Nantucket
Flowers through the window
lavender and yellow
changed by white curtains—
Smell of cleanliness—
Sunshine of late afternoon—
On the glass tray
a glass pitcher, the tumbler
turned down, by which
a key is lying— And the
immaculate white bed
“What Western feminists don’t understand is that we don’t want freedom,” Gailani said. “We want to be able to follow the Koran, minus all the anti-women dogma that surrounds it.”
Maybe they want freedom within the Koran, in part because nearly the entire Afghan culture and the Arab world have so few thinkers who have thought about pursuing freedom outside of the Koran.
So just as the Bush administration misread the desire for democracy Iraq, feminists are misreading the desires of women all over the globe; taking them out the contexts of culture and religion.
We must cultivate our own gardens, right?
See Also: My post here about Martha Nussbaum’s list of capabilities which attempts to apply some feminism (as well as a lot of other important ideas) to cultures (India specifically) around the globe in a much more intelligent way. Does her project suffer some of the same short-sightedness?
The thesis: Eliot Spitzer’s cheating shouldn’t surprise you, silly, biologists know that animals cheat all the time!
First, I’d like to point out the article is a hodge-podge of current events, evolutionary biology (the research I don’t necessarily disagree with, the interpretation of which I do), economic theory and psychology…but it does manage to be in the Science section of the NY times.
Second, you might be wondering if Angier is serious about expecting the reader not to be interested in the moral and practical problems that arise from infidelity (and which arguably may arise in the monkeys mentioned here, as she points out). It’s a lot to ask of an intelligent reader to ignore so much, and I would point out that none of us would even have to rely on religious arguments to counter such claims.
Like Angier, I don’t think it’s the job of a scientist to be interested in Spitzer’s infidelity (with a prostitute, no less) but here she glibly ignores a host of problems he’s brought us, not least of which is damaging the public trust.
Maybe this picture is appropriate
by detourblog
Really, you’ve got to take a look at this.
How do you create a robot that can respond anywhere near as well to a complex environment as a living organism does?
I’m reminded of Searle’s Chinese Room, and Deep Blue (really smart and really dumb), and Shakey.
Do you aim for emotional attachment like the Japanese do?
See Also: The BigDog promotional video set to Herbie Hancock’s Rock It. You remember that video? An Introduction to Artifical Intelligence to which someone will undoubtedly bring up Skynet.
Addition: From Military.com: ‘This is the upgraded “Big Dog” from Boston Dynamics. The unit is gas powered, weighs 235 pounds, has a payload of 345 pounds, and can traverse a wide variety of terrain.’
Drudge has a copy.
“I can no more disown him (Wright)than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.“
It’s a startingly revealing speech, and it makes me admire him. I can’t help but think his loyalty to the black traditions (see post below) and honesty about his own experiences are enough to make us all better off.
I’d rather have him be honest than president (if that’s where this should happen to lead, which is by no means clear).
Can Obama just shed Wright and move on…and if he won’t…will this change many voters’ minds?
Mark Steyn has a post about Obama and Jeremiah Wright:
“Why would he do such a thing? I wouldn’t expose my kids to the four-letter ravings of Jeremiah Wright because I wouldn’t want them to grow up loathing their country. I find it hard not to think less of a man who does”
Steyn is certainly free to his opinion, and no doubt it’s unsettling to me and many others to hear that strain of anti-Americanism preached at all, and in a church no less….but..
…what if that strain of anti-Americanism in the black church is a way of ameliorating the racial tension and legacy of slavery into a movement, and what if that movement could eventually become directed toward nationalistic goals that could even please the NRO?
Click here for more. (Really good at 4:20 or so on)
Steyn certainly doesn’t have to agree with Wright (and I doubt he’s voting for a democrat anyways)…but understanding the depth of the tradition he comes from a little better might help.
Can Obama just shed Wright and move foward?
If you’re interested in some ideas about the current state of cosmic inflation and Big Bang theory, check out recent Sean Carroll’s bloggingheads turn (~12 min). Recommended.
Also, George Smoot’s book, Wrinkles in Time is very readable and fun (like listening to a really interesting, smart friend) and gives a background to his COBE research and contributions to Big Bang theory. He had quite an adventure.
It’s a good way for novices to prevent from becoming cranks. Thanks to Mr. Carroll for sharing.
See Also: Riemannian space, Alan Guth, Gravity and space-time.
This was yesterday, March 14th, 2008, in Atlanta where the Weather Channel is located. Here’s a good report, with links to video. I hope everyone is OK.
1. Don’t forget about Brooklyn, August 9th, 2007, article here. A reported F2.
2. Miami, May 12th 1997 (minor damage, F1). It’s not often you see a tornado among office buildings.
3. And I guess if you live in Oklahoma City, you get used to it.
Here’s the (F)ujita Scale. A really cool photo, the Atlanta tornado shrouded enough to inspire mystery.
The pillars of American liberalism — the Democratic Party, the universities and the mass media — are obsessed with biological markers, most particularly race and gender. They have insisted, moreover, that pedagogy and culture and politics be just as seized with the primacy of these distinctions and with the resulting “privileging” that allegedly haunts every aspect of our social relations.
According to the argument, because race and gender have been ideas central to American liberalism, (perhaps especially by those who’ve benefitted most from free market actitivity but denounce it all the same) race and gender are now playing themselves out in the political arena, and it’s getting ugly…or it’s going to get ugly once the logical fallacies and limits of such ideas are tossed around in the public arena.
It also suggests Hillary Clinton is merely a political opportunist clever enough to realize the new landscape, and so is still game enough to change her tactics accordingly.
Perhaps liberalism has been led astray from a more politically wise, philosophically profound body of ideas. Perhaps some on the right are correct in diagnosing the problem as one of ideological excess that perhaps began in the 60’s, or perhaps has been lurking in socialist, neo-marxist, anti-capitalist thinking here and elsewhere…
Though if so as I’ve mentioned, then look for the right to respond with a similar ideological zeal and less reasoned defense of their own ideas in response…thus fueling the fire…
It’s not quite an optimistic vision… and of course…perhaps.
