Defending the liberal tradition in history, science, and philosophy.
Here's a fun old brainteaser: the missing dollar.
Five points to whoever can give the most complete and clear explanation of the puzzle.
Given the media frenzy over the Plame affair, shouldn't this be getting more attention?
You used to be so amused
At napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.
How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
In her post Ramsey Clark rides again, Neo-neocon asks how former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, supporter of civil rights, can defend mass murdering dictators? How can he display such indifference to the oppressed victims of authoritarian regimes?
Why am I interested in all this? It's what so often grabs me, intrapersonal political change. So my question about Clark is: how did what originally seems to have been a relatively mainstream guy end up esposing views that put him in the running with Noam Chomsky? Did something happen to change him? Or was he always like that, despite having served in the Johnson administration?..It is hard to reconcile Clark's support of civil rights in America with his current support of mass murderers, but it does reflect on the course that the rest of the 'radical' left has taken. Although civil rights activism was an unquestionably positive thing, it may have produced some side-effects...Ramsey Clark's appointment paved the way for Marshall's elevation, as planned, and gave Johnson an Attorney General deeply committed to the civil rights agenda. Ramsey Clark was a prime mover of that cause during the 60s, and it was undoubtedly his finest hour.
From civil rights activism, the Left learned that influencing the government through activism was an effective way of forcing Americans to change their behavior. Since then, whenever the Left wanted to force the American people to change their ways, they didn't try to positively influence the general population - they focused on using activism to change the laws of the land. Winning American hearts and minds became irrelevant - shouting and ordering them around was lot easier, and more fun.
Already leaning towards stasism, the Left saw the general population as a herd that could be pushed in one direction or another by activism and state control. They lost all interest in gaining the support of "Joe Sixpack". In fact, they felt free to hate his guts and to laugh at him at every opportunity. The opinion of the average 'redneck' American meant as much to the Left as the opinion of a cow.
The extreme Left freely expressed their hate and eventually, America started to hate them back. Over the years, they lost their hope that Socialism would cure all ills. Then, they lost their belief that the UN would do the same. They lost their influence over the American public. When they lost the house, the senate and the presidency, they lost everything. All that remains of the old guard are a few ageing professors, Hugo Chavez and random media figures.
People who believe that they have no ability to win power through the Democratic process will turn towards authoritarianism. Neo-nazis like David Duke and have been aware of their political powerlessness for years. People like Ramsey Clark are just discovering their own. The American people flushed extreme Leftist ideology down the toilet. The formerly powerful, like Clark, are finding themselves swimming in the same tank that David Duke and Pat Buchanan have been in for years and they can't stand it.
Clark, Duke and their ilk are doing their best to push their ideologies in any way they can. Clark and Duke say they're doing it for the love: Duke says he's moved by his compassion for the white race, Clark says he's moved by the humanity of dictators and murderers. Both are stasists who believe that the state should force others to live according to their personal beliefs, and both are probably doing it all for the money and whatever power they can grab.
David Duke has made several friendly overtures to the Left, most recently with his support of Cindy Sheehan's crusade. With his own anti-GOP crusade, Pat Buchanan has won some favorable reviews.
Will Clark and his friends accept these overtures? It's an offer they may not be able to refuse.
Well, Firefox 1.5 is out. End users won’t notice a huge difference, thought there are a couple of UI enhancements that are nice. Tabs for pages you’ve not yet read are italicized, for instance. Also, when they patch it users will no longer be required to download the whole thing and reinstall the program, you’ll only get the new code...
But it’s a bit more stable, and a bit less resource intensive, and has a bunch of new backend features that web designers will love you to have. I could list them off, but they mean almost nothing to me and probably not to you. Anyway, Go get it...
Oh, and before you do, check and make sure that any of your favorite extensions are 1.5 compatible. They all ought to be by now, but there is all the difference in the world between "is" and "ought"...
Hilarious anonymous comment from Slashdot, attached to a story about Yahoo Mail integration of RSS feeds in a dedicated folder:
Usenet is dying because it is not Web 2.0 Compliant.
Can I tag Usenet groups? Can I delicious them to the bookmarkiverse and flickr them across the photosphere? Can I TrackBack a Usenet post and moblog a counterpost from a flashmob?
No? Not interested. (sips latte)
It's funny because it's true.
The latest issue of The New Libertarian is available right here.
David A. says it's our fault, it's up to us to fix it.
Two questions come to mind:
1) Is that fair? and
2) Okay, if it's fair, what do we do now?
Humanists should all take note of this.
I've been posting a variation of this since Dean's World began. I periodically re-post it because no matter how many times I post it, and no matter how much proof I put forward about the right answer, most people--including professors of mathematics, physics, medicine, etc.--answer it wrong. Here it is again:
You find yourself on a game show called "Let's Make A Deal." The game is very simple, as there are but three doors: door #1, door #2, and door #3. Behind one door is a million dollars. Behind the other two doors is a worthless joke prize. All you have to do is pick which door you want to open, and you get whatever is behind that door. But you only get once choice. By simple math, then, you obviously have a 1 in 3 chance of picking the correct door in the first place and becoming an instant millionaire, yes?
You pick a door. As soon as you tell Monty (the gameshow host) what door you want to open, he stops and says, "Okay, you've made your choice. Now, I'm going to do what we always do here on this game: I'm going to open one of the other two doors for you that I know has a booby prize." And he does so. Then he asks, "Okay, now, would you like to stay with your original guess, or would you like to switch to the other door that's still closed? You only get one shot, so do you want to stay with your original choice, or switch?"
