Philosophically, the most absurd view I hold is a sort of quasi-realism about morality that's grounded in a thoroughgoing nominalism about everything else.|Bellman|Ok, you're going to have to unpack this for me a bit.
I am so tired of hearing American citizens talk about how the illegal immigrants are coming in and taking their jobs from them. Come on! If we weren’t illegal, you wouldn’t be able to get away with paying us next to nothing. And do you really want to have those jobs? Do you really want to clean toilets, or wash dishes, or maul livestock all night long? I mean, can you imagine your typical New York stockbroker having to sneak onto a farmer’s property in the middle of the night and quietly drink the blood of five goats? Forget about it! First of all, he wouldn’t possess the dread gaze of the Chupacabra, a gaze which makes all animals freeze and succumb to my vampiric embrace. Secondly, he wouldn’t want to get his fancy suit all dirty.
According to this theory [of American cowardice], President George W. Bush is an "aberration," a leader out of sync with his nation's character and no more than a brief nightmare for those who oppose the creation of an "American Middle East." Messrs. Abbasi and Ahmadinejad have concluded that there will be no [last] helicopter [fleeing Iraq] as long as George W. Bush is in the White House. But they believe that whoever succeeds him, Democrat or Republican, will revive the [fleeing] helicopter image to extricate the U.S. from a complex situation that few Americans appear to understand..."We are sure the U.S. will return to saner policies," says Manuchehr Motakki, Iran's new Foreign Minister....
But how valid is the assumption that Mr. Bush is an aberration and that his successor will "run away"? It was to find answers that this writer spent several days in the U.S., especially Washington and New York, meeting ordinary Americans and senior leaders, including potential presidential candidates from both parties. While Mr. Bush's approval ratings, now in free fall, and the increasingly bitter American debate on Iraq may lend some credence to the "helicopter" theory, I found no evidence that anyone in the American leadership elite supported a cut-and-run strategy.
The reason was that almost all realized that the 9/11 attacks have changed the way most Americans see the world and their own place in it. Running away from Saigon, the Iranian desert, Beirut, Safwan and Mogadishu was not hard to sell to the average American, because he was sure that the story would end there; the enemies left behind would not pursue their campaign within the U.S. itself. The enemies that America is now facing in the jihadist archipelago, however, are dedicated to the destruction of the U.S. as the world knows it today.|WSJ Opinion Journal|
[T]he war-weary public has done, and continues to do, nothing to change its habits of profligate oil use which have driven us to project our military into the Middle East.
We...expect to keep running American society exactly the way it has been set up to run -- as a nonstop demolition derby, with hamburgers and fries between laps around the freeway....
In the absence of [changing our energy dependent ways], our presence in Iraq is not optional.|Clusterfuck Nation|
Experts at the robot research centre in Shandong Technology University controlled white mice by stimulating micro-electrodes on their heads.
The mice obeyed computer-generated commands to, in succession, "turn left", "turn right" and "move forward".
| Ananova |
Two decades ago, games played by one person at a time, in which the player's character navigates a high-fantasy world of goblins and elves, constituted the best-selling state of the art. But today, fantasy role-playing games that can be played by hundreds, thousands, or even millions of players at once, all meeting in cyberspace and navigating the world they collectively inhabit, have become vastly more popular. And in the process, single-player fantasy swashbucklers have been relegated to dustbin status, an afterthought, if any thought, for most game makers.
...
By focusing the action on an individual character — a stand-in for the player himself — a single-player game can often deliver a more emotionally compelling experience than games in which countless numbers participate. And if, by chance, that individual character is charged with saving civilization from some terrible evil, well, all the more so.
3.29 Whenever used herein, a masculine noun or pronoun is deemed to include the feminine, and a singular noun or pronoun is deemed to include the plural unless the text involved indicates the contrary.
The memo indicates the two leaders envisioned a quick victory and a transition to a new Iraqi government that would be complicated, but manageable. Mr. Bush predicted that it was "unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups." Mr. Blair agreed with that assessment.
The memo also shows that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire, or assassinating Mr. Hussein. |link|
The publication of the Joint Forces Command study, called the "Iraqi Perspectives Project," coincides with the release by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence of several hundred documents captured in postwar Iraq. There are many more to come. Some of the documents used to complete the study have been made public as part of the ODNI effort; others have not.
