A young Israeli settler from Kiryat Arba throws stones at Palestinian homes near the disputed house in the West Bank city of Hebron on November 29, 2008. A US businessman vowed last week to fight an Israeli eviction order against a group of Jews living in a house in the West Bank city of Hebron he says he bought. The Palestinian owner of the house, however, said the sale was never completed, and an Israeli court ruled that documents provided by the settlers were forged. Hebron has long been a flashpoint because of a settler enclave of around 600 hardline Jews living in the heart of a city with more than 170,000 Palestinian residents, and a further 6,500 Israeli settlers living in Kiryat Arba on the outskirts. By Hazem Bader/AFP/Getty.
...the real reason that Obama and Clinton might enjoy success is something that goes barely mentioned in the media. Obama and Clinton are buying into a bottomed-out market vis-à-vis America’s position in the world. It is as if they will be buying stock after the market has crashed, and just at the point when a number of factors are already set in motion for a recovery. For President George W. Bush did not just damage America’s position in the world, he has also, over the past two years, quietly repositioned himself as a realist in foreign policy, and that, coupled with a bold new strategy in Iraq, known as the “surge,” has poised America for a diplomatic rebound, which the next administration will get the credit for carrying out.
Can all conflict be reduced beyond even team aggression and resource competition, down to the single factor of population growth? It’s not quite that simple, but a deeper investigation of the role of population increase shows quite clearly that growth rate and population demographics function as significant triggers for raiding, wars, and even terrorism.
Research found a mere 50 to 100 out of 5,000 emergency rooms across the country routinely screen for HIV, even though the percentage of ER visitors who test positive is much greater than the percentage of the general population that’s known to be infected. Another study found that only 4.9 percent of fully insured patients with “a serious illness suggestive of AIDS” got HIV tests, and yet another revealed that only 36 percent of insured patients who sought treatment for other sexually transmitted diseases were tested for HIV, according to the forum’s statement.
...blogs have allowed women to participate openly in the same political sphere as men, even in highly segregated societies such as Saudi Arabia...In societies with high internet penetration, blogs can have a democratizing, community-building function. Although we've seen this in the United States, its occurrence in politically closed societies such as Bahrain is significant because of the nexus of people it can bring together in certain types of interactions. I don't know all the ramifications that the term "public sphere" has in political science, but it sounds like a local one may have emerged in certain Gulf states of a type that would have been unlikely prior to the internet.
...that brings me to what worries me most about video games: their whole purpose is to provide dependable, achievable rewards for a certain amount of work. The whole point of designing them well is to curtail possible frustration, to limit the kind of problems that might cause genuine exertion, or to always provide alternative pleasures if certain ones are difficult. It can be, of course, a wonderful feeling to be in worlds like this. There are so few ways to miss that feeling of accomplishment-induced pleasure. It doesn't matter much how artificial that accomplishment is: the pleasure it causes is very real.
Bill Kristol sees them as deeply intertwined, with illegal torture buttressing the rule of law in a democracy. My own view is different:
Torture is the polar opposite of freedom. It is the banishment
of all freedom from a human body and soul, insofar as that is possible.
As human beings, we all inhabit bodies and have minds, souls, and
reflexes that are designed in part to protect those bodies: to resist
or flinch from pain, to protect the psyche from disintegration, and to
maintain a sense of selfhood that is the basis for the concept of
personal liberty. What torture does is use these involuntary,
self-protective, self-defining resources of human beings against the
integrity of the human being himself. It takes what is most involuntary
in a person and uses it to break that person's will. It takes what is
animal in us and deploys it against what makes us human. As an American
commander wrote in an August 2003 e-mail about his instructions to
torture prisoners at Abu Ghraib, "The gloves are coming off gentlemen
regarding these detainees, Col. Boltz has made it clear that we want
these individuals broken."