Here's the question: is there any compelling reason to switch doors?
To be clear, there is no trickery. Monty is not cheating. The money started in its original location, and will not be moved. The money is either behind the door you first picked, or behind the remaining unopened door. Should you switch?
The answer is: yes you should switch, since you'll win most of the time if you do.
These are some cool Red Sox commercials, which I relate to somewhat having grown up a White Sox fan. I know, it's not quite the same, but still.
Have you ever noticed, by the way, what an odd sport baseball is? I mean, I guess they're all odd. Still, I think of pure athleticism as being who can run fastest or farthest, jump highest or longest, throw the hardest or furthest, lift the most weight, or be the quickest. Yet there's no part of baseball which purely rewards any of that. Mind you, all of those things are valuable in baseball to a greater or lesser extent (even weight training is good for, well, training). But a gold-medal Olympic sprinter, or hurler, or javelin thrower, or weightlifter... they'd all be almost useless on the baseball field. True, the same could be said in reverse, but that just adds to what's odd about baseball.
In American football, if you can run like the wind and catch at least reasonably well, you could have a career. In European football (i.e. "soccer"), long-distance running and coordination are key. In basketball, if you can jump and you can dodge, you could have a career. In hockey, if you can skate well and take a hit, you might have a career there.
None of this is meant to disparage any other sport, or type of athlete. I just can't quite think of a type of athlete that seems more specialized, and more oddly constrained by artificial rules, than what you find in the baseball player. I don't know much about cricket, but I suspect it's much the same for cricketers. Indeed, it may be even moreso for cricket, from what little I know of the game.
Baseball is simply... baseball. And there's ineffably unique about it.
Am I making sense here or am I just being silly?
(Thanks to Scott Eiland for the Red Sox link.)
Ever watch a movie and find yourself saying, "I'm not buying a word of this," but still enjoying it anyway? That's how I felt watching National Treasure. I guess it's because I like history, and I have an idea that young people in particular might have an interest in early American history sparked by it. Plus I've always enjoyed kooky stories involving the Freemasons and, of course, the Knights Templar. (And yes, by the way, it is true that many of the founders were Masons. Not much else the movie says about Masons is true, but that much is.)
The physics of the movie are all wrong. The archaeology is laughably bad. The history is pretty good, at least if you restrict yourself strictly to what they say about the early Americans and throw out all the stuff about treasure and maps to same. Think too hard about anything else and it all collapses, but what the heck. Indiana Jones wasn't exactly realistic either. It was a fun movie.
Is it a sign of impending middle age that I now dilute most fruit juices 4 or 5 to 1 with water before drinking them?
Well, it looks like someone is taking a stab at creating a music player with a Mozilla backend. The product, called Songbird looks a lot like Itunes, with a healthy dose of MusicMatch thrown in...
The people behind Songbird have a respectable history within the music-player line; many of them worked on the groundbreaking Winamp player. Why AOL decided to kill the thing off, I don’t know...
Now, Itunes is the industry leader in Jukebox UI, and for good reason. But it does have its shortcomings. If they can offer me a product which works as well as Itunes, but without some of the clunk and clutter, I’ll be a happy man. And if they create a product which forces Apple into playing defensive for a while, we consumers will be well served...
Welcome to the Carnival of the Liberated, a sampler of some of the best posts of the week from Iraqi and Afghani bloggers. This week we've got an attack on a hospital, what's in a name, the Cairo conference, and much, much more.
Abu Khaleel of A Glimpse of Iraq explains his nom de blog and notes the meanings of some common personal and place names.
An Average Iraqi tells us about Students Day with plenty of pictures of schoolkids. High cuteness factor.
Riverbend comments on several assassinations that have taken place over the last several weeks in Iraq:
In the last three weeks, at least six different prominent doctors/professors have been assassinated. Some of them were Shia and some of them were Sunni- some were former Ba’athists and others weren’t. The only thing they have in common is the fact that each of them played a prominent role in Iraqi universities prior to the war: Dr. Haykal Al-Musawi, Dr. Ra'ad Al-Mawla (biologist), Dr. Sa'ad Al-Ansari, Dr. Mustafa Al-Heeti (pediatrician), Dr. Amir Al-Khazraji, and Dr.Mohammed Al-Jaza'eri (surgeon).She also notes that “this diminishing educated class is also Iraq's secular class”.
Sunshine of Days of My Life gives an account of the terrorist attack on a hospital in Baghdad last week. Her cousin, a doctor, survived the attack:
“I was in the delivery room when one of my patient's just gave birth to a nice healthy baby , then I heard a very loud explosion , & things falling on me , I tried to go out to see what is going on in the hospital, I was covered with blood & I saw horrible views , dead bodies , even some of my friends died” … she said “the national guards were like angels they helped me & saved my life”…Another comment on the attack from Emotions…
I found this lengthy email exchange reported by Imad Khadduri of Free Iraq pretty interesting.
Haneen posts about a dolma (stuffed grape leaves) feast. Apparently, in Iraq they use chard instead of grape leaves.
Hammorabi has comments about Saddam's trial. It's safe to say that he doesn't like Ramsey Clark much. Take a number.
Mohammed of Iraq the Model posts this cartoon about the statement from Iraqis at the Cairo conference asking for a timetable for U. S. withdrawal. The caption reads
With all transparency and clarity brother, first we ask the occupation forces to put a schedule for pulling out to their countries and next we ask for a timetable for the withdrawal of Iraqi army and police, government officials and members of parliament members to their homes and then we can come back to bring the good old days.That about covers it.
