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For those of you who don’t know, [Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded] is a retrospective of the entire run of Whatever, all the way back to the hazy days of 1998, when the concept of blogging was so new they didn’t even have the word “blog” yet. We called them “online diaries.” We also had to type uphill in the snow, both ways. And we liked it.
In the midst of an acrimonious election season, it is important to step back and put all the shouting in perspective… to be fully aware of what we are, and what we are not.
More about the song.
Business Owners, Customers Upset Over Controversial Billboard:
At first glance, the sign looked like a children’s cartoon, but the message next to the fairy princess stirred emotions.
“When you condemn all religions and say they are a fairytale, that is wrong,” said Rich Stormes, a nearby business owner.
Nope. That’s an opinion, and it’s protected under the US Constitution. But the blindly religious have little regard for such niceties…
(via Stupid Evil Bastard)
Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Childhood’s End, and Rendezvous with Rama, has passed away at age 90.
Thanks for the wonder, Sir Arthur.
Award-winning author Pat Cadigan has started the “Match It for Pratchett” campaign, honoring Terry Pratchett. Pratchett, the author of the popular Discworld novels, recently announced that he has been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. He has donated £500,000 (roughly $1 million) to Alzheimer’s research, and the campaign to match his donation is underway.
Please visit the campaign’s Guide to Giving and donate today.
(hat tip: Boing Boing)
Brilliant science fiction author John Scalzi is auctioning off a pre-publication manuscript of his new novel Zoe’s Tale to benefit the Disabled American Veterans Charitable Service Trust.
This is an exclusive and extremely rare version of this novel (only four other copies of this edition exist) and will be the only way for a member of the general public to read the novel prior to its official publication in August 2008. All money raised by this auction, minus eBay and PayPal fees, will go to the Disabled American Veterans Charitable Service Trust. The auction is currently taking place on eBay and will end on Feb-25-08 09:10:29 PST. Opening bid is $50.
Go. Bid. Now.
In Death and Underachievement: A Guide to Happiness in Work, Ryan Norbauer has some interesting thoughts on the endless, Sisyphean struggle for achievement, achievement, and more achievement…
And all the facts point to a universe that is utterly indifferent to your body-mass index, your latest promotion, or how well-organized your reference filing system is. You neighbors may pretend to care — and then proceed to think of you with acrimonious covetousness or jealousy — but, as the Copernican principle reminds us, in the long run your neighbors are just like you: a speck, on a speck, on a speck. (Listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson’s interview in the last part of this Radiolab segment to have this concept dizzyingly driven home.) But even if we were to abandon all reason and evidence and assume the human race enjoys some sort of privileged status in the affairs of the universe, we need only remember that each of us is one among 6.6 billion people (give or take), and that even if you were to attain a level of accomplishment that (let’s face it) you could never even dream of approaching — say, becoming prime minister of Canada — the vast majority of people now and ever living will never even have heard of you…
If we are to accept achievement as the vehicle to guide us through life, we must at least admit to ourselves that it’s a ferris wheel we’re riding and not a bullet train. I’m ready to make that admission. I say fuck this ride; let’s go eat cotton candy.
Reading Norbauer’s essay put me in mind of a quote that I’d always thought was from Ralph Waldo Emerson. To my surprise, it’s actually from a work by Bessie Anderson Stanley:
To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
Several assailants attacked a Jewish man on a New York subway last Friday:
Friday’s altercation on the Q train began when somebody yelled out “Merry Christmas,” to which rider Walter Adler responded, “Happy Hanukkah,” said Toba Hellerstein.
“Almost immediately, you see the look in this guy’s face like I’ve called his mother something,” Adler told CNN affiliate WABC.Two women who were with a group of 10 rowdy people then began to verbally assault Adler’s companions with anti-Semitic language, Hellerstein said.
One member of the group allegedly yelled, “Oh, Hanukkah. That’s the day that the Jews killed Jesus,” she said.
When Adler tried to intercede, a male member of the group punched him, she said.
Another passenger, Hassan Askari—a Muslim student from Bangladesh—came to Adler’s aid, and the group began physically and verbally assaulting him, Hellerstein said.
One wonders: How many self-professed Christians were among those who attacked Adler? How many self-professed Christians were among those who stood by and did nothing during the attack?
Once more, children: Religions, in and of themselves, do not commit crimes and atrocities. People do.
(Hat tip: Pharyngula)
Changing the course of events is never as easy as you imagine it to be…
I am so wanting one of these:
I have always wanted a copy of the map from Time Bandits. I recently decided to create my own replica of this exquisite prop. I have studied the film and every printed reference source I could find to create this replica and it is very accurate to the screen-used map. It has been drawn completely in Photoshop with the goal to create a replica that looks hand-drawn. The file is enormous containing 188 layers with a file size of 1.72 GB. This level of fine detail is replicated using the highest quality printer available.
(hat tip: BoingBoing)
The reproduction of this prop looks absolutely gorgeous. The map, you see, shows the locations of all the time holes in Creation. Once you possess it, well, the possibilities are endless…
Read the rest of this entry »From Overheard in New York...
Professor: What words do we get from the name Aphrodite?
Student #1: Hermaphrodite.
Professor: Yes — from the union of Aphrodite and Hermes. What else?
Student #2: Aphrodisiac!
Professor: Good! And what is an aphrodisiac?
Students: [Silence.]
Professor: Are you all Victorians? Come on… What’s it called when one uses something to arouse sexual appetite?
Student #3: Necrophiliac! [Class laughs.]
Professor: I have to advise you to invest in a dictionary, as it’s simply prudent to know the difference between a necrophiliac and an aphrodisiac. Hopefully, you won’t ever need to thank me for that.
If any man in history deserved the gratitude of all humanity, it is Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov, who saved the world twenty-four years ago today by doing… nothing.
(hat tip: Wired)
Tell me again that it’s only Muslims who resort to violence over matters of religion...
A melee broke out in Sweden outside a photography exhibit depicting Jesus as a homosexual.
Artist Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin created the Ecce Homo exhibit 10 years ago, and it has been controversial ever since.
On Sunday, a group of young people tried to set fire to a poster at the Jonkoping Kulturhuset, The Local reported.
Staff members tried to stop them, leading to a fight involving about 30 people, said Tony el Zouki, the director of the Kulturhuset.
More at Pam’s House Blend...
For my good friend Buddy Don, just because I can…
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming… “WOW! What a Ride!”— attributed to Bill McKenna, professional motorcycle racer
I would have given my left nut to have had this when my kids were growing up…
The Control-a-Kid remote has all the functions you will need to help keep those little monsters under control. Functions like stop sulking or tantrums, eat greens to do homework and more. What is even better is that this remote does not use batteries, but is powered by positive thinking.