It's hard for Kristol to top himself, but in Orwellian terms, offering a Medal of Freedom for torture may be a career high:
One last thing: Bush should consider pardoning--and should at least be
vociferously praising--everyone who served in good faith in the war on
terror, but whose deeds may now be susceptible to demagogic or
politically inspired prosecution by some seeking to score political
points. The lawyers can work out if such general or specific preemptive
pardons are possible; it may be that the best Bush can or should do is
to warn publicly against any such harassment or prosecution. But the
idea is this: The CIA agents who waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,
and the NSA officials who listened in on phone calls from Pakistan,
should not have to worry about legal bills or public defamation. In
fact, Bush might want to give some of these public servants the Medal
of Freedom at the same time he bestows the honor on Generals Petraeus
and Odierno. They deserve it.
Torturers should not have to worry about "public defamation"? We are to be forbidden from even criticizing war criminals in the Schmittian order Kristol idolizes? But, of course, this is all a classic piece of disinformation. There is no "witch-hunt" for CIA staffers ordered by their superiors to commit war crimes. There is a vital, public need to hold the president and those at the very top accountable for the war crimes they illegally authorized and even now deny. And to hold accountable in the court of public opinion those people in the public square who were not only cognizant of the war crimes being committed, but egging them on.
One more thing: why did Kristol write this in the Weekly Standard and not the NYT?
New York has plucked out some highlights from the profiles of TheAtlasphere.com users, a dating site for Ayn Rand fans. I particularly like this one:
You should contact me if you are a skinny woman. If your words are a meaningful progression of concepts rather than a series of vocalizations induced by your spinal cord for the purpose of complementing my tone of voice. If you’ve seen the meatbot, the walking automaton, the pod-people, the dense, glazy-eyed substrate through which living organisms such as myself must escape to reach air and sunlight. If you’ve realized that if speech is to be regarded as a cognitive function, technically they aren’t speaking, and you don’t have to listen.
"Something big is happening. What started out as a series of pragmatic
ad hoc responses by governments and central banks is moving the
boundary between state and market. Politicians are now overlaying
expediency with ideology. Government is no longer a term of abuse.
Things could move still faster in the months ahead. With
their myriad rescue schemes and loan guarantees, the US and British
governments have nationalised their respective banking systems in all
but name. The banks pretend they are still answerable to their
shareholders, but it is a charade. They survive only with the explicit
financial guarantee of the state.
Still, the markets remain
frozen, starving business of the oxygen of credit. Unless things change
soon, the politicians will have little choice but to take direct
control, and quite possibly, ownership, of the banks. Nationalisation
could be the first act of an Obama presidency. That at least would put
some substance into all those loose analogies with FDR," - Philip Stevens, FT.
A man evacuated from Mumbai following the attacks hugs a woman upon his arrival on November 28, 2008 at the military airport of Torrejon, near Madrid. Sixty Spanish citizens who were in Mumbai when the attacks erupted in the Indian city were expected back in Madrid Friday on a Spanish air force plane. By Pedro Armestre/AFP/Getty.
The story goes like this: Back in 1992, Congress passed a law requiring all federal agencies to buy alternative-fuel vehicles for 75 percent of their light-duty fleet. The catch was that, while the agencies had to buy the cars, they didn't actually have to use the alternative fuel. So a lot of agencies ended up purchasing cars that could run on propane, compressed natural gas, or E85 (an 85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline blend), and them shipped them to areas that didn't actually have any alternative fueling stations—the infrastructure just wasn't in place. Fewer than 0.1 percent of fueling stations in the United States even offer E85. That meant most flex-fuel cars were running on plain old gasoline, and, since these vehicles generally have larger-than-average engines, they actually end up using more oil and emitting more carbon dioxide. The Postal Service used 1.5 million additional gallons of gas last year because only 1 percent of its 37,000 flex-fuel vans were actually running on ethanol.
Curious to see if there were any stark similarities or contrasts within particular films, Pie aims to create an incredibly simple and concise baseline of comparison of films trough one particular trait: colour. This project was also the result of my first explorations into processing. The outcome is a number of triptychs comparing various films of particular trilogies, directors or genres. A program written in processing captures each frame of each movie and essentially creates a 'pie chart' of the colours contained within each film producing a simplistic and abstracted representation. Each poster includes the film title, year, director, cinematographer, running time and occasionally, various surprising/unsurprising similarities.
