1. When emoticon’s converse … my guess this isn’t the conversation most people think they’re going to be having.
2. Looking back.
3. Google maps (or Earth) meets Xenophon’s travels.
4. One in six … and most of that “one” work for the city.
5. The politics of fear.
6. An interesting take on the Mr Polanski kerfuffle. One more here and that will do it on that topic for me.
7. This story got a lot of repeats as well, and if true, then that will be yet another indictment against the performance of Mr Obama.
8. Transformation of a story, Siddhartha and Christian tradition.
9. Dissecting Mr Obama’s energy tax.
10. Healthcare.
11. A homily on costs.
12. One way of looking at the question, “Who is this Jesus fellow anyhow?”
13. It’s a much bigger problem if convicted than just arraigned.
14. Not quite a giga-pixel.
15. This reminds me I still have to watch last weeks episode of Dollhouse.

Well, for a time I’m going to continue evening link+ remarking in the hope that it engenders further conversation.

1. Matthew Lee Anderson has a short blurb on authenticity. Authenticity seems like one of the qualities that is noetically charged, .i.e.,  that is it changes under noetic inspection. That is to say, if you wonder whether you’re authentic or not, you aren’t. If you don’t, you might be. This makes being leading a authentic self-examined life something of a difficult prospect. You can of course lead an authentic self-examined life … so long as the aspect you are examining about your self and your outlook is not whether or not you are being authentic. Back in the day, when attending college in through the 80s and I deem the decade before as well, it was vogue to “drop out” of school for a time to find yourself. My impression that this motive was rarely, uhm, authentic. In last nights’ links+r post, I noted a Joe Carter post reflecting on those quite ordinary moments. There is some similarity here. Graduations, gaudy events, and moments filled with fire are not as authentic nor as lasting as the quite stolid ordinary times in our lives. Consider the exchange in the movie Up!, counting cars for “reds” and “blues” wouldn’t be an authentic ordinary memory to treasure if you’re doing it to be authentic.
2. Science used to be a field which, when theory disagreed with experiment, discarded the theory and not bolstered it with, well, pseudo-science or at best merely irrelevant science. Time and time again we find, in the Philippines, in WWII resistance movements faced with a enemy which utilizes torture finds that, on capture of one of their own, must immediately abandon all safe houses and locations known to that captured individual. Everyone who was in contact with the captured person facing and undergoing torture is now at a high risk for interdiction. Yet here it is argued that torture is best for producing “false memories.”
   

   The problem here is that “The problem, he says, is that stress hormones actually make it less likely that someone subject to abuse can accurately recall information, so that such abuse ends up “destroying the very memories they’re supposed to recover.””

   Uhm questions like “Where do you live?” Who are your contacts? And such aren’t “hard things” to remember. They are your mission. Your life. The center of your activity as a resistance member. Forgetting them is not likely or the problem. This is very much not like the manufactured memories of real or imagined pre-adolescent mythical abuse. These are more like, “Where do you work?” Stress might “make it less likely” that you can accurately recall information. But, I’d bet even with stress most people could get that right. [Disclaimer: Yet again, before the “you promote torture” worms come out of the woodwork. I do not promote torture. I think the honest appraisal is that can be effective, but we will choose nevertheless not to use it.]

3. Post cold war … some reflections. While I think this short article is important all I can think of right now is that improving and cementing commercial ties between nations ultimately will lead to closer ties and connections. And in that regard, what America needs most is Teremok (or more accurately ???????). When we were in Russia last year, we loved eating there … and everone knows America and the West need most is yet another fast food franchise. Blini filled with smoked salmon and sour cream (or one of dozens of other choices) washed down with kvas. Yum.

In the wake of last night’s posts, it was noted that they moved from more to less philosophical. That seems to be a trend.

