) and, more significantly, the expanding Hittite Empire under King Suppiluliuma I.

· The Northern Retreat: The northernmost buffer zone, particularly the kingdom of Amurru and the city-state of Qadesh, slipped out of the Egyptian sphere of influence and into the Hittite orbit.

· Military Response: Scholarly analysis of the "Restoration Stela" and military reliefs in the tomb of Horemheb suggest that Tutankhamun’s administration did not remain idle. General Horemheb likely led campaigns into the Sinai and Southern Canaan to re-establish order. Archeological evidence at the site of Tell el-Borg in the Sinai indicates a heightened military presence during this era to protect the "Ways of Horus," the vital trade and military route into Asia.

· Foreign Policy Stance: Egypt moved from the proactive conquest seen under Thutmose III to a reactive, defensive posture. The goal was no longer expansion, but the preservation of existing trade routes and the containment of Hittite southward movement.

The effective loss of the Asian sphere of influence at the end of the 18^th Dynasty was not the end. 19^th Dynasty pharaohs Seti I and Ramses II did their best to attempt to reconquer Palestine and Syria, to varying degrees of success.

References

1. Hawass, Z. (2010). The Golden Boy: History, Art and Anatomy of Tutankhamun’s Mummy. (For insights into the king's health and cause of death).

2. Reeves, N. (1990). The Complete Tutankhamun: The King, the Tomb, the Royal Treasure. (The definitive guide to the excavation and tomb contents).

3. Hornung, E. (1999). History of Ancient Egypt: An Introduction. (For the broader context of the 18th Dynasty and the Amarna transition).

4. Moran, W. L. (1992). The Amarna Letters. (Essential for understanding the geopolitical state of the Asian empire).

5. Wilkinson, T. (2010). The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt. (Detailed analysis of the political maneuvering of Ay and Horemheb).

Vindication in the Levant: How a 2026 Discovery Proved My 2004 Thesis Right

2026-10-08T04:28:31.430-07:00

Vindication in the Levant: How a 2026 Discovery Proved My 2004 Thesis Right

Back in 2004, I wrote my thesis on the morphological and archaeological comparisons of the Levantine hominids, focusing on a region often described as the "central bus station" of Pleistocene migrations. At the time, paleoanthropology was heavily dominated by strict "Out of Africa" replacement models. The prevailing orthodoxy suggested that Neanderthals and anatomically modern Homo sapiens were entirely discrete, isolated species that simply replaced one another without any meaningful interaction.

I saw things differently. Looking closely at the fossil record from sites like Amud, Skhul, Qafzeh, and Tabun, the evidence painted a very different picture. The cranial osteometrics didn't show two distinct, isolated species; they showed a continuous, intermediate gradation of features. Furthermore, both groups were utilizing the exact same Levallois-Mousterian stone tool technologies. I argued something highly controversial for the time: because of their shared morphology, shared time and space, and shared technology, these two groups were actually part of one single, variable, and continuously evolving population.

Skhul V

Some in the academic community thought I was out on a limb. I argued that relying on a simplistic, linear view of evolution was risky and flawed.

Science, however, has a beautiful way of catching up to the truth.

The first major vindication came from the Max Planck Institute in 2010, when genetic evidence definitively proved that our ancestors and Neanderthals interbred. Now, in 2026, a groundbreaking new study from the Üçağızlı II Cave in Türkiye has delivered the ultimate archaeological mic-drop.

The Üçağızlı II Cave Discovery: A Mirror to the Past

In a 2026 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers detailed the findings from the Üçağızlı II Cave, located in the northern Levant along the Mediterranean coast of Türkiye. Following meticulous excavations, they discovered that Neanderthals occupied the cave from 77,000 to 59,000 years ago, immediately followed by Homo sapiens who lived there from 59,000 to 47,000 years ago.

What makes this discovery so groundbreaking is not just the sequential occupation, but the astonishing behavioral continuity between the two groups. Both species utilized nearly identical stone tool techniques—specifically Mousterian variants with parallel flake production—and hunted the same local game, such as deer and wild boar. This perfectly mirrors the core argument I made over two decades ago regarding the shared Mousterian tool kits at Levantine sites like Qafzeh and Skhul. I wrote then that the presence of the exact same technological complex strongly indicated interaction and shared culture, rather than the existence of two completely distinct and isolated species.

Beyond Survival: Shared Symbolic Culture

The researchers at Üçağızlı II Cave found something even more remarkable that extends beyond basic survival. Both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens selectively collected the exact same type of sea snail shell, Columbella rustica, which held absolutely no value as food. These shells were deliberately heated and pierced, likely for use as ornamentation.

Previously, this kind of non-utilitarian, symbolic behavior was often attributed exclusively to modern humans. Yet, as study co-author Naoki Morimoto noted, these distinct human groups were probably sharing symbolic preferences. This profound cognitive and cultural overlap further cements my 2004 conclusion that the hominids in the Levant represented a continuously interacting, polymorphic population, rather than completely isolated groups.

