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Tuesday, Apr 15, 2003

listing

"Hmmmm . . . let's go down the pre-invasion checklist:

Vague, unsubstantiated claims about weapons of mass destruction? Check.

Helpful testimony from a highly convenient defector? Check.

Ominous "all options on the table" rhetoric from the White House? Check.

Evasive "Don't look at me; I just work here" excuses from Colin Powell? Check.

Naive reassurances from our British flunk. . . er, allies? Check.

Bellicose threats from our Israeli master. . . er, allies? Check.

US forces quietly assembling on the Syrian border? Check.

Likudnik media whores spouting the administration line? Or is it the other way around? Well, anyway: Check."
via billmon

where is raul?

"From the war to come, we turn our attention back to the war that just was. Last Friday, much to my delight, I began receiving emails again from Raul, the last Iraqi teenager with access to the Internet. When we left our hero, he had turned against the United States and become a Fedayeen Saddam. It looks like he's changed his mind again, and I welcome him back. His transmissions began anew last Wednesday, the Day The Earth Stood Still."

lynch mob

"NASIRIYAH, Iraq, April 14 -- Accounts of the U.S. military's dramatic rescue of Pfc. Jessica Lynch from Saddam Hospital here two weeks ago read like the stuff of a Hollywood script. For Iraqi doctors working in the hospital that night, it was exactly that -- Hollywood dazzle, with little need for real action.

"They made a big show," said Haitham Gizzy, a physician at the public hospital here who treated Lynch for her injuries. "It was just a drama," he said. "A big, dramatic show."
via slate

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

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