Kardox defends his sinful life against his friends' intervention.
Kurdo says that politics among the Kurds in Iraq has changed from calls for Kurdish independence to complaints about political infighting and cronyism among Kurds.
Sooni photoblogs the graduation exercises for Iraqi security forces.
Dave Schuler posts regularly to his own weblog, The Glittering Eye. The Carnival was originally conceived by Ryan Boots.
Black: Dark. Blind. Colorless. The absence of color. Without light. Rejecting all color. Gloomy. Sinister. Blotting out.
White: Bright. Blinding. Without color. Incorporating all colors. Without identity. Pale. Fishbelly. Whitewashing. White out.
Dang! No wonder these people hate each other! I think I hate 'em both.
It is of course a preliminary study, but this is neat and probably calls for more research: Glucosamine might help MS patients.
Something that isn't remarked upon often enough is that the fascist "insurgency" in Iraq, having learned that attacking soldiers gets them killed in quick order, have turned primarily to attacking civilians. Note, for example, this latest example of murdering religious pilgrims. Aziz tells me that one of those murdered was a close friend of his family. Our condolences, Aziz.
I have long been a supporter of nuclear energy. It's the safest, most environmentally-friendly form of mass power generation we have ever had. For lots of useful analysis on this issue from an environmentalist perspective, I strongly recommend checking out what the Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy have lots of good information. I particularly point out this good piece by James Lovelock.
But the crazy crazy party
Never seen so many people
Laughing dancing
Look at you you're having fun
But look at me
I'm almost cryin'
That don't keep her love from dyin'
Misery cause for me the party's over
Turn out the lights...
(Via The Queen.)
Smash, who's served numerous times in the conflict against Saddam's fascist tyranny, notes that some professing to be anti-war are far more interested in America's failure than anything else.
The question becomes, how do those of us who support the effort to stabilize Iraq get through to those reasonable people on the left who are swayed by these people?
Interesting discussion of the nature of arguments ad hominem, HIV skepticism, and EJ Scovill here at Cattalarchy. Trent refutes Al-Bayati's report. Said report, along with qualified endorsements, is here.
I can't let my life be consumed with this, especially since I'm busy today, but the discussion over there is, I think, profitable in some regards at least.
Well, Hurricane EX GF just blew through my apartment, leaving behind nothing but shatter dreams, bad metaphors and memories in her wake. Today she brought a couple of burly men with her to grab her dresser, our (her) bed, and bookshelves...
We had a big library. Except that it isn’t "ours" anymore. In fact, nothing is "ours". the entity known as “us” has been dead for months—it just took me longer than her to notice. I wish it had left a will. And turns out that those books we bought "together" are really "hers" and "mine".
So I got to have the fun task of separating our books and movies. Two separate piles, not enough space for them separately. And if that isn’t the perfect metaphor, I don’t know what is...
Not that I’m entirely gone; 5pts for whoever gets the reference in the title...
Update: Edited to remove a redundant sentence that was in there twice...
Homespun Bloggers Radio episode #11 is on the air.
Wired has been offering some of the best alternate energy news around. Their latest is "Why $5 Gas Is Good for America":
At the climax of his book Twilight in the Desert, Houston investment banker and energy guru Matthew Simmons describes a visit to the world's most powerful oil company, Saudi Aramco, in Dhahran. Simmons listens in horror as a senior manager reveals the kingdom's darkest secret. The old ways no longer suffice. To keep their aging wells productive, the Saudis now rely upon one information age prop after another: advanced analysis of rock cores, 3-D seismic imagery, software for diagnosing underground oil flows - all integrated using something called fuzzy logic. Fuzzy logic? The Aramco man tries to explain the science of complex systems and partial information, but Simmons hears only tidings of a bleak future. Obviously, the end of energy as we know it is nigh...[actually, Simmons is probably right about the possibility that easy-to-produce oil is peaking - but he may be wrong about the consequences. It looks like high prices may finally be waking up the previously sluggish alternative fuels market.]
...We've never had more options for keeping those wheels turning. Aramco's fuzzy logic is just one of a multitude of new tools and fuels - some proven, some in the works, and some wildly speculative. The main thing standing between those possibilities and your gas tank is cheap crude oil that costs Aramco barely $3 a barrel to bring to the surface.In related news, even the CIA is going green.So rising oil prices are more than just an irritant or even an ominous nick out of the GDP. They're an invitation to corn and coal and hydrogen. For anyone with a fresh idea, expensive oil is as good as a subsidy - with no political strings attached. Indeed, every extra penny you pay at the pump is an incentive for some aspiring energy mogul to find another fuel...
(Via Gay Orbit.)
Deroy Murdock, an editor of National Review, discusses a swirl of self-contradiction in New Orleans: "Business owners who wish to re-open or expand to pre-Katrina levels face a daunting labor shortage. New Orleanians, finding jobs scarce, remain in exile. Shorthanded employers are reluctant to resume operations, so they stay shut, compounding joblessness. Workers desperately need housing. Katrina harmed some 74 percent of local residences, 50,000 of which may be bulldozed, the Wall Street Journal reports. This ranges from modest wind damage, to mold-encrusted walls in structurally adequate homes, to the Lower Ninth Ward’s jaw-dropping obliteration. Countless houses there floated off their foundations before settling atop cars or street corners, sometimes blocks away. Restoring and creating residences, in turn, would be easier if carpenters and roofers themselves had accommodations. Tourism might fare better if hotels, restaurants, and nightspots were more abundant. They, of course, might open more quickly if visitors proliferated — which would be likelier if lodging were plentiful. Civic boosters here need to spread good news to attract conventioneers and venture capitalists, but emphasize bad news to keep aid coming. Fortunately (or not) preaching this contrary gospel is a snap.....So, in short, lifting the nighttime curfew would attract tourists who enjoy the French Quarter’s around-the-clock fun. But doing so while most of the city is dark could boost crime — news of which would scare away the very same visitors who are expected to lead New Orleans’s renaissance."