(Hat tip: Random Good Stuff)
There are many ways to be divine. Ian McDonald’s Hugo-nominated story “The Little Goddess” shows us one such way:
As the car took me across the waking city I tried to understand how it felt to be human. I had been a goddess so long I could hardly remember feeling any other way, but it seemed so little different that I began to suspect that you are divine because people say you are. The road climbed through green suburbs, winding now, growing narrower, busy with brightly decorated buses and trucks. The houses grew leaner and meaner, to roadside hovels and chai-stalls and then we were out of the city—the first time since I had arrived seven years before. I pressed my hands and face to the glass and looked down on Kathmandu beneath its shroud of ochre smog. The car joined the long line of traffic along the narrow, rough road that clung to the valley side. Above me, mountains dotted with goatherd shelters and stone shrines flying tattered prayer banners. Below me, rushing cream-brown water. Nearly there. I wondered how far behind me on this road were those other government cars, carrying the priests sent to seek out little girls bearing the thirty-two signs of perfection. Then the car rounded the bend in the valley and I was home, Shakya, its truck halts and gas station, the shops and the temple of Padma Narteswara, the dusty trees with white rings painted around their trunks and between them the stone wall and arch where the steps led down through the terraces to my house, and in that stone-framed rectangle of sky, my parents, standing there side by side, pressing closely, shyly, against each other as I had last seen them lingering in the courtyard of the Kumari Ghar.
I’ve found that an occasional message of hope and inspiration is good for one’s soul. To wit: I give you ‘Unwritten’...
I’m so ashamed. Clearly, I wasted my youth… because I scored 100% on the Name That Toon audio quiz. Oh, the humiliation…
From the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence comes this list of mistakes we have all made, as individuals and as a society. Gandhi’s grandson Arun passes the list on to us (with one addition he has made):
Mohandas K. Gandhi was convinced much of the violence in society and in our personal lives stems from the passive violence that we commit against each other. He described these acts of passive violence as the “Seven Blunders”. Grandfather gave me the list in 1947 just before we left India to return to South Africa where my father, Manilal, Gandhi’s second son, and my mother, Sushila, worked for nonviolent change. In the Indian tradition of adding one’s knowledge to the ancient wisdom being passed on, and in keeping with what Grandfather said and wrote about responsibility, I have added an eighth item to the list of blunders. – Arun Gandhi
- Wealth Without Work
- Pleasure Without Conscience
- Knowledge Without Character
- Commerce Without Morality
- Science Without Humanity
- Worship Without Sacrifice
- Politics Without Principles
- Rights Without Responsibilities
An unnamed writer for the Institute goes on to expand on each point. Worth reading.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. died the other day. Much has been written about him since, by people far more familiar with his works than I, so I will not bore you with my ignorant musings about him. But I will commend to you his essay entitled “Cold Turkey”, written in 2004. A few excerpts:
Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.
But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America’s becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.
...
How about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. …
And so on.
Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney stuff.
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.
“Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon? Give me a break!
...
There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.
But, when you stop to think about it, only a nut case would want to be a human being, if he or she had a choice. Such treacherous, untrustworthy, lying and greedy animals we are!
Two well-done guides to check out:
The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing The Myths is a brilliant parody, with explanations, of the anti-gay screeds so popular amongst the wingnuts. Author Jim Burroway makes the case that the heterosexuals are hellbent on destroying society — using exactly the same techniques as the professional homophobes. Read his footnotes carefully to learn how statistics can be twisted to demonize anyone at all. (Hat tip to Mike the Mad Biologist for this find.)
Chris Hoofnagle’s Denialists Deck of Cards describes the tactics used by those who spread doubts and misinformation about many sorts of problems — global warming, tobacco, pollution, and on and on. Know the cards that the obfuscators will throw down!
I am not an advocate of violence. I firmly believe in Isaac Asimov’s assertion that “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent”.
However: This emphatically does not mean that when one is attacked, it is necessary to passively sit there and allow oneself to be pulped. The young lady who writes the Violent Acres blog learned this at the tender age of six years:
Armed with my new tips and tricks, I laced up my skates and headed out to face the jungle that is childhood. When the boys confronted me again, I dared them to mess with me. One ballsy kid lunged towards me with the intent of pushing me down. Quickly, I kicked that kid squarely between the legs with my skate. He crumpled to the ground as I hysterically screamed at his friends, “I’LL EAT YOUR EYES I’LL EAT ALL OF YOUR EYES” Terrified, those boys got up and ran like Hell. I’ve never felt so empowered in my entire life.
You go, girl.
It’s easy if you try…
Two networks (NBC and The CW) are refusing to air the ad for the Dixie Chicks’ new documentary, "Shut Up and Sing". As Glenn Greenwald has noted:
The networks’ claim is that they prohibit controversial political advocacy ads because allowing such ads would bestow an unfair advantage in political debates to those with the financial resources to afford to purchase such advertising. But that is just ludicrous, since the networks are awash with all sorts of overtly political ads, corporate ads that convey implicit political values, and politically charged programming content. Worse, the targets of the rejected ads are typically the most empowered and well-financed groups in our country, and it is just laughable for the networks to claim that allowing ads critical of them will put them at an unfair disadvantage in political debates.
...The very idea that it is in the “public interest” to prohibit ads that criticize the Leader is ludicrous on its face. The President is constantly given free airtime to argue his views and propagandize on virtually every issue, and the networks endlessly offer forums for his followers and surrogates to defend him. And the networks’ argument is particularly absurd now, given that networks are awash with cash from offensive, obnoxious, and repugnant political ads of every kind.
Think Progress has the ad, and here is the trailer:
And for something completely different, Lewis Black explains religion. (Warning: Some language may be NSFW).
via Pharyngula
- The Library of Congress has created a September 11 Web Archive, preserving the content of over 30,000 selected Web sites from September 11, 2001 through December 1, 2001.
- Despite the best efforts of the Republicans to terrorize Americans into voting their way, the fact remains that the chances of dying in a terror attack are unterrifyingly tiny:
[D]espite the never-ending litany of warnings and endless stories of half-baked plots foiled, how likely are you, statistically speaking, to die from a terrorist attack?
Comparing official mortality data with the number of Americans who have been killed inside the United States by terrorism since the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma reveals that scores of threats are far more likely to kill an American than any terrorist—at least, statistically speaking.
In fact, your appendix is more likely to kill you than al-Qaida is.
