March 2006
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Pomona Prof “Visited” by FBI Because of His Views on Venezuela (Leiter)
His views don’t, needless to say, mirror the pack of lies emanating from Washington. Details here; an excerpt: A Pomona College professor who is an outspoken critic of U.S. policy in Venezuela was questioned on March 7th by two agents from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF)…
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Republocrat Senator Lieberman of Connecticut May Face a Challenge (Leiter)
The trustworthy whore of the insurance industry, Joe "I rarely meet a Republican policy I don’t like" Lieberman, nominal Democratic Senator from Connecticut, may face an actual challenge this fall. Connecticut readers, in particular, ought to read the article.
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Conservative Pundit Kevin Phillips Also Reads This Blog… (Leiter)
…as this review of his latest book on American Theocracy makes clear: On the far right is a still obscure but, Phillips says, rapidly growing group of "Christian Reconstructionists" who believe in a "Taliban-like" reversal of women’s rights, who describe the separation of church and state as a "myth" and who call openly for a…
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The Fake “War on Terror,” Part 372 (Leiter)
Story here; an excerpt: In a guest lecture at the University of Texas School of Law on Wednesday, FBI Supervisory Senior Resident Agent G. Charles Rasner listed Indymedia, Food Not Bombs, and the Communist Party of Texas as “Terrorist Watch” cause groups in Austin. Rasner gave a presentation entitled “Counter-Terrorism Efforts in Texas” to a…
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Kevin Phillips informs us that up is up and down is down: NYT shocked (Hellie)
As you no doubt know, Phillips is one of the fathers of the Southern Strategy, the coiner of the term ‘sunbelt’, the author of the book The Emergent Republican Majority, and the like. Despite this odious history, Phillips, being a Very Smart Guy, saw the light at some point, and has since been issuing regular,…
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Practical Reasoning (Edmundson)
Wittgenstein wondered what would be left over if my arm’s going up were subtracted from my raising it (PI ¶621). Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute and Berlin Humboldt University have demonstrated a "Mental Typewriter," which enables people to type just by thinking about typing. Is this what’s left over if moving my arm is subtracted…
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How many cops (Wilson)
does it take to "control" a 1000-person peace parade? Looks like they’re ready for May Day in Berlin.
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Men, Straw and Hollow (Edmundson)
The Associated Press (March 18) circulates a primer on critical thinking.
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Is Helen Thomas’s Hair on Fire? (Edmundson)
This is an update to my earlier post, "Preemption Doctrine Adds Nuclear Option." The respected White House correspondent, Helen Thomas, turned up the heat under Presidential Spokesman Scott McClellan on the general issue of preemptive war: Q Does the President know that he’s in violation of international law when he advocates preemptive war? The U.N.…
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Friday Poem: “As It Was”
As It Was The liberal lady’s voice dropped to a whisperAs she spoke words she thought controversialWhy whisper I said in a voice seemly but loudYou are not the only American against this war(A woman passing turned toward me and smiled)The lady seemed embarrassed I often feel aloneYou are not I answered you are among…
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Justice O’Connor Reads This Blog: Warns that Republican Attacks on the Independence of Judiciary Threaten “Dictatorship” (Leiter)
Who knew? Professor Edmundson mentioned this already, but having been away for a few days, I wanted to revisit this briefly (esp. since the U.S. media has largely ignored this speech). At a recent speech at Georgetown, the retired Supreme Court Justice made clear she must have been reading items like these: Sandra Day O’Connor,…
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Preemption Doctrine Adds Nuclear Option (Edmundson)
The Bush Adminstration’s recently released "National Security Strategy" is not merely recycled material, as the media has taken it to be. Dismaying as its obliviousness to experience is, what is even more so is the new bombshell it contains: the threat of preemptive nuclear strikes against possible attackers. According to Hans M. Kristensen, director of…
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This explains a lot (Wilson)
A recent study shows that extreme partisans don’t use rational parts of the brain when processing political information: Is political persuasion mostly useless? Is the percentage of people essentially immune to rational argument about political things increasing? […] At Emory University, psychologist Drew Westen and his team conducted what they believe is the first study…
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Do-it-yourself Enigma Machine (Edmundson)
Cryptography buffs and Turing fans might be interested in building a working replica of the Enigma machine. Soldering required.
I disagree with the perspectives described here and wrote with my co-authors on the very real catastrophic potential of AI…