Archive Page 2
I thought this was pretty funny:
ABC News: EXCLUSIVE: Barbara Walters Interviews Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
Chavez refuses to endorse an American presidential candidate for 2008, saying that his support would be a burden for the candidate. He does, however, express great confidence that if he could run for president in the United States, he would have no trouble winning and that he could win over any right wing candidate within six months.
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David Brooks, my new favorite columnist, makes a great case for staying in Iraq until the job is done. Basically he criticizes those who are for immediate withdrawal for their naive position of “if we leave the Iraqi government will buck up and take control.” As if us leaving would infuse them with some sudden ability to reign in the chaos.
This is just a small portion of the argument.
The Long Exit – New York Times
One serious position is heard on the left: that there’s nothing more we can effectively do in Iraq. We’ve spent four years there and have not been able to quell the violence. If the place is headed for civil war, there’s nothing we can do to stop it, and we certainly don’t want to get caught in the middle. The only reasonable option is to get out now before more Americans die.The second serious option is heard on the right. We have to do everything we can to head off catastrophe, and it’s too soon to give up hope. The surge is already producing some results. Bombing deaths are down by at least a third. Execution-style slayings have been cut in half. An oil agreement has been reached, tribes in Anbar Province are chasing Al Qaeda, cross-sectarian political blocs are emerging. We should perhaps build on the promise of the surge with regional diplomacy or a soft partition, but we certainly should not set timetables for withdrawal.
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Where did the Republicans go?
I definitely don’t agree with everything in this article, but the gist of it, that the Republican part of Regan is not the Republican part of today, definitely rings true to me.
How The Right Went Wrong — TIME
But everything that Reagan said in 1985 about “the other side” could easily apply to the conservatives of 2007. They are handcuffed to a political party that looks unsettlingly like the Democrats did in the 1980s, one that is more a collection of interest groups than ideas, recognizable more by its campaign tactics than its philosophy. The principles that propelled the movement have either run their course, or run aground, or been abandoned by Reagan’s legatees.
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It’s a fairly negative view of the world but an interesting take nonetheless.
Hurrah for Capitalism, Its Many Warts and All – New York Times
In his novel “I Married a Communist,” Philip Roth writes: “He tells you capitalism is a dog-eat-dog system. What is life if not a dog-eat-dog system? This is a system that is in tune with life. And because it is, it works.“Look, everything the Communists say about capitalism is true, and everything the capitalists say about Communism is true. The difference is, our system works because it’s based on the truth about people’s selfishness, and theirs doesn’t because it’s based on a fairy tale about people’s brotherhood. It’s such a crazy fairy tale they’ve got to take people and put them in Siberia in order to get them to believe it.”
The Soviet Union is now gone, consumed by its contradictions. But Chávez is still around with his socialist slogans and his invective against “the most cynical, most murderous empire that has existed in all of history.” Sitting on a mountain of oil revenue, much of it earned through unabated sales to the United States, the Venezuelan caudillo inveighs against the American capitalist monster.
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This time a highly accomplished French socialist scientist who was one of the original proponents of the theory.
Dr. Allegre now sees global warming as over-hyped and an environmental concern of second rank.His break with what he now sees as environmental cant on climate change came in September, in an article entitled “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” in l’ Express, the French weekly. His article cited evidence that Antarctica is gaining ice and that Kilimanjaro’s retreating snow caps, among other global-warming concerns, come from natural causes. “The cause of this climate change is unknown,” he states matter of factly. There is no basis for saying, as most do, that the “science is settled.”
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Madness from Russia and Germany
Wow. Examples of insanity in the ‘civilized’ world.
Russian Expert Shot Near D.C.-Area Home
An expert on Russian intelligence was critically injured in a shooting in front of his suburban Washington home, authorities said.The shooting of Paul Joyal, 53, came days after he accused the Russian government of involvement in the poisoning of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko. The FBI was assisting in the investigation.
Joyal was shot Thursday by two men in his driveway, police said.
Amazing. Either this is a huge coincidence or the KGB hasn’t changed as much as I thought it had since the wall fell.