It's sweet and fanciful to think that with a
grant of immunity and a hot cup of chai, Bush-administration officials
who have scoffed at congressional subpoenas and court dates will sit
down and unburden themselves to a truth commission about their role in
the U.S. attorney firings.
I do think that a Truth Commission remains our best bet. But it cannot be set up as a way to give Bush officials legal immunity for war crimes. It must be the preliminary. And Dahlia seems to me too willing to believe that we already know most of it. With Cheney and Addington, the worst probably remains hidden from view. Let's expose it and see what the public thinks we should do with these people when the true extent of their crimes is in the full light of day.
You know times are tough when the rich start cutting costs on their mistresses. According to a new survey by Prince & Assoc., more than 80% of multimillionaires who had extra-marital lovers planned to cut back on their gifts and allowances. Still, only 12% of the multimillionaire cheaters said they plan to give up on their lovers altogether for financial reasons.
Kate Mccgwire uses pigeon feathers, polystyrene, felt, and glue to create her sculptures. Her description of the work:
The twisted form of a serpent-like creature lies enclosed in an airless glass cabinet, a diverting object for museum display. Instead of the usual taxidermist's presentation of a perfectly preserved specimen complete with beady-eyed head, this animal appears to be headless, as if it's been gagged.
Bob Kaplan explains the Hindu-Muslim divide that helps frame the Mumbai terror attacks:
The immediate result of the Mumbai terror attacks will be a further
hardening of inter-communal relations within India. The latest attacks
will also increase the likelihood that in national elections slated for
early 2009, the result will be a BJP-led government, as Hindus, who
comprise the overwhelming majority of Indian voters, take on another
layer of insecurity.
Internationally, this event will further aggravate Indian-Pakistani
relations, making it harder for the incoming Obama Administration to
effect a rapprochement between the two countries, necessary for
progress in Afghanistan, where the two subcontinental states are
engaged in a proxy struggle that goes on behind the immediate conflict
between the United States and al-Qaeda.
But the real story is India itself, whose undeniable rise as a
major world power is being threatened by these civilizational tensions.
(Photo:
Indian soldiers take up position outside the Taj Mahal Palace &
Tower Hotel hotel during an armed siege, on November 28, 2008 in
Mumbai, India. The city of Mumbai was rocked by multiple coordinated
terrorist attacks that targeted locations popular with foreigners, late
on the night of November 26 and into the next morning, killing scores
and wounding hundreds in shootings and blasts around the city. By Uriel Sinai/Getty Images.
Maybe K-Lo got Prop 8 confused with a couple of other statewide initiative results, where common-sense marijuana law reform actually got more votes than Barack Obama. In Michigan, an initiative to legalize medical marijuana garnered 63% of the vote (receiving 134,241 more votes than Obama), while decriminalizing marijuana in Massachusetts received 65% of the state-wide vote, earning 48,422 more votes.
Interestingly, these initiatives that provide citizens with more freedom and personal responsibilty, performed much better statewide than Prop 8, which stripped citizens of freedom and personal responsibility. Now which initiatives are the conservative ones again?
"Who are these pro-McCain Democratic voters? They overwhelmingly tend to be former Hillary supporters. Perhaps the most well-known of these voters are the "PUMAs" - which stands for Party Unity My Ass. These are Hillary supporters who are adamantly opposed to Obama. Let's not forget that during the Democratic primaries - real elections, not polls - Hillary crushed Obama among white working-class and middle-class voters in such key states as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. If a meaningful number of these voters end up voting for McCain, as I predict they will, then Obama's smooth road to the White House is going to run smack into a brick wall," - Steve Warshawsky, American Thinker, October 25, 2008.
Much research has been conducted about who engages in celebrity worship and what drives the compulsion. Celebrity worship for purely entertainment purposes likely reflects an extraverted personality and is most likely a healthy past time for most people. This type of celebrity worship involves harmless behaviors such as reading and learning about a celebrity. Intense personal attitudes towards celebrities, however, reflect traits of neuroticism. The most extreme descriptions of celebrity worship exhibit borderline pathological behavior and traits of psychoticism. This type of celebrity worship may involve empathy with a celebrity’s failures and successes, obsessions with the details of a celebrity’s life, and over-identification with the celebrity.