The Final Nail in the "Replacement" Coffin

For years, the dominant "Out of Africa" replacement theory relied on a simplistic, linear model of evolution where modern humans arrived and completely replaced archaic forms without any meaningful contact. I argued in my thesis that this strict interpretation was deeply flawed. The Levantine region was a busy "central bus station" of migration, and the morphological and archaeological evidence pointed directly to a shared, continuously evolving human complex.

The findings from Üçağızlı II demonstrate exactly what I hypothesized: culture and knowledge flowed freely between these groups. This unique situation suggests that culture allowed different hominids in the region to maintain shared behaviors for thousands of years. It is incredibly satisfying to see the archaeological record finally catching up and confirming that these early humans shared not only the same landscape, but a rich, interconnected cultural heritage.

Reference:

Baykara, İ., Turan, D., Kural, E. E., Silibolatlaz, D., Agras, M. K., Şahiner, E., Kavak, S., Zanolli, C., Ishihara, Y., Morita, W., & Morimoto, N. (2026). Long-term cultural continuity across the Neanderthal–modern human sequence at Üçağızlı II Cave, northern Levant. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 123(29), e2609061123. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2609061123

Zaworski, James P. https://www.academia.edu/7464115/A_Re_examination_of_the_Levantine_Neandertal_and_Archaic_Homo_sapiens_complex

The Cognitive Convergence: Reevaluating Neanderthal Linguistic and Neurological Capabilities

2026-10-07T06:51:06.164-07:00

The Cognitive Convergence: Reevaluating Neanderthal Linguistic and Neurological Capabilities

For over a century, the Neanderthal has served as the intellectual foil to Homo sapiens—a close evolutionary cousin often characterized by an presumed deficit in higher-order cognition and complex language. However, an accelerating convergence of genetic, anatomical, and neurological evidence has begun to dismantle this paradigm. By examining the shared evolutionary timeline of linguistic biological hardware alongside new comparative studies of neuroanatomy, it becomes increasingly clear that Neanderthals possessed the capacity for sophisticated, modern communication.

The biological foundation for speech in both Neanderthals and modern humans appears to predate our evolutionary divergence. Recent genetic analyses indicate that the HAQER genetic regions, which are closely linked to language development, evolved before the human-Neanderthal split. This suggests that both lineages inherited the fundamental genetic "hardware" required for complex communication from a common ancestor. This genetic potential is corroborated by the fossil record. Anatomical evidence, notably the structure and placement of the Neanderthal hyoid bone, mirrors that of modern humans. Furthermore, reconstructions of Neanderthal ear anatomy suggest an auditory bandwidth tuned perfectly to the frequencies of human speech, implying that their acoustic world was built for vocal communication.

Beyond the physical mechanics of speech, the archaeological record demonstrates that Neanderthals possessed the cognitive prerequisites for language: symbolic thought. The discovery of complex, symbolic cave art in Spain—securely dated to a period before Homo sapiens arrived in Europe—proves that Neanderthals were capable of abstraction. Language, at its core, requires the translation of abstract concepts into symbolic auditory cues, an intellectual leap that pairs seamlessly with the creation of visual symbolism.

Historically, skeptics have countered these points by arguing that despite the presence of basic anatomical hardware and symbolic behavior, Neanderthals lacked the specific, highly evolved neural circuitry unique to modern Homo sapiens. However, groundbreaking new comparative neuroanatomical studies challenge the very premise of this "neurological deficit." Recent analyses of hominin brain structure demonstrate that Neanderthal brains differ less from Homo sapiens brains than modern Homo sapiens brains differ from one another. By showing that Neanderthal neurological architecture falls well within the established spectrum of modern human variance, the argument that their brains were inherently unequipped for language is rendered obsolete.

Ultimately, the synthesis of this evidence paints a picture not of two distinct cognitive tiers, but of a shared cognitive continuum. With identical genetic foundations for language, identical hardware for vocalization and hearing, proven capacities for symbolic thought, and brains that align with modern human anatomical variance, the Neanderthal can no longer be viewed as linguistically mute. Recognizing their linguistic capabilities not only reframes our understanding of their daily lives but also suggests that the extensive genetic and cultural interactions between our two species likely included rich, sophisticated communication.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/chapter/edited-volume/abs/pii/B9780128214282000081

Thoughts on the American Midterm Election of 2026.

2026-10-05T23:03:27.198-07:00

The American midterm election is set for November 3, 2026, which is less than one month from now. The entire House of Representatives and about 1/3 of the Senate are going to be voted for (435 members of the House and 35 of 100 Senate seats). The election is set during the second Presidential term of Republican Donald J. Trump. Currently, all three branches of the federal government (executive, legislative, judicial) are controlled by the GOP. This particular midterm election is an important one, and historically, midterm elections have essentially been a kind of referendum on the sitting President and his policies (even though officially the President is not on the ballot). Much is at stake in this election, and I do have some predictions to make, based on polling and some concerns about how the election will be held.