It is early, but the emerging picture suggests that the U.S. intelligence community underestimated Saddam Hussein's interest in terrorism. One U.S. intelligence official, identified only as an "IC analyst" in the Senate Select Intelligence Committee report on Iraq, summarized the intelligence community's view on Iraq and terrorism with disarming candor: "I don't think we were really focused on the CT [counterterrorism] side, because we weren't concerned about the IIS [Iraqi Intelligence Service] going out and proactively conducting terrorist attacks. It wasn't until we realized that there was the possibility of going to war that we had to get a handle on that." |link|
Now, that power-law curve predicts 14-bladed razors by the year 2100, but that’s not the interesting curve. The interesting curve is the hyperbolic one, for two reasons: One, it matches the real-world data. And two, it goes to infinity in 2015. And how are you going to get an asymptotically-accelerating number of blades onto a razor? Why, you’d need godlike super-technology to do that.
Right. There it is, proof of the approaching Vingean Singularity, sooner than anyone expected it, clear as the chin on your face. |agrumer|
A team at the Injury Research Center of the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee has found that being obese increases male drivers' risk of dying in a car crash, as does being very slim. However, being moderately overweight might help cushion the blow.
...
The researchers suggest that the unexplained reasons for the gender difference in BMI and motor vehicle fatality might be, in part, the difference in body habitus or body shape between men and women, and should be studied further. Their findings may also lend credence to the theory of a "cushioning effect" for slightly overweight men that might protect them from fatal injury in a crash, according to Dr. Zhu. |link|
Bob Huggins is returning to college basketball as Kansas State's coach after 16 years at Cincinnati, where he turned the Bearcats into a national power but was ousted following a drunken-driving conviction and a clash with the school's president.
...
Cincinnati cited the arrest as the culmination of many problems. He also had been criticized for a low graduation rate and for several off-court incidents involving players.
"We expect our coaches to be role models, and we expect our students to be role models," Zimpher said after his firing. "We make no apologies for setting high standards." |link|
O'Donnell and his coaches scout the other teams. Liberty knew that one of its opponents in Annapolis would probably argue that the Chinese should be pressured because they discriminate against their Muslim minority. In the van on the four-hour drive there, debaters rehearsed responses, using a special lingo.
"They pull the genocide card," one said, "we come back with Heidegger."
"Then blam, Erich Fromm."
"Right. Setting up an accusation of Holocaust triv."
"Holocaust what?" asked O'Donnell."
"Triv. Trivialization."
"Don't use shorthand," O'Donnell said. "Judges don't like it."
Vice President Cheney said Sunday that his 10-month-old claim that the insurgency was in its "last throes" was "basically accurate" and reflects reality. |Washington Post|
Forty years ago today, for a brief but interesting time, Washtenaw County became the flying saucer capital of the Midwest.
It started when a Dexter farmer named Frank Mannor and his 18-year-old son, Ronald, told the Washtenaw County Sheriff's Department that a strange flying object appeared and landed in a swampy area at Quigley and Brand roads. |link|
Willnus has a copy of the police report from that night, and said there's no way that it was swamp gas.
"For instance, it mentions that the object was observed to rise to an altitude of approximately 500 feet, and then return to the ground," he said. "Swamp gas doesn't do that. It only goes off the ground a few feet. It mentioned when it took off, it sounded like a rifle shot in a canyon. Again, swamp gas doesn't do that."
So what was it?
"We can't be sure," he said. "It was, I think, either a craft that came from off the earth, an extraterrestrial, or some kind of one-dimensional device. And I'm starting to use the word multiverse rather than universe ... Some kind of one-dimensional craft, perhaps, that came into our realm and then left."
[U]nlike Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Iran has never in modern times launched an aggressive war against a neighbour and for a decade now has not been credibly accused of sponsoring a terrorist attack. As to the [National Security Strategy] criticisms of Iranian “tyranny”, this exemplifies the hypocrisy that undermines US claims to be spreading “democracy” in the Middle East – for along with its elements of theocratic authoritarianism, Iran also has more elements of representative democracy than any of America’s key Muslim allies in the region.
Preventive war against Iran would therefore be a monstrous act by any standard. The right to pre-emptive war against visibly imminent attack has always been asserted by the US and every other state. Preventive war against possible future dangers represents a deeply menacing revolution in international affairs. It is also ridiculous to suggest, as this NSS does, that the US should claim this right, without other states following suit.
In rejecting proposals for preventive nuclear war against the Soviet Union and China in the early 1950s, President Harry Truman put it well: “The only thing you prevent by war is peace.” ....
