Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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William Safire: A way to balance liberty and security
Must Americans wait until intrusive general searches mushroom into scandal, weakening America’s ability to collect information that saves lives? Congress should debate this Pentagon report, exercising foresight, rather than years from now, in the high dudgeon of hindsight. So says William Safire of this recently released Pentagon report. I’ll have a look round the net…
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Children of Bush's America: Naomi Klein
Naomi Klein this week with some curious remarks – and interesting insight. The echo was probably intentional. Bush is so desperate for the Hispanic vote that he has taken to shouting ” Vamos a ganar! We’re going to win!” during stump speeches in Ohio. Of course he is desperate for the hispanic vote – what…
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Blogging Mobile
Tis nice to be able to use the local 2Mb line down the local net cafe – they provide space for wired 100Mbs laptops. More blogging later.
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Google Ads
I will be testing out the much-hyped Google Ads over the next while – I am curious to see how this thing works. Feel free to click on the ads, but if you don’t feel like it, don’t bother.
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Life is Beautiful
I just watched Life is Beautiful, after putting off seeing if for 6 whole years. To say I was impressed would be understating, to say it was a one of the best films I have ever seen, would be putting it mildly. I have seen no better depiction of the Holocaust – and no better…
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Testimony by Ray Bradbury
Also from Slashdot is Ray Bradbury’s testimony to the President’s Commission on Implementation on U.S. Space Exploration Policy. He has some interesting ideas on the place and time humanity finds itself in. I like this quote: That’s fascinating to think about – isn’t it? Four hundred years before Kitty Hawk, an Italian lands on an…
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Plogs and Plogging
Just came across this story on Slashdot. Another new phrase is coined – but I would still call them blogs, except they are being used in slightly different way. So plog is short for ‘project log’. It’s basically a blog – why coin a new and slightly-more-daft-sounding word? Still though it is good way of…
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Operation Copper Green
Michael Totten has the lowdown on the New Yorker’s report concerning Don Rumsfeld. His verdict: While Im aware it could be absolute nonsense, not a single word seems implausible. For my part I was not as shocked as most by the photos from prisons in Iraq. I read an article about methods used in last…
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Atoms
I have added an atom.xml feed to the blog, for those of you have started using aggregators. I think it’s working anyway.
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Conspicuous by his Absence
Kieran Healy is reading Robert Skidelsky’s John Maynard Keynes, something I have been meaning to read for some time. He is the father of Will Skidelsky, whom I met while interning for the New Statesman. Interesting stuff that I did not realise about Wittgenstein – the Tractatus is somewhere very far down my books to…
Got any book recommendations?