As of today (October 6, 2026) a variety of polls taken by journalistic organizations predict that the House of Representatives will tip to Democratic control. The approval rating of the President's handling on the economy, and his promise to reduce inflation and "make America affordable again", appears to be one of the main issues driving the President's disapproval rating, combined with driving up oil prices by starting a war with Iran despite campaign pledges to steer away from "new wars" or "endless wars", combined with the tariffs and trade wars he has unilaterally initiated (tariffs are taxes paid by American companies and consumers and not paid for by the countries the tariffs are aimed at). "It's the economy, stupid" was a political statement from the 1990s which is just as true today as it was then.

https://www2.stetson.edu/today/2026/09/poll-republicans-hold-double-digit-leads-in-florida-governor-u-s-senate-races/

Of course, polling can get it wrong and has gotten it wrong in the past. It mostly depends on voter turnout, but other "wild cards" may determine the outcome. If the Democrats regain control of one, or both houses of Congress, they will be able to block, thwart and otherwise direct oversight and be a check on the executive branch. Of course, the President does not want this to happen and in a "normal" administration, democracy is allowed to play out. However, and it is a big "however", the current administration has a pretty bad scorecard for allowing free and fair elections to be held in the United States of America by doing its best to disenfranchise voters which is evidenced in its attempt to stop or regulate mail in voting (going on now), questioning the integrity of elections (past and present), and actively whipping up riots to attack the Capitol and halt the peaceful transfer of power (January 6, 2021). Current polling shows not only a very significant disapproval of the current administration, but also a significant swing of independent voters as well as Latino voters, both groups which tipped the balance for Trump in the 2024 election.

If the Democrats gain control of the legislative branch, they will have the power to initiate impeachment proceedings, yet again, on President Trump. They may or may not be able to control the Senate, but will definitely not have the "supermajority" needed to convict the President and remove him from office (unless they can get enough Republicans to vote to convict). The President wants none of this and the administration may take active measures to interfere in this midterm election, which is something I dread and hope will not come to be.

How will the midterm elections play out? I have three possible scenarios which will impact my prediction on the outcome of the election.

1. The election will go off without a hitch and be smooth and "normal". The results will be accepted and democracy will function as usual. In this scenario, the Democrats will at least gain control of the House of Representatives and that will become an effective check on the executive in the remaining "lame duck" Presidency. This is the most hoped for but probably the least likely to go off smoothly, considering the history of election interference by the current administration. There will definitely be challenges on the results, the old battle cry of "the election was rigged", whether there is evidence or not, and it will be a mess to be challenged and played out in courts.

2. Fearing the loss of power, the President will concoct some "national security emergency" and use this (whatever it may be) to use federal forces to actively seize voting machines (by claiming they were "rigged", either domestically or by a foreign power), or some other impetus to thwart the election in some meaningful way. If this were the case, it would be unconstitutional, as the Constitution clearly states that the states have the right to control how, when, and where elections are held withing the state. I think there is a 10% chance that this will happen. If this does happen, it will set off a constitutional crisis.

3. Another possible scenario is that bandana masked MAGA supporters will "observe the polling places". This scenario does not directly come from federal law enforcement or military so "plausible deniability" is the flavor of the day, meaning it could be construed that "patriots" are so concerned about election integrity that they will go to the polls and by there mere presence intimidate potential voters. Perhaps enough people will stay away from such intimidation. In this scenario, it is a coin toss as to the outcome of the midterms. The Democrats may then just squeak by with a small majority in the House but not the Senate. No constitutional crisis will result, but further political polarization will result, with bad feelings all around.

In the end, I am hoping for a smooth midterm election. With current polling data, I predict that, if there is no election interference or intimidation, the Democrats will gain the upper hand in the House of Representatives but not in the Senate. If they do gain control of the Senate, it will be a 51-49 majority at best but I think the GOP will retain control of the Senate, and we will once again have "gridlock" for the next two years, with no significant legislation being enacted and a lot of show and bravado with another impeachment, but no conviction, of the President.

I would suggest that every American citizen should get out there and exercise his or her constitutional right and vote, no matter your party affiliation.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/polls/latest-polls.html

https://www.https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-elections/midtermsnbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/poll-latino-voters-swing-away-trump-republicans-midterm-shift-rcna599894

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/oct/02/midterm-races-control-congress-charts-visuals

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_United_States_elections

One Month into the 31st Consecutive Semester in Macau.

2026-10-01T05:40:20.800-07:00

It is October 1st, 2026 and I am enjoying the day off as it is the 77th anniversary of modern China. We get two days off plus the weekend, so it is a well timed break from teaching. It's a bit hot in Macau, inordinately hot for autumn, and there are so many tourists in Macau that I decided to stay in and relax.

I am pleased with how I have held up, in terms of my health, this semester. I had been rather worried, and daunted, at being given 6 classes and eighteen hours of teaching per week. I had a rough semester last time around, with high blood pressure and an apparent milk heart attack, and a kind of difficult summer where I really struggled to get the dosage of the blood pressure meds right, and just getting around to run typical errands. During the summer break just going out to do grocery shopping or go downtown was a major exhausting ordeal.