- Can You Tell a Sunni From a Shiite? It seems that very few in the Bush Administration can. What does that tell us about those who purport to be protecting us from a terrifying enemy?
For the past several months, I’ve been wrapping up lengthy interviews with Washington counterterrorism officials with a fundamental question: “Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?”
A “gotcha” question? Perhaps. But if knowing your enemy is the most basic rule of war, I don’t think it’s out of bounds. And as I quickly explain to my subjects, I’m not looking for theological explanations, just the basics: Who’s on what side today, and what does each want?
...[S]o far, most American officials I’ve interviewed don’t have a clue. That includes not just intelligence and law enforcement officials, but also members of Congress who have important roles overseeing our spy agencies. How can they do their jobs without knowing the basics?
- Bob Harris creates the ‘Sheer Damn Decency Index’, showing where countries around the world stand on the question of torture:
Not to pretend that moral arguments ever work, but also: torturing another human being is wrong. Period. If you’re a Christian, as the saying goes: what would Jesus do? I’m no expert, but my guess he probably would not hold a blowtorch to anyone’s genitals, no matter how many episodes of 24 you’ve seen. Either you believe your damn religion or you don’t.
I bring up the torture thing today because of this new BBC survey on attitudes toward torture in 25 countries around the world. About 27,000 people were asked if they (a) opposed all use of torture, (b) would consent to the use of torture “if it may gain information that saves innocent lives,” or© had no clue.
Given the vividly public position of experts in the field and the absolute unambiguity of every major religion on the topic, the question really amounts to little more than asking if you’re (a) well-informed, decent, and sane, (b) willing to compromise your morals on a false premise, or© unable to distinguish between the two.
- Timothy Lynch of the Cato Institute exposes the use of the use of doublespeak in the ‘War on Terrorism’:
One of the central insights of George Orwell’s classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four concerned the manipulative use of language, which he called “newspeak” and “doublethink,” and which we now call “doublespeak” and “Orwellian.” Orwell was alarmed by government propaganda and the seemingly rampant use of euphemisms and halftruths— and he conveyed his discomfort with such tactics to generations of readers by using vivid examples in his novel. Despite our general awareness of the tactic, government officials routinely use doublespeak to expand, or at least maintain, their power.
The purpose of this paper is not to criticize any particular policy initiative. Reasonable people can honestly disagree about what needs to be done to combat the terrorists who are bent on killing Americans. However, a conscientious discussion of our policy options must begin with a clear understanding of what our government is actually doing and what it is really proposing to do next. The aim here is to enhance the understanding of both policymakers and the interested lay public by exposing doublespeak.
- Via Pharyngula, we learn that the Rev. Dr. has been doing research on the ‘denialist’:
I’ve been thinking about putting together a comprehensive description of “the denialist.” You know, the type of person that refuses to believe in facts when they are indisputable. Topics of denial include the holocaust, HIV causing AIDS, global warming/climate change, evolution, the necessity of animals in research, cigarettes causing cancer, embryonic stem cells aren’t as good as adult stem cells etc…
As far as I can tell though, no matter what their issue, the denialists share some typical features (some of the features are often cited as signs of bad science in situations like helping judges determine quality of expert testimony). I’ve identified 5 features which I think are most common to these types of argument and most generalizeable to the phenomenon of denialism: Conspiracy, Selectivity, The Fake Expert, Impossible Expectations, and Metaphor.
- Orcinus provides graphic evidence that Republican scare tactics have not changed in more than fifty years.
- Scientists and Engineers for America, or SEFORA, is a new advocacy group that aims to give scientific knowledge and understanding a lead role in political discourse:
The principal role of the science and technology community is to advance human understanding. But there are times when this is not enough. Scientists and engineers have a right, indeed an obligation, to enter the political debate when the nation’s leaders systematically ignore scientific evidence and analysis, put ideological interests ahead of scientific truths, suppress valid scientific evidence and harass and threaten scientists for speaking honestly about their research.
Productivity guru Merlin Mann boils it down:
1. Reduce noise – We all have innumerable inboxes, interruptions, and distractions that are part of work and life — you can’t change that. What you can do is get more hard-nosed about the elective diversions that you invite into your world. Cancel a subscription for a magazine you never read or sign off an annoying mailing list. Needles get easier to find when you aren’t constantly adding new hay to the stack.
2. Write things down – Ever find a piece of paper in your office with seven digits on it? You know it’s a phone number, but whose? Get ruthless about jotting down ephemeral information if you’ll need to recall it later. Remember that your brain is a creative organ with limitless creative possibilities — but it makes a really crummy whiteboard.
3. Focus on action – My favorite productivity book, “Getting Things Done” highlights how anything you want to do in life eventually comes down to intentional physical activity — even if it’s something as mundane as “take out trash” and “call Mom.” Learn the habit of planning your world around action verbs rather than fuzzy nouns. “Implement Strategy” is not a task; it’s a project. “Call Jim about strategy” is a very do-able “next action” that keeps the ball in motion.
4. Get out of your inbox – Many of us are habituated to living out of our email inbox, voicemail, and the other “in baskets” of our lives. Instead, try to set aside regular, periodic times when you trawl for the new content in your life — then get back to work! Inboxes are delivery systems, not workspaces. The real work is happening in your brain and practically every other place that’s not an inbox. Stop allowing yourself to be brow-beaten by the latest, loudest, or most dramatic item that’s landed in your world.
5. Get pickier – You are the sole person in your life who gets to decide where your time and attention can go. Take that responsibility seriously by not wasting time on junk. You know in your heart what’s really important to you — does the current direction of your time and attention reflect that? Is “kid hugging” time where it should be in proportion to “Blackberry checking” time? Be mindful at the highest level about where you focus your energy, and always strive not to squander it on undeserving activities.
I know I could stand to improve with respect to each and every one of these techniques. There are probably very few among us who could not.
- Five years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, RJ Eskow reminds us that…
More Americans have now died in Iraq than died on 9/11. Iraq didn’t attack us on that day, and our misguided policy there has now taken more American lives than Al Qaeda. Here are the numbers: 3,015 Americans have died in Iraq as of September 9. 2,666 of these were military deaths and 349 were civilians.
- Adam Kotsko explores the rhetorical shenanigans of the right (via A Blog Around the Clock):
There are some central rhetorical strategies I’ve noticed that seem to be closely associated with the right wing. In the spirit, though not precisely the style, of Mark Kaplan’s Notes on Rhetoric, I’d like to catalogue a few of them here.
