Photo, above: Mongolian script was introduced by Chinggis Khan and was later revised by the famous Mongolian Buddhist and sculptor Zanabazar (1635-1723), the first reincarnated Buddhist leader of Mongolia. For his many accomplishments and wide-ranging interests.

The classical Mongolian script (in Mongolian script: ᠮᠣᠩᠭᠣᠯ ᠪᠢᠴᠢᠭ᠌Mongγol bičig; in Mongolian Cyrillic: Монгол бичиг Mongol bichig), also known as Uyghurjin Mongol bichig, was the first writing system created specifically for the Mongolian language, and was the most successful until the introduction of Cyrillic in 1946. Derived from Uighur, Mongolian is a true alphabet, with separate letters for consonants and vowels. The Mongolian script has been adapted to write languages such as Oirat and Manchu. Alphabets based on this classical vertical script are used in Inner Mongolia and other parts of China to this day to write Mongolian, Sibe and, experimentally, Evenki. [Evenks are indigenous people of Siberia and, to a lesser degree of northern China.  They constitute the northernmost group of Tungusic-speaking peoples.] See Hour 1, Block C, Maria Konnikova, NYT,  What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades.

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Hour One

Friday  13 June  2014 / Hour 1, Block A: Michael Vlahos, Naval War College, in re: The black flag of al Qaeda at the gates of Samarra.  Recall the US in its last moments in South Vietnam, April 1975.  "We've lost control."    Back then, I felt great shame for my country; today, very differently: two presidents have cynically "invested" in this war, given changes to change course and failed.  The leadership of this country have been incapable of effectively fighting the war.  When I said  then, "We are all Arabists now," I meant that all Americans were obliged to learn about the Arab world, the caliphate – and we didn't even try.   . . . . We voted for a president who took us directly away from the Bush policies, and we elected him twice. We've made mistakes before . . . as we repair ourselves, what do we need to know about the Sunni and Shi'a that we missed the first (and second, and third) times? . . .  We offered a kind of guardianship of the Sunni world . . . W e eventually came to encompass about fifteen different countries – the non-Turkish part of the Ottoman empire, and managed somehow no to understand that we were doing this.  We spoke of security and stability in the Middle East – where "Middle East" is not really a region, and we did not set up the kind of structures needed.

Obama Finds He Can’t Put Iraq War behind Him  Iraq continues to shape Barack Obama’s presidency, as he concludes that American interests there prevent him from fully leaving Iraq to the Iraqis themselves.

Friday  13 June  2014 / Hour 1, Block B: Michael Vlahos, Naval War College, in re: Iraqi Shiite Cleric Issues Call to Arms  The senior Shiite cleric, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called on Iraqis to assist the government’s fight against Sunni militants who have seized stretches of Iraqi territory.

Friday  13 June  2014 / Hour 1, Block C: Maria Konnikova, NYT, in re:  What’s Lost as Handwriting Fades Does handwriting matter?  Not very much, according to many educators. The Common Core standards, which have been adopted in most states, call for teaching legible writing, but only in kindergarten and first grade. After that, the emphasis quickly shifts to proficiency on the keyboard.

But psychologists and neuroscientists say it is far too soon to declare handwriting a relic of the past. New evidence suggests that the links between handwriting and broader educational development run deep. Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they also remain better able to generate ideas and retain information. In other words, it’s not just what we write that matters — but how.

“When we write, a unique neural circuit is automatically activated,” said Stanislas Dehaene, a psychologist at the Collège de France in Paris. “There is a core recognition of  . . .