On Tuesday night, after my class finished at 10 PM, I walked home from the university for the first time this year. It's about a 30 to 40 minute walk and I used to do it routinely. I sweated like crazy but was not inordinately fatigued nor had any of the symptoms which messed with me from February to August, so I think things are looking up. I plan to do a little hiking and take some photos over the weekend before going back to resume teaching next week.

So far, the students have been receptive to my style of teaching. Three of the classes have some really good students with upper intermediate level English but the other three classes have very low level English speakers, so it is a kind of odd balance to try to adjust my teaching style to meet their needs. The other issue is that there are just too many students in the classes now. I have 250 students in total this semseter and that is too much.

All in all, though, I am holding up (knock on wood), and we're about 33% done with the fall semester and I'm looking forward to the Christmas break.

History in the Rear-View Mirror — Failure at Wounded Knee, Rush, and American Culture: A Tale by James Zaworski

2026-09-28T04:34:31.736-07:00

Driving Away to the East, and Into the Past: From the Bozeman Trail to Wounded Knee

"Driving away to the east, and into the past
History recedes in my rear-view mirror
Carried away on a wave of music down a desert road..."

When Geddy Lee’s voice sang those opening lines of Rush’s "Workin' Them Angels" through the speakers of my rental car in the summer of 2023, it felt as if the late lyricist Neil Peart had mapped my exact route across the Northern Plains. Back in the United States on a cross-country road trip, I was following a path that moved simultaneously across geography and through time—from the shadow of the western mountains eastward onto the Great Plains, and chronologically from the first great Native victories of the Plains Wars in 1866 and 1876 toward their tragic final chapter in 1890.

As a cultural anthropologist and archaeologist who has worked in North American archaeology, I have spent my adult life deeply invested in Native American history and culture. Like so many of my generation, my historical consciousness was forever shaped by Dee Brown’s 1970 classic, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Borrowing its haunting title from Stephen Vincent Benét’s poem, Brown’s book dismantled the myths of the American frontier and told the story of the West from the perspective of the Indigenous nations who fought to defend their homelands. In 2023, my road trip became a living pilgrimage through the geography and chronology of that struggle.

1866: The Fetterman Fight and the Bozeman Trail, Wyoming

"Turning away from the cliffs of the Great Divide..."

The chronological and geographical arc of my journey began in the high country of northern Wyoming, east of the Continental Divide along the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains. Here, along the old Bozeman Trail, gold seekers and the U.S. Army had pushed directly through the heart of prime Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho hunting grounds in the 1860s.

Standing at the site of the Fetterman Fight—where, on December 21, 1866, an alliance of warriors led by Red Cloud and a young Crazy Horse lured Captain William Fetterman and eighty men out of Fort Phil Kearny into a total rout—you are standing at the high-water mark of early Plains resistance. In 1866, the Lakota and Cheyenne were strong enough to force the United States government to abandon its forts along the Bozeman Trail and sign the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868. On the ground in Wyoming, walking the quiet ridge of that 1866 battlefield felt orderly and accessible—a preserved monument to a brilliant Native tactical victory.

June 1876: Rosebud Creek and the Little Bighorn, Montana

"Memory beating like a heart beneath the floorboards..."

Following both the calendar of the nineteenth century and the highway northward into southern Montana, the next stops on my 2023 itinerary moved forward ten years to the summer of 1876. By then, the peace of 1868 had been shattered by the discovery of gold in the Black Hills and the federal government’s demand that the free-roaming bands surrender their lands.

I drove first to the valley of the Rosebud, where on June 17, 1876, Crazy Horse led a massive force of Lakota and Northern Cheyenne warriors that fought General George Crook’s column to a standstill, preventing Crook from joining the wider military net closing in on the free bands. From the Rosebud, the chronology led just a short drive west to the ridges above the Little Bighorn River—the Greasy Grass—where, eight days later on June 25, 1876, those same warriors annihilated Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer’s battalion of the U.S. 7th Cavalry.

At Little Bighorn, history has never felt to me like something trapped behind glass. On a previous cross-country trip to the battlefield, I had stopped at the trading post on the reservation side, right across the highway from the national park entrance. There, I met an old Cheyenne man. I bought him lunch and a beer, and we sat together on a wooden bench outside the trading post, looking straight across the road toward the hills where Custer fell. As we talked and shared a can of beer in the Montana sunlight, he spoke of the battle—in which his own grandfather had taken part—as though it had happened the week before.

"We kicked Custer’s ass," he told me, looking out at the ridges. "It took as long to beat him as it takes a man to eat his dinner."

For a cultural anthropologist, sitting on that bench sharing food, a drink, and a laugh with a man whose grandfather had fought in 1876 was the purest kind of fieldwork—a bridge between past and present built on simple human respect.

From the Black Hills Eastward into Pine Ridge, South Dakota

"Taking my time in the fast lane
Riding a featureless plain..."

Leaving the 1876 battlefields of Montana behind in 2023, I turned my rental car southeast into South Dakota and stayed in the Black Hills—Paha Sapa, the sacred heart of the Lakota universe whose illegal confiscation had triggered the war of 1876 in the first place.