That’s only the beginning. Here’s more in Germany and Europe:
On Feb. 1, 15 German police officers forced their way into the home of the Busekros family in the Bavarian town of Erlangen. They hauled off 16-year-old Melissa, the eldest of the six Busekros children, to a psychiatric ward in nearby Nuremberg. Last week, a court affirmed that Melissa has to remain in the Child Psychiatry Unit because she is suffering from “school phobia.”Home-schooling has been illegal in Germany since Adolf Hitler outlawed it in 1938 and ordered all children to be sent to state schools.
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The situation is hardly better at the European level. Last September, the European Court of Human Rights supported Hitler’s 1938 schooling bill.
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The United Nations is also restricting the rights of parents. Article 29 of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child stipulates that it is the goal of the state to direct the education of children. In Belgium, the U.N. Convention is currently being used to limit the constitutional right to home-school. In 1995 Britain was told that it violated the U.N. Convention by allowing parents to remove their children from public school sex-education classes.
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A Consensus?
More global warming skepticism:
‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ – backed by eminent scientists – is set to rock the accepted consensus that climate change is being driven by humans.The programme … will see a series of respected scientists attack the “propaganda” that they claim is killing the world’s poor.
Even the co-founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, is shown, claiming African countries should be encouraged to burn more CO2.
Nobody in the documentary defends the greenhouse effect theory, as it claims that climate change is natural, has been occurring for years, and ice falling from glaciers is just the spring break-up and as normal as leaves falling in autumn.
Whether or not this really says anything about global warming, it does say that there is no “consensus” among scientists as the majority of the media (notably the popular Scientific magazines) would have you believe.
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While I disagree with Patrick Michaels on the point of the movie, which in my opinion is for Al Gore to set himself up as the savior of the world in the event that global warming doesn’t kills us all, I do find the article interesting and his call for a sane solution to global warming refreshing.
Patrick J. Michaels on An Inconvenient Truth on National Review Online
The main point of the movie is that, unless we do something very serious, very soon about carbon dioxide emissions, much of Greenland’s 630,000 cubic miles of ice is going to fall into the ocean, raising sea levels over twenty feet by the year 2100.Where’s the scientific support for this claim?
Certainly not in the recent Policymaker’s Summary from the United Nations’ much anticipated compendium on climate change. Under the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s medium-range emission scenario for greenhouse gases, a rise in sea level of between 8 and 17 inches is predicted by 2100. Gore’s film exaggerates the rise by about 2,000 percent.
Even 17 inches is likely to be high, because it assumes that the concentration of methane, an important greenhouse gas, is growing rapidly. Atmospheric methane concentration hasn’t changed appreciably for seven years, and Nobel Laureate Sherwood Rowland recently pronounced the IPCC’s methane emissions scenarios as “quite unlikely.”
Technorati Tags: global warming, inconvenient truth, al gore, academy awards
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Mardi Gras basics Part 2: Holy Trinity – Slashfood:
Most every country or region uses a trinity, or a basic mix of flavors (generally vegetable-based, spice-based, or a combination of the two) for a majority of their signature dishes which include soups, stews, sauces, or variations thereof.
That’s something I did not know, but is interesting. Is there some law of favors that causes trinities of flavors to emerge in different parts of the world or is it just coincidence that it’s three flavors.
Szechuan: ginger, green garlic, green peppers
Lebanese: garlic, lemon juice, olive oil
Italian 1: tomato, garlic, basil
Italian 2: olive oil, onion, garlic
France: onions, carrots, celery (Mirepoix)
Cajun/creole: onions, bell peppers, celery
Japanese: dasi, soy sauce, mirina
What would American be? I don’t know… ketchup, mustard and mayo?
Technorati Tags: food
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The Flow of a Debate
As much as I enjoy the process of debating, the goal of argument is, in my opinion, to arrive at truth, or if that can’t happen, at least get to the point where both points of view are understood and agree to disagree. The latter ideally only happening in certain cases, for example when there is not enough data to form a conclusion or when there is a moral dilemma where the desired outcome is a reflection of values rather than an objective good/bad judgement.
I’m not a big fan of formal debate. I don’t see much of a purpose in being tied to a set format or being judged on style or debating an issue you don’t agree with just for the sake of debate. If the ultimate goal isn’t to arrive at a conclusion, to actually convince someone or to at least cause them to seriously consider changing their point of view on a subject, then I think there are better things to do with your time.
Something I haven’t found online however is a format where debates can take place with some constraints but with the ultimate purpose of discovering the truth.
