Friday April 20, 2007
The Disadvantages of Monotheism for a Universal State
Culturally the Greeks remained convinced that they were intellectually superior to everybody else, including the Latins; and curiously enough that Latin-speakers seldom contested this assumption. But the realities were, as always, less simple than the assumptions.
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Tuesday August 29, 2006
Macro Wave
I had a dream last night. I was watching an election map and the letter ‘D’ kept coming up like winners on a slot machine. I stood up in my living room and pumped my arms. “It’s a macro-wave baby, a macro-wave!”
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Monday August 14, 2006
Danger Levels
Terrorism is on the menu again. For an electoral strategy, is it better to admit the world isn’t safe and blame the current administration’s policies for not addressing the problem correctly, or convince the electorate that statistically, terrorism is not much of a threat?
While the latter may be true, say when comparing the threat from terrorism to infectious diseases, it misses the problems of discussing statistics in general and human directed threats specifically.
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Friday June 23, 2006
A Philosophy of Sport
We enjoy silent, human-powered sports done in nature, where the reward involves no audience and no prize other than hard-won grace. These entail risk, require soul and invite reflection. They bring us closer to the natural world and to ourselves.
The above from Patagonia’s newly redesigned site.
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Tuesday May 16, 2006
I Contain Multitudes
I am not a fan of identity politics. My liberal instincts reject separatist appeals and favor universal aspirations. I believe identities are social constructs that we pick and choose from the various elements of our history. There are bounds to this. I cannot claim any African identity unless I want to emphasize my pre sapiens lineage. It seems that those most in need of identity to fuel their quest for power are most likely to emphasize a mythical origin; National Socialists, Afrikaaners, Jihadis.
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Saturday May 13, 2006
Oddest Satement of the Day...so far.
“The anti-death penalty movement has never had much in the way of sympathetic visuals or symbols,” says Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington. “Other movements have trees and whales, positive images. Well, an innocent person is a positive image.”
WAPO
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Wednesday May 10, 2006
Pen People
There are those who carry pens in their pockets and those who don’t. Those who do, do so for a couple of reasons:
- They prefer to write with a specific instrument and most writing tools are inferior.
- They prefer to always have something with which to write and not be reduced to begging for that which is easily carried.
- They dislike using pens that the great unwashed and penless souls have cradled in their claws.
Because they have pens, they are often asked to loan said pen to the penless. This is awkward. Sometimes the pen is not returned and even if it is, it is contaminated. Sometimes a decoy pen is carried and the pen carriers can appear both prepared and generous. “Keep it. I’ve got another just like it.”
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Wednesday May 10, 2006
Interior Decorating
Control, in fact, mattered much more than policies. It was not by chance that in every coalition government—‘Fatherland Front’, ‘Unity Government’, or ‘bloc of anti-Facscist parties’—in eastern Europe, Communists sought control of certain key ministries: the Ministry of the Interior, which gave the Party authority over the police and security forces as well as power to grant or withhold licenses to print newspapers; the Ministry of Justice, with control over purges, tribunals and judges; the Ministry of Agriculture, which administered land reforms and redistribution and was thus in a position to confer favours and buy the loyalty of millions of peasants.
p 131 Judt, Postwar
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Saturday April 22, 2006
TPFDL
From Cobra II: meddlng on the part of Rumsfeld and the White House.
The TPFDL (“tipfiddle”) was particularly important for the Army. More than the other services, the Army depended on the carefully coordinated deployment of weapons and materiel by the Transportation Command. The TPFDL automatically determined not only which logistical and auxiliary units should be sent to support the combat forces earmarked for the war plan, but also the order in which they should be sent.
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Thursday April 20, 2006
In General
I don’t have problem with retired generals calling for Rumsfeld to quit. I can’t imagine that they expected anything good to come of it. The Pentagon has a long reach, particularly when it comes to jobs within the defense industries, the usual goal of a retired officer. I don’t expect they feel good about crossing the civilian-military boundary, although again they are retired and needn’t throw away their voice if they believe the national interest is at stake.
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Thursday April 20, 2006
What Type of Regime Are You People Running Here?
China “must know that this Bush administration is good at controlling crowds for themselves, and the fact that they couldn’t control this is going to play to their worst fears and suspicions about the United States, into mistrust about American intentions toward China.”
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Thursday April 20, 2006
Context Please
Yesterday afternoon, NPR described the movement to restrict protests at military funerals, without once mentioning that such bills would be unnecessary but for Fred Phelps and his extended family. A casual or conservative listener might assume that it was an antiwar group doing the protesting. The antiwar movement may be confused and ineffectual, but even they realize the futility of protesting at a funeral.
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Thursday April 13, 2006
Alle Menschen werden Brüder
“Jesus,” muttered the Jewish tenor to the Chinese bass just resting his mouth from Schiller’s German amidst Beethoven’s universal notes.
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Thursday April 6, 2006
Friday Lint (040706)
A Weekend of Music.
Last night we heard Anima Mea, a girls’ chamber choir from St. Petersburg, Russia singing Eastern Orthodox and Russian folk songs. Saturday night is Mahler’s Fifth Symphony and Sunday afternoon will be Beethoven’s Ninth, the Ode to Joy. Last weekend I had a good part of Saturday to myself and enjoyed a day of Russian composers;
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Sunday April 2, 2006
Fireworks Update
Per capita consumption of fireworks—consumption loosely implied—has grown from two ounces per head in 1976 to almost a pound of fireworks per person in 2004. I would have expected 1976 to have been a good year for fireworks!
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