To finish the chronological and geographical arc of my journey, I had to leave the pine-clad tourist roads of the Black Hills and drive east onto the vast, rolling prairies of the Pine Ridge Reservation. Geographically, I was leaving the mountain country for the open plains; historically, I was leaving the summer triumphs of 1876 and driving fourteen years forward into the bitter winter of 1890.

Road construction outside the Hills threw off my schedule, slowing traffic to a crawl and eating away the afternoon hours. When I finally cleared the construction zone and pointed the car east toward Pine Ridge, Rush’s "Workin' Them Angels" came on the iPod, with Geddy Lee singing Neil Peart’s words: "Driving away to the east, and into the past / History recedes in my rear-view mirror / Carried away on a wave of music down a desert road."

The synchronicity gave me chills. I was literally driving east, and I was driving straight into the final act of the Plains Wars. Yet as I crossed onto the Pine Ridge Reservation, I realized that history wasn't receding in my mirror at all—it was waiting right in front of me. Pine Ridge is economically one of the poorest places in North America, its hardship unmistakable in the weathered homes and isolated stretches along the highway. Yet it is also a place of untamed natural beauty and deep cultural endurance. Unlike Fetterman, Rosebud, or Little Bighorn, this was not a manicured government park. It was the living home of the Oglala Lakota.

December 29, 1890: The Road to Wounded Knee Creek

"All my life I've been workin' them angels overtime
Riding and driving and living so close to the edge..."

As the miles ticked down toward Wounded Knee Creek, a heavy apprehension settled over me. For my entire life, the date of the Wounded Knee Massacre—December 29, 1890—had been braided together with my own family’s deepest milestones. Sixty-one years to the day after the reconstituted U.S. 7th Cavalry surrounded Chief Spotted Elk’s band of freezing, disarmed Miniconjou Lakota and opened fire with Hotchkiss artillery guns—slaughtering between 250 and 300 men, women, and children—my parents were married on December 29, 1951. Thirty-eight years after that, on December 29, 1989, my grandmother passed away. That single calendar square held my family’s beginning, our grief, and one of the darkest stains in American history.

Yet as a non-Native American approaching the site alone late in the day, my personal connection to December 29 and my professional training as an anthropologist suddenly felt inadequate. At Little Bighorn, it had been easy to share a beer on a bench with a Cheyenne elder talking about the day his grandfather’s people whipped Custer. Wounded Knee was not a battlefield; it was a mass crime scene where the trauma had never been resolved. How was an outsider supposed to act here?

Because of the earlier road construction delays, it was past 5:00 PM when I arrived at the site of the "battle"—the massacre. I pulled my rental car over to the shoulder.

There were no park rangers, no visitor center benches, and no polished bronze plaques to guide a traveler. Beside the road stood a sign that had been vandalized, bearing the raw scars of anger over how the massacre had been named and remembered. There was no grand monument to the victims down by the road, only an overgrown trail leading toward what looked like a small museum, already closed and dark after 5:00 PM.

I sat behind the wheel with the engine idling. As far as I could see, the roadside was completely deserted. The evening wind moved through the tall prairie grass. Caught between the late hour, the empty stillness, the scarred sign, and the sudden, overwhelming weight of feeling like an intruder on sacred and wounded ground, my nerve failed me. I chickened out. Instead of opening the door and stepping out onto the earth as I had done at Fetterman, Rosebud, and Little Bighorn, I left the car in gear and pulled back onto the highway.

2023 and Beyond: What Remains in the Mirror

"Looking back — till there's nothing to see in the mirror..."

As I accelerated away to the east, I glanced up into my rear-view mirror.

Out of nowhere, from the roadside that had looked completely empty just moments before, several Lakota kids had appeared and were running hard after my car, holding up handmade souvenirs they hoped to sell me.

I didn't hit the brakes. I kept driving, watching those children grow smaller and smaller in the glass until the curve of the highway took me away and there was nothing left to see in the mirror.

A wave of shame hit me immediately, far heavier than the apprehension I had felt on the drive in. I felt that I had failed at Wounded Knee. I had traced the entire historical and geographical path of the Plains Wars—from 1866 at Fetterman to 1876 at Rosebud and Little Bighorn to 1890 at Pine Ridge—with such a deep sense of history, and yet at the final stop, I left without engaging with the people.

Ever since that evening in 2023, I have wished that I had simply tapped the brakes, turned the car around, and tried. As an anthropologist who had once sat so naturally with a Cheyenne elder across from Little Bighorn, I knew better. It would have taken so little to make a U-turn, step out into the late-afternoon dust, talk with those kids for a few minutes, and help them out a little by buying some of their trinkets. Those few dollars wouldn't have undone the slaughter of December 29, 1890, and they wouldn't have solved the poverty of Pine Ridge, but stopping would have honored the living community instead of retreating into the safety of my rental car.

