Full post here.

In your ideological discontent with ‘capitalism,’ do you have to get into bed with some of Slavoj Zizek’s ideas…especially on the 20th anniversary of the day the Berlin Wall came down?

Still waiting on the Times to stop the ideological retreat…

Also On This Site:  Adam Kirsch In The New Republic On Slavoj Zizek: The Deadly Jester…Slavoj Zizek In The New Republic: Responding To Adam Kirsch

Full post here. (From Althouse, with interesting comments)

There is an argument attached to the Hasan killings; namely that Hasan may have been giving signs of a belief in a more radical Islam that would conflict with his military duties (though it’s perhaps not reasonable to suspect that such extreme and violent action would ever be taken).  The argument states that an environment of fear (or oversensitivity, at least) has been created and potentially institutionalized in the military.  Such an environment (motivated by an overly pc cultural climate) might have led some who were alarmed at Hasan’s behavior to turn their heads and avoid the problem, and thus may have helped to prevent the extreme outcome.

As the facts are discovered, it seems Islam was likely a motivating factor in Hasan’s decision to attack soldiers who would soon deploy to fight Muslims, and it may even be that he was connected with specific groups that would support such an action.  Muslims of course, are free to practice their religion, and to follow the laws, and most do. However, there are clearly an issues of concern here for further consideration (also some on the American right which will too easily incite the passions into a mold of religious conflict for political gain…mostly thanks to Hasan).

Addition:  Or perhaps people were monitoring him but he fell through the cracks.

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More broadly, a friend of mine further on the right than me is making the argument there are at least two issues:

1.  the real threat of radical Muslims willing to attack American targets from abroad and potentially at home, in the name of their religious beliefs…and how to best handle this threat…and the underlying reasons which help to cause it.

…as well as:

2.  An overly relativistic and confused set of ideas guiding the political left, which might not be deep enough to handle the type of situation that Hasan has presented us with.  In addition, such lack of depth (on full display in the Times article) forces us into more bitter partisanship, creating deeper rifts in the body politic.

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A few facts and a lot of generalizations…your thoughts and comments are welcome.  Here’s a quote from Simon Blackburn I put up a while ago:

“Nigel: Has relativism had its day as an influential philosophical position?

Simon: No – and I don’t think it should ever die. The danger is that it gets replaced by some kind of complacent dogmatism, which is at least equally unhealthy. The Greek sceptics thought that confronting a plurality of perspectives is the beginning of wisdom, and I think they were right. It is certainly the beginning of historiography and anthropology, and if we think, for instance, of the Copernican revolution, of self-conscious science. The trick is to benefit from an imaginative awareness of diversity, without falling into a kind of “anything goes” wishy-washy nihilism or scepticism….”

See Also On This Site:   From YouTube: Roger Scruton On Religious Freedom, Islam & Atheism…How do you reasonably deal with relativism anyways?: From Virtual Philosophy: A Brief Interview With Simon Blackburn…From The NY Times: Review Of Christopher Caldwell’s Book “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West”

Full article here.

“Nothing matters to Capitol Hill so much as apportioning responsibilities and the power that goes with them.”

It’s nice to have a little government skepticism, combined with economic insight:

“Too many US households and financial institutions got too deeply in debt.”

“…-one surely ought to look hard at the tax policies that actively encourage indebtedness.”

Also On This Site:   From Althouse: Ann Althouse And Dayo Olopade Discuss Health Insurance…Crook would perhaps like to see some version of the bill passed:From Clive Crook: Is Health Care Reform On Track?…From The New Yorker: Atul Gawande On Health Care-”The Cost Conundrum”

Excerpt here.

Feynman (wikipedia) wonders in this piece about what makes science science.  He manages to argue quite well why he doesn’t think psychology and the social sciences are.

I’d offer that very good minds can practice psychology…people with deep experience and wisdom and understanding.  Psychology obviously has value to many, many people… and also makes deep metaphysical arguments about the world and our understanding of it…yet… as Feynman rather effectively argues…it’s just not a science.

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I should also note that Feynman bristled at philosophers endlessly philosophizing about the nature of scientific knowledge, and who often are looking to borrow what they can from it to bolster their own metaphysical theories about the world.

Here’s a quote from Roger Scruton’s book (pg 50) on Immanuel Kant, one of the deeper philosophers:

“Scientific explanation depends upon principles of method:  being presupposed in scientific enquiry, these principles cannot be proved through it.  Kant believed that such principles would be reflected in basic scientific laws; and it is one of the tasks of metaphysics to provide grounds for their acceptance.“

Metaphysics will love you not…but at least philosophy can potentially recognize some of its shortcomings against such measure.

See Also: Karl Popper’s metaphysical theory on much the same subject: Falsifiability

Also On This Site: From 3 Quarks Daily: Richard Feynman Talks About A Pool And A Not-So-Pretty Girl…Elizabeth Spelke On Bloggingheads: Towards A Coalitional Mathematics?

Full article here.

Thought this might be of some interest:

“The crack is the surface component of a continental rift forming as the Arabian and African plates drift away from one another. It began to open up in September 2005, when a volcano at the northern end of the rift, called Dabbahu, erupted.”

And it happened in a few days, apparently.