- Video games have evolved since the days of Pong, and so have the purposes that those games can serve. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reviews the serious uses of games (via 3 Quarks Daily):
The serious games moniker provides a catchall for simulations that transcend traditional video and computer game fodder (gunplay, slick cars, and sports) and delve into heftier issues (responding to genocide, promoting democracy, and training first responders). Already neatly segmented, serious games exist for science, defense, health, conflict resolution, and social change. Their sophistication, target audience, and message vary. FAS developed Immune Attack to allow high school students to experience the challenge of defending the human body against invading antigens; PeaceMaker, a game created by students at Carnegie Mellon University, lets Palestinians and Israelis switch roles to better understand each other’s plight; and the U.N. World Food Programme’s Food Force teaches kids about the difficulties of delivering aid to the developing world.
- As always, Tom Tomorrow nails the rightwing nuttiness of The Path to 9/11, which of course bills itself as The absolutely true story of Bill Clinton and 9/11!
- Ed Brayton points to a post at the Cato Institute blog showing that six years ago, while Clinton was still President, the hysterics over at Free Republic were terrified that wiretap warrants granted by FISA would facilitate “absolute tyranny” and a “shadow government”:
Isn’t it fascinating how when the tables turn, they really turn? When Clinton was in office, this was an unprecedented grab for power, using a secret court to rubber stamp their destruction of our freedoms. Now, that secret court is an obstructionist body that stands in the way of Bush as he tries to protect our freedom, and anyone who questions that is obviously a communist and a lover of terrorists.
- Juan Cole reports that a prominent Islamic cleric in Cairo has declared that the Islamic religious concept of “jihad” is not to be construed as permitting aggression:
Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports that the Grand Sheikh of al-Azhar Seminary in Cairo, perhaps the foremost Sunni Arab authority, has issued a statement that jihad or “holy war” was legislated in Islam for the defense of the persons and honor of Muslims, and is not to be used as a threat or a form of aggression against the innocent.
...
Grand Sheikh Tantawi denied that there is any clash of civilizations or religions, affirmed that members of the religions cooperate with one another, and mere difference in religion does not prevent that.
He quoted the Quran verse, “There is no compulsion in religion,” saying that it demonstrates that freedom of belief is delegated (to human beings), and any practices that contradict that principle are considered departures from true Islam.
- "Faith In America, Inc. is a national organization dedicated to the emancipation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from bigotry disguised as religious truth. Such religion-based bigotry has been used throughout history to justify discrimination against other groups of people, including women, racial and ethnic minorities, and people of minority religious beliefs. Faith In America is committed to ending this misuse of religion."
- Robert L. Park explains The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science.
- Rocky Anderson, mayor of Salt Lake City, served the truth straight up in a tall frosty glass at a recent protest rally:
Blind faith in bad leaders is not patriotism.
The full text of his speech is available [PDF], as is a short video of the rally. Anderson was interviewed afterwards by Keith Olbermann on Countdown.
A patriot does not tell people who are intensely concerned about their country to just sit down and be quiet; to refrain from speaking out in the name of politeness or for the sake of being a good host; to show slavish, blind obedience and deference to a dishonest, war-mongering, human-rights-violating president.
That is not a patriot. Rather, that person is a sycophant. That person is a member of a frightening culture of obedience – a culture where falling in line with authority is more important than choosing what is right, even if it is not easy, safe, or popular. And, I suspect, that person is afraid – afraid we are right, afraid of the truth (even to the point of denying it), afraid he or she has put in with an oppressive, inhumane, regime that does not respect the laws and traditions of our country, and that history will rank as the worst presidency our nation has ever had to endure.
- I wrote earlier about the need for some perspective in the discussion of terrorism. grumpypilgrim at Dangerous Intersection makes a very cogent point about the terror hysteria promoted by the right:
After reading the Cato report about terrorism, I suddenly realized why Republicans have been so gung-ho to declare “war” against terrorism: because it’s the easiest war in town. The odds that any American will die from a terrorist attack are microscopic, so what better thing to declare “war” against than something that is extremely unlikely to happen anyway? It’s a bit like declaring war against fatal tooth decay or war against bathtub drownings.
Much, much harder (politically, socially and scientifically) is to declare war against the things that actually kill Americans in large numbers: cigarettes, obesity (heart disease, stroke, etc.), auto accidents, drunk driving, cancer, etc. Unlike terrorism, many of these causes of death, though significantly more lethal than terrorism, have many large and powerful corporations advocating (and paying very large bribes…er, I mean, political contributions) on their behalf: tobacco companies, fast food and soft drink companies, auto makers, liquor distributors and tavern owners, etc. Compared to getting tobacco off store shelves, McDonalds to serve more healthy food, or drunk drivers off our roads, declaring “war” against a tiny number of terrorists in Third-World countries is trivially easy.
- Over at Daily Kos, Bill in Portland has compiled a comprehensive timeline that shows, without doubt, that the Bush administration sold the war in Iraq to the American people by conflating Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Now, Bush has turned around and lied to the American people about having used the 9/11 attacks to sell the war:
...nobody has ever suggested in this administration that Saddam Hussein ordered the attack.
- Sadly, Shakespeare’s Sister seems to be right on the money with her jeremiad on the self-centeredness of far too many Americans:
Nothing seems to matter to Americans until it directly affects them, and, by then, it’s almost always too late.
Instead, they will suffer all manner of indignity being imposed upon others to preserve themselves. Wiretapping other people without a warrant is fine. Holding other people indefinitely without access to an attorney or due process is fine. Torturing other people is fine. Maligning other people for dissent is fine. Disenfranchising other voters is fine. Rewarding corporations for moving jobs filled by other people offshore is fine. Destroying the environment for other generations is fine. Cutting federal funding for programs that benefit other people is fine. Denying equal rights to other people is fine. Using other people as a wedge issue is fine. Denying bodily autonomy to other people is fine. It’s all fair play as long as it’s not being done to me, and you tell me it’s keeping me safe and happy.
- Chris Hallquist explains what he believes in One humanist’s manifesto:
The following is in response to a couple of comments to the effect that I do nothing but attack religion. It is a simple statement of what I am for. Every one of these things, I should point out, is threatened by religious fundamentalism. That’s why I spend so much time talking about the things I do.
- I believe in reason.
- I believe in being honest with oneself.
- I believe in improving on accepted beliefs.
- I believe in having the freedom to seek the truth without worrying that the evidence will point to the “wrong” conclusion.
- I believe in having the determination to make a careful investigation and not accept the first answer that is presented.
- I believe in having the courage to face unpleasant realities.
There is more, and a lively discussion in the comments.
