Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Operation Iranian Freedom
Back to Iran again. Geoffrey Kemp writing in the National Interest is hoping that for the sake of America’s interest, Israel is not planning to strike Iran. Could or would Israel try to drag the United States into such a confrontation? The answer is no, unless this is what the Bush administration wants to happen.…
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Deterring terrorists
Shmuel Bar, who is director of studies at the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya, writes in the latest edition of Policy Review. The subject of his essay is what Israel has learned about deterring terrorists. It’s a good read, and he even manages to quote one Gerry Adams. While…
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Mark Urban blog
For those of you who might have missed it, one of the best reporters on the BBC has started blogging. It seems to have gone unnoticed since I appear to be the only RSS subscriber. It might take a while to get his blogging mojo going, but it is definitely a blog to watch.
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Mr. Murdoch Goes to War
Murdoch speaks to the staffers at the Wall Street Journal in December last year. Their audience was of roughly three minds, according to a Journal staffer who dissected the newsroom’s mood for me. There were those who were already making plans to leave, or knew they would jump ship at the first decent opportunity. He…
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Ireland.com relaunches
Er. What exactly is the newly relaunched Ireland.com supposed to tell me, exactly? It’s still in Beta apparently. It’s a nice site and all that, but why will I be visiting it in the future? I can’t think of a reason. No RSS feeds that I can see either.
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Podcast stats
I have to admit surprise at the level of interest in my two test podcasts. I published the first 40min podcast on May 21, and it is now hitting 100 downloads/plays. The second was published June 15, and is hitting 70 downloads/plays. I’m not sure where all these listeners are coming from, but it certainly…
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What's going on with Iran?
Mr Hersh is talking about Iran again. Kevin Drum points to a good Q&A by Laura Rozen over at Mother Jones. Danny Postel points to this interesting piece in the Economist. It does not make for pleasant reading. After Israel’s recent practice run for bombing Iran, the newspaper concludes that they may not be bluffing.…
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The Fear grows…
We may finally be moving from denial to fear in the great Irish property standoff. I like this week’s graph from Trees. Average price drops are also nearing 10%.
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The Galaxy Zoo project
An amateur astronomer took this picture and asked: What’s the blue blob? The Economist this week covers the story of Galaxy Zoo, the collaborative web project for astronomers that found the blob. Their blog is here. Earlier projects in distributed computing, such as SETI@home, which searched for extraterrestrial life, have used the power of millions…
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Irish Times goes free
The new Irish Times website is live. I rather like the layout. Popular stories has been given prominence. The choice to change background colour on a hover is … interesting. The hover on pic with text is similar to the Guardian and The Economist. They don’t seem to have included the option to comment on…
Got any book recommendations?