Rudy Rummel says no, and provides strong proof.
The 50-year-old actor said that he was in talks about a film of “these guys who do what they are asked to for very little money to defend and fight for what they consider to be freedom”Rumor (from Yon) has it Bruce even tried to enlist, but was told he was too old.
…
“I am baffled to understand why the things I saw happening in Iraq are not being reported,” he told MSNBC, the American news channel.
...
Willis said it would be wrong for Americans to give up on Iraq just as progress is being made. “The Iraqi people want to live in a world where they can move from their homes to the market and not have to fear being killed,” he said. “I mean, doesn’t everybody want that?”
...attacks wholesome American products and childhood icons. For shame, for shame!
This movie soooo looks like it's going to rock. More right here. (Be sure to watch the trailers.)
This could be bogus of course, but it's happened in other places, including here in the USA: Austin Bay notes still more news that Iraqi terrorists are increasingly making gestures toward embracing ballots instead of bullets.
Okay, he didn't actually kill himself, but:
I guess he one-upped Jeff at Dog Snot Diaries.
(Via Sandi.)
Man you people were quiet today.
Bill Quick is skeptical of my optimism.
Related Posts (on one page):
If Friday after Thanksgiving is "Black Friday," is today "Black Sunday?"
Well anyway, Juliette doesn't much like it either way.
Quoted:
Anyone here know anyone in Turkey?[W]e just found out that Ahmand Seyyed Saraj (on the list), who was sentenced to several years in a maximum security Iranian jail and 30 lashes has escaped the country, and is stranded in Turkey. If anyone out there is in Turkey, or is involved with government in a way that you could secure help for Ahmad, or simply have money or other resrouces, please contact us at committeetoprotectbloggers[at]gmail[dot]com.
More here
____________________________________
Also, we have put together a comprehensive list of bloggers who have fallen afoul of government power. It can hardly be complete, but it's the only one I know of so far. There are 33 people on it, ranging from several members of the US armed forces who've been demoted to students in Iranian prisons who've been tortured.
It is available here.
Regards,
Curt Hopkins
Daily Pundit notes some news about Warsaw Pact records released in Poland.
Was the communist era really that bad?
Yes.
So, former interim Prime Minister of Iraq, Ayad Allawi says human rights abuses are now as bad in Iraq as they were under Saddam. Note who he's blaming for this: the current interim government, i.e. the Iraqi politicians who replaced him.
This is the same Allawi who was extremely positive about the liberation of Iraq just a year ago.
So what did he do about all this torture and abuse when he was Prime Minister? Surely he could have done something. He appears to have decided to wait until after he lost an election to say anything. In fact, not even then. He seems to have saved it until just two weeks or so before the next round of elections.
If this were an American politician I'd be outraged, but I have to admit, it says something important: Allawi now "gets "how democratic politics work. Particularly, he seems to grok how flaming rhetoric works. Most sane people know that his claim can't possibly be true--Saddam butchered millions for God's sake, and routinely chopped off limbs, had women raped in front of their families, and bathed people in acid--but Allawi hopes to ride this to victory for his coalition on December 14.
It's a risky game. If it results in widespread disillusionment and boycotting of elections, it means democracy could fail and civil war could ensue--although, being a secular Shia, that seems not to be Allawi's aim. I predict that his next move will be to call on all Iraqis to support politicians who agree with him and want to guarantee civil rights for all Iraqis--i.e. members of his party and allied parties. And he will say that anyone who doesn't participate in the elections on December 14 is voting for more torture. (Yes, that is a prediction. Let's see if I"m right.)
I suspect that whether this gambit succeeds in awarding him the Prime Ministership on December 14 or not, the new more democratic Iraq will work toward ratcheting up human-rights protections.
I hate the rhetoric. I admire the likely result. What can you do? This may just be how democratic politics are supposed to work. Turn up the rhetoric, inflame passions... get results.
Allawi is just another politician now. In its own way, ain't that grand? :-)
Related Posts (on one page):
From JRogge, quoted:
Hey Dean,In my personal list of the world's worst living pondscum, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe is somewhere in the top 10. I don't tend to say nice things about this man; I believe I once publicly stated that I'd like to see his head on a spike, and I pretty much see no reason to retract that. So I of course am pleased if this administration in Washington (or any administration) is making life tough for him and the thugs who support him.What do you think of this? It kind of shows that at least Bush is consistant about one thing, the fostering of Democracy. Do you think this may be too soon? Perhaps we should keep our enemies few for now?
Still he does have some consistancies.
As for the administration: anyone who expects perfect consistency from any other human being, let alone a head of state, is expecting too much. If we were perfectly consistent on democracy around the world, we would refuse to befriend Musharaaf in Pakistan, for example--but we had taken that position too strongly, neither Iraq nor Afghanistan would now be holding free and fair elections. By acting as we have toward Pakistan, we have at least freed two Middle Eastern nations from tyranny and replaced them with imperfect but clearly better regimes which are not our sworn enemies. The alliance has also arguably made Pakistan more anti-terrorist than they were before, or would be now if we had chosen to simply alienate Musharaaf's regime.