- Why are Iraqi civilians dying at the hands of US soldiers? Because at least some commanders don’t see anything out of the ordinary when such deaths occur:
The Marine officer who commanded the battalion involved in the Haditha killings last November did not consider the deaths of 24 Iraqis, many of them women and children, unusual and did not initiate an inquiry, according to a sworn statement he gave to military investigators in March.
“I thought it was very sad, very unfortunate, but at the time, I did not suspect any wrongdoing from my Marines,” Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, commander of the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Marines, said in the statement.
“I did not have any reason to believe that this was anything other than combat action,” he added.
Chessani’s statement, provided to The Washington Post by a person sympathetic to the enlisted Marines involved in the case, helps explain why there was no investigation of the incident at the time, despite the large number of civilian deaths, and why it took several months for the U.S. military chain of command to react to the event.
It also provides a glimpse of the mind-set of a commander on the scene who, despite the carnage, did not stop to consider whether Marines had crossed a line and killed defenseless civilians.
It suggests that top U.S. commanders have been unsuccessful in urging subordinate leaders to focus less on killing insurgents and more on winning the support of the Iraqi people, especially by providing them security.
- Anyone who has watched even a few minutes of the nauseating product of the cable news channels this past week now knows just how fond those outlets are of dead girls. Dead girls make for dynamite ratings… but only if they are dead, blonde, and American:
But although I mind this pollution of the air waves with something that is not, whatever it is, news, the main thing I mind is the racism.
The case of Abeer al-Janabi, the little fourteen-year old Iraqi girl who was allegedly raped and killed after being stalked by a US serviceman would never be given the wall to wall coverage treatment.
That is frankly because the victim was not a blonde, blue-eyed American, but a black-eyed, brunette Iraqi.
- And it’s news only if those beautiful dead girls did not die while serving with the American military in Iraq. Wouldn’t want to remind the unwashed masses of the meatgrinder that Bushco lied us into:
We hear a lot about beautiful dead girls in the US media. Here are some that we haven’t heard about much. Their smiles haven’t been plastered over the supermarket tabloid press, and they’re not likely to be. One of the reasons is that they don’t fit the popular stereotype of beautiful-woman-as-helpless-victim. Another reason is that many people still haven’t focused on the reality of women in the military. Even here on DKos, I see comments about “sons and fathers” who have been killed and maimed. Almost NO MENTION of women in the military.
- You gotta love in-your-face science:
A more sublime T-shirt cannot be imagined.
- David Byrne reviews the film Jesus Camp:
There were some perfect sound bites — at one point Pastor Fischer instructs the little ones that they should be willing to die for Christ, and the little ones obediently agree. She may even use the word martyr, which has a shocking echo in the Middle East. I can see future suicide bombers for Jesus — the next step will be learning to fly planes into buildings. Of course, the grownups would say, “Oh no, we’re not like them” — but they admit that the principal difference is simply that “We’re right.”
...
They want to turn the U.S. into the “Christian” version of Iran or Saudi Arabia. A theocracy. The separation between church and state, already shaky with Bush in charge, is under full frontal assault by this bunch — and they are well organized, too. The megachurches tell their parishioners who to vote for, what judges to support, letters to write, and where they should stand on the issues. Well, we all do this to some extent — even in casual chats with friends we attempt to deduce and arrive at a consensus of opinion; a sloppy democratic give-and-take on any number of subjects often gives way to agreement. But this is top-down messaging — no discussion allowed. There’s a scene in the Colorado Springs megachurch run by the Preacher who talks with Bush once a week — same deal as with the kids, only most of the attendees are pliant adults.
Hizbullah is a poor people’s movement. It could have been moderated over time, and its adherents could have been pulled into more moderate, mainstream politics if the world had devoted itself to seeing that the Lebanese economy flourished and its government was gradually strengthened. That was the achievement of the Lebanese and regional political elite in the 1990s. If the Israelis had not aggressively occupied the Lebanese South, there would have been no Hizbullah. If the Israelis had left ten years earlier, Hizbullah would have disarmed when all the other militias did. Hizbullah could have been nurtured out of existence if Lebanon had been helped.
Now, extremism has been strengthened. Lebanon is abject, on its knees, stricken with a plague inflicted on it by Bush and Olmert. The abject, the humiliated, the impoverished do not, as Bush and Olmert fondly imagine to themselves, lie down and let the mighty walk over them. They blow up skyscrapers.
The idea that the whole Eastern Mediterranean had to be polluted, that the Christian Lebanese economy had to be destroyed for the next decade or two, that 900,000 persons had to be rendered homeless, that a whole country had to be pounded into rubble because some Lebanese Shiites voted for Hizbullah in the last election, putting 12 in parliament, is obscene. Bush’s glib ignorance is destroying our world. Our children will suffer for it, and perhaps our grandchildren after them.
- After reading this exhaustively researched (and probably incomplete) list of factual errors and outright lies in Ann Coulter’s Godless, the natural reaction is: “Holy crap — is there any doubt now that Ann Coulter is nothing but a lying hack?”
- Al Gore is training volunteers to give his presentation of An Inconvenient Truth around the country.
- Amazing. There is a report that just before the invasion of Iraq, the Fratboy-in-Chief had to be hipped to the fact that there’s more than one flavor of Islam:
A year after his “Axis of Evil” speech before the U.S. Congress, President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans, one of whom became postwar Iraq’s first representative to the United States. The three described what they thought would be the political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. During their conversation with the President, [Former Ambassador to Croatia Peter] Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites.
Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam — to which the President allegedly responded, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”
- “Artist Brian Springer spent a year scouring the airwaves with a satellite dish grabbing back channel news feeds not intended for public consumption. The result of his research is SPIN, one of the most insightful films ever made about the mechanics of how television is used as a tool of social control to distort and limit the American public’s perception of reality.
Take the time to watch it from beginning to end and you’ll never look at TV reporting the same again.”
- The recently established happy|agenda keeps an eye on the antics of the religious right in Ohio:
In our great state, elected officials and candidates for elected office must be held accountable when they embrace religious radicalism. We believe the manipulation of religious texts to further extremist political agendas is a threat to all Ohioans. Ohio’s voters deserve to know with whom candidates are aligned so that they can make informed decisions in the voting booth.
- The incongruously-named “Justice” Department wants to exempt US military personnel from the law — because they might be, you know, actually guilty of crimes:
An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts.
Senior officials have responded by drafting legislation that would grant U.S. personnel involved in the terrorism fight new protections against prosecution for past violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996. That law criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions governing conduct in war and threatens the death penalty if U.S.-held detainees die in custody from abusive treatment.
