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Dlisted | Be Very Afraid

2009-11-14T06:38:31Z

Would You Hit It?

Captured Photo Collection » Photographer Collection: David Guttenfelder in Afghanistan Photos

2009-11-14T06:20:42Z

U.S. Marines from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, one with the names of fallen colleagues tattooed on his back, bathe at a forward operating base in southern Afghanistan Saturday, April 26, 2008. Some 3,500 U.S. Marines arrived in Afghanistan to help NATO's increasingly bloody fight against the Taliban. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)

Creepy Ad Watch

2009-11-13T19:23:00Z

Dave Bry scratches his head:

What exactly is going on in that new Kodak Gallery commercial? A creepy piano tinkles as a little girl and a grandma shout to each other across the span of an absurdly large couch. Little girl says something stupid, grandma laughs at her stupidity. But the mood darkens when little girl asks grandma, “Were you ever in love?” Grandma answers with a cryptic, “Well…” The music intensifies, takes on an almost maniacal quality. Then the little girl says something about magic sea horses, grandma seems confused and, wait a minute—that couch is definitely getting smaller! Is this like an Alice In Wonderland thing? Or they’re trying to convey the horror of senile dementia? Or, wait, is the grandma supposed to be a ghost? Are they both ghosts? Is this a commercial about the victims of some grisly, long-ago mass-murder coming back to haunt the living?

Friday Super Cat Blogging - 13 November 2009

2009-11-14T05:51:39Z

Shared by Nate
hahaha. rori's all WTF IS THAT NOISE COMING FROM DADDY!?!?

Today is cat overload day. For starters, we have exclusive rare footage of Domino playing with a shoe. I've cleverly titled it "Domino and the Shoe." And not just any shoe, either. This one is a nice smelly shoe freshly tossed off a human foot at the end of a long workday. I don't know what it is about human foot smell that drives cats crazy, but smelly shoes are like catnip to them. Weird. In any case, be sure to watch the whole thing so you don't miss Domino's grand finale at the end.

But that's not all! Two weeks ago, we asked you to vote for your favorite Mother Jones climate cat covers — and to add your own to the meow mix. The results were overwhelming — a cascade of cat covers. Four of the original contestants tied for first place, and I've chosen another eleven for our final cat-off. A flickr gallery of all the entrants is below, and you can see — and vote for — the final 15 contenders here.

So click here and vote! May the best cat win.

Birds

2009-11-13T18:22:32Z

(via notestoself)

Always the Same Thing - Diner’s Journal Blog - NYTimes.com

2009-11-13T17:00:59Z

Always the Same Thing

By SAM SIFTON

Maybe the most interesting thing about the reader reaction to this week’s review of Le Relais de Venise is the number of people who report themselves excited by the idea that they don’t have to think about what to order when they go there. The restaurant only serves salad, steak and fries. (Maybe the least interesting is the gastrohipster outrage that such a restaurant would merit review in The Times.)

The response recalls an aphorism sometimes attributed to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein: “I don’t care what I eat so long as it is always the same.”

The librarians here at Diner’s Journal can’t prove that Wittgenstein ever actually said that. But one of the blog’s irregulars (this correspondent’s father, as it happens) did manage to dig up part of a letter the economist John Maynard Keynes wrote after meeting him in Cambridge in 1929:

My wife gave him some Swiss cheese and rye bread for lunch, which he greatly liked. Thereafter he more or less insisted on eating bread and cheese at all meals, largely ignoring the various dishes that my wife prepared. Wittgenstein declared that it did not much matter to him what he ate, so long as it always remained the same. When a dish that looked especially appetizing was brought to the table, I sometimes exclaimed “Hot Ziggety!” — a slang phrase that I learned as a boy in Kansas. Wittgenstein picked up this expression from me. It was inconceivably droll to hear him exclaim “Hot Ziggety!” when my wife put the bread and cheese before him.

Steak for lunch?

Quips about Philosophy

2009-11-13T06:36:57Z

Shared by Nate
awesome

Jerry Dworkin (UC Davis) has a fun compilation, some familiar, some new to me.

Better the broken Windows than life with the Mac monks

2009-11-11T23:50:40Z

Shared by Nate
ahahahaha

I don't care if every Mac product comes equipped with a magic button on the side that causes it to piddle gold coins and resurrect the dead and make holographic unicorns dance inside your head. I'm not buying one, so shut up and go home. Go back to your house. I know, you've got an iHouse. The walls are brushed aluminum. There's a glowing Apple logo on the roof. And you love it there. You absolute monster.

Armistice Day

2009-11-11T12:00:12Z

91 years ago, the world marked the end of the Great War that had consumed tens of millions of lives, mostly those of young men sent to die far from home in a cause that few could explain, then or now. It was a false dawn. The chaos unleashed by the Great War spawned more and greater wars, revolutions and genocides that continued through most of the 20th century and still continue, in places, even to this day.