The term for it all this is "Realpolitik," and it's something every administration has to practice to a certain extent. We're also wildly inconsistent when it comes to communist regimes: we maintain economic sanctions against Castro, but we have extremely generous trade with China? It makes no sense on the surface--although I'll bet the trade issue with Cuba will be reexamined once that pig-f**ker Castro finally dies (and there's another head I'd like to see on a spike, by the way. I'm just an old-fashioned girl, what can I say?)
Much is being made in some circles about a singing duo named Prussian Blue, who are apparently soft and gushy on Nazism. I haven't paid it much attention mostly because I don't listen to much pop music. I prefer blues and rock, and when I listen to pop it's usually old-school stuff that's stood the test of time. My general rule is that if people are still listening to something ten years after it was released, it's probably worth checking out. Some pop music fits into that category, 98% does not.
But now there's apparently a significant kerfuffle over two 13-year-old singers who are gushy about Nazism, and I find myself strangely unable to get excited about it. Not because I have anything nice to say about Nazism, but because I've been watching the entertainment industry speak endearingly of vile totalitarian ideologies for most of my life.
This is the same entertainment industry that lionizes Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. The same industry that made heroes out of the mass-murdering Sandinistas. That to this day pretends that the McCarthy era in America was nothing but one long paranoid nightmare wherein nobody, not even people like Alger Hiss, Julius Rosenberg, or Harry Dexter White, was guilty of anything but being a bit too liberal.
Some of these people still can't admit that Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson, and Mary Travers were communists for God's sake.
A couple of years ago I was in a Denny's when I spotted a kid wearing a bright blood-red shirt with a big yellow hammer and sickle. I wanted to walk over to him and slap him in the face. But instead I shrugged. He was 21 or 22 at the oldest, maybe more like 18 or 19. He couldn't possibly have known the depths of the evil his shirt represented. The Soviets, when they invaded Afghanistan, murdered a million innocent Afghans. This out of a country of only 6 or 7 million people. That was going on as recently as the 1980s. You think those Afghans today would find Nazi chic more offensive than Communist chic?
I also, a year or two before that, got into an argument with a friend in his early 20s who actually thought I was "melodramatic" when I pointed out that Stalin had killed, by the most conservative estimates available, about 20 million people in cold blood. (Others place his body count over 60 million.) Yet you can go around the world and find restaurants, drinks, and music that extols the virtues of him and communist dictators just like him.
It's all sick of course. Depraved even. If I were Jewish I'd be particularly stung by "Prussian Blue." If I were Ukranian or Chinese or Vietnamese or Cambodian or Afghan, on the other hand, maybe it would all seem just sadly familiar. Hitler not so bad? Why not? Next up: pop songs about the glories of the Laogai!
By all means, let's kick around "Prussian Blue." Let's especially kick around their parents and their producers. These 13 year old twits likely have no idea what they're talking about, but the adults in their lives have no such excuse. But while we're doing it, let's remember all the other cases of covering up for, even romanticizing, hateful totalitarian ideologies. I think we'd be doing more good in the long run that way.
Seattle Times: Monorail trains collide near Westlake.
ABC News: Seattle monorail trains clip each other.
ABC News has the honest headline. The two trains clipped each other slightly while passing each other on a curve. Two people received minor injuries. What's the Seattle Times' excuse? They don't even get to the meat of the story until the second paragraph.
and there seems to be a disturbing tendency by many who genuinely want the war to succeed, to rely on stale straw men excuses for why it might fail.
You are all likely aware of the new blog No End But Victory, which has participation from a broad swath of premier bloggers who are pro-Iraq and pro-victory. I have contributed two articles there. I'd like to bring my new post there to your attention and invite you all to join the discussion.
Victory has many fathers - but failure has many mothers. I want victory in Iraq. A frank debate on that front is essential.
Related Posts (on one page):
The Wall Street Journal has a neat interview and perspective piece on William F. Buckley Jr.
It's hard for me to explain what I learned from William F. Buckley Jr. For a while there I considered myself a staunch conservative, and when I did I admired him greatly. Now I'm not a staunch anything but patriot and classical liberal. I probably disagree with at least half of what Buckley believes.
Yet I went for a period of about ten years where I read his The National Review pretty much from cover to cover every two weeks. During that period I would also semi-regularly read things like The New Republic and The Nation, but I always found The National Review the most captivating. They were conservative, yes, but with style and humor. It was a very funny magazine at times. Nor was there ever much of a detectable "party line" in the magazine, inasmuch as from issue to issue they would often host debates in their own pages, with writers strongly disagreeing with each other, or occasionally having cross-magazine debates (i.e. duelling issues, with arguments lobbed back and forth between The National Review and one of the lefty magazines).
Every issue, I found things I disagreed with, and things I agreed with, but I always felt measurably smarter after reading it.
I lost interest in it after a while. The field expanded and there were many more political journals on the right and left. I also eventually reached a point where I felt I'd learned all I could learn from the conservatives. The blogosphere also got started, and the variety of informative and interesting people out there to read expanded exponentially. I moved on.
Still. I learned a lot from conservatives. Including the areas where I could disagree with them but still understand where they were coming from. If you can learn to do that, with any person or group, you've learned something very important.
Three weeks and I'm finally done with my last assignment and will be a graduate.
After four years, these last few weeks almost seem inhumanly long.