Russia, America, torture, noetic

1. It is noted that Mr Obama was not so loquacious at the economic summit. Also from the same author/source, the Joe Wilson problem … he was, you now, lying.
2. Surprise! Gambling in the casino, the gendarmes is oh so surprised. How about Mr Obama? More here. And here.
3. A3 TDI gets 78mpg. Will it be sold in the US? I doubt it. After all, we have ca$h for clunkers.
4. Mr bin Laden’s bet.
5. Poland invades.
6. Brandon has his links at Siris. But y’all already knew that.
7. A right to healthcare. A right to food. Pretty soon, there’ll be a right to television.
8. I wonder how prostrations would fly?
9. First the nanny state and the nanny marketplace. Next, the nanny battlefield?
10. On 13 days.
11. Sherman and Xenophon.
12. Mr Polanski, so far I have yet any defenders of his.
13. Math and utility, harking back to Mr Wigner’s paper on the unreasonbleness of the nature between math and the world.
14. Kremlin spin.

fuel efficiency, Iran, Afghanistan, healthcare, history

My morning link posts usually arrive with virtually no editorial comment on my part, the sentence or so I give is mostly intended to interest the viewer to follow the link to the post indicated. I’ve got a short time this evening, and I’m caught up on my link browsing, so I thought I’d try to offer a smaller number of links here with a short paragraph surrounding it.

There’s been some discussion on and off about setting barriers. In general democrats think that bringing more to the table, irrespective of their seriousness or issues awareness is not relevant. What they feel is that more is always better. Yet, experience should, one might think, tell a different tale. Setting higher standards, yes it gets you less people making the decisions or performing the act, but it often raises the level of the result. Speaking of results that are not so impressive.

The friendly neighborhood Rust Belt Philosopher has a short post on fallacies. He starts off writing:

One of the nice things about fallacies is how they usually have equally fallacious mirror images. The ad populum fallacy, for instance, could be reversed into the invalid argument that a view is accurate because nobody (or very few people) believe it.

Recently I’ve come to find that ad populum point of view in historical reviews, i.e., the popular conception of what happened is wrong more than it is right. The popular view of what happened and why … is wrong. Not just a little wrong often, but exactly wrong. For example, virtually nobody believes that the BEF was innovative and responsive to situations in the field during WWI. Actually the common popular view was that the leadership was amazingly unresponsive, stupid and tradition/hidebound sending millions to their deaths in trenches because of their stupidity. This is alas, exactly wrong, but the popular view remains. The litany of “exactly wrong” historical popular views might be almost as long as the ones that the popular view gets right.

Joe Carter at First Thoughts has some ideas about monotony. The movie Up! offered the same theme, in part, in modern cinematic experience, highlighting the primacy of the ordinary in life. Ordinary moments with our spouse, children, neighbor, or for that matter God are really in the end more important than the ones we find to be pivotal. In a recent post of mine, arguments in favor of asceticism were made. In part, asceticism is about realizing those quiet moments with God are important and making that goal a formative in how you set your life and its goals.

This post will have evoke the standard responses from right and left. Up three paragraphs Mr Niven remarks in his post on the fallacy that correlation does not imply causation. That, in part, will be a crucial link in the argument by the left in this regard. Automation is part of the modern world. As a minimum wage goes up, the cost of replacing that unskilled worker with automation goes up. As the minimum wage goes up, it becomes harder to justify paying for the production of that same unskilled worker. It makes entry harder. Why does the left pretend this isn’t true?

democracy, fallacy, logic, Good, God, unemployment

1. Of race and anti-race and their connection to policy.
2. The NYTimes offers that a decade of no warming, which was not predicted, might pose problems for the predictions of global warming. D’ya think?
3. Celebration of a Saint. 
4. Iran and the persecution of a blogger for blogging.
5. Silencing the opposition … a theme?
6. Not unrelated.
7. How not to calculate network extends in finite sets.
8. The left’s tendency to over-extend their praise for Mr Obama, merely a fancy on the right … or not?
9. A sad truth noted, I’d offer that a better portion of that evil is done by people who fancy they are doing good but haven’t really thought it through.
10. Puns in headlines? A good idea or not?
11. Poland and the start of WWII.
12. House rules … or at least goes to the bank with full pockets.
13. NATO and the bear.
14. For when there is something in the air.
15. Again, not unrelated to the prior link.
16. On government spending in recession.
17. Christianity in Russia, perhaps not so pro forma.
18. Thoughts on smashing the icon.