But now Washington and Tel Aviv want it both ways. They want simultaneously to possess nuclear deterrents and to prevent other states from developing the nuclear forces they are supposed to deter. It is impossible to base any legal, consensual or stable international order on such an intellectually and morally incoherent foundation.|Financial Times Editorial|
Last week, the Bush administration agreed to talk with Iran about Iraq. Iran has been arming Iraqi Shiite militia and some insurgent groups.
The administration's objectives will include bringing an end to that practice and, more broadly, ending sectarian violence by Iranian-supported militia. My sense is that such talks are a bad idea. Iran is involved in Iraq because it perceives an interest in supporting our enemies there.
To talk Iran into changing course, we would have to offer it an incentive larger than the one that's pushing it to cause trouble now. The only such incentive I can imagine is backing away from our efforts to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
But a nuclear Iran would have far more ability to cause mischief in the region than Iran has now. Our top priority, even ahead of curbing current Iranian mischief making in Iraq, must be to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
"The reality is that most of us think the Iranians are probably going to get a weapon, or the technology to make one, sooner or later," an administration official acknowledged a few weeks ago, refusing to talk on the record because such an admission amounts to a concession that dragging Iran in front of the United Nations Security Council may prove to be an exercise in futility. "The optimists around here just hope we can delay the day by 10 or 20 years, and that by that time we'll have a different relationship with a different Iranian government."
A roll of the dice, for sure. Yet is the risk greater than it was when other countries -- from the Soviet Union and China to India and Pakistan -- defied the United States to join the nuclear club?
And could deterrence, containment and cool calculation of national interest work to restrain Iran as it worked to restrain America and its competitors during the cold war? Or is that false comfort?
My civil neighbor, the tax-gatherer, is the very man I have to deal with--for it is, after all, with men and not with parchment that I quarrel--and he has voluntarily chosen to be an agent of the government. How shall he ever know well that he is and does as an officer of the government, or as a man, until he is obliged to consider whether he will treat me, his neighbor, for whom he has respect, as a neighbor and well-disposed man, or as a maniac and disturber of the peace, and see if he can get over this obstruction to his neighborlines without a ruder and more impetuous thought or speech corresponding with his action.
The Vilayat-al Faqih, "Supreme Jurisprudent" Ali Khamein'i, has apparently issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons. This is serious. He is not only the leading theologian in Iran, he is the supreme commander of the armed forces and in effect the Head of State as well. It was he more than any other, through the Council of Guardians whose members he appoints, an equivalent of the Supreme Court, that the more moderate President Khatami was undermined. I am not a fan of the Iranian theologians, but I take Khamein'i's religiosity seriously enough to take seriously his fatwa. I would find it hard to believe that Iran would actually develop nuclear weapons with such a ruling in place while he is in his position.
I will not be supporting Senator Clinton because: a) she has no clear stand on the war and b) Terri Schiavo and flag-burning are not issues where you reach out to the other side and try to split the difference. You want to talk about lowering abortion rates through cooperation on sex education and contraception, fine, but don’t jack with stuff that is pure rightwing firewater.
But Feingold's maneuver isn't just problematic for Hillary in '08. At a time when Democrats were beginning to score points over the ports issue, in one fell swoop, Feingold has put the Democrat Party back on the wrong side of the national security issue. This is the work of either a very selfish politician, or a very naïve one.
Matt Lewis
Weakening our national security is their agenda. Is it yours? Sign the petition to tell the Democrat leaders to stop undermining the War on Terror with cheap political stunts.
Ken Mehlman
Feingold's maneuver Monday was a bit of a Thelma & Louise moment in politics: he slammed the gas pedal to the floor and set Senate Democrats heading straight for the edge of the Grand Canyon. Liberals stood on one side cheering it as an act of heroism, Republicans stood on the other cheering it as a stunt of monumental stupidity and hoping the car would actually catch air. And poor Senate Democrats were left strapped in the vehicle, with eyes bulging and mouths wide open, as they scrambled to find the brake.
Tom Bevans
As an aside, it's interesting to note that those who supported DiFi's censure bill are many of the same folks who did nothing to stop Alito. Just another reason to get rid of 'em.
Sean-Paul Kelly
Pat Roberts made it clear again last week that he puts loyalty to the Bush administration ahead of everything else, even his responsibilities as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Instead of beginning a probe of President George W. Bush's domestic spying program, as critics demanded, Roberts announced that he'd reached "an accommodation" with the White House - creation of a subcommittee to monitor the operation, just as the Bush administration wanted.
. . . .