Not quite as cutting-edge as the quantum stuff, but a bit closer to the practical: single-molecule switches. Still not ready for prime time but it's increasingly looking like an engineering challenge and not wild speculation.
So what are you up to?
The postmodern terrorist doesn't have to win local hearts and minds...he just needs a degree from the London School of Economics:
In describing his guerrilla army, Mao Tse-tung used an aquatic analogy: "Guerrillas are the fish, and the population is the sea in which they swim." He realized that a neutral, if not supportive populace was essential to guerrilla success. Once the majority was swayed to at least tolerate the guerrillas, then only a small portion need be committed to the cause to achieve victory. Today's Islamofascist terrorists are ignoring Mao's dictum in dealing with populations — witness the atrocities committed against Iraqi civilians by terrorists occupying Fallujah and Tal Afar — and in so doing have alienated themselves from the populations in Afghanistan and Iraq. This arrogance will in time contribute to their failure...more..But the terrorists have applied his metaphor assiduously to the financial sphere, for the modern Islamofascist terrorist movement swims in the rich waters of international finance. Far from being poor, ignorant peasants as many in the West fancifully envision the terrorists, these men and their organizations are highly sophisticated, technologically aware, and extraordinarily adept at moving money within the intricate web of international financial institutions. Perhaps one of the most misunderstood aspects of these terrorists is that many of the most virulently anti-Western have matriculated in British and American institutions of higher learning. More than one detainee in Guantanamo has an advanced degree in international finance from schools such as the London School of Economics. Admission standards may have changed, but one does not reasonably expect to find a simple Afghani opium farmer conscripted by the Taliban to be on the roster of distinguished graduates.
This article reminded me of an online conversation I'd had with a left-leaning British commenter, Franky, on Jeff Jarvis' site, Buzzmachine. This conversation took place a short time after the 7/7 bombings in London, and it was mostly about Franky's belief that 'society' was to blame for the bombers' actions:
The problem with the stupidty of they hate our freedom argument is that it will lead us on the wrong path when we try to understand this threat. Equally the argument that these are evil people. Let's take an example: the morons get in control and refuse to look at anything more than these are "evil people" - subsequently we'll be looking for people with history of violence, with criminal records, sociopathic personalities etc. When in fact as we're seeing with these london bombers one of them dedicated much of his time to charity. To search and root out and destroy the people and causes of these bombings is too serious to be left to people who struggle to formulate an argument longer than a bumper-sticker.I assume he was talking about British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was sentenced to death for abducting and murdering US journalist Daniel Pearl. Omar Saeed Sheikh went to the London School of Economics.
Posted by Franky at July 13, 2005 03:11 PM..Franky, apparently, a university educated terrorist believes that a middle-or upper class lifestyle in a multicultural, democratic nation doesn’t offer them 'enough'.
What is it about a multicultural democracy that is so disappointing?
Posted by mary at July 13, 2005 04:57 PMBecause it's not seen as fulfilling enough, these are people who search for a purpose beyond working each day and picking up a paycheck. This disillusionment with everyday life is common in all cultures, but it is taken to lethal degress when mixed with wahabbi-funded preachers who seek to guide these impressionable young men to take murderous actions. I remember a group that shared all the values of the taleban at my university that woud target unhappy muslims. They sought to offer them answers, solutions to this exitensial depression. Then a guy who started a few years after me went on to kill Daniel Pearl.
Posted by Franky at July 13, 2005 05:05 PM
I guess if you want to find a truly wretched hive of scum and jihadism, you don't have to travel to the Middle East. Just hop on the Picadilly line, get off at the Holbern station, take a five minute walk and you're there.
I got an Email. I was stumped...
I see your posts over at Dean's World, and it occurred to me that as a younger guy in Northern California you might know something about this. I'm currently in a debate about the name of a certain juvenile-ish practice that seems to happen in many high schools. I'm wondering if you have heard of this, and what it's called.There is a little trick a person can do with his tongue, kind of curling it back or something. If it's done in a certain way, you sort of shoot out a little stream of fine drops of spit over maybe a two or three feet distance. It's not exactly spitting, but more like a quick stream from a squirt gun that shoots maybe ten or twenty drops. I can't describe exactly how to do it, because I never figured it out. However, it was a semi-common trick or prank to play on someone to do that to them back when I was in high school. Maybe sort of a gross out laugh among guys. Even though I never managed to do it on purpose, I still do it once in a very great while while even now, on accident, unintentionally. Most often, this happens if I'm yawning. My questions for you are, have you heard of it, and what do you call it?
So what amuses you today?
(Share a link if you've got one.)
Here are two important names in (fairly) recent American history:
Leslie King Jr.
William Blythe III
Can you tell me the office which they both held?
(Hint: As of this writing, both are still alive. Also, no googling. Honor binds all participants.)
We have recently begun a new Dean's World category: Best of Dean's World Comments.
I honestly believe that half of our daily readers here on Dean's World visit not because of my blatherings but because of comments left by others. Dean's World hosts the most diverse, informed, and thoughtful group of commenters in the blogosphere.
Did I just throw down a gauntlet? Perhaps I did. But I'll state it again: Dean's World hosts the most diverse, informed, and thoughtful group of commenters in the blogosphere. You disagree? I ask you to identify a challenger. I believe we make The McLaughlin Group look like a bunch of amateurs.
My standards for what it takes to keep a comment account here on Dean's World are both quite liberal and quite severe: you can say anything you want, on virtually any subject, so long as you do not A) attack my integrity, B) attack my family, or C) make a habit of derailing interesting conversations.
