Archive for December, 2006
An interesting little video from 1968, in which Noam Chomsky debates William Buckley about the Vietnam War. What struck me is how very civil they both were towards each other, even though they held such different views on a highly divisive issue:
Now flash forward to 2006, and look how the [...]
Well, just a slight ripple in the press, about the lack of preparedness for a bio-terror event, and the glacial pace that the authorities are preparing for such an event is contrasted with the near certainty among those leaders polled that a bio-terror attack is likely within the next 5 years. This [...]
Here’s a story that I’ll follow. It’s about an outbreak of Pertussis in Boston, only it turns out it really wasn’t Pertussis, nobody knows what it is. I had postulated that a free press is a key element to bringing public resources to bear on health issues, and to the ultimate [...]
With this quote, Winston Churchill summed up how the next World War would be fought. It’s notable how often he uses the phrase “the minds of men” when describing the future. The Churchill Center had sent me an email describing the number of times this phrase reappears–I believe the number was in the [...]
With this quote, Winston Churchill summed up how the next World War would be fought. It’s notable how often he uses the phrase “the minds of men” when describing the future. The Churchill Center had sent me an email describing the number of times this phrase reappears–I believe the number was in the [...]
Or, all hail King George! (And if you don’t , I’ll cut your newspapers to ribbons…)
So here’s what a recent Op-ed piece looked like in a major newspaper. A petty Thirld World dictatorship? An Eastern Bloc Country before Perestroika?
NO, it’s AMERICA and it’s TODAY, 23 December 2006.
New York Times: [...]
Or, all hail King George! (And if you don’t , I’ll cut your newspapers to ribbons…)
So here’s what a recent Op-ed piece looked like in a major newspaper. A petty Thirld World dictatorship? An Eastern Bloc Country before Perestroika?
NO, it’s AMERICA and it’s TODAY, 23 December 2006.
New York Times: [...]
There are so many little nuggets in Amartya Sen’s book Development as Freedom that I really don’t know where to start, as there were so many little post-it notes stuck at passages that I thought were either entertaining or made excellent points, or contained interesting perspectives on points I’d thought about before that I stopped [...]
An interesting excerpt from Collapse by Jared Diamond, about the native intelligence of New Guinea highland farmers, the utility and longevity of that knowledge:
New Guinea is the large island just North of Australia…lying almost on the equator and hence with hot tropical rainforest in the lowlands, but whose rugged interior consists of alternating ridges and [...]
John Robb has an interesting post in which two astute points are made, and flowing from these, an important question is raised. The answer to his question depends on our thinking across disciplines, to see a very similar structure in a problem that was solved in Victorian London. A [...]
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