In light of a recent Supreme Court ruling that the international Conventions apply to the treatment of detainees in the terrorism fight, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has spoken privately with Republican lawmakers about the need for such “protections,” according to someone who heard his remarks last week.
- Steve Pavlina explains how to discover your life purpose in about 20 minutes.
- Here (via Backup Brain) is a handy list of 50 Easy Questions to Ask Any Republican:
6. When Dick Cheney and the oil company and energy executives met in private to plan America’s energy policy, how much of their goal was to benefit consumers?
7. Do you believe in the President’s call for an Era of Personal Responsibility?
8. Since Republicans control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, how personally responsible are they for conditions in America today?
...
16. Do you like the government collecting personal data on you without a warrant?
17. How much money do you have in your bank account, stocks and investments?
18. What’s your partner’s favorite sex position?
19. If you have nothing to hide, why aren’t you answering?
- Marc Cooper asks hard questions about the current conflagration in the Middle East… questions many on the right would prefer were left unasked, one suspects:
Warfare is not about keeping score, or getting even. It’s about the lives and deaths of real people. And thought it’s a cliche, most of them are just like me and you. War should never be a question of what is justified. But rather what is the minimum amount of violence absolutely necessary to achieve whatever that “just” goal might be. Does Hezbollah have a right to camp out in Lebanon and hurl missiles at Israel? Of course not. Hezbollah must be rolled back and disarmed, but not by flattening Lebanon and enflaming the entire Arab world.
Likewise, one might ask: Do Israelis have the right to continue occupying Palestinian territory that — frankly — just doesn’t belong to them? Does Israel have the right to continue an occupation that deprives Palestinians of their sovereignty, their dignity and their equal rights? Of course not. A two-state solution must be reached and the Israeli domination of the Palestinians must come to an end, but not by supporting Palestinian suicide bombers nor any other atrocity committed against the Israeli civilian population.
I’m sorry to be so blunt, but only a fool — yes, a fool — would watch unperturbed as match after match is tossed into the sea of gasoline that is the Middle East. If Israel’s retaliation, which now includes wholesale bombardment of Lebanese cities driving hundreds of thousands from their homes, morphs into a wide, regional war will anyone be consoled ten years from now by standing on the smoking ruins and simply saying, “Oh well, you know, the Hezbollah are the ones who started it.”
- Gotta love those Christians… they got rules for everything, even assaulting your own children (via BoingBoing):
Parents are told that smacking can be a “10-to-15-minute process” and that if a child reacts angrily, such as by slamming doors or “pouting”, they should be smacked again.
Cool. When I next encounter a foolish Christian, do I get to smack him around for 10 to 15 minutes… and beat him again when he dares to complain?
“Smacking is meant to drive the foolishness, the sinful manifestations, out of the child’s personality so that they do not become permanent fixtures,” [the ‘guide to smacking’] says.
- Why do the small minds on the Right assume an air of moral superiority when it is so blatantly clear that they are moral cripples? Our good friend Justin H at RightontheRight.com tells us that because UN observers were not able to stop Hezbollah from firing missiles at Israel, it is perfectly all right to kill the observers:
If UNIFIL had done their job, this conflict would never have been allowed to escalate, and Hezbollah would of never been allowed to mass this type of force. You have to realize, that if Hezbollah wasn’t firing at UNIFIL (and they weren’t), UNIFIL must of not been a threat to Hezbollah. That means they weren’t doing their jobs. Bombing an observation post may not of been the most tactful thing, but hey, even Reagan bombed the French Embassy when we went into Libya. Sometimes a message has to get across…
What Justin is advocating, of course, is homicide as a form of communication. Golly, what a great concept! That’s the kind of morally corrupt thinking that got us into the mess we’re in now.
- Human Rights Watch has published the findings of its Detainee Abuse and Accountability Project:
In order to collect and analyze allegations of abuse of detainees in U.S. custody in Afghanistan, Iraq, and at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, and to assess what actions, if any, the U.S. government has taken in response to credible allegations, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law, Human Rights Watch and Human Rights First have jointly undertaken a Detainee Abuse and Accountability Project (DAA Project). The Project tracks abuse allegations and records investigations, disciplinary measures, or criminal prosecutions that are linked to them… Available evidence indicates that U.S. military and civilian agencies do not appear to have adequately investigated numerous cases of alleged torture and other mistreatment. Of the hundreds of allegations of abuse collected by the DAA Project, only about half appear to have been properly investigated. In numerous cases, military investigators appear to have closed investigations prematurely or to have delayed their resolution. In many cases, the military has simply failed to open investigations, even in cases where credible allegations have been made.
via MetaFilter
- Is it even mathematically possible that the NSA’s illegal wiretaps can be effective at catching terrorists? Not according to an analysis by Professor Floyd Rudmin:
To know if mass surveillance will work, Bayes’ theorem requires three estimations:
- The base-rate for terrorists, i.e. what proportion of the population are terrorists;
- The accuracy rate, i.e., the probability that real terrorists will be identified by NSA;
- The misidentification rate, i.e., the probability that innocent citizens will be misidentified by NSA as terrorists.
- Charlotte Aldebron, at the tender age of 12, understood idolatry better than many adults when she wrote "What the American Flag Stands For":
The American flag stands for the fact that cloth can be very important. It is against the law to let the flag touch the ground or to leave the flag flying when the weather is bad. The flag has to be treated with respect. You can tell just how important this cloth is because when you compare it to people, it gets much better treatment. Nobody cares if a homeless person touches the ground. A homeless person can lie all over the ground all night long without anyone picking him up, folding him neatly and sheltering him from the rain.
via Daily Kos
School children have to pledge loyalty to this piece of cloth every morning. No one has to pledge loyalty to justice and equality and human decency. No one has to promise that people will get a fair wage, or enough food to eat, or affordable medicine, or clean water, or air free of harmful chemicals. But we all have to promise to love a rectangle of red, white, and blue cloth.
Betsy Ross would be quite surprised to see how successful her creation has become. But Thomas Jefferson would be disappointed to see how little of the flag’s real meaning remains.
- The ultraright bloggers scream over and over that Islam is hellbent on the destruction of Western civilization and values. How, then, can they explain the existence of very real efforts, from within the faith, to change how Islam is interpreted and practiced? These efforts are discussed in the article Islam’s reformers?
In Britain and the US, we have seen the emergence of a number of Islamic “rationalists” who are building a case for Muslim societies to change from within, and for Muslim minorities in western countries to change how they think of themselves in relation to wider society. They include the British-Pakistani writer and thinker Ziauddin Sardar, the philosophers Tariq Ramadan (Swiss-Egyptian) and AbdolKarim Soroush (Iranian). From the US, change is being advocated by the evangelist Hamza Yusuf Hanson, who regards himself as more traditionalist than reformer.