I freely admit that I am the sole arbiter of the above conditions, and that regulars to this establishment are cut more slack than others.
I will also say this: there are about two dozen people who have been banned from Dean's World in the last four years. I will not identify them by name, either now or in the future. But if you would like your account reinstated, you do not have to apologize to me for anything, or explain yourself in any way. All you have to do is shoot me a short note saying that you understand conditions A-C above. Nothing more needs to be said, ever.
All of the above conditions have been stated in the past, but not in formal fashion. Now they have been made explicit. In keeping with that, we have also started a new Dean's World category: "Best of Dean's World comments." We hope you will enjoy it.
From our thread on product placement in movies. --Dean
I wish I could side with you and John, Dean, because I think it's none of Nader's or the government's damn business.
But I do have to say that product placement is an insidious form of brainwashing. Or at least, it was for me. But only once.
Back in the 70s, Marvel introduced a new comic book hero: Luke Cage, Hero for Hire. Luke was a man falsely convicted of murder; and to win credit toward an early release, he participated in an experimental biomedical program. But a vindictive prison guard turned up the settings on the experiment, and it overloaded, leaving Luke with incredible strength and a super-strong hide. He injured the guard in escaping from the experiment; and rather than face the wrath of the guards, he broke jail, and went out to prove his innocence. And to pay his bills, he advertised himself as a superhero for hire.
Now I happened to luck onto Luke's first issues; and I thought he was just the coolest character out there. I was too young to understand that he was black, and so he wasn't supposed to be a role model for little white kids like me. He was aimed at the black youth market, not me. I didn't know, and I didn't care. For a long time, Superman, Batman, and Captain Marvel couldn't hold a candle to Luke Cage in my eyes. I wanted to be just like Luke.
And Luke lived right down the street from and often got food from the Orange Julius. Imagine my surprise when, later in life, I learned that that's an actual restaurant chain!
To this day, I can't pass by an Orange Julius without getting at least a drink. And every time I do, some little boy in the back of my head is envisioning himself as a big, mean-spirited black superhero with a heart of gold.
So sometimes, product placement really can tie a character and a product together in your head. Does that make it a matter for the government to intervene? Not a chance. But it explains why the companies do it.
From our thread on Malcolm X. --Dean
I remember the relatively innocent times in which Malcolm Little [aka Malcolm X] arose into the American consciouslness from the obsurity of the ghetto. I'm talking late 1950s.
He was so damned honest and straightforward. You almost had to respect that quality in him despite that he was hardwired all wrong for the country is he was living in, the religion he adopted, and much else.
One day, some liberal was flapping his or her mouth about him being an American. He must have gotten p*ssed at the stupidity of whatever comment he reacted to, because he replied:
"Being born in Omaha doesn't make me an American any more than being born in an oven makes a cat a biscuit."
He was at the top of the class of his junior high school. One day he told one of his teachers, whom he had previously respected, about his dreams of attending a law school. The teacher replied to him that law school was "no realistic goal for a n*gger."
For Malcolm, that incident was said to have marked the terminus of his efforts to make a life for himself as an American. Which was really too bad. We could all have profited from his wit, his honesty, his intelligence, his fearlessness, his straightforwardness. And above all, his integrity. Because all that he had.
I respected him, and I still do. In some fundamental way that I have difficulty explaining to anyone.
So I'm sorry about you, Malcolm. I wish I could have been there for you that day. And cut that teacher's f**king throat, right in your presence.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
They finally called me a slut. After Zionist, CIA, tool of the opposition, Mason (?), unemployed, and ignorant, finally they accused me of a romantic relationship with an oppositionist. LMAO But that's STILL not as funny as "owner of a bad website."
I'm thankful for my wife and my two wonderful sons.
I'm thankful that within a few weeks I'll finally be done with school, and will be able to spend more time with them and be less stressed when I do.
I'm thankful for Dean's World's commenters and readers. Yes, even those of you who usually disagree with me.
What are you thankful for?
I did a Brass Crescent Links Roundup a few days ago, and wanted to share one link in particular with you all. A close friend of mine, Hujefa V, has begun blogging. Hojo is a physician in Dallas, whose love of the Dallas Cowboys got him some unwanted attention last year. That incident gave him his first opportunity to write in the public domain, and the result was a masterpiece of reasoned and patriotic appeal. His new blog, Around Midnight In The ICU, promises to be just as compelling, since it will be about what he knows best. That is, medicine, and Cowboys football. Or both :)
His latest post, only his third, touches on Thanksgiving in a raw and personal way. Take a look.
Although some people cringe at the way we turn common social phenomena into "syndromes," the truth is that there are certain social pathologies which can be identified by certain traits that are documented to occur over and over again. One of these is Parental Alienation Syndrome. I believe that if you read about it, you will probably know people who it describes perfectly. I know I have seen it many times, and it's almost always very ugly. The patterns are instantly recognizable once you see them in action.
Somewhere in all our fulminating about "deadbeat dads," we ought to be doing more to recognize this particular pathology.
If you're looking for more free ice cream, you might want to check out the latest Carnival of the Vanities, which is up at Don Surber's blog.
Quoted:
Read the rest here.Delsing and colleagues at Chalmers University began by embedding their Cooper-pair transistor in a resonant circuit. Next, they cooled the device down to millikelvin temperatures and measured how the phase of a radio-frequency signal changed when it was reflected from the circuit. Based on these measurements, the team was able to show that the device behaved like a quantum capacitor. Hakonen and co-workers in Helsinki and Moscow group employed a similar technique. Both teams found that the devices behaved as predicted by theory.
