One of the problems with torture is that somebody has to carry it out — someone has to do it, has to inflict deliberate, coercive pain on another individual. And in the doing of it, it doesn't matter a bit what this inflicting of coercive pain is called, whether the word torture is used or some nicer-sounding euphemism like "tough" or "aggressive tactics." And most people can't do this. They just can't. Not at first anyway. This is part of... Read more
Shankar Vendantam is a stupid, lazy amnesiac, which is to say a reporter for The Washington Post. Vendantam covers the "human behavior" beat, writing Monday about the "hindsight bias." That's actually an interesting phenomenon, and Vendantam has some useful things to say about its affects and implications for things like juries and eyewitnesses. But anything constructive in Vendantam's piece is overwhelmed by the wretched opening paragraphs, which serve only to make people less well informed than they were before they... Read more
(Or, "Un-American, continued") Through an improbable series of events nearly 500 years ago, it fell to a German man named Martin Waldseemuller to decide what half of the world would be called. Fortunately for us, he was not an egomaniac, so I am not now writing this from my home in the United States of Waldseemulleria (although if I were, then I would probably have been able to figure out how to get the umlaut over the 'u' in his... Read more
Arthur Silber thinks that many of us have been using meaningless language as part of an elaborate charade. Specifically, he's upset with the use of the adjectives "American" and "un-American": … politicians of all stripes appeal to "American values" when they are defending their particular beliefs or programs. Similarly, when people wish to condemn some practice in the strongest possible terms, they call it "un-American." An essential part of this elaborate charade is that none of these terms is ever... Read more
"Promise What You Will," Iron & Wine Jesus God, they did it. They declared torture legal. "Forever Young," Alphaville Freaking torture. I'm back on my heels … "Saturday Afternoon," Green Makes all the rest of this seem like a trivial waste of time "Pictures of You," The Cure Who cares what's on my iPod when they're shredding the Constitution? "And She Was," Talking Heads When they declare that human rights are conditional … "So Tonight That I Might See," Mazzy... Read more
"The language of religion," Atrios writes, is "something I don't understand. It's gibberish to me. When people start invoking religion in discussing issues they may as well be talking Martian. I'm not being insulting here, I'm just saying it's utterly meaningless to me personally." And of course there's no reason such language should be meaningful to him. Sectarian language isn't much use when trying to communicate with people outside of the sect. This is something we religious types don't always... Read more
When you find a story particularly impenetrable, confusing or disconcerting, sometimes it helps to retell it. This particular story was itself a retelling of an older story (the new version left out the whale because people seemed to find that episode too distracting). – – – – – – – – – – – – So this crazy rich guy out on the Main Line is getting ready for his daughter's wedding. It's a big deal — one of those... Read more
"Unmitigated gall" is a cliched phrase. You'll rarely hear anyone speak of gall without describing it as unmitigated, and you'll rarely hear the word unmitigated used to describe anything other than gall. Still, it's a useful phrase, even sometimes an unavoidable one. Such as this morning. You may have read over the weekend about the National Intelligence Estimate on the effect of the war in Iraq. The NIE, as one analyst said to The Washington Post "is stating the obvious"... Read more
… will resume shortly. Apologies for the unannounced/unintended hiatus. Turns out that five performances a weekend (Cakewalk at the William Way Center, 1315 Spruce St., Phila, Thurs.-Sat. at 8 p.m., Sat. matinee at 2, Sun. matinee at 3, tickets available thru Smarttix.com) takes more time/energy than I thought. The show runs through Oct. 8, so … Left Behind Fridays will resume Oct. 13. P.S. Cakewalk was selected as a City Paper arts pick. So we got that goin' for us,... Read more
Sometimes I read something interesting on the Web, bookmark the site, and then write about it here on the blog. Sometimes, though, I read something interesting, bookmark the site, and then never get around to writing about it. Weeks and months pass by and the bookmarks folder gets filled to overflowing. I usually label this folder "current" — a label that quickly becomes inaccurate. My current "current" folder is actually labeled "MLK," because I started it back around Jan. 15... Read more
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