I’ve written in the past about the futility of war, and that is the most important thought for this day of remembrance. But there is something else that demands more attention than it has received. The cataclysm of the Great War brought forth monsters like Hitler and Stalin, who killed millions. But the War itself, with the millions and tens of millions of lives it took, directly and indirectly, was loosed on the world by political leaders more notable for mediocrity than for monstrous greatness.

The names of Asquith, Bethmann-Hollweg, Berchtold and Poincare are barely remembered, yet on any reasonable accounting they belong among the great criminals of history. Not only did they create the conditions for war, and rush (eagerly in most cases) into it, they carried on even as the death toll mounted into the hundreds of thousands and beyond. Even as the original grounds for war became utterly irrelevant, they continued to intrigue for trivial postwar benefits, carving up imagined conquests among themselves. Eventually, most were displaced by leaders who were marginally less mediocre, and more determined to win at all costs (Lloyd George, Clemenceau, Ludendorff, Hindenburg and others).

How could such ordinary, seemingly decent, men pursue such an evil and self-destructive course, and yet, in most cases, attract and retain the support of their people? I find it hard to understand.

Happy 90th Birthday, Mikhail Kalashnikov

2009-11-11T16:40:25Z

I learn from Registan that the guy who invented the AK turned 90 yesterday. Joe Harlan reflects:

The most common assault rifle on earth, being used by children in Africa and old men in Paktia, is the end result of an arms glut never before witnessed in history. The armies of some two to three dozen countries use Kalashnikovs or an unlicensed copy. Armed non state actors on every continent except Antarctica have used it. The production of these weapons is estimated at roughly 100 million units, give or take, and is being copied — by hand in some places, or by industrial manufacturers in others.

I wonder if Kalashnikov ever got to talk to IDF Maj. Uziel Gal.

Lunch break

2009-11-11T17:54:12Z

Jon Stewart takes a look at the House's health-care reform debate.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

The Men Who Stare at Votes

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Crisis

Mmmm ... democracy ....

Armistice Day

2009-11-11T20:01:28Z

I think I wound up taking my first take on an Armistice Day post down a bit of a blind alley. What I should have said was something closer to Jacob Levy’s sentiments here:

A Veteran’s/ Armistice/ Remembrance Day observed on November 11 in particular shouldn’t just mean a gauzy and somber honoring of live veterans and fallen soldiers. It should be in part a day of anger and horror about the particular war that ended on this day, the stupid brutality of it, and the evil that followed in its wake. Of course, no continuously-existing government (US, UK, Canada) is likely to create a day officially dedicated to pointing out that its predecessor contributed to the deaths of millions for no good cause. But we have the capacity to remember lessons other than the official ones.

John Quiggin says something similar here. Jim Henley notes that Armistice Day was originally “dedicated to the cause of world peace,” before being transformed into an additional day of celebration for the military.

I'm doing 'God's work'. Meet Mr Goldman Sachs - Times Online

2009-11-09T20:24:28Z

They are the rainmakers’ rainmakers, the biggest swinging dicks in the financial jungle

Experimental Philosophy: Are People Actually Moral Objectivists?

2009-11-07T05:07:57Z

Shared by Nate
for your consideration (not written by me, i should add)

So many students were thinking about what the Martians would say if the Martians witnessed the same behavior on Martian streets (that is, they were thinking about what the Martians would say about the stabbing behavior if Dylan was a Martian). The Martians would say it's morally permissible, and they'd be correct.

And, of course, when many (most) students were considering the Dylan stabbing on American streets, they're thinking about what Americans would say about the American named "Dylan" being stabbed on American streets. They'd say it's incorrect. And they'd be right.

You *claim* in the paper that the students are all considering the same act. The stabbing of the American named "Dylan" on American streets. I see no reason to believe this. In fact, I see no reason to believe that the students are even, by and large, capable of understanding the question. At what grade level do you think most of these students even read?

Furthermore, I'm not sure that you're right about the claim that lots of ethicists take the folk to be objectivists. The folk really don't matter. The opinions of the intelligent, educated thoughtful subset of the folk matter. These are not undergrads at Baruch College. I fail to see what polling people, the vast majority of which can't understand very simple philosophical arguments (and really deserve C's or worse), is supposed to show. Surely it doesn't show much of anything of interest to a philosopher.

Before I even became slightly convinced by anything here, I'd need to be given reason to believe that the students are, in fact, considering one particular act perpetrated by S against A in a culture C, where it's made perfectly clear what the morally salient features of being members of culture C are. Merely asking them a question involving a particular act doesn't even begin to give me reason to believe that what they're considering is that very act (performed by S against A in culture C, where S and A are both members of C). Maybe you can ask them some other questions and get some data that will give us reason to believe they are, in fact, considering the case with the required sort of mental sophistication?