Friday  13 June  2014 / Hour 1, Block D:  Tunku Varadarajan, Hoover, in re: Narendra Modi - "...whatever his likeness to Erdogan, there is one crucial difference: he is a man of almost disconcerting discipline. It is inconceivable that he would wade into a crowd, fists flailing, shrieking “spawn of Israel” at a protester, as Erdogan did recently." . . .  [more]

Hour Two

Friday  13 June  2014 / Hour 2, Block A: Bret Stephens, WSJ GLOBAL VIEW, in re:    Hillary by the Book

Friday  13 June  2014 / Hour 2, Block B:  Eric Trager, Washington Institute, in re:  Sisi’s Fearful Egypt  Two years ago, Islamist political posters plastered Giza's impoverished Omraniya neighborhood. But two weeks ago, as Egyptians went to the polls for the seventh time since the 2011 uprising, a military man's banners monopolized the wall space. "Abdel Fatah al-Sisi knows how to fix the country," shopkeeper Shaaban Hamdy, a Sisi supporter, told me in Cairo last week. Hamdy voted for Mohamed Morsi during the 2012 presidential elections, seeing the Muslim Brotherhood leader as "something new, not the same old [regime]." Yet despite regretting that decision, Hamdy acknowledged that Sisi might not be Egypt's final answer either. "If he fails," Hamdy said, "the people will come again and change him."   [more]

Friday  13 June  2014 / Hour 2, Block C:  This is the cover story in the inaugural edition of the Globe’s new weekly political section CAPITAL:  For the first time since the 2000 election, Massachusetts is unlikely to have a major presidential contender, report Boston Globe political reporter Jim O’Sullivan and Boston Globe Washington Bureau reporter Matt Viser.

Top Dems Elizabeth Warren and Deval Patrick have foresworn interest in the campaign, leaving no local candidates in line for the 2016 race that has already begun, and breaking Massachusetts’ unmatched record.

But campaign veterans say the state’s political infrastructure—its campaign-cash goldmine status, lineup of native political operatives, and proximity to New Hampshire – will allow it to retain influence.

Friday  13 June  2014 / Hour 2, Block D: Gretchen Morgenson, author, in re:  A Vow to End Hollow Nods and Salutes  The chief executive at General Motors, Mary T. Barra, wants to ensure that deadly failures never happen again, but old habits are hard to change.

Hour Three

Friday  13 June  2014 / Hour 3, Block A: 512,000 Camaros recalled, ‘flaw can switch car off while being driven’  GM Recalls 2010-2014 Chevy Camaros because of ignition switch-off   General Motors announced another recall, this time 512,000 2010-2014 Chevy Camaros, saying a flaw in the ignition switch can turn the car off. Even though the car is operated by a keyfob . . . and if that wasn't bad enough, Automotive News is reporting that Attorneys General in Florida, Connecticut, Indiana, Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana and Utah are also investigating . . .   [more]

Friday  13 June  2014 / Hour 3, Block B: The uncertainty of science: For the past four years, the glaciers in Glacier National Park have stopped shrinking.  “We had this sort of pause,” Fagre said of shrinking at Sperry Glacier and, by extrapolation, other glaciers. “They pretty much got as much snow as they needed.” Sperry covered 0.86 square kilometers in 2005, 0.83 in 2009 and 0.82 in 2013, illustrating the “pause” in its retreat as there was a 0.03 square kilometer loss from 2005 to 2009, but only 0.01 in the last four years, from 2009 to 2013, Fagre said.

The article spends a lot of time talking about how the shrinkage is about to resume and the glaciers are certain to disappear, but this pause in glacier shrinkage corresponds nicely with the 17-plus year pause in warming that has been going on.

And then there’s this: Great moments in climate forecasting.   And this, also from Steve Goddard: In 1971 the world’s top climate scientists said fossil fuels would cause an ice age by 2020.  I especially like the quotation from the last article, where these experts say that there is “no need to worry about the carbon dioxide fuel-burning puts in the atmosphere.” These are the same experts who've spent the past three decades since 1988 telling us that CO2-caused global warming was going to kill us all.

Friday  13 June  2014 / Hour 3, Block C: 

Friday  13 June  2014 / Hour 3, Block D: Jan Hoffman, NYT, in re:  "A Wall as a Barrier to Learning"  Rethinking the Colorful Kindergarten Classroom  In a new study, 24 kindergartners were taught in two classrooms . . .  

Imagine a kindergarten classroom. Picture the vividly colored scalloped borders on the walls, the dancing letters, maybe some charming cartoon barnyard animals holding up “Welcome to School!” signs. That bright, cheery look has become a familiar sight in classrooms across the country, one that has only grown over the last few decades, fed by the proliferation of educational supply stores. But to what effect?

