Monthly Archives: April 2012

An Unusually Effective Campaign Ad

Posted on April 30, 2012 by

Wow.

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The Race Talk: Some Things I’ll Tell My Kids about Race (Contra John Derbyshire)

Posted on April 28, 2012 by

In the event you missed the news, John Derbyshire recently wrote a bewilderingly racist essay that got him removed as a contributing editor to National Review. His topic: what white parents should tell their white children about race, most particularly blacks. … Continue reading →

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The Man with the Hoe (Millet’s Painting and Markham’s Poem)

Posted on April 28, 2012 by

In the late 1890s, Edwin Markham was visiting San Francisco and found himself awestruck by Millet’s painting of “The Man with the Hoe” (which now resides as part of the permanent collection of the Getty Center in Los Angeles, if … Continue reading →

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Chris Hedges the Prophet: Liberal Democracy Headed for Breakdown

Posted on April 25, 2012 by

Chris Hedges thinks the writing is on the wall, Nebuchadnezzar. In his most recent essay at Truthdig (“The Globalization of Hollow Politics”), he writes the following: A breakdown of liberal democracy [in the United States], which seems to be where we … Continue reading →

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The Birds: Europe’s Debt Crisis Foreshadows President Obama’s Electoral Doom

Posted on April 24, 2012 by

I foresee, in the following New York Times reporting on the Eurozone economic crisis, the end of Barack Obama’s presidency: Jens Weidmann, president of the Bundesbank, the German central bank, argued Monday that the core problem in the euro zone … Continue reading →

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Jerry Coyne, Dissectheist

Posted on April 23, 2012 by

At Uncommon Descent there is a contest going on, seeking from readers some new bit of coinage for accurately designating the Jerry Coyne-style atheist (the atheist obsessed with deconstructing and combating religion). I believe I’ve thought of the right word, and submitted it to … Continue reading →

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Cyborg Lobster Watch: A Remote-Controlled Plane as a Tool for Vision

Posted on April 22, 2012 by

Some questions: Is an extension of man, man? Where does the self end and our tools begin? And when we look-in on the “flights” of another person’s consciousness, extended and carried via a remote-controlled plane, does that become us as well? Or … Continue reading →

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Thanks, McDonald’s: Obesity is Killing America’s Economic Competitiveness by Ballooning Health Care Costs

Posted on April 21, 2012 by

So says Jim Clifton, CEO of Gallup and author of The Coming Jobs War. In an interview at Gallup’s Management Journal, he tags obesity and fruitless late-life interventions as the two chief reasons that Americans spend so much more than … Continue reading →

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Vatican to US Nuns: Shut Up!

Posted on April 19, 2012 by

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious represents 57,000 nuns in the US, but it has become too feminist for the reactionary hierarchy of the Church at Rome. Here’s the BBC: Vatican officials . . . castigated the group for making some … Continue reading →

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Adrienne Rich Reading, “What Kind of Times Are These”

Posted on April 19, 2012 by
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Republicans Oppose the Violence Against Women Act—and Lesbians

Posted on April 19, 2012 by

The Republicans are reluctant to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act this year. Why? Because nondiscrimination against lesbians is included in the bill. The poet Adrienne Rich, who died this past month at the age of 82 and who raised … Continue reading →

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Neuroscience for Buddhists: Externalism Nicely Explained

Posted on April 18, 2012 by

At the New York Review of Books, Tim Parks recounts his experience of having a beer with Riccardo Manzotti, a man who believes that consciousness does not reside in the brain. Monzotti is an externalist who thinks the subject-object split … Continue reading →

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The Combative Christopher Hitchens

Posted on April 17, 2012 by

Deeelushious.  

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Life Found on Mars? Neuropharmacologist and Biologist Joseph Miller is “99 Percent Sure There’s Life” on Mars

Posted on April 15, 2012 by

The Discovery News website this week is reporting some pretty mind-blowing stuff on whether there is bacterial life on Mars, accompanied by an exciting quote from neuropharmacologist and biologist Joseph Miller (who is at the University of Southern California’s Keck School … Continue reading →

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Christopher Hitchens’ Advice to Young People

Posted on April 15, 2012 by

A powerful appeal from Hitchens when he was clearly in decline. Carpe diem. _____ Hitchens would have had his 62nd birthday this past week, and Charlie Rose did a powerful roundtable discussion with four of his closest friends—Salmon Rushdie, Martin … Continue reading →

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Rick Santorum as Robert Capa’s Federico Borrell García

Posted on April 13, 2012 by

Matt Drudge is good at finding unsettling images, but I found this one especially disturbing (though I couldn’t identify why):   Then it registered: it echoes the famous Robert Capa image of Federico Borrell García dropping from a gunshot during the … Continue reading →

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Smile Research

Posted on April 13, 2012 by

How much you smile, and how wide that smile tends to be, may correlate with your lifespan. Really. Here’s researcher Ron Gutman, at a TED conference, discussing what science has discovered about smiling: _____ And here’s the closing scene from … Continue reading →

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Blame Atheists for Ballooning Budget Deficits and Islam’s Growing Clout in Europe?

Posted on April 12, 2012 by

Maybe. In a fascinating summary, at NewGeography.com, of global demographic research, Joel Kotkin points the finger at Enlightenment secularism for the ballooning budget deficits and low birth rates in industrialized countries: The increasingly perilous shape of public finance in almost all … Continue reading →

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Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009: Mitt Romney Won’t Say Whether He Supports It

Posted on April 11, 2012 by

In the first month of his presidency, President Obama signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay bill, assuring that women who believe they have been subject to wage discrimination get their due day in court. The bill made it … Continue reading →

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Quantum Dieting: Change Your Measurements, Change Your Life

Posted on April 10, 2012 by

An article in Seed surveys some recent research on quantum physics’s implications for common sense reality. Here’s the problem: [N]one of us perceives the world as it exists fundamentally. We do not observe the tiniest bits of matter, nor the forces … Continue reading →

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