- Larry Johnson puts the threat of terrorism into perspective, comparing it to the threats we faced during the Cold War:
While terrorism from radical Islamic extremism is a threat we must take seriously, we are kidding ourselves to place it on par with the military and nuclear threat we faced during the Cold War with the Soviet Union…
In retrospect, Bush and his allies are right about one thing—the threat of terrorism from Islamic extremists is unprecedented. However, it is unprecedented in the sense that we have allowed our fear of the unknown to justify torture, illegal detention, a clamp down on civil liberties, and ignoring international accords, like the Geneva Convention.
Should we ignore terrorism? No. We do face a serious threat from radical Islamists. They are a fervent and uncompromising lot. Fortunately, they are not ubiquitous nor do they represent a majority opinion among Muslims around the world. While jihadist radicals have flocked to Iraq (and been killed and captured with regularity) they have had limited success gaining traction and sustaining operations around the world.
- The Army has published an updated edition of its counterinsurgency manual [PDF]:
A counterinsurgency campaign is, as described in this manual, a mix of offensive, defensive, and stability operations, conducted along multiple lines of operation. It requires Soldiers and Marines to employ a mix of both familiar combat tasks and skills more often associated with nonmilitary agencies, with the balance between them varying depending on the local situation. This is not easy. Leaders at all levels must adjust their approach constantly, ensuring that their elements are ready each day to be greeted with a handshake or a hand grenade, to take on missions only infrequently practiced until recent years at our combat training centers, to be nation builders as well as warriors, to help re-establish institutions and local security forces, to assist in the rebuilding of infrastructure and basic services, and to facilitate the establishment of local governance and the rule of law. The list of such tasks is a long one and involves extensive coordination and cooperation with a myriad of intergovernmental, indigenous, and international agencies. Indeed, the responsibilities of leaders in a counterinsurgency campaign are daunting – and the discussions in this manual endeavor to alert them to the challenges of such campaigns and to suggest general approaches for grappling with those challenges.
Conducting a successful counterinsurgency campaign thus requires a flexible, adaptive force led by agile, well-informed, culturally astute leaders. It is our hope that this manual provides the necessary guidelines to succeed in such a campaign, in operations that, inevitably, are exceedingly difficult and complex. Our Soldiers and Marines deserve nothing less.
- By way of BoingBoing, and just for my buddy BD, here’s some Japanese footage of the extremely rare Indonesian coelacanth, a species of fish thought to have gone extinct millions of years ago:
- Further evidence has come to light that the Bush administration cherry-picked the intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq:
Iraq WMD red flags ignored, ex-CIA aide tells paper
A former CIA officer says he made repeated efforts to alert top agency officials to problems with an Iraqi defector’s claims about the country’s mobile biological weapons labs but he was ignored, the Washington Post reported on Sunday.
CIA officer Tyler Drumheller said he personally crossed out a reference to the labs from a classified draft of a U.N. speech by Secretary of State Colin Powell because he recognized the source as a defector, code-named Curveball, who was suspected to be mentally unstable and a liar.
Drumheller told the Post he was surprised when a few days later, on February 5, 2003, Powell told the U.N. Security Council that “we have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and rails.”
- Larry Johnson points out that the Bush administration’s whining about recent revelations in the New York Times ebar the unmistakable stench of hypocrisy:
Bullshit alert! After watching George Bush and Dick Cheney weep and wail over the “damage” done by the New York Times for reporting that financial data is being dumped into the CIA as part of an effort to find terrorist networks, I kept waiting for Darryl Hannah to pop up and say, “Live, from New York, it’s Saturday Night”. Does George have Alzheimer’s Disease? Has he forgotten that he used to love the New York Times?...
[W]ho can forget that Vice President Cheney instructed his Chief of Staff, the intrepid Scooter Libby, to leak misleading portions of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate to the New York Times’ Judith Miller. NPR’s David Greene reported that:
Former vice presidential aide Lewis Libby, indicted for leaking a CIA agent’s identity, has testified that any classified information he may have leaked to a reporter was authorized by President Bush through the vice president. The claim is included in court documents released Thursday.
Libby told a grand jury that classified information he may have leaked to a New York Times reporter was authorized for use by President Bush, acting through Vice President Dick Cheney. Lewis is awaiting trial on charges that he lied to the grand jury, which was investigating the leak of the agent’s identity to the media.We should also remember that the New York Times was not the only friendly outlet for planting “news”. White House officials turned to Time Magazine and the Chicago Sun Times in shopping information about Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA officer. For this White House, leaking classified information that damages national security is okay as long as it can be used to save the President’s political reputation.
- MarkCC analyzes the latest lie from Powerline about the ticket sales for ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. I’d only add this: Suppose the ticket sales for ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ were, in fact, dropping. Does that prove anything at all about the factual content of the movie?
- In a related item, the US Senate is using taxpayer dollars to fund a disinformation campaign about ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.
- Media Matters has a resource page collecting their articles about Ann Coulter.
- Ed Brayton provides an overview of the royal fisking that Ann Coulter is being subjected to regarding her latest attempt to sell books by pandering to the ‘intelligent design’ crowd:
The Panda’s Thumb crew decided to take her 4 chapters on evolution and dissect them, picking out some of the more absurd claims and showing, in great detail, why she’s wrong about them. Suffice to say that there are enough claims that are not just weak but stunningly dishonest and wide of the mark that this could take weeks to complete…
On the first claim, that there is no evidence for evolution, Myers correctly points to the scientific literature that contains hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of articles about various aspects of evolution. That represents the life’s work of tens of thousands of scientists, difficult and painstaking work that slowly and steadily adds to our understanding of evolution. Of course, Ann has it backwards. The issue is not whether there is evidence that supports evolution, but whether there is evidence that is explained by evolution. Theories, after all, are explanations for data…
The Coulter chapters get much, much worse. As Ian Musgrave notes, she repeats practically every old creationist canard in existence, including the claim that there are no transitional fossils. Again, why would an ID advocate deny the existence of transitional fossils if ID is genuinely consistent with guided common descent? One would expect there to be transitional fossils if that is true, just as we would expect them to be there is unguided common descent is true. The answer seems obvious to me: because they really don’t mean it when they say that ID is okay with common descent, despite the monumental evidence for it.
