Justin has found a fantastic interview Cheney gave in 1994. In the interview Cheney argues that invading Iraq would be a huge mistake and predicts many of the problems the US is having there today. He even uses the word “quagmire.”
gods
Gods always come in handy, they justify almost anything, and the gods of Sakiel-Norn were no exception. All of them were carnivorous; they liked animal sacrifices, but human blood was what they valued most. At the city’s founding, so long ago it had passed into legend, nine devout fathers were said to have offered up their own children, to be buried as holy guardians under its nine gates.
This passage reminded me a bit of Terry Pratchet’s Small Gods, but it’s much darker and not nearly as funny.
Look, Mom!
Originally uploaded by sarcozona
I can cook now. You may notice that it’s tofu. I don’t buy meat at the grocery store because it’s expensive and I fail at cooking it and I feel guilty about wasted resources. Since I’m too poor to go to restaurants, I’m pretty much vegetarian now. (Though I wouldn’t turn fried chicken or a good steak down if you offered…) My vegetarian sister will be very pleased.
turn me upside down
If we restrict ourselves to proposals which are falsifiable, what kind of explanations are available to us? In the history of science there have been two kinds of explanation which generally succeeded: explanations in terms of general principles; and explanations in terms of history. We are used to believing that the former are more fundamental than the latter. If we discover a fact that seems to hold universally, such as that all electrons have the same mass, we believe immediately that the reason for it must rest on principle and not on history. We usually expect a phenomenon to be contingent only if we see that it changes from instance to instance. If asked to justify this, we would say that something that is universally true cannot rest on contingent circumstances, which can vary from case to case. This makes sense, but it is an example of the kind of argument that works well only as long as it is not applied at the scale of the universe as a whole. When we are dealing with properties of the observable universe we no longer have any reason to insist that if something is true in every observable case, it cannot at the same time be contingent. One reason is that we have no justification to assert that the universe we see around us represents a good sample of all that exists, or that has existed, or that might in principle exist. There is in fact no logical reason to exclude the possibility that some of the facts about the elementary particles, which appear to hold throughout our observable universe, might at the same time be contingent.
The argument that Lee Smolin makes is pretty interesting. He suggests that “a process of self-organization like that of biological evolution shapes the universe, as it develops and eventually reproduces through black holes, each of which may result in a new big bang and a new universe. Natural selection may guide the appearance of the laws of physics, favoring those universes which best reproduce.” This is kind of terrifying, but much more interesting than the physics classes I’ve had so far.
hail storm
There was a storm today with lots and lots of hail. I was very glad I decided not to go to the lab when it looked like rain.
chemical philosophy
If you want the truth – I know I presume – you must look into the technology of these matters. Even into the hearts of certain molecules – it is they after all which dictate temperatures, pressures, rates of flow, costs, profits, the shapes of towers….
“You must ask two questions. First, what is the real nature of synthesis? And then: what is the real nature of control?
You think you know, you cling to your beliefs. But sooner or later you will have to let them go….”
LGBT activist tortured by Iraqi police
The White House says that our War on Terror in Iraq is “[e]ncouraging reconciliation and human rights.” Torturing an LGBT activist doesn’t sound like encouraging human rights.
The police tried to get Hani to admit he was a member of our Iraqi LGBT group, but he refused to say so, which is when the torture began,” he said, adding: “But Hani had his cell phone with him, and on that phone he had my cell phone number – which is listed on our Web site – and the phone numbers of a number of journalists, including one from the Washington Post. The police demanded to know why Hani had these phone numbers if he was not a member of our organization, and why he was in contact with journalists if he was not a member, and also threatened him with rape if he did not admit it.” While Hani was in police custody, he heard several different voices speaking English with American accents coming from somewhere outside the room in the detention center where he was being held.
As Helen Boyd points out,
Just to reiterate: he was tortured by the Iraqi Police Force, that is, “the good guys.”
Considering our own country’s opposition to human rights for LGBT people, this shouldn’t be surprising. From laws prohibiting gay marriage to the failure to protect LGBT people from hate crimes the US isn’t doing enough to encourage human rights within our own country – how could we expect the US to encourage them somewhere else?