global warming, race, icon, Orthodox, WWII

1. The missile move as an economy of force, i.e., just a shift to the East. And from the same author, danger lurks.
2. On Honduras. I have to say, I’ve seen nothing at all on this matter from the left. Is their silence a sign of ignorance or discomfort?
3. The internet and dissent.
4. The locals might not be stupid. But … this might highlight a problem (follow the aarrg link).
5. (some) Kids today.
6. Perhaps not unrelated … Teachers.
7. Medicare reform on the rocks? More here.
8. A plea to give Mr Obama some rope on Afghanistan.
9. Of right and wrong.
10. Well, there goes $800 billion we won’t get back and certainly will live to regret.
11. The inventor of exercise … really.
12. Parents are not potters, Ms Delsol suggested we are all gardeners.
13. Imagining war.
14. And nightlife in Kiev.
15. Feminism considered in the context of Buffy and Jennifer.

links, Honduras, economy, education, exercise, parenting

1. Right or wrong … I think is a mis-phrasing, perhaps mistake or not is better, and yet I think it was in fact a mistake. Preaching to the choir, i.e., the watchers of the other networks, is has its purpose. Reaching across to the other side, also has a purpose and deciding it’s not worth the bother … is a mistake.
2. Three on the McChrystal leak of the Afghan report here, here, and here. Oops, sorry here’s a fourth. OK, OK … a fifth.
3. Embarrassment? Hmm, I wouldn’t go that far, the recession is felt world-wide and a cost-benefit analysis might find that a census doesn’t pay … and might just as well wait until after the crises passes.
4. Friends-for-cash, late modernity strikes in Japan.
5. Somebody thinks that RFC’s constitute government regulation. Hint: they weren’t.
6. Travels related.
7. A new show for the new season … and CERN.
8. Global warming predicts and increase in hurricane frequency … oops.
9. Keeping an eye on the healthcare threats, err, bills.
10. A picture essay … and I think more than several Poles will take issue with these history lessons. Oddly enough, right now on Netflix during basement cycling sessions I’m watching Wadja’s Katyn.
11. Vote for Ott.
12. Ugly duckling no longer.
13. On abortion.
14. A reply to an atheist.
15. Mobile tech and southeast Asia.
16. Putting a finger on the failure of aid.
17. It is most definitely not OK, and I think even those who do are doing so because its transgressive.

Obama, Afghanistan, media, Orthodoxy, late modernity, art, abortion,

1. Six, of course those excited about that that ignore the 512 or more cores/processors in many high end video cards.
2. A complete waste of time … surprised?
3. Bigger stadia, more … screen?
4. An offer to redefine “jury of your peers.”
5. For the econ-readers, two books reviewed by Mr Easterly. Another by Mr Bernanke examined here.
6. Fasting and the evangelical.
7. For seeing … art.
8. High school GPA is correlated with college success (as opposed to SAT/ACT test results).
9. TED.
10. ACORN and a really bad defence of the same noted. Another tidbit here too.
11. Remarking in the wake of Mr Obama’s (yet another) media blitz.
12. The title of this piece got me to me drew a wide smile.
13. The NEA scandal/admin … will that catch fire? or just smoke and smolder?
14. Draw to two opposing sides … with the fate of civilization at stake?
15. Big heads, but bigness is perceived only because their chests are so small.
16. Recalling what cruel and unusual punishments really meant.
17. Ethical monad.
18. Recalling Mr Obama’s campaign platforms. 
19. Forgetting that most of us found Plato’s regime with the philosopher kings kinda repellent.