- Greg Sargent points out that the right only cares about the victims of terrorism when said victims are politically useful:
I’ve asked this before, but what is it about the relatives of people killed by terrorists that these wingnuts hate so much? Recall that Ann Coulter smeared the widows of 9/11 victims and that many righty bloggers smeared the father of Nick Berg, who was beheaded in Iraq. Their sin, of course, was that they criticized America and George Bush.
Let me put this as clearly as I can: To the likes of Hinderaker, the pain of those who lost loved ones to this war only matters to the extent that the bereaved allow their grief to be used to prop up the war effort and Bush himself. If the bereaved relatives don’t allow their grief to be used in this fashion, their sacrifice and loss no longer matter a whit—they’re not to be pitied or empathized with, but scorned and humiliated as brutally as possible. Despicable.
- And, just because we all need a laugh now and again, I present Victor Navone’s classic animation, "Alien Song":
- Stars and Stripes tells us that the Iraqi army is hemorrhaging:
Iraqi soldiers in Al Anbar province are leaving their army in droves, draining much-needed manpower from fledgling Iraqi security forces and preventing U.S. troops from reducing troop strength in the volatile region, U.S. and Iraqi military officials say.
Lousy living conditions, bad food and failure to receive regular pay are the main reasons behind the exodus, which is running at least several hundred soldiers a month, the officials say.
- Gretchen Rubin provides tips on losing weight without dieting. (Thanks to Chris Brogan at lifehack.org.)
8. Don’t eat off other people’s plates. Consider that two swallows of a chocolate milkshake has 72 calories, and four fast-food French fries have 42 calories. It adds up.
9. Keep a bowl of sliced red and yellow peppers in the fridge.
10. Know your weaknesses, and avoid them. My weakness is anything in mini form. I wouldn’t dream of eating a whole Tootsie Roll bar, but I’d eat 50 mini-Tootsie Rolls without blinking.
- Rude Pundit is digging up evidence of repeated plagiarism by Ann Coulter. Raw Story has some info on this, as well. And Gawker has found a Boston Globe column from five years ago suggesting that Coulter has been plagiarizing other writers for quite some time now.
- And while we’re at it, Media Matters suggests some questions that could be asked of Ann Coulter, as the… um… irregularities in her narrative are explored.
- Juan Cole reports that according to Our Sainted President, we are near victory in Iraq — just as long as you redefine victory loosely enough:
Bush tried to define down victory to a general ability of people to go about their lives. He said it was unreasonable to expect to end “all violence.” But Mr. Bush, no one suggested that you end “all violence.” The goal here is to win the guerrilla war.
During a guerrilla war, people always go about their daily lives, except when a bomb is going off in their specific neighborhood. So if the goal is that Iraqis should be able to buy bread and go to school and drive to work, most of them have that already most of the time. It is just that little problem of some 12,000 people a year being blown up, assassinated, or beheaded and their heads wrapped in cellophane and stored in banana crates along the side of the road that remains.
In other words, Bush defines the main weapon in the guerrilla war, carbombings, as ineradicable, and declares that he can win that war without actually ending its main weapon. It is a cheap trick of rhetoric, a prestidigitation of the lips. “These are not the ‘droids you’re looking for.”
- Some excellent satire from fafblog:
Run for your lives – America is under attack! Just days ago three prisoners at Guantanamo Bay committed suicide in a savage assault on America’s freedom to not care about prisoner suicides! Oh sure, the “Blame Atrocities First” crowd will tell you these prisoners were “driven to despair,” that they “had no rights,” that they were “held and tortured without due process or judicial oversight in a nightmarish mockery of justice.” But what they won’t tell you is that they only committed suicide as part of a diabolical ruse to trick the world into thinking our secret torture camp is the kind of secret torture camp that drives its prisoners to commit suicide! This fiendish attempt to slander the great American institution of the gulag is nothing less than an act of asymmetrical warfare against the United States – a noose is just a suicide bomb with a very small blast radius, people! – and when faced with a terrorist attack, America must respond. Giblets demands immediate retaliatory airstrikes on depressed Muslim torture victims throughout the mideast!
- The evidence continues to mount that the Republican party’s single goal is the accumulation of power by any means, legal or illegal:
The latest sign that Republicans have an election-year strategy to shut down voter registration drives comes from Ohio. As the state gears up for a very competitive election season this fall, its secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, has put in place “emergency” regulations that could hit voter registration workers with criminal penalties for perfectly legitimate registration practices. The rules are so draconian they could shut down registration drives in Ohio.
Mr. Blackwell, who also happens to be the Republican candidate for governor this year, has a history of this sort of behavior. In 2004, he instructed county boards of elections to reject any registrations on paper of less than 80-pound stock — about the thickness of a postcard. His order was almost certainly illegal, and he retracted it after he came under intense criticism. It was, however, in place long enough to get some registrations tossed out.
This year, Mr. Blackwell’s office has issued rules and materials that appear to require that paid registration workers, and perhaps even volunteers, personally take the forms they collect to an election office. Organizations that run registration drives generally have the people who register voters bring the forms back to supervisors, who can then review them for errors. Under Mr. Blackwell’s edict, everyone involved could be committing a crime. Mr. Blackwell’s rules also appear to prohibit people who register voters from sending the forms in by mail. That rule itself may violate federal elections law.
- Janet Stemwedel (aka Dr. Free-ride) reviews two short guides to the techniques of critical thinking:
Today, I’m going to give you my review of two little books that appeared in my faculty mailbox, both from The Foundation for Critical Thinking. The first is The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools, the second The Thinker’s Guide to Fallacies: The Art of Mental Trickery and Manipulation, both written by Richard Paul and Linda Elder.
- "Can how we think change our brains in a way that will make life more joyful and less stressful? " The thinkers at the Mind & Life Institute Mission and Organization aim to find out. Gretchen Rubin at The Happiness Project has another approach: she’s going to spend a year delving into ways to be happy, wherever she finds them. And, courtesy of Cognitive Daily comes a happiness test from the BBC.
- The wish is granted! Long live Jambi!:
After being shuttered for more than 15 years, the doors to “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” are being reopened. The Emmy Award-winning show will get new life on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim lineup, which will air all 45 original episodes beginning July 10, company officials announced Monday.
- At Martini Republic, Alex explains the latest fearmongering meme from the ultra-right: we will “literally lose America” if we withdraw from Iraq. As Alex points out, “the cause and effect is obvious — if you’re a twit on acid”.
- Ava Lowrey is a young peace activist and creator of dozens of animations, most dealing with the war in Iraq. Her site is called Peace Takes Courage. How does one so young become so wise?
- There is good reason to doubt that the Bush administration is truly serious about pursuing a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear situation:
In the end, said one former official who has kept close tabs on the debate, “it came down to conv