A Bit of Iraq in America

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Escalating tensions between Sunnis and Shiites across the Middle East are rippling through some American Muslim communities, and have been blamed for events including vandalism and student confrontations. Political splits between those for and against the American invasion of Iraq fuel some of the animosity, but it is also a fight among Muslims about who represents Islam.

-- Neil Farquhar for The New York Times

Isn't this special? Dubya liked to say that we were fighting the terrorists in Iraq so that we would not have to fight them here. But it looks like we may be fighting in a civil war both there and here.

xXx

A Bit of Iraq in America

♠
Escalating tensions between Sunnis and Shiites across the Middle East are rippling through some American Muslim communities, and have been blamed for events including vandalism and student confrontations. Political splits between those for and against the American invasion of Iraq fuel some of the animosity, but it is also a fight among Muslims about who represents Islam.

-- Neil Farquhar for The New York Times

Isn't this special? Dubya liked to say that we were fighting the terrorists in Iraq so that we would not have to fight them here. But it looks like we may be fighting in a civil war both there and here.

xXx

Superbowl 41

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Oh, why can't they put Christmas, the Superbowl, and Valentine's Day, all on the same day?

Must they rub our faces in our outsiderness!

xXx

Superbowl 41

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Oh, why can't they put Christmas, the Superbowl, and Valentine's Day, all on the same day?

Must they rub our faces in our outsiderness!

xXx

Eco-Porn?

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The question is whether what's happening now is just the natural give and take of the planet, as Erik the Red and my town's early settlers understood it. Or whether it's something so unprecedented that we need to divert vast resources to a transnational elite bureaucracy so that they can do their best to cripple the global economy and deny much of the developing world access to the healthier and longer lives that capitalism brings. To the eco-chondriacs that's a no-brainer.

-- Mark Steyn for The Chicago Sun-Times

I have been keeping track of the global-warming scare, and it seems only fair to hear a contrarian voice. Steyn also has this good idea:

You could take every dime spent by every government and NGO and eco-group to investigate "climate change" and spend it on Internet porn instead, and it wouldn't make the slightest difference to what the climate will be in 2050.

Just make sure it's the good, misogynistic, violent kind. The one thing we don't need is more really bland porn.

xXx

Eco-Porn?

♠
The question is whether what's happening now is just the natural give and take of the planet, as Erik the Red and my town's early settlers understood it. Or whether it's something so unprecedented that we need to divert vast resources to a transnational elite bureaucracy so that they can do their best to cripple the global economy and deny much of the developing world access to the healthier and longer lives that capitalism brings. To the eco-chondriacs that's a no-brainer.

-- Mark Steyn for The Chicago Sun-Times

I have been keeping track of the global-warming scare, and it seems only fair to hear a contrarian voice. Steyn also has this good idea:

You could take every dime spent by every government and NGO and eco-group to investigate "climate change" and spend it on Internet porn instead, and it wouldn't make the slightest difference to what the climate will be in 2050.

Just make sure it's the good, misogynistic, violent kind. The one thing we don't need is more really bland porn.

xXx

Postmodernist, Politics-Based Science

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Chris Mooney and Alan Sokal write about the unhealthy mix of politics in science. Naturally, the current concern stems from the anti-evolution and anti-global-warming types that support the Bush Administration. However, they point out that the left was the problem not long ago. They provide a nice anecdote of their battle against the post-modernists that held greater sway during the Clinton years:

One of us — Sokal — was sufficiently disturbed by these trends to try an unorthodox experiment: write a parody of postmodern science criticism to see whether a trendy academic journal would accept it as a serious scholarly article. Asserting up front that "physical 'reality' [note the scare quotes] … is at bottom a social and linguistic construct," Sokal averred that the latest conceptions of quantum gravity support deconstructive literary theory, Lacanian psychoanalysis, "postmodernist epistemology" and, of course, progressive politics. The cultural-studies journal Social Text ate it up.

After Sokal revealed his hoax in the magazine Lingua Franca, a debate exploded about the nature of science and rationality, popularly known as the "science wars." It pitted scientists and their staunch defenders within and outside of the academic community — spanning the political spectrum from left to right — against a band of intellectuals from the humanities, virtually all of them situated on the left.

They discuss ways to try to restore and maintain a "reality-based government," but it presumably is something that always has to be fought. Power corrupts. It is important to just continue fighting it out to try to keep power humble. Besides, you cannot always be entirely sure that you are right.


(source: Chris Mooney and Alan Sokal for The Los Angelos Times)

xXx

Postmodernist, Politics-Based Science

♠
Chris Mooney and Alan Sokal write about the unhealthy mix of politics in science. Naturally, the current concern stems from the anti-evolution and anti-global-warming types that support the Bush Administration. However, they point out that the left was the problem not long ago. They provide a nice anecdote of their battle against the post-modernists that held greater sway during the Clinton years:

One of us — Sokal — was sufficiently disturbed by these trends to try an unorthodox experiment: write a parody of postmodern science criticism to see whether a trendy academic journal would accept it as a serious scholarly article. Asserting up front that "physical 'reality' [note the scare quotes] … is at bottom a social and linguistic construct," Sokal averred that the latest conceptions of quantum gravity support deconstructive literary theory, Lacanian psychoanalysis, "postmodernist epistemology" and, of course, progressive politics. The cultural-studies journal Social Text ate it up.

After Sokal revealed his hoax in the magazine Lingua Franca, a debate exploded about the nature of science and rationality, popularly known as the "science wars." It pitted scientists and their staunch defenders within and outside of the academic community — spanning the political spectrum from left to right — against a band of intellectuals from the humanities, virtually all of them situated on the left.

They discuss ways to try to restore and maintain a "reality-based government," but it presumably is something that always has to be fought. Power corrupts. It is important to just continue fighting it out to try to keep power humble. Besides, you cannot always be entirely sure that you are right.


(source: Chris Mooney and Alan Sokal for The Los Angelos Times)

xXx

Elvis: Heartbreak Hotel '56

Elvis: Heartbreak Hotel '56