To hell with them (and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin).
Category: Society Page 5 of 69
In all honesty, the Wikileaks event has turned me into a net consumer of media in the past week. I’ve got a lot to say (shocker), but I keep wanting more of it before I’m certain about what I want to say. I’m a longtime resident of the Transparency Camp, and this doc dump tests a lot of the principles required for residency.
But then we get to a day like today, and I’m glad that I’ve mostly shut up. Between idiocy like this and this and this? I might permanently sink my chances of being welcome in polite society.
Compare the New York Times glossing of the revelations concerning US diplomatic spying with the Guardian’s detailed look.
Right?
Right?
Oh, to have been there to watch Christopher Hitchens debate Tony Blair on the net benefit of religion in the world. Â Hitchens opened, quoting Cardinal Newman’s Apologia:
“The Catholic church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail and for all the many millions on it to die in extremist agony than one soul … should tell one wilful untruth or should steal one farthing without excuse.”
You’ll have to say it’s beautifully phrased, but to me, and this is my proposition, what we have here, and picked from no mean source, is a distillation of precisely what is twisted and immoral in the faith mentality. Its essential fanaticism, it’s consideration of the human being as raw material, and its fantasy of purity.
Once you assume a creator and a plan, it makes us objects, in a cruel experiment, whereby we are created sick, and commanded to be well. I’ll repeat that. Created sick, and then ordered to be well. And over us, to supervise this, is installed a celestial dictatorship, a kind of divine North Korea. Greedy, exigent, greedy for uncritical phrase from dawn until dusk and swift to punish the original since with which it so tenderly gifted us in the very first place.
Blair replied:
So the proposition that religion is unadulterated poison is unsustainable. It can be destructive, it can also create a deep well of compassion, and frequently does.
And the second is that people are inspired to do such good by what I would say is the true essence of faith, which is along with doctrine and ritual particular to each faith, a basic belief common to all faiths, in serving and loving God, through serving and loving your fellow human beings.
[ . . . ]
The message of the prophet Mohammed, saving one life is as if you’re saving the whole of humanity, the Hindu searching after selflessness, the Buddhist concepts of Kuruni … which all subjugate selfish desires to care for others, Sikh insistence on respect for others of another faith. That in my view is the true face of faith. And the values derived from this essence offer to many people a benign, positive and progressive framework by which to live our daily lives. Stimulating the impulse to do good, disciplining the propensity to be selfish and bad.
The entire transcript is available. Â Grab a cup of tea and read the whole thing. Â Inspiring, really.
It’s odd to write these post titles now. Â It’s like a time warp back to 2005. Â But with Bush attempting to rehabilitate himself, I don’t feel like I’ve much of a choice, here. Â So, to restate: George W. Bush is not just a war criminal, but the sort of sorry individual who was willing to perpetrate a fraud on the world so he could get what he wanted:
According to a memo written by a Blair aide documenting the meeting, Bush and Blair in that session each said they doubted any weapons of mass destruction would soon be discovered by the UN inspectors then searching for such arms in Iraq. Without any WMDs, it could be harder to win support for the war. But Bush had an idea—or two.
The memo—portions of which were published in the New York Times and in Philippe Sands’Lawless World —noted that Bush raised the notion of provoking a confrontation with Saddam Hussein. “The US was thinking,” the memo said, “of flying US reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted UN colours. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach” of UN resolutions. A retaliatory attack would then be fully justified; the war could begin. In other words, Bush raised the prospect of staging a phony event to justify a military attack on Iraq.
[ . . . ]
Now, Bush, too, is keeping the cover-up alive. In his new book, Decision Points, Bush does write about this particular meeting. [ . . . ] But Bush says nothing about his proposal to provoke the war through fraud. (The memo, by the way, does not record Blair objecting to this potential subterfuge.)
One of the most maddening things about this is that Bush doesn’t have the capacity to understand what he’s wrought. Â (And I bet Tony Blair wishes he were more like Bush, on this point. Â Too bad. Â I hope he suffers for it until the end of his days.)
Aung San Suu Kyi’s release is imminent:
After seven years under house arrest and 15 of the last 21 incarcerated in some form by Burma‘s military regime, Aung San Suu Kyi today chose one last night of imprisonment so that she might walk truly free.
[ . . . ]
It was rumoured that Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s best-known democracy advocate and a Nobel peace laureate, demanded an unconditional release and insisted on negotiating her unfettered freedom with military officials before she would set foot outside her door.
That’s great. Â It really is. Â But what about Burma?
Hey, did I mention I went to Taiwan? Oh, you hadn’t heard? Well hey, here’s some more photos from the kickoff!
Somewhat more seriously – you should check out Mark V.’s take, over at Bikehugger. It’s more succinct than me. And if what he’s got cued up in his Flickr stream is any indication, it’s going to be more interesting. (He’s inspired me to rethink what can be done with phonecam video.)
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Okay, I kinda want one. Â (Should I just have admitted that?)
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Still time to register for the ThinkBike workshops:
The opening session will be kicked off by the Dutch Ambassador Mrs. Renée Jones-Bos. City staff, local decision makers, and bicyclists are invited to learn more about Dutch cycling infrastructure and policy best practices.
I’ll be there for some of it.
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You’ve seen this already, right? Â One part of the Federal government tells us that too much cheese is bad for us while another part works to improve the sales of menu items with 8x the usual cheese? Â I think that government has a legitimate role in promoting certain behaviors, but it’s pointless if one effort will undermine the other:
Urged on by government warnings about saturated fat, Americans have been moving toward low-fat milk for decades, leaving a surplus of whole milk and milk fat. Yet the government, through Dairy Management, is engaged in an effort to find ways to get dairy back into Americans’ diets, primarily through cheese.
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Let these roll around in your head for a while:
Here are a few examples of instances where other languages have found the right word and English simply falls speechless.
1. Toska
Russian – Vladmir Nabokov describes it best: “No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.â€
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I love Hong Kong. I love a good flow. I love hip-hop. Enjoy all three below, in this video from MC Yan:
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Great post and comment thread on the best tool (and other) warranties. I rarely shop by lowest price, aiming mostly for quality that will last a long time. But service in the event of failure is a definite priority. Because buying cheap shit is ruining us.
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I wish I’d had a chance to see this:
Known to its creators and participating artists as the Underbelly Project, the space, where all the show’s artworks remain, defies every norm of the gallery scene. Collectors can’t buy the art. The public can’t see it. And the only people with a chance of stumbling across it are the urban explorers who prowl the city’s hidden infrastructure or employees of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
That’s because the exhibition has been mounted, illegally, in a long-abandoned subway station.
Joel Johnson, at Gizmodo, engages some of that site’s commenters in a way that I would recommend to most sites:
It seems like every so often the comments at Gizmodo fill up with entitled, half-witted thinkers, like a boil taut with ignorance. Even the least pointed opinion by an author ruptures it, leaving us dripping with wet bitterness. It’s time to give the commentariat a good lancing.
A hyperlocal news site that I read – ARLnow.com – came to mind when I first read this, but really, this is advice for the whole Internet. Â The world is filled with stupid people, and not every opinion deserves a platform.
” . . . turn upside down right along with it.”
This takes 5:40: