Month: August 2006

1938 All Over Again

Richard Cohen from Washington Post
When George Bush used the term “Islamic fascists,” he had a point. But it’s futile to use colorful language when, in reality, you’re out of the conversation altogether. This is another baleful consequence of the Iraq War. The U.S. is not only preoccupied, it is loathed. The leadership it once was able to exert — especially in the Middle East — is a thing of the past. If it is going to have its credibility restored, another president will have to do so. In the meantime, as we always learn, Europe without American leadership is a mere tourist destination.

2010 College Freshman Mindset

Beloit College
Members of the class of 2010, entering college this fall, were mostly born in 1988. For them: Billy Carter, Lucille Ball, Gilda Radner, Billy Martin, Andy Gibb, and Secretariat have always been dead.
1. The Soviet Union has never existed and therefore is about as scary as the student union.
2. They have known only two presidents.
3. For most of their lives, major U.S. airlines have been bankrupt.
4. Manuel Noriega has always been in jail in the U.S.
5. They have grown up getting lost in “big boxes.”
6. There has always been only one Germany.
7.
They have never heard anyone actually “ring it up” on a cash register.
8. They are wireless, yet always connected.
9. A stained blue dress is as famous to their generation as a third-rate burglary was to their parents’.
10. Thanks to pervasive headphones in the back seat, parents have always been able to speak freely in the front.
11. A coffee has always taken longer to make than a milkshake.
12.
Smoking has never been permitted on U.S. airlines. Continue reading “2010 College Freshman Mindset”

Rats & GoldFish Smarter than Scientists?

Miami – Scientists may have big brains, but a Miami-based marine mammal pecialist and author says lab rats and even goldfish can outwit them.

Richard O’Barry of the Dolphin Project says the super-sized brains of human cientists are a function of being cold hearted and living in their cientific environment and not a sign of intelligence.

“We equate our big brain with intelligence. Over the years we have looked t these kinds of things and said the scientists must be intelligent,” he said “The real flaw in this logic is that it suggests all brains are built the ame … When you look at the structure of the human scientists brain you
see it is not built for complex – open minded – information processing,” he told Animal People Magazine in an interview. Continue reading “Rats & GoldFish Smarter than Scientists?”

Greenland’s glaciers have been shrinking for 100 years: study

Greenland’s glaciers have been shrinking for 100 years: study
This study, which covers 247 of 350 glaciers on Disko, is the most comprehensive ever conducted on the movements of Greenland’s glaciers,” glaciologist Jacob Clement Yde, who carried out the study with Niels Tvis Knudsen, told AFP.

Using maps from the 19th century and current satellite observations, the scientists were able to conclude that “70 percent of the glaciers have been shrinking regularly since the end of the 1880s at a rate of around eight meters per year,” Yde said.

“We studied 95 percent of the area covered by glaciers in Disko and everything indicates that our results are also valid for the glaciers along the coasts of the rest of Greenland,” he said.

The biggest reduction was observed between 1964 and 1985. Continue reading “Greenland’s glaciers have been shrinking for 100 years: study”

Islam needs Irony

OpinionJournal – Featured Article
The Ottoman Empire evolved systems of law which to some extent replicated that wise provision. But after the Ottoman collapse the Muslim sects rebelled against the idea, since it contradicts the claims of the Shariah to be the final legal authority. The Egyptian writer and leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb, went so far as to denounce all secular law as blasphemy. Mortals who make laws for their own government, he argued, usurp a power which is God’s alone. And although few Muslim leaders will publicly endorse Qutb’s argument, few will publicly condemn it either. What to us is a proof of Qutb’s fanaticism and egomania is, for many Muslims, a proof of his piety.

Whenever I consider this matter I am struck by a singular fact about the Christian religion, a fact noticed by Kierkegaard and Hegel but rarely commented upon today, which is that it is informed by a spirit of irony. Irony means accepting “the other,” as someone other than you. It was irony that led Christ to declare that his “kingdom is not of this world,” not to be achieved through politics. Such irony is a long way from the humorless incantations of the Koran. Yet it is from a posture of irony that every real negotiation, every offer of peace, every acceptance of the other, begins. The way forward, it seems to me, is to encourage the re-emergence of an ironical Islam, of the kind you find in the philosophy of Averroës, in Persian poetry and in “The Thousand and One Nights.” We should also encourage those ethnic and religious jokes which did so much to defuse tension in the days before political correctness. And maybe, one day, the rigid face of some puritanical mullah will crack open in a hesitant smile, and negotiations can at last begin

Shi’ite revival roiling Mideast – World

Shi’ite revival roiling Mideast – World – insider.washingtontimes.com
Islam scholars say the Shi’ite-Sunni clash is a complex mix of religion, politics and class issues, and that the schism has never been fixed or permanent in Islam’s 1,400-year history. But the sectarian fighting in Iraq and Hezbollah’s war in Lebanon have forced ordinary Muslims to choose sides.
“Even secular Sunnis and Shia, because they need to be protected in a place like Iraq, or they fear what might happen in Bahrain or eastern Saudi Arabia, tend to draw towards their own,” Mr. Cook said.
“I think that’s an unfortunate scenario that is playing itself out throughout the region.”

Chocolate traps worker

JS Online:A heap of truffles: Chocolate traps worker
“I was pushing the chocolate down into the vat because it was stuck,” said Garcia, 21. “It came loose, and I just slid down the hopper into the chocolate.”
Garcia, who has worked at the company for almost two years, said he was almost chest deep in the chocolate, the dark variety. “It was in my hair, in my ears, my mouth, everywhere,” Garcia said. “I felt like I weighed 900 pounds. I couldn’t move.”

Garcia said his colleagues added cocoa butter to the vat in an attempt to thin the chocolate. Sinnen said firefighters in the ladder company that responded to the accident helped scoop the chocolate out of the vat. Eventually, enough chocolate was removed that Garcia was able to take off his pants and be pulled out. (Click on the picture to enlarge.)

Are We Fighting ‘Islamic Fascists’?

RealClearPolitics – Articles – Are We Fighting ‘Islamic Fascists’?
Fascism, Nolte said, is “resistance to transcendence.” By that, he meant that fascism was a rebellion against the liberating but destabilizing transformations of modern society.

I do see many of these same factors in the growing popularity of radical Islam in the Middle East. The baseline for this movement remains the Iranian revolution of 1979, which exploded in the region’s most modern and, if you will, “transcendent” state. The Shah’s Iran was rushing to embrace the global economy. Its elite was liberal, secular, international — and also wretchedly corrupt. Ordinary Muslims felt, with some justice, that they were being left out of the spoils of this new Iran — that their hard work was being used to buy mansions on the Cote d’Azur. That radical populism lives on in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, dressed in his ostentatiously humble golf jacket.

Andrew Young Resigns From Wal-Mart Post

Andrew Young Resigns From Wal-Mart Post – AOL News
Young was asked about whether he was concerned Wal-Mart causes smaller, mom-and-pop stores to close.”Well, I think they should; they ran the `mom and pop’ stores out of my neighborhood,” the paper quoted Young as saying. “But you see, those are the people who have been overcharging us, selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they’ve ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it’s Arabs; very few black people own these stores.”