Neil Peart wrote the lyric—and Geddy Lee sang it—that "History recedes in my rear-view mirror," but on that highway in South Dakota, history didn't recede at all. It ran after my car in the late-afternoon sun, carried in the hands of children living in the long shadow of 1890. Dee Brown taught my generation what it meant to say Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and a piece of my own heart stayed behind on that shoulder in 2023. My journey from west to east across the Plains is still unfinished. In the future, when I am back on the road in the United States, I will drive back into Pine Ridge—and next time, no matter the hour, I am going to put the car in park, open the door, and talk to the people who call that history home.

Remembering Antietam: America's Bloodiest Day;

2026-09-17T21:29:51.762-07:00

Looking back on September 17th, 1862 on September 17, 2026 I feel that we need to reflect on this terrible and horrible event. It has been 164 years. It is important to reflect on the sheer carnage of this battle, and the American Civil War, to ensure it never happens again.

The battle was fought near Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg, Maryland. It was a Union tactical victory but came at a high cost: over 23,000 casualties, making it "America's bloodiest day".

Here are some photos of the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam, from the Library of Congress and part of the exhibition by Matthew Brady, "The Dead of Antietam". The photos depict the aftermath of the three main phases of the battle: The Cornfield, The Sunken Road, and Burnside's Bridge.

Thoughts on Passing Laws Regulating AI, Artificial Intelligence.

2026-09-13T22:09:42.595-07:00

The development of AI, Artificial Intelligence, has increased seemingly exponentially in the last few years. Hundreds of billions of dollars are being invested in it and it has been hailed as the greatest thing since the development of the Internet, but even more so. Many positive aspects of AI have been hailed, from being able to help read and decipher burnt scrolls from Pompeii to solving seemingly unsolvable mathematics problems to accurate medical diagnoses, scoring better than humans at various computer games, to scoring better than 90% of human students who took the Uniform Bar Exam in law.

However, it isn't all peaches and cream. In recent news, the AI company, Anthropic, had given its AI agents a task to complete in an experimental situation where it was supposed to be in a closed environment. The AI agents organized in an unexpected way, hacking onto the Internet and then hacking into several companies to achieve their goal, despite any ethical subroutines they were programmed with to restrict any potential harm. Apparently, the AI agents were aware that what they were doing was "wrong", but they did it anyway. This has sounded the alarm about how advanced AI has become and also how potentially dangerous it may become. Experts in AI have sounded the alarm and some have predicted that AI could become an "existential threat" to humans in the very near future by hacking into infrastructure facilities like hospitals and water treatment facilities, to creating and using drones or bioweapons. It may sound like the film "The Terminator" with "Skynet" becoming self-aware and attacking humanity, but when serious experts in the field begin to talk this way, perhaps governments should take note and pass internationally binding laws regulating this industry.

Over the past two summers, I played around with AI to see what it could do in terms of essay writing. I teach a practical writing course for non-native English speakers and wanted to see if I could detect what a piece of AI writing, after giving it some samples of my writing and give it a writing prompt. I won't say which AI company that I used, but suffice it to say, I could not tell that I didn't write these essays and neither did any plagiarism software or AI detection software that I have available to me personally or through my work.

I firmly believe that, despite the benefits of AI, that governments all over the world should pass international standards and laws regulating the development of AI that are legally binding. It's about time to sound the alarm on the development of this technology and limit its use.

References.

Anthropic. Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026. https://www.anthropic.com/threat-intelligence-report-september-2026

BBC News. Anthropic's Claude AI escapes to hack into three organisations. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7dl7w8y7po

BBC News. Trump downplays warnings of AI risks, citing rivalry with China. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7v48vp31mdo

CNN. Anthropic said its AI models hacked into other companies’ systems during testing. https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/30/tech/anthropic-ai-models-break-out-hack

PBS Newshour. Anthropic says its AI models hacked 3 organizations during testing

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/anthropic-says-its-ai-models-hacked-3-organizations-during-testing

Stanford University. https://ai100.stanford.edu/gathering-strength-gathering-storms-one-hundred-year-study-artificial-intelligence-ai100-2021-1/sq2

UC San Diego.

https://today.ucsd.edu/story/nine-breakthroughs-made-possible-by-ai

Wikipedia. Progress Made by AI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_in_artificial_intelligence

Zuken. https://www.zuken.com/us/blog/five-ground-breaking-uses-of-ai-in-the-last-five-years/

Thoughts on the 25th Anniversary of September 11, 2001.

2026-09-10T22:02:16.517-07:00

I was living and studying in southern Illinois in 2001. I was married and my wife didn't drive. A nice cold front came through during the evening before, bringing delightful cooler weather and a very clear, sunny morning. I was in bed trying to get every extra minute of sleep as my wife was walking the dogs and the phone rang. Back in those days, nobody had mobile phones, so this was my land line and I was not about to get out of bed and go into the living room to answer the phone so I let the answer machine do it for me. It was my oldest brother, Bernie. He said "Jim, pick up the phone now and turn on the television.!" I could hear the insistence and urgency in his voice...