The effect could be used to read out quantum bits (qubits) in a reliable way because the quantum capacitance of the excited state of the qubit has the opposite sign to the ground state. These states could be used as the "1s" and "0s" in a quantum computer. Indeed Hakonen and colleagues have already used this approach to read the value of a qubit without changing its value -- which is almost always a problem when measuring the quantum state of any system.
Quoted:
A year ago I was just weeks past a meeting with some Iraqis. They were from Fallujah, Ramadi, and Baghdad. We were discussing a number of things, but one of them was the upcoming election.
There was a man there from Ramadi that said "what election, you are crazy, it will be just as it always has been, they will tell us what to vote." An argument ensued, and he looked in shock at people from Baghdad who were frustrated trying to explain to him, "if you go and put your name on the list, I will vote for you, it’s not the same now, you can join a party and you can vote for whom you like!"
There's more. I suggest you read the whole thing.
If you think you'll be arguing with someone over Thanksgiving dinner regarding Iraq, Hugh Hewitt has some great suggestions for how to proceed.
Martin Shoemaker, channeling his inner black man, on product placement.
I always thought Luke Cage was cool too...
Quoted:
From: God god@yahoo.comI have been smited!
Date: Nov 23, 2005 8:36 AM
Subject: Excuse me
Remote Address: 68.226.155.16
Remote User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 Firefox/1.0.7
Composed in: 0.7 minutes
----
F*CK YOU...you're a disgrace to the human race.
Our friend and frequent commenter Andrew Ian Dodge has a cool band, "Growing Old Disgracefully." You can check out a free track and some band info here.
I've been blogging since the late '90s, but only part of what could be called "the blogosphere" for about four years. In that time, I have noticed that the discussion of "torture" seems to come up every six to nine months and to rage through the blogosphere for a few weeks each time it does. If you want my past opinions on this subject, just do a Google search on torture on deanesmay.com.
I notice that in the latest conflicts, there have been some interesting comments by Jeff Goldstein and my hero Cathy Young.
Congratulations Kos and ThinkProgress!This kind of thing is just inexcusable, especially in wartime, and ridiculous to boot. These people would have been the first to excoriate Bush had he advanced the notion Saddam's stockpiles of WP constituted chemical weapons and justified the need to invade.
You have successfully peddled the phone conversation between two Kurdish brothers to uncritical media outlets, and they are running with it, pretending that this unedited raw intelligence report is actually Pentagon policy.
...
We didn’t do what you are charging, WP isn’t a chemical weapon, we didn’t use it indiscriminately against civilians, yet we have to defend against these accusations because lowlife a**holes like you and Kos keep peddling them and giving them legitimacy.
I am so sick of these people pulling this crap. And don’t be confused- this is ALL about bringing down Bush. Whatever the cost. I am so angry I can barely type right now.
Related Posts (on one page):
I grew up a fairly serious Christian. My religious upbringing was, however, like so many other things about my upbringing, schizophrenic. It was a mix between southern jump-and-shout revivalism, Pat Robertson-style weirdism, mainline Presbyterianism, and Roman Catholicism. The reason for such a strange mix would be very complicated to explain but, for good or ill, those were all part of my religious upbringing and are all part of who I am today.
The result of all this is that, for reasons I cannot fully explain, if I were ever to return to the Christian fold it would likely be as either a Roman Catholic or, more likely, as an Orthodox Christian, with a slightly liberal outlook.
Of all the Christian liturgy I have seen--and I've seen quite a lot--I find the most beautiful and riveting to be the Orthodox and Roman Catholic versions of the sacrament of communion. I think most of my Protestant friends are missing out on this, and owe it to themselves to at least once attend an Orthodox or Catholic mass to witness it. It is extremely beautiful. Having attended it many times, I can fully understand how Andrew Sullivan still considers himself a Roman Catholic despite his deep disagreements with the church.
It's the whole "faith" thing that does me in, alas. I just don't believe. On the other hand, I don't view those who do believe with any level of contempt. For whatever reason the faith just isn't there for me. Is that my loss or theirs? Either way, it's just how it is.
All that said, the most heartbreakingly beautiful movie about Christian faith that I have ever seen was Robert Duvall's The Apostle. Duvall is simply spellbinding, with June Carter Cash giving the performance of her career as his mother. Most of (most of) what I find beautiful and captivating about Christianity is encapsulated in that movie. I would love for most of my Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and even Jewish and Muslim and atheist friends to see it. If you want to understand the faith that animates most of the American south, there is no finer portrayal on the silver screen.
Politically, I think that after seeing it you will fully understand the faith of both William Jefferson Clinton and George W. Bush. Spiritually, almost nothing either President said on the subject of faith was ever strange to me. I understood and still understand both men perfectly, on this score anyway. This movie helps illustrate that.
Have any other Dean's World readers seen it? It's extraordinary isn't it?
Well, the GF is now the EX (though with luck she’ll give me my definite article back), and I am living on my own. At least until I can find another roommate (the place is in Davis CA, and runs US$600/month. Anyone interested?)...
One of interesting things is that certain decisions that were “us” decisions are now “me” decisions. Even things as basic as: What Kind of Juice to Have? She liked Passion Orange Guava (POG), I thought it was good, we did that. Now I go to the grocery store and have to make think do I want to stay with her preference or go with something else? In the end, Orange beat POG by a small margin...
Cathy Young notes yet another shameless example. This time the culprit is P