1. Open source and teaching math, I haven’t looked into it yet, but it sounds like a great idea. Not unrelated, a talk on the Internet and maths by Terry Tao.
2. The missile deal, a summary … prior to the Gates interview. A conspiracy suggested. A letter from Poland here.
3. Home grown jalapeño peppers.
4. A fast lady in red (and yellow).
5. Costs and cap/trade.
6. An atheist asks an interesting question.
7. Memory eternal … a post that aches to be read (HT: the Ochlophobist).
8. I’ve seen this noted before, and usually in the context as a “mood killer”. Hmm, any experimental evidence?
9. H1N1 and Oman.
10. If you haven’t been missing the Anabasis reading at the Chicago Boyz, you’re missing out on some fine historical analysis and discussion of one of the great works.
11. Sound-tracks for electric cars.
12. Immorality, the Bible and Science-fiction.
13. Plantinga online, I guess I bought the right book.
14. Advice for blogging as a Christian, which I’d say I’m not very good at doing.
15. The US and Syria.
16. Mr Beck and the right, one view. For myself, I’ve never seen or heard him, so I’m a bystander to all the hoopla.
17. Trying to grok the President’s rational model.

1. Contra syncretism.
2. Just the sort of thing to implement during a major recession. Putting it succinctly as felony stupidity.
3. What passes for argument from the left. Left leaning elitist propaganda here too.
4. Pie … now!!!
5. Of church and state in Morocco.
6. A strange argument indeed, in which political fitness is measured by pork, which I would think is a bad thing, not a good one.
7. Waste, done Democrat flavor.
8. Just a few kids and not a lot of money can produce remarkable results.
9. Yet another day, yet another boldfaced lie from the Administration.
10. A genuine adult film.
11. Future polymath projects.
12. Watching the DOJ.
13. Will there be any notice of this on the left?
14. Missile defense, is this more of Obama’s foreign policy strategy of coddling your enemies and rejecting your friends?
15. Taxonomy of NGO.
16. Now, I thought in my essays that sometimes I connect disparate ideas … but Nazi movies and the thoughts of dead fish … that’s noetic movement indeed.

Let me know if you like the remarks or not or prefer the brief version.

1. Ob-Wings is a liberal blog and I haven’t thought about it enough to figure out if I agree or disagrees with the main thrust of this piece. “Second, if colleges ultimately shift to an on-demand model, students will be missing what I consider to be the best parts of “college.”  The aggregation of years of dining hall conversations, tavern debates, and dorm room bull sessions are my most valuable memories.” This makes no sense to me. I mean, I enjoyed bull sessions. But they weren’t in any sense better or ultimately more valuable than my classes. This must be the clearest demonstration that a comparing a non-science/non-technical higher education to a science/math/engineering education is like comparing apples and rocks.
2. ACORN should in any reasonable universe, taking a fatal blow. My guess is that business as usual will continue unabated.
3. Water we are told is the resource more threatened than petroleum, which itself might have passed the point of no return. I would like to note (brag?) that about a month ago we installed a dual/low flush toilet in our house (this one: Kohler K-3654-0).
4. Three simple rules for Afghanistan. Mr Easterly has some questions. I’d add, another. Wasn’t David Petraeus sent to Afghanistan. He seemed to grok COIN. Where is he now?
5. I don’t get it. This notion that the tea party is the “last gasp/stand” of the demographically waning rural/small town Christian white demographic seems to have
6. So it’s over. If you didn’t lose your job you’ve figured that out … and are likely working a lot harder than you were a year ago. I’m not convinced that’s a bad thing (that is the working harder part). The unemployment will likely ease on its own over the next year. Too bad we wasted 800 billions on an unnecessary stimulus package that had to be passed in the dark of the night as an emergency measure.
7. Mostly foreign policy links. I can’t figure Mr Obama’s foreign policy ideas out. He’s nasty to our allies, mushy to those who don’t like us, who still don’t like us, but now they don’t respect us either. And then there’s Honduras.
8. Mr Boudreaux asks how Mr Obama can call the financial sector “reckless”. Well, many a drunk can recognize another man to be drunk. I don’t see how that’s a problem. Ms McArdle, however, has repeatedly pointed out regarding the prior crisis for any indication that this was a regulatory failure, for it seems pretty clear the regulators were egging the whole mortgage bubble on.
9. A mother’s choice celebrated.
10. I read that book some years ago (before I began blogging). It should be in the scholastic canon, by which I mean everybody should have read that book. Recalling the linked notes on the Dostoevsky/Tolstoy (false?) choice … I’d offer that this one (The Death of Ivan Ilyich) is superlative and short.
11. Saving the whales … at what expense. Mr Kuznicki once offered that issues on the front burner don’t necessarily push others out of the limelight. That, in his case, even if SSM is on the front burner, we’ll all be attentive and paying attention to the myriad other issues. That there is no bandwidth problem for activism. This is, I think, clearly false as Mr Carter’s example demonstrates. Sudan/Darfur and the Congo is another example. Attention to the one, where the other is worse but not in the limelight … is a common problem. And yes, I realize that was not the main thrust of Mr Carter’s essay, but I’d offer it as a side matter.