She had resoundingly rejected the idea of negotiating with Hamas; she
has endorsed the security fence; and she supported a resolution
sponsored by Senators Kyl and Lieberman that urged the White House to
designate Iran's revolutionary guard as a terrorist organization, a
measure opposed by both Obama and Biden. These stances have won many
fans among pro-Israel hawks. "Senator Clinton's track record during her
years in the senate has been outstanding," says Malcolm Hoenlein, the
executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations. "In addition to the public record, she
has done many things quietly without seeking recognition that were
significant in regards to the Middle East and other international
concerns."
Eli Lake explores whether this sets her up for conflict with Jim Jones. It will be one of the more fascinating internal debates of the Obama administration. Having both Clinton and Jones gives Obama more freedom of action, and more leverage both within his administration and beyond it.
It is not just Murdoch (and everybody else at News Corp.’s highest levels) who absolutely despises Bill O’Reilly, the bullying, mean-spirited, and hugely successful evening commentator, but [Fox News chief executive] Roger Ailes himself who loathes him. Success, however, has cemented everyone to each other ... The embarrassment can no longer be missed. He mumbles even more than usual when called on to justify it. [Murdoch] barely pretends to hide the way he feels about Bill O’Reilly. And while it is not that he would give Fox up—because the money is the money; success trumps all—in the larger sense of who he is, he seems to want to hedge his bets.
Rob Horning, veteran music reviewer, adds to Peter Suderman's post on the ubiquity of positive album reviews:
Suderman has no real explanations for the surfeit of positive reviews. I had some theories back when I was writing more music reviews and was trying figure out why anyone bothered. Unlike films, many many records get released, and just noticing one and running a review of it already marks it as significant. The substance of the review itself is almost beside the point. Acknowledging its existence is already an admission that it’s “pretty good,” so it would be strange for the review to suggest otherwise.
Megan makes many excellent points in this new post. Money quote:
It is safe to say that almost everyone involved in this mess, from
the borrowers to the bankers, thought that they were getting away with
something--at the very least, that they had found a way to get rich
without working. It is an old saw that no one can be conned unless
they are willing to believe in something for nothing, and the best cons
generally get the victim to believe that he is putting one over on the
con man.
I don't disagree. But I'm not sure I buy this:
So
while yes, part of this story has been simple greed, a willingness to
believe that we could and should massively increase consumption no
matter what, I tend to take this desire as a given.
I see a simple desire to enrich oneself as a given. What I think is culturally influenced is the imperative to "massively increase consumption no
matter what."
The quintessential economic sentence is supposed to be "There is no
free lunch"; it says that there are limited resources, that to have
more of one thing you must accept less of another, that there is no
gain without pain. Depression economics, however, is the study of
situations where there is a free lunch, if we can only figure
out how to get our hands on it, because there are unemployed resources
that could be put to work. The true scarcity in Keynes's world—and
ours—was therefore not of resources, or even of virtue, but of
understanding.
We will not achieve the understanding we need, however, unless we
are willing to think clearly about our problems and to follow those
thoughts wherever they lead. Some people say that our economic problems
are structural, with no quick cure available; but I believe that the
only important structural obstacles to world prosperity are the
obsolete doctrines that clutter the minds of men.
To which, Krauthammer's column this morning is a useful riposte:
The ruling Democrats have a choice: Rescue this economy to return it to
market control. Or use this crisis to seize the commanding heights of
the economy for the greater social good. Note: The latter has already
been tried. The results are filed under "History, ash heap of."
Ross notes how used the residents of Mumbai are to low-level constant terror:
If you try to imagine how the United States would bear up under the kind of horrific drumbeat
of small and large-scale attacks that India's experienced in the last
few years, it's hard to feel anything save admiration - and, on this
day, thanksgiving - for Indian courage and resilience under fire.
