Category: Uncategorized

In what is definitely the worst possible scenario for the Genesis project, the parachute on the re-entry craft failed to deploy and the stuntman-piloted helicopters never had an opportunity to attempt a recovery. Unless some miracle remains for the team, looks like the whole project is a wash over the most basic part of re-entry; slowing down. Tough luck.

Link

Oh god, I’m slipping into moral realivism.

Such rough-and-ready pragmatism taps into one of our deepest intellectual veins. It appeals to America’s collective self-image as a square-jawed action hero. And it may partly explain why the outcry against the White House’s deception over the war in Iraq was rather muted. It is not just that we believe that “united we stand,” it is that, deep down, many Americans are prone to think that it is results, not principles, that matter. …some of us find worrying over abstract principles like truth to be boring and irrelevant nitpicking, best left to the nerds who watch C-Span and worry about whether the death penalty is “fair.”

So, by not opposing the Iraq war, you may as well have joined all those nuts not engaged in worrying about “abstract principles like truth”.

An unswerving allegiance to what you believe isn’t a sign that you care about truth. It is a sign of dogmatism. Caring about truth does not mean never having to admit you are wrong. On the contrary, caring about truth means that you have to be open to the possibility that your own beliefs are mistaken. It is a consequence of the very idea of objective truth. True beliefs are those that portray the world as it is and not as we hope, fear, or wish it to be. If truth is objective, believing doesn’t make it so; and even our most deeply felt opinions could turn out to be wrong.

Oh wow, I agree. Unfortunately, the author falls into the same trap most liberal mouth-pieces do; they forget to turn this mirror on themselves.

Disgusted by the right’s lust for absolutes, many of us retreated from talk of objective truth and embraced the philosopher Richard Rorty’s call for an “ironic” stance toward our own liberal sympathies. We stopped caring about whether we were “right” and thought more about what makes the world go round.

Remember, the point he’s working towards is that liberal thought needs to now search for absolutes. But when the right does this, it’s lust. Kids, this is lesson number one in how to hold dual, and opposing, positions on the same subject. And, what critcism of the right would be complete without a reference to 1984

What [O’Brien, the sinister representative of Big Brother] cares about is getting rid of Winston’s idea of truth. He is well aware of the point I’ve just been making. Eliminate the very idea of right and wrong independent of what the government says, and you eliminate not just dissent — you eliminate the very possibility of dissent.

Very true. Orwell understood well that silencing criticsism isn’t enough for absolute control. Absolute power involves intellectual control at such a fundamental level, the individual ceases to be meaningful. The world of 1984 also flexed a muscle currently missing from our political body: children. An entire generation of Winston’s life was completely enslaved by the government, escewing even the family unit. Parents vanished based on children’s accusations and it was simply a fact of life, something Winston saw coming long before running into his neighbor at the Ministry of Truth. Wonder if strengthening the family unit seems a fairly worthwhile endeavor now?

Link (via Arts & Letters Daily)

As mentioned before, the Genesis project is scheculed to return to Earth today. Good luck to the team; I hope they catch better than Bill Buckner.
Yahoo! News – Space Capsule Heading Back to Earth

I think I have to read this.

“The danger of American foreign policy,” [John Gray] writes, “is not that it is obsessed with evil but that it is based on the belief that evil can be abolished.” Such foolishness, he points out, is far removed from the wisdom of America’s founding fathers, for whom “the purpose of government was not to conduct us to the Promised Land but to stave off the recurrent evils to which human life is naturally prone”.

Link (via Arts & Letters Daily)

A computer game written by Douglas Adams is being revived to coincide with a new BBC Radio 4 series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.
The text adventure will appear on the station’s website and was described by the late Adams as “the first game to move beyond being ‘user friendly’”.

Link; Link to Radio 4 website for series

Is this trend officially over yet? Between the Alton Brown/Good Eats code, the Geek code, and the Personal Growth Geek Code (wtf?), I think we’re slowly approaching apogee.

So, of course, I had to find out what my Blogger Code was.

I’m so lame, apparently in more ways than I thought.

-------- Begin Blogger Code --------
B3 d t+ k++ s- u- f- i- o- x-- e- l c+
-------- End Blogger Code --------

(copy and decode here)

Is this the future of sports?

National Hockey League team owners are now seriously considering forming a new league.

Don’t negotiate and it’s “The NHL is dead; long live the NHL”? I have no doubt they can do this, I just have serious doubts about the effects. I certainly, as a fan, would have some major quibbles about an ownership move to destroy a league simply over negotiations. Lock-outs are one thing, but damn guys, shutting down the league? May I refer you to IRL?

Of course, the players aren’t exactly winning a lot points with me either. Come on, how much do you need? I’d feel really bad if Yzerman couldn’t buy yet another house somewhere that I’ll never be able to afford to visit. Yep, cry a river I would.

If nothing else, this is a move to pad the fans for a protracted, dirty, and immature lock-out/walk-out. Reading stuff like this only cements the end of the coming season.

One note to the NHL; I still don’t watch or pay attention to MLB after their stunning display of concern for the game in the 90s. Just something to consider.

Link

Former Navy Secretary John Lehman has no idea where a Silver Star citation displayed on Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry’s campaign Web site came from, he said Friday. The citation appears over Lehman’s signature.

“It is a total mystery to me. I never saw it. I never signed it. I never approved it. And the additional language it contains was not written by me,” he said.

…

Asked how the citation could have been executed over his signature without his knowledge, Lehman said: “I have no idea. I can only imagine they were signed by an autopen.” The autopen is a device often used in the routine execution of executive documents in government.

Deeper and deeper.

Link

They tortured people in Iraq, they (the Iraqis) have no weapons of mass destruction. Could somebody explain to me whether you think they’re idiots or geniuses?”

Idiocy only shows when you say stuff like this to Reuters. What a moron.

Oh, and if I’m an idiot, then you can kiss my tourism dollars goodbye as well. I’ll stupidly spend my hard-earned, valuable money right here at home.

…Prime Minister Paul Martin, has pledged to put relations with Canada’s largest trading partner on a warmer footing.

Good luck with such wonderful rhetoric coming from Parliment. Americans love to be called idiots.

Link

Kerry apparently has the ability to solicit multiple citations for the same medal, something the Sun-Times quotes as calling “bizarre”. Of course, the original citation, issued by the Commander of Naval Ops in Vietnam at the time of the incident isn’t there. Wonder why?

Oh, and his own website is citing him as receiving a medal that doesn’t exist (link to PDF, see page 2)–on an official form. Interesting.

Link to Sun-Times article