I turned on the television and it was on ABC and as I saw the smoking World Trade Center, he and I were speculating as to how a jet could fly into the building on such a clear day. As the news reporter was speaking over live feed I witnessed the a jet fly into the other tower on live TV. It was surreal. My brother and I came to the conclusion simultaneously that this was no coincidence and that this was deliberate. My brother said "If Dad were alive he wouldn't believe this!" Our father was a physician, and took great interest in historical and current events.

I called my wife to come into the house and see this. After a short time, on the live feed, I witnessed one of the towers collapse. It was horrible, and the realization that all of those lives lost was horrific.

I didn't watch the second building come down as I had to drive my wife to John A. Logan College, as she has a class and she didn't drive.

I heard on the radio that day when the second tower came down. In a physics class that night, the instructor rather callously asked the students to calculate how much time it took for someone to hit the ground from the top of the buildings. The students all got up and left the class early as a result.

The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were deliberate, planned, and executed. Some 3,000 people lost their lives on that tragic and historic day.

On This Day in History: Japan Officially Surrenders to General Douglas MacArthur on September 2, 1945.

2026-09-03T01:46:07.672-07:00

The Empire of Japan officially, and unconditionally, agreed to the surrender terms imposed on it by the United States of America in a brief, 23-minute ceremony officiated by General Douglas A. MacArthur onboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 3, 1945. This officially was the end of World War II.

Source: The Library of Congress

References

The Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2008680589/

The National Archives.
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/surrender-of-japan

The Truman Library. https://www.trumanlibraryinstitute.org/wwii-80-formal-surrender-of-japan/

My 31st Consecutive Semester Has Begun in Macau!

2026-09-02T01:41:16.155-07:00

It's official: I have been working for 15 consecutive years at the same university in Macau (as of September 1st, 2026). My first semester teaching English here was in early September of 2011. The university was much younger then, there were fewer students, class sizes were smaller and the English classes met regularly (two to three times per week and one hour and fifty minutes per class).

I'm much older now than I was then. Class sizes are much larger. The overall English ability of the students I have so far is significantly lower than then. The smart phone addiction of the students before was not a problem; now it's like a drug. The students can't put the phones away or stop themselves from playing on the phone. AI dependence is absurd now.

However, I still enjoy teaching. Hopefully I can be an effective instructor and help the students improve their English listening and speaking.

This semester is going to a huge challenge for me, as I have 6 classes with up to 57 students in each class. I have never had such a tremendous workload before, and at 61 and with health issues, it is going to be a challenge.

I've met two classes so far, one class has 38 students (students may continue to add or drop classes for the first two weeks) and this afternoon had 50 students. Classes are 3 hours long. That's 15 weeks x 6 classes x 3 hours per class, which doesn't include lesson preparation, quiz and test creation, grading, speaking evaluation, etc.

Today's motto is "Two classes down, eighty-eight to go!"

See y'all in the funny papers!

Summer Vacation is Over and Semester 31 Begins Next Week.

2026-08-27T03:33:48.752-07:00

My summer vacation for 2026 is over and it is time, yet again, to gear up for a new fall semester. The coming semester will see me teaching six, 3 hour classes, of English speaking and listening (including public speaking) to what is expected to be a record number of students per class (45 to 56), so the coming semester will be pretty challenging.

This will be my 31st consecutive semester teaching at the same university, so it is a milestone for me: 15 years and counting. My current contract is good until June of next year and we will see how things go.

Age and some health issues will make things challenging, to be sure, but I will face it with as much fortitude and courage as I can muster.

Cheers to the new semester.

Candid Photos of "The Hungry Ghost Festival" in Macau.

2026-08-24T05:10:22.007-07:00

I was out on the evening of August 23, 2026 in Macau (a little light grocery shopping and a dim sum dinner) and noticed a lot of burning of offerings to the spirits of the ancestors going on and took some candid photos. I don't know if this "Hungry Ghost Festival" is observed this much in mainland China, but it is one of the first festivals I noticed when moving to Macau back in August of 2011.

The festival is one of ancestor worship essentially, working on the premise that the spirits of the ancestors are among us and need to be placated. They are "hungry", so offerings of food are offered. In addition, fake "hell money" is burned so the spirits may buy the things they liked in life.

These photos are as candid as I could be and no disrespect was intended in sharing photos of this important and sacred festival celebrated here in Macau.

Incidentally, the government of Macau now puts out these specially designated 33 gallon modified steel barrels for this purpose.

I took these photos in Flower City, Taipa Macau.

Thoughts on Tariffs, the Smoot-Hawley Act, and Lessons Not Learned from History.

2026-08-24T03:25:59.311-07:00

Trade wars and tariffs seem to dominate the news headlines since January of 2025. The economic forecast for the United States economy, with a 40 trillion dollar national debt, mediocre employment reports, inflation, all in the midst of an unnecessary war with Iran is not great on those notes; trade wars and tariffs loom and just will make things worse.

In recent years, the United States has seen a resurgence of a very old economic strategy: the tariff. Driven by a desire to protect domestic manufacturing and gain leverage in international trade disputes, broad tariffs are back in fashion. But for economic historians, this protectionist pivot raises a major red flag, pointing directly back to the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930.