In dealing with terror, Americans have something to learn from the Brits and Indians.
I love your Rick-Roll bit so had to share this. We live in the Panamanian highlands about an hour from the Costa Rican border. I'm out walking the dogs one morning on a road that can best be described as unimproved. I haven't seen a car or another person for half an hour until I pass an Indio (Panamanian indigenous Indian) carrying a small boom box tuned to a local radio station. What's playing? You guessed it. You can run but you can't hide.
This initiative protecting traditional marriage won by the same margin as Barack Obama did in that state — getting the support of some Obama voters, in fact.
It won 52 - 48. Obama won California by 61 - 37. He won by over 6 points nationwide.
Bank details are the most popular single item for sale by online fraudsters, according to a new report by Symantec, an internet-security firm. They are also the priciest, perhaps because the average account for which details are offered has a balance of nearly $40,000.
"As an American Jew it's an amazing feeling to come to a place where
you feel you belong. You know we're such a minority in the U.S. Even
though I grew up in New Jersey, which was very Jewish, and then I went
to school in Chicago, which was Jewish, and then I moved to New York,
which is very Jewish, and then I went to Hollywood, which is very
Jewish. But they say we're only 2 percent of the population and
shrinking because of intermarriage."
Take two identical objects, one built to be a toolshed and the other built as a fort. They look exactly the same. But once you know that one is a fort, it transforms. You approach it with diffidence, with the respect of someone entering a sacred space. That is why children hide their forts and surround them with all manner of booby traps. Special spaces require special measures. For the uninitiated to enter the fort is for the fort to be sullied, to have become polluted. When you are a child the last thing you want is for a parent (for instance) to enter the fort, bringing with them, inevitably, the stigma of the mundane. A parent can be allowed into the fort only under special circumstances and with a firm understanding that they will play by a different set of rules: fort rules. It is like trying to take communion when you’re unbaptized. You can put the wafer in your mouth a thousand times, but the mystery of transubstantiation will elude you.
The question of the next decade is: How can we find what we want -- the perfect job, just the right pair of shoes, exactly the news that's important to us -- amidst the maelstrom of information that's available on the Web? Google, of course, is the de facto answer, it's algorithms generating a ballpark guess at what we want when we type in a few search terms. But the burgeoning mass of data on the Internet is threatening to outmode such robotic tools. So a growing number of start-ups is putting forward another strategy for filtering the Web: Use human judgment first, computer power second.
People who don't see a connection between Bush's fundamentalist psyche and his refusal or inability to see reality in front of him would do well to read this post from "Flopping Aces," a far right Christianist trying to absorb the facts of our time. He cannot:
It may be that right now all the powers that be, the media, the
educational system, etc. seem to be arrayed in favor of things that we,
the minority, can see are not good. Much of what we have seen has
seemed ‘rigged’ against us, and we have been ‘defeated’ like the inner
and outer enemies of Joan defeated her. In this time, we should
remember we cannot possibly see with an infinite eye. We should leave
that for the One who is competent to do so. It can’t be our goal to
only ‘win’ arguments or technical victories.
"As I wrote last December, "[t]he pundits can talk until they are blue in the face about Obama's charisma and eloquence and cross-racial appeal. The fact of the matter is that Obama has no chance of being elected president in 2008." I am more convinced of this conclusion than ever," - Steven M. Warshawsky, American Thinker, August 11, 2008.
For Berkshire bees, quitting time is about 5 pm. New York City bees, they work harder and longer. And as you can see, we're here before 7 am, and these bees are already starting to work, whereas the country bees won't be opening the doors till about 9 am. And these city bees will still be hard at work at 7 tonight! Maybe it's because it's warmer here or maybe it's the city lights. Whatever it is, they definitely work longer hours.
An Army chaplain prays before a special Thanksgiving meal is served for troops in the dining hall at the US military forward operating base (FOB) Camp Salerno near Khost on November 27, 2008. Today in Kabul a car bomb amongst rush hour traffic near the US Embassy killed 4 people and injured 17. By Paula Bronstein/Getty.
November 23, 2008 - November 29, 2008
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