…to those who invoke the “ticking bomb” scenario when trying to justify torture approved and perpitrated by our government:
No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.
-Theodore Roosevelt
I’m trying to take an online defensive driving course because I got a speeding ticket a while back. Unfortunately, I’m having problems with the streaming video, and I’ve had to watch the majority of a ridiculous teaching movie four times now. They used “teenagers”‘ and “with it” music video stylizing that is annoying as hell to my 43 year old personality.
Sigh…
Now I really have an incentive to never get another speeding ticket.
A relatively brief but compelling prediction of the predilections of the current generation of members of our armed forces by Ray Kimball can be found at The Huffington Post.
Some of the things I’ve been reading lately:
This one is disturbing - UK photographer chased down and detained for taking pix at fun fair
60 essayists analyze future problems and prospects in 50-year forecast
More disturbing reading
Things have changed in the past 7 years, and not for the better…
Can you spot the many ways this is just simply wrong?
Not-so-intelligent design there, methinks…
Thanks to Stephen at The Politburo Diktat for “pointing out” the photo.
I’m at a lacrosse game today, watching my son play. My wife and daughter are out of town at a dance competition. It’s been a busy weekend, so I’m taking this opportunity to see how effective posting from my iPhone is. I don’t know how well I can compose without a full-sized keyboard. Of course, time isn’t my only constraint on writing, so is being blocked. Sigh….
It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter’s Law into account.
-Douglas Hofstadter
I’ve updated to WordPress version 2.5, and eventually I hope to change over to a three column format, but don’t expect that any time soon. Given I can’t even work up the energy to make time to write coherent posts, reconfiguring the format is beyond what I can do for now, I suspect.
Let me know if any weirdness ensues from the WordPress upgrade.
Recently, I was reading something on the web that mocked the marketing of policies with the statement, “we are engaged in a ‘war on (insert threatening noun here)’”. The target of the mocking was the utterly misnamed “war on terror”, the naming of which follows a dubious legacy left by the “war on drugs” and the “war on poverty”, neither of which has been very successful by any meaningful, objective measure. Given how I have to be precise in my use of language in my job (mis-description can cost us a lot of money), I become particularly irritated by the continual use of the phrase “war on terror” to describe what to most people started on September 11, 2001. That was not the first day of conflict (it was indeed the second time the New York World Trade Center towers had been subject to a terrorist attack), and our collective ignorance of the world played no small role in the ultimate origins of the attacks.
Calling our efforts to counter terrorists attacks a “war” is elevating criminal acts above their true station, but if we insist upon using the term “war” then a more proper name is the blowback war.
“Blowback” refers to how the actions of the United States in Afghanistan and other regions in efforts to stymie the Soviet Union ended up creating more enemies of the United States than friends.
Using the correct terms may be the only way we can gain in this conflict, but unfortunately we are only capable of focusing on the here and now, not the too recent past.
Never confuse motion with action.
-Benjamin Franklin
Stolen from Neil Gaiman’s Journal, clearing out the tabs:
New book: Were Iraqi defectors coached to embellish?
Why your food is costing more money
Paul Krugman, Master Of The Space Lanes
Credit Scores 102: A Crisis, and Some Changes
Obama’s racial problems transcend Wright
Firefox 3 goes on a diet, eats less memory than IE and Opera
The word “nigger” is bleeped out in television broadcasts (at least it was in a clip shown on a cable news show I saw the other day).
The word “bitch” is used routinely in television shows now, often as a laugh line.
Not meaning to pull a Ferraro, but does this reflect something about our culture that we refuse to face honestly?
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
-H. L. Mencken
There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.
-Robertson Davies