I’ve thought a lot over the last year about creating a forum online where this type of debate can be facilitated in such a way that intelligent debate can take place in a fairly structured environment, but that would still be fun. After thinking along those lines, this morning I created the following chart illustrating a possible flow for a debate. Yellow is the debate initiator, blue the opposition and the rounded rectangles are where the debate/argument (or in certain cases a ’round’ of the debate) ends in possible outcomes. I’m considering creating some type of web application where I could test and refine this flow.
Convinceme.net is a new site dedicated to debate that I think is decent idea, but if the type content that is on there now is any indication of how the site is going to end up, it’s definitely not what I had in mind. I also think their debates are too loosely structured and the idea of having anyone in the public judge any debate definitely is not going to work. Most people will just vote for whatever they thought before they read the debate if they bother reading it at all. Despite the flaws, kudos to the creators for the work they’ve done, and hopefully it will get to a point where it’s useful but it’s not there yet.
I also found another good resource on formal debates that has helped give me ideas for structuring an online debate. It’s a full book written by an experienced formal debater.
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Any Excuse for a Siesta
I am definitely a proponent of naps so any ammo that will help me justify taking a nap is welcome (yet another bias I seek to find supporting evidence for).
Seed: Siesta Touted As Defense Against Heart Disease:
…in a long-term study of Greek men and women, the ones who took at least three 30-minute siestas every week had a 37 percent lower risk of heart-disease related death than those who skipped an afternoon snooze.
Naturally living in Uruguay where siestas are still taken regularly, and being next door to Argentina where siestas are also taken (and possibly in Brazil as well, though I don’t know) I was curious to find out if all that napping was enough (despite other considerations) to push them down on the list of countries with high per capita deaths due to heart disease.
This is what I came up with after a (very) quick search:
In the rather verbose category of Complications and ill-defined descriptions of heard disease per capita on NationMaster, the rankings are:
11 – Uruguay
19 – Argentina
23 – United States
32 – Brazil
In Hypertensive heart disease per capita the results are a bit more compelling:
20 – United States
23 – Uruguay
28 – Brazil
31 – Argentina
The category on NationMaster that best fit the bill – Heart disease deaths by country – did not list any South American countries.
Overall my decidedly non-scientific statistical foray was mostly inconclusive but interesting to research nonetheless. I’ll definitely be napping more… just in case.
Technorati Tags: heart disease, siestas
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In a recent study scientists were able to clone mice with better success using a specific type of adult stem cells from hair follicles rather than embryonic stem cells.
Fuchs’ team used keratinocyte stem cells, involved in the hair growth cycle and in healing wounds to the skin, from a part of the mouse’s hair follicle called the bulge. These adult stem cells are easy to collect, quiescent—so they are not continually dividing—and remain able to develop into many cell types.
This is interesting. I don’t have strong views on the morality of using embryonic stem cells for scientific research, but I definitely object to the practice aborting fetuses for the purpose of harvesting embryonic stem cells. Finding other methods of gathering stem cells that produce the same benefits as embryonic stem cells in way that is clearly moral, less expensive and potentially more reliable is, to me, good news all around.
Technorati Tags: stem cells, embryonic stem cells
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Sean and I were discussing the article I mentioned previously on net neutrality and we (or at least I) came to the (preliminary) conclusion that a lot of net neutrality comes down to the question of who do you trust more and where do you have more influence–in the telcos and ISP’s (Big Business) or the government.
It looks like if control goes to the government there will probably be regulation enforcing net neutrality–that is laws preventing ISP’s from restricting access to premium bandwidth and forcing them to allow equal access to all websites. If control goes to the ISP’s at least some of them will implement some type of tiered system of bandwidth. Either way though, a large measure of control over the Internet will shift from business to government or vice versa. Status quo doesn’t seem to be an option here.
I’d consider the entity I trust more to be be the one I have more influence over. Thus the question becomes who do I have more influence over, ISP’s or the government. With an ISP the easiest way to register approval is obviously with where I spend my money–I use them if I like the service or change if I don’t. The problem here is that there is a limited number of ISP’s and if they all implement the tiered system that choice is severely limited. With government my best recourse is at the polls. This is obviously a small influence but a real one nonetheless.
Something else to consider is that once control goes to the government it almost never is taken away. If the government begins to further regulate the ISP industry they are moving the Internet closer towards becoming a utility like water/electricity etc. where even though it is not government owned (at least not always) the amount of government control is high. Depending on your point of view, this is either a good or bad thing. Utilities are generally available to everyone but your choice is usually very limited and if you don’t like the service you are often left with very few reasonable recourses.
Either way the prospects don’t look too bright. Apparently the option of just working to increase bandwidth isn’t economically feasible or at least not the most efficient business decision as perceived by ISP’s and change will be on the way in the form of increased regulation or decreased freedom on the Internet.
This is my take on it now, I’d be happy to hear where I’m uninformed or buying into hype if that’s the case.
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These are notes on a lecture from Intercollegiate Studies Institute from 9/11/2002. The lecture is old but D’Souza has recently release another book on the topic, The Enemy at Home and I think his arguments from 4 years ago are still relevant. Again, these are just my notes, all ideas are D’Souza’s.
Three schools of anti-Americanism:
- European School (French School) – Spread of American culture threatens local and distinctive cultures of the world.
- Asian Critique – America and the West have solved the economic problem, but not the cultural problem. We have prosperity but not social order.
- Islamic critique – Everyone in the world wants part of America but not ‘the rest.’ The selective importing attempts are an illusion. It’s all or nothing. This would undermine the Islamic world and leave it unrecognizable.
The Islamic critique is important – American culture is subversive.
How did the relatively inferior civilization gain so much power so quickly and gain such a powerful world influence? Some would say that Western civilization triumphed–we beat up everyone else and forced them to submit. Slaves. Indians. etc.
Did the West become rich and powerful through oppression? Slavery and colonialism are universal institutions, there is nothing western about it. What is distinctively Western is not slavery but abolitionism–there have not been anti-slavery movements by non-slaves anywhere else but in the West. Lincoln – “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.”
Muhammad Ali on Africa – “Thank God my grandaddy got on that boat.” Do we owe reparations to the descendants of slaves? Compare their situation to any comparable group of blacks living on the content of Africa.
Most immigrant literature on America is a Horatio Alger literature – focused on getting rich, but this is a limited vision of America. While this is true, if you’re rich in America you can’t get the one thing that you can buy outside of America – aristocracy. There is a social egalitarianism in America.
In America your destiny is not chosen as in countries such as India. Your life is a blank sheet of paper, you are the artist. Your destiny is not given to you but constructed by you. This is the appeal of America.
Americas critics are quick to point the mistakes of American foreign policy. What other country distributes food to civilians on the enemy side of a war (Afghanistan), repairs the countries of its enemies after wars (WWII). America is held to a much, much higher standard. This testifies to the superiority of Americas moral philosophy.
The argument against America by Islam is that American society is based on Freedom, Islamic on virtue. Islam might be failing in some degrees but at least they are trying to implement virtue. Virtue is a superior principle to liberty. How should we answer this argument? It can’t be with arguments about our freedoms.
Virtue is at some levels a higher principle than freedom but what Islamic radicals miss is that freedom is the essential pre-requisite for virtue. Can you be compelled to virtue? If the supply of virtue is insufficient in free society, it is non-existant in the totalitarian society because a forced virtue is no virtue at all.
America does not only provide us with the good life, but with a framework to pursue the life that is good.
The audio file is available on the ISI website.
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Here’s an unexpected interruption of the interruption of Global Warming coverage. New Scientist says the oceans might be able to keep things cool here on planet Earth for a bit longer. This of course comes at the risk of hurting the deep sea creatures.
CO2 being pushed deep into the oceans – earth – 12 February 2007 – New Scientist Environment
Atmospheric carbon dioxide is being pushed deeper into the oceans than previously thought, according to researchers. The findings mean the oceans may continue to absorb human emissions of the greenhouse gas more rapidly and for longer, they say, reducing their impact on global warming. But the research is bad news for the marine organisms that are already suffering from ocean acidification.
Also on New Scientist, apparently there’s a bit of a chance that the Earths warming and cooling every 100 or 41 thousand years results the normal cycles of the sun rather than chances in the Earth’s orbit. This isn’t directly related to the current global warming situation but it’s interesting just how theoretical this type of science is.
Sun’s fickle heart may leave us cold
There’s a dimmer switch inside the sun that causes its brightness to rise and fall on timescales of around 100,000 years – exactly the same period as between ice ages on Earth. So says a physicist who has created a computer model of our star’s core.
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