Roberts put Bush's re-election ahead of an informed electorate when he delayed phase two of the pre-war intelligence report. He placed loyalty to the Bush administration ahead of Americans' civil liberties when he foiled an investigation of domestic spying.
To Pat Roberts, the Senate Intelligence Committee exists for one reason - to validate the policies of President George W. Bush.
The Hutchinson News
When will it be fair to say that Congress has tacitly approved of the President's surveillance program?
Althouse
The Pentagon is trying to develop "insect cyborgs" able to sniff out explosives, or "bug" conversations by lurking unseen in enemy hideouts with micro-transmitters strapped to their bodies.
The cyborgs - half insect, half robot - would be created by inserting tiny devices into the bodies of flying, hopping or crawling insects while in their larva or pupa stage, so that the mechanisms become part of their bodies and ultimately allow them to be moved by remote control.|Guardian|
I leave it to others to make the fairly obvious applications to our general situation. But might we might say that the seeds of the present constitutional crisis were laid by spineless Democrats who refused to take seriously the prospect of impeaching Ronald Reagan and who refused to raise a ruckus when President George H. W. Bush engaged in his infamous Christmas pardons of 1992 that effectively shut down the investigation of Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh into the culpability of Secretary of Defense Caspar Winberger and Bush himself? And, of course, Bush pardoned Abrams as well, who is now back in service in George W. Bush’s administration.
|Iran-Contra and our Present Constitutional Discontents|
Last year, in response to a legal threat from the Education Department, Washington University in St. Louis modified the standards for an undergraduate scholarship that had been open just to minorities and was named for the first African-American dean at the university. This year, the first since the change, 12 of the 42 first-year recipients are white. |link|
With Bush’s poll numbers returning to post-Katrina/Harriet Miers lows, most Democrats seem to understand the political stupidity of Feingold’s move to censure the President.
Republicans, on the other hand, should use the opportunity that Feingold has provided them and hammer Democrats mercilessly on this issue. If played right, this could be like the Jack Murtha episode where Democrats will have to turn off their non-stop Bush bashing and vote against Feingold or risk appearing to be on the Michael Moore fringe of the debate.
[W]hile I carry no water for anyone with strong religious beliefs, I acknowledge the historical significance of religion and devote a lot of time in my classes to its social and political dimensions over the past few centuries. For that reason -- and because we have a lot of students (mostly Christian) who haven't yet been demoralized by the random, cavernous void that comprises human existence -- I avoid statements that will be interpreted as overly blasphemous (e.g., "Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick, World War I was a depraved waste of life"), or insulting to anyone's strange metaphysical beliefs (e.g., "[insert religious denomination here] are fucking crazy.")|Axis of Evel Knievel|
Meanwhile, because sensible moderates like Saletan won't do the hard ground work of preserving abortion rights -- he's not "a member of the movement," he assures readers -- the task has fallen to a smaller and smaller segments of the left. Of course such people seem strange to Saletan, though the picture he draws of "earnest" women with "backpacks or spiky hair" who are "absolute relativists" and could use a dose of "humor" is hardly one that's uncommon in anti-feminist writing. But who did Saletan expect would still be maintaining choice as a fact rather than a word game at this point in history, when even moderate pro-choice supporters feel that the best use of their faculties is to try to convince an American public that already considers abortion to be taboo that it's "bad"? |Garance Franke-Ruta|
After two days, the casino was thick with the smell of man dork. Enthusiasts road-tripped from around Europe to smoke, play and watch. Downstairs in the basement, a makeshift bookseller hawked paperbacks including "Genius in Chess," "Black Is Still OK!" and "Mastering the Najdorf." Upstairs in the main auditorium, Nakamura had his quarter-finals opponent, an 18-year-old Georgian woman named Nana Dzagnidze, right where he wanted her, backed against the wall. In this, and other chess tournaments, games are time-limited. For that reason, playing the clock is a big part of the game. And few masters play it better than Nakamura.
U.S. District Judge Thomas McAvoy's "classified" order leaves secret his reasons for also turning down defense requests to suppress any evidence acquired from warrantless wiretaps or force authorities to disclose whether they were used in the Albany case.
...
Defense attorney Terence Kindlon said Saturday he is researching possible appeals of the ruling. "My sense is, this can't be right. This has to be wrong," he said. "The question is, how do you even argue it when you don't know what the basis is?" |link|
"If workers are ready to go on strike in the United States, and we are ready to pay them to strike, it would be very costly," Mr. Stern says. "But paying workers in Indonesia or India or other places to go on strike against the same global employer isn't particularly expensive."
