drat fink

View current page
...more recent posts

Tuesday, Apr 15, 2003

heads or tails

"The White House has privately ruled out suggestions that the US should go to war against Syria following its military success in Iraq, and has blocked preliminary planning for such a campaign in the Pentagon, the Guardian learned yesterday."

value proposition

"Now, this is a complicated point because although everybody in the room represented the media (and would, in short order, be recirculating the noninformation and obvious disinformation that was given out), almost everybody in the room saw the media as occurring somewhere else - a confection being created by some unseen hand. Everybody here would step out of the briefing room and look up at the monitors above the makeshift newsroom tuned to the networks and news channels and watch the briefing be reported to the world and share the same reaction: what bullshit. "
via digby

Monday, Apr 14, 2003

the right board

information on and a list of current members of the defense policy board.

road bloke

"Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, gave his strongest indication yesterday that he expected to see a Palestinian state and was willing to evacuate controversial settlements to achieve peace.

In an apparent softening of his stance, Mr Sharon declared that he was prepared for a "parting from places" that have been bound up with the state of Israel."

Friday, Apr 11, 2003

third wave

"Who are the third-culture intellectuals? The list includes the individuals featured in this book, whose work and ideas give meaning to the term: the physicists Paul Davies, J. Doyne Farmer, Murray Gell-Mann, Alan Guth, Roger Penrose, Martin Rees, and Lee Smolin; the evolutionary biologists Richard Dawkins, Niles Eldredge, Stephen Jay Gould, Steve Jones, and George C. Williams; the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett; the biologists Brian Goodwin, Stuart Kauffman, Lynn Margulis, and Francisco J. Varela; the computer scientists W. Daniel Hillis, Christopher G. Langton, Marvin Minsky, and Roger Schank; the psychologists Nicholas Humphrey and Steven Pinker.
During the past three years, I have had ongoing one-on-one discussions with the above mentioned scientists about their own work and the work of other scientists included in the book. The result is not an anthology, nor is it an overview. I see it as an oral history of a dynamical emergent system, a celebration of the ideas of third-culture thinkers who are defining the interesting and important questions of our times."

link cache

evolutionary psychology primer

Thursday, Apr 10, 2003

freedom fries

via booknotes

hall of shame

"Long live democracy, free speech and the '69 Mets -- all improbable, glorious miracles that I have always believed in."

afghonistan

"April 10, 2003 | President George W. Bush signed the Afghanistan Freedom Support Act into law last Dec. 4, authorizing $3.3 billion in economic, political, humanitarian and security assistance for Afghanistan over the next four years. The next month, Bush submitted the 2003 budget authorization to Congress but requested slightly less than that.

As in: $0.00.

"The administration anticipated that Congress would put it in," explains a sympathetic congressional source. "So they low-balled it."
via tapped

insignificant undoings

"I opened the case and � to my horror � found nothing inside. There was a little booklet, I suppose, but there was no DVD. Has this ever happened to anyone else? I wonder whether they�ll even believe me when I bring it back this afternoon. A brand new, fully shrink-wrapped and sealed DVD case turns out to have no actual DVD inside. Can you imagine the fun that French cultural theorists could have with an event like this? E.g., Baudrillard:"
via megnut

older posts...