What Was the Smoot-Hawley Act?

Signed into law by President Herbert Hoover just after the 1929 stock market crash, the Smoot-Hawley Act was intended to protect American farmers and industries from foreign competition during a fragile time. Against the desperate advice of over 1,000 university professors and economists, the U.S. government hiked import duties on roughly 20,000 agricultural and industrial goods.

The results were catastrophic. Instead of saving American jobs, the act triggered a massive wave of global retaliation. Over two dozen countries—including Canada and major European nations—quickly slapped retaliatory tariffs on American exports. Global trade plummeted by approximately 65% between 1929 and 1934, suffocating the global economy and deepening the Great Depression.

The Lessons We're Ignoring Today

While the modern U.S. economy is vastly different from the 1930s, the underlying mechanics of global trade remain the same. The legacy of Smoot-Hawley highlights exactly how modern tariffs can negatively impact the U.S. economy today:

The Retaliation Trap: Just as trading partners retaliated in the 1930s, modern tariffs invite immediate counter-tariffs. This restricts overseas access for U.S. exporters—especially in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors—hurting the very industries the initial tariffs were meant to protect.
Higher Costs for Consumers: Tariffs are essentially taxes paid by domestic importers, not foreign governments. Today, tariffs on imported raw materials and consumer goods drive up manufacturing costs and retail prices, acting as a hidden tax on American households.
Supply Chain Disruption: In our hyper-connected modern economy, parts and components cross borders multiple times before a product is finished. Broad tariff regimes disrupt these global supply chains, slowing down production, creating shortages, and stifling innovation.
Economic Isolationism: Smoot-Hawley fractured international relations and fueled a "beggar-thy-neighbor" economic environment where everyone lost. Today, leaning heavily on unilateral tariffs risks alienating key allies and driving them to forge new trade agreements that exclude the United States.

When the U.S. imposes a tariff, the foreign government does not pay the bill. The tariff is essentially a tax paid directly to the U.S. government by the American business importing the product.

To deal with this sudden increase in costs, American importers typically have to pass the expense down the supply chain, ultimately landing on the everyday consumer. Here is exactly how that mechanism impacts retail prices and broader inflation.When the U.S. imposes a tariff, the foreign government does not pay the bill. The tariff is essentially a tax paid directly to the U.S. government by the American business importing the product.

The Direct Impact on Retail Prices

When import costs rise, retail prices follow. Recent economic research tracking over 350,000 products across major U.S. retailers highlights two distinct ways tariffs make everyday shopping more expensive:

The Imported Goods Markup: Products directly subject to recent tariffs saw their retail prices rise by approximately 6.6% relative to their pre-tariff trends. Retailers often adjust these prices gradually in anticipation of higher replacement costs, meaning consumers start paying more even before the retailer restocks.
The Domestic Price Bump: Counterintuitively, tariffs also make American-made goods more expensive. The same research found that domestic goods rose by about 3.8%. When foreign products become artificially expensive, domestic producers face less price competition and often take the opportunity to raise their own prices.
The Spillover Effect: Items that are rarely sold alone often see price hikes together. For instance, when past tariffs targeted imported washing machines, retailers raised the prices of both washers and dryers—even though dryers were not taxed.

How Tariffs Feed Broad Inflation

While a price hike on a specific good is straightforward, the way tariffs affect national inflation is more complex and happens in phases:

The Initial Slowdown: Immediately after broad tariffs are enacted, the economy often experiences a "negative demand shock". Businesses pause investments and consumers pull back on spending. This drop in demand can actually cause energy prices to fall, which temporarily suppresses headline inflation.
The Supply Chain Ripple: Over the next two to three years, the increased costs of raw materials and imported components work their way through the manufacturing process. A tariff on imported steel or microchips makes it more expensive to build cars or appliances domestically, forcing a broad spectrum of manufacturers to raise prices.
The Net Inflationary Heat: Eventually, goods inflation peaks and spills over into the broader economy. Economists estimate that recent rounds of tariffs contributed a cumulative 0.7 percentage points to the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI). While tariffs are rarely the sole cause of inflation, they act as a measurable and persistent driver.

Ultimately, tariffs function like a hidden consumption tax. Because lower- and middle-income families spend a much larger percentage of their household budget on physical goods like apparel, electronics, and furniture, they end up shouldering a disproportionate share of this inflationary burden.

Free trade is the remedy. Free trade with Canada and Mexico have been agreed to in two treaties, one of them was NAFTA and the other was a renegotiated version under the first Trump administration. It would be wise to learn the lessons from history, wake up, smell the imported coffee, and stop slapping tariffs on imported goods from our closest trading partners.

Sources:

https://criticaldebateshsgj.scholasticahq.com/article/147903-economic-shields-and-retaliation-to-political-shifts-the-legacy-of-the-smoot-hawley-tariff

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/23/archives/smoothawley-revisited-trade-protectionists-should-consider-havoc.html

https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-5275-4707-0

https://www.barrons.com/articles/smoot-hawley-tariff-a-bad-law-badly-timed-1492833567