1. Mr Borlaugh … climate sceptic?
2. The Dems pull the race card … yawn. A reply here.
3. Truth to power?
4. You are a cyclist if …
5. The big five.
6. How many at the tea party … getting closer to real numbers, which I might add might also be a weather vane for the bias of your sources. When the MSM calls identical crowds between 1.5 to 5 million when they are for Mr Obama’s inauguration and as low as 30-60k for a tea party … bias seems the only plausible explanation.
7. A van, not unrelated.
8. I guess if you say, he lied, that would be racist (or true).
9. Ethics and the Old Testament.
10. The tire tariff, political pandering? More here.
11. Ms McArdle rebuts Mr Sullivan.
12. Lasers explained.
13. I think this is a very important point made about American healthcare spending.
14. Why is that an either or question? (the original article is here)
15. The Tueller drill.
16. A book recommended. Looks very good to me.
17. Wow. That is very cool.

1. In favor of auto-expire in legislation.
2. Mr Sullivan’s case considered, more here. The real issue.
3. One view of the Mr Wilson address outcry kerfuffle.
4. Philosophy, well, there you go.
5. Pretty pretty.
6. Some conservative links.
7. A stacked deck.
8. Notes from the tea party. More here and here. And as seen from the other side of the world.
9. MMA and the gospel, and a question asked.
10. Of Bangles and bikes (doing “bike like an Egyptian”).
11. Moving toward a 1 liter (that is 1 liter/100km) car.
12. On our economic woes.
13. Untruth in advertising (although it might be noted that it if you take “stoned” literally instead of a figure for execution, it might be true).
14. Self as illusion, modern science and religion.

1. Market watch on carbon credits.
2. Some middle of the road observations on Obama’s health address.
3. And finally, from a libertarian.
4. And some from the right.
5. A reporter fails to use some highly technical research tools, i.e., google.
6. Eve-teasing, India and bloggers.
7. Protests and response in Minsk. (note I used google translate Russian -> English)
8. And a student address in Michigan from 1988 recalled. (note I used google translate Russian -> English here too)
9. Looking at prosecutorial abuse.
10. half full/empty and cinema.
11. Education and psychology.
12. On the elimination of waste and fraud as a gambit.
13. Moscow and Kyiv.
14. Sir Thomas and Mr Kennedy.
15. Abiogenic oil, the significance of which would imply that there might exist large untapped (deeper) oil reserves.
16. Two explanations for economists recent failures.
17. Mr Carter notices an ACORN expose.
18. The “short arm” of the law.

1. Well, Ms Paglia ruffled the ‘sphere, but signifying … what?
2. Incentives essential … not essential. Hint: the former is right, knuckleheads on the Administration notwithstanding.
3. Nose surgery patterns.
4. That green jobs fella.
5. Has anyone defended Mr Obama’s Honduras policy?
6. For the Muslim in Egypt.
7. A book reviewed, the 10,000 year explosion.
8. Hmmm. That should help Congress tank their popularity even more.
9. A problem for Mr Obama’s credibility. Why would anyone believe anything that man says any longer? Has he done anything at all that he said he would if it wasn’t also to his advantage?
10. Problems with the public option.
11. This brings to mind my favorite frog saying, “Eat a live frog first thing every morning, it will be the worst thing all day for both of you.”
12. Watching the top court.
13. A new site for media bias analysis.
14. Literature … one for the ages.
15. Imagine that, going into politics for personal greed and aggrandizement.