Such a strike, if it disrupted the global shipping of goods manufactured overseas but intended for sale in the United States, could be extremely effective, he adds. |link|
Many drivers now bend long rods over their motor bikes, attaching them at the front and back, hoping that any stray kite strings will slide along them and spare their necks. |link|
The U.S. Army has discovered a remote control gun turret that works, and cannot get enough of them. The army wants over 9,000 CROWS (common remotely operated weapon stations), but is only getting 15 a month. There should be about a thousand CROWS in service by the end of the year. . . .
But there's another reason, not often talked about, for the success of CROWS. The guys operating these systems grew up playing video games. They developed skills in operating systems (video games) very similar to the CROWS controls. This was important, because viewing the world around the vehicle via a vidcam is not as enlightening (although a lot safer) than having your head and chest exposed to the elements, and any firepower the enemy sends your way. But experienced video gamers are skilled at whipping that screen view around, and picking up any signs of danger.
21. Be polite. Be professional. But have a plan to kill everyone you meet.
Looking at the scatter plots, the correlation between life satisfaction and quality of government is remarkably linear. One interesting and seemingly robust result is that "countries with some element of proportional voting do have higher levels of life satisfaction."
State bill proposes Christianity be Missouri’s official religion
The resolution would recognize "a Christian god," and it would not protect minority religions, but "protect the majority's right to express their religious beliefs.
The resolution also recognizes that, "a greater power exists," and only Christianity receives what the resolution calls, "justified recognition."
"Go on," Smythe urged. "How strongly does she equate cybernetics with Communism?"
I looked at him in surprise. "She quotes Nemchinov pretty strongly on that," I said. "Her argument--I suppose she was carrying the Nemchinov philosophy--is that only the Communist system gives sufficient room to apply the combination of mathematics and cybernetics to the national economy. Pretty dry phraseology, but not the way it sounds when Tamara is talking." I grinned self-consciously. "Okay, okay, so I've got a thing about the girl."
He waved me on to continue.
"Well, according to Nemchinov," I said, "public ownership--the Communist system--is essential to setting up a single electronic network. I mean, a net that includes cybernetic systems for industry, commerce, agriculture--the works."
"And capitalism?"
"Nemchinov--according to Tamara--has it thumbs down on private enterprise."
"Why?"
I shrugged. "Something about there being an inherent barrier in private enterprise to creating the true cybernetics system on a national scale. The framework of companies, corporations, syndicates--all these spell out unacceptable interference from conflicting interests. The way Nemchinov puts it, you need almost the equivalent of ant society to create a really meaningful cybernetics system."
"Do you think his point is valid?"
I thought that one over for several moments. "Not really, I suppose. I haven't made any effort," I added, "to weigh the pros and cons of one system against the other, Tom. In the cybernetics sense, I mean."
They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.
...
Eventually, his and his wife's money was freed up. The Soehnges were apparently found not to be promoting global terrorism under the guise of paying a credit-card bill. They never did learn how a large credit card payment can pose a security threat.
A relgious businessman is to spend £250 million building a porn-free town where contraception will be banned.
Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan, who was raised by nuns, says it's 'God's will', reports the Daily Mirror.
Ave Maria will be run on strict Catholic lines, with no selling of porn, condoms or birth control pills, and a ban on X-rated cable TV.
There have already been 7,000 inquiries about the 11,000, homes in Florida - next to a Catholic college also built by Monaghan.
But civil liberties groups predict big legal battles over the bans.
| Ananova |
In contrast, grazing ruminants such as cattle produce food and require fewer entries into the fields with tractors and other equipment. In grazed pastures, according to Davis, less wildlife is lost to the mower blades, and more find stable habitat in untilled fields. And no-till agriculture also helps stabilize soil and reduce run-off into streams.
"Pasture-forage production, with herbivores harvesting the forage, would be the ultimate in 'no-till' agriculture," Davis said.
Davis proposes a ruminant-pasture model of food production, which would replace all poultry, pig and lamb production with beef and dairy products. According to his calculations, such a model would result in the deaths of 300 million fewer animals annually (counting both field animals and cattle) than would a total vegan model. This difference, according to Davis, is mainly the result of fewer field animals killed in pasture and forage production than in the growing and harvest of grain, beans, and corn. |link|
The one thing that unites these two perspectives is a commitment to male irresponsibility. Gender neutrality, in Tierney's world, could be a good thing if it allowed men to have sex without consequences and abandon their pregnant girlfriends, but is bad thing when it requires men to clean up after themselves.|TAPPED|