A new study looked at whether such classrooms encourage, or actually distract from, learning. The study, one of the first to examine how the look of these walls affects young students, found that when kindergartners were taught in a highly decorated classroom, they were more distracted, their gazes more likely to wander off task, and their test scores lower than when they were taught in a room that was comparatively spartan. The researchers, from Carnegie Mellon University, did not conclude that kindergartners, who spend most of the day in one room, should be taught in an austere environment. But they urged educators to establish standards.

“So many things affect academic outcomes that are not under our control,” said Anna V. Fisher, an associate professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon and the lead author of the study, which was published in Psychological Science. “But the classroom’s visual environment is under the direct control of the teachers. They’re trying their best in the absence of empirically validated guidelines.”  In the early years of school, children must learn to direct their attention and concentrate on a task. As they grow older, their focus improves. Sixth graders, for example, can tune out extraneous stimuli far more readily than can preschoolers, the study . . .

Hour Four

Friday  13 June  2014 / Hour 4, Block A:  Liz Peek, The Fiscal Times, in re: Obama Is Funding the Kochs’ War on Democrats Don’t tell Harry Reid, but the Obama administration has been bankrolling the rightwing Koch brothers.  How can that be?

President Obama’s refusal to allow construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline has meant a rising surplus of heavy Canadian crude available to Midwestern refiners – outfits like Pine Bend in Minnesota, which is owned by Koch Industries. Too much oil with no place to go translates into a glut, and lower prices. That’s great news to the buyers of that oil, like the Kochs, who are expected to shell out some $125 million to conservative causes this year in an attempt to help the GOP take control of the Senate, among other ambitions. All of which must give Harry Reid, who famously considers the philanthropic Kochs “un-American,” serious heartburn.

Because the proposed 800,000 barrels a day (b/d) Keystone XL Pipeline continues suspended in political lava, Canada continues to ramp up exports of oil from tar sands mainly through the only pipelines available – which primarily serve the U.S. Midwest. Some 70 percent of oil sands crude imported into the U.S. in 2012 was refined in the Midwest area.  [more]

Related: Keystone Pipeline Gets Clogged by Senate Politics

Friday  13 June  2014 / Hour 4, Block B:  John Tamny, RealClearPolitics, in re: Though there are small disagreements in policy areas that are probably rooted in Matt Kibbe's understandable need to increase the libertarian tent, his new book on the basics of libertarianism is a very worthwhile read that explains the only perfect ideology; one rooted in Don't Hurt People, and Don't Take Their Stuff.

I first became acquainted with Matt Kibbe's intensely logical libertarianism (libertarians will no doubt pick up on the redundancy) in 2003. The FreedomWorks president had a letter-to-the-editor published in the Wall Street Journal that criticized the federal government's efforts to block the timely release of potentially life-saving drugs before being vetted by the FDA.

Having survived a near-death battle with cancer not long before the letter's publication, Kibbe knew well what he was opining on. Why, he asked, would federal officials block those already near death from doing everything possible to stay alive? Kibbe had already migrated toward his ideology as a teen after discovering that the members of the musical group Rush were Ayn Rand devotees, but it's safe to presume that his harrowing experience with cancer further solidified his beliefs.   Perhaps most important of all, in 2008 Kibbe watched in embarrassed horror as an allegedly free-market Republican president in George W. Bush joined with Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, Treasury secretary Henry Paulson, and an always emotional Democratic Party to save banks and homebuyers from mistakes they made during the economy-sapping rush into housing in the 2000s.

Book Review: Matt Kibbe's 'Don't Hurt People, and Don't Take Their Stuff'

Friday  13 June  2014 / Hour 4, Block C: Soccer Men: Profiles of the Rogues, Geniuses, and Neurotics Who Dominate the World's Most Popular Sport by Simon Kuper (1 of 2)

Friday  13 June  2014 / Hour 4, Block D: Soccer Men: Profiles of the Rogues, Geniuses, and Neurotics Who Dominate the World's Most Popular Sport by Simon Kuper (2 of 2)

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