“…Ebinger says it could continue to widen and lengthen. “As the plates keep spreading apart, it will end up looking like the Red Sea,”‘

Possibly in 4 million years.

Full article here.

“If the Afghan government can use the lessons from this election to build some protection for the Afghan people against fraud and corruption, then those who died and suffered because of the last vote will not have done so in vain.”

Yet who will help to maintain the democratic structure that has been cobbled together?

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And now that Abdullah Abdullah has pulled out, it’s going to be time for Obama to make a decision.  Anthony Cordesman outlines what he thinks ought to be considered here.

Related On This Site:  From Bloomberg: More Troops To Afghanistan? A Memo From Henry Kissinger To Gerald Ford?…From The NY Times Video: ‘A Schoolgirl’s Odyssey’…From The WSJ: Graham, Lieberman and McCain “Only Decisive Force Can Prevail In Afghanistan…From Commonweal: Andrew Bacevich “The War We Can’t Win: Afghanistan And The Limits Of American Power”

Full article here.

A good article to get a sense of what’s going on in Afghanistan for our combat troops; how the war looks from someone embedded with NATO forces on the ground.

“Michael Yon is a former Green Beret, native of Winter Haven, Fl. who has been reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan since December 2004.  No other reporter has spent as much time with combat troops in these two wars.”

Also On This Site:  Dexter Filkins Book On Afghanistan And Iraq: “The Forever War”…Sarah Chayes On Afghanistan In The Boston Review: Days Of Lies And Roses

Full post here.

“The problem is, newspapers were losing business before the recession.  Newspapers have been losing business for decades.”

And she finishes with:

“And I just don’t think that in ten years, the newspaper business model will be able to support very many newsrooms of any size.”

And newer business models are being developed and tested as we speak.  I suppose it depends on where you’re sitting, but the technology is currently available to broadcast and discuss ideas on the web at next to no cost (not necessarily free).  I’m not convinced that the vital role of newspaper as responsible institution of its own….watching even more responsible institutions for the public good (political watchdog, finder of facts) won’t be filled by someone else.  Mickey Kaus has a good list here (scroll down) of some necessities.

I’d also argue (showing my political stripes, and perhaps nothing else) that aside from the business model and ad revenue problem, there is the ideology problem at the NY Times (and many other outlets, not all on the left).  They are drawing themselves within an ever narrower set of ideas with which to interpret and report on events.  I think there are other, deeper reasons for this.

Yet, the NY Times still offers value, and important ideas, and much of the blogosphere relies on the Times’ shrinking newsroom for their own success at the moment.

Also On This Site: Here in Seattle, Bill Virgin says newspapers built up their value, and slowly let it die: From The Seattle Post-Intelligencer Via Sound Politics: Why Did The PI Die?..Who Reads The Newspapers?…The Newseum Opens On The Mall: More From The Weekly Standard

Two previous two posts which have some links of interest:  From The New Yorker: Malcolm Gladwell’s “Priced To Sell”…From The Becker-Posner Blog: The Future Of Newspapers.

Full video here.  Anthony Cordesman and some thoughtful journalists have a discussion.

Matthew Hoh’s resignation here.

Stanley McChrystal’s original report here.

Still looking for alternative strategies beyond graceful exit (potentially without meeting our security goals) or further troop commitment that would meet the Afghan people and protect our interests (and our moral commitment to the Afghans but only through our military)…your thoughts and comments are welcome.

Related On This Site:  From Bloomberg: More Troops To Afghanistan? A Memo From Henry Kissinger To Gerald Ford?…From The NY Times Video: ‘A Schoolgirl’s Odyssey’…From The WSJ: Graham, Lieberman and McCain “Only Decisive Force Can Prevail In Afghanistan…From Commonweal: Andrew Bacevich “The War We Can’t Win: Afghanistan And The Limits Of American Power”

I’m a non-scientist, so this is probably partially understood, somewhat accurate, and certainly dated:

Here is a well-done video from the Sprites Project at the University of Alaska:

During what is normally a cloud to ground lightning strike during a thunderstorm, there is occasionally a discharge of energy above the cloud, high up in the atmosphere.  These phenomenae are called blue jets, red sprites, and elves.  They are faint, require a dark background against which to view them, and also require that you be far enough away to see the storm from a distance (preferably from aircraft or a mountain overlooking a plain).

From Christopher Paul Barrington-Leigh’s abstract here, found at the Conjugate Sprites Project (where I got most of this information) page:

“Sprites are highly structured discharges lasting 5 to 100 ms and extending from 40 to 85 km altitude which result from intense electric fields following a major redistribution of electric charge in the troposphere — usually a positive cloud-to-ground return stroke.”

The Runaway Breakdown thesis here’s a quote from wikipedia by Nikolai Lehtinen:

“In the upper atmosphere, cosmic rays striking air molecules within thunderstorms can supply the relativistic electrons which trigger a breakdown in “runaway” mode. The breakdown region is a conductive plasma many tens of meters long, and it can supply the “seed” which triggers a lightning flash.”

An interesting possibility…

Related On This Site: You can get Walter Lewin’s Lectures at MIT for free:  Repost: From MIT OpenCourseWare: Walter Lewin’s Lecture On Lightning