Posted by: AnonGradStudent Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 11:47 PM

Experimental philosophers discover that the folk are likely enrolled in philosophy courses where they are surveyed by experimental philosophers

2009-11-07T05:03:44Z

Shared by Nate
yep

There's an interesting discussion over at Experimental Philosophy (here). The question is whether 'the folk' are objectivists and there's some interesting evidence that suggests that some folk are not. In the comments, Angel floats the possibility that the students in the course might not be immature moral agents. It seems there's something to that suggestion. I noted half-jokingly that if we were given surveys as undergrads (I'm only speaking of some students who went to Rhodes, not the students who took the actual surveys), our profs would discover that sleep-deprived, binge-drinking, prescription-drug abusing undergrads sometimes speak as relativists do when answering survey questions. I worry that such results tell us little about our friends and neighbors who aren't college students. I worry that they tell us little about our students' attitudes when not in phil class. Two worries. The students are a bad sample because they aren't morally mature. The students responses don't provide clean data because students will take relativism more seriously in the context of a philosophy course than they would if they were just reading the paper or watching the news. So, what's an experimental philosopher to do?

Letter From Fort Hood

2009-11-06T16:19:29Z

A former reader emails today to pass along a firsthand account of the shooting at Fort Hood on Thursday. It's unedited except for paragraph breaks:

I was walking into the medical SRP building when he started firing (he never made it to the main SRP building....the media accounts are understandably pretty off right now). He was calmly and methodically shooting everyone. Like every non-deployed military post, no one was armed. For the first time in my life I really wish I had a weapon. I don't know how to explain what it feels like to have someone shoot at you while you're unarmed. He missed me but didn't miss a lot of others. Just pure random luck. It's a very compressed area, thus the numbers.

I saw a lot of heroism. So many more would have died if this wasn't an Army post. We're almost all CLS trained and it made a huge difference. Cause the EMTs didn't get there for almost an hour (they thought there was a second shooter). I just can't believe one of our own shot us. When I saw his ID card I couldn't believe it. After he shot the female police officer he was fumbling his reload and I saw the other police officer around the corner and yelled at him to come shoot the shooter. He did.   Then I used my belt as a tourniquet on the female officer.

I hate to tell you this but in the course of the day it became clear that it was another Akbar incident.¹ (Once they convinced them the blood drenching my clothes wasn't mine I spent the day being interviewed by the alphabet.) Akbar again.  God help us. He was very planned. I counted three full mags around him (I secured his weapon for a while).  Found out later that his car was filled with more ammo.

This was premeditated. This wasn't VBC again. That guy snapped, not this one. He was so damn calm when he was shooting. Methodical. And he was moving tactically. The Army really is diverse and we really do love all our own. We signed up to be shot at but not at home. Not unarmed. No one should ever see what the inside of that medical SRP building looked like. I suppose that's what VA Tech looked like. Except they didn't have soldiers coming from everywhere to tourniquet and compress and talk to the wounded while rounds are still coming out.

No one touched him...the shooter that is...other than to treat him. Though I told the medic (and I'm not proud of this) that was giving him plasma that there better not be anyone else who needed it because he should be the last one to be treated. But I had just finished holding a soldier who was critical (I counted three entry wounds) and talking to him about his children.... If the shooter had a grievance he should have taken it out on those responsible; he wasn't shooting people he knew (media reports to the contrary). He was just shooting anybody who happened to be present for SRP medical processing, mainly lower enlisted.

But please, no one use this politically!   The Army is not "broken", PTSD doesn't turn people into killers, most Muslims aren't evil, and whether we should stay or go in Afghanistan has nothing to do with this. I'm babbling...sorry.

¹Hasan Akbar was an Army sergeant who killed two soldiers and wounded 14 others in a grenade attack in Kuwait in 2003. He's currently under a sentence of death.

There have been several media reports that the Fort Hood shooter yelled "Allahu Akbar!" during his rampage, but my correspondent says, "He was silent in my presence."

"I just can't believe one of our own shot us."

2009-11-06T23:28:08Z

Drum gets an e-mail from someone who witnessed the attack.

Leaking Levi

2009-11-06T19:05:00Z

Someone found some out-takes of an early photo-shoot rehearsal.

Mental Health Break

2009-11-05T21:20:00Z

A fourth-grader is about to give a report about her dad stationed in Iraq:

EMBED-Tricked On Halloween - Watch more free videos

This Is Excellent News For Conservatives

2009-11-04T17:39:31Z

Shared by Nate
this one's a doozy

It always is.