news

[jfb]

The sky is getting darker. I am always startled by the degree to which we can affect this big planet.

The National Parks are underfunded, and really beautiful, by the way.

A Tel Aviv rally to support withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Sudan's ambiguous place in the war on terror. Contrasting the state of democracy in India and Pakistan.

Some of the pundits who cheered us into Iraq now "feel foolish". They feel foolish because they are foolish. They were fools. They were paid well by large corporations to do no investigation, to apply no critical thought, to publicly disregard facts and contingencies that were not hard to discover, to ingest and regurgitate the assertions of authority figures. Words of remorse are all well and good, but why are these people still talking at all?

Comments

[dougo.livejournal.com]

People like to read opinions, so opinions will still be published. I don't know whom you're talking about who "apply no critical thought" and "publicly disregard facts", though; I have some measure of respect for all of the names in that article that I recognize (except Bob Novak), and I think the very fact that they're changing their opinions based on new facts shows that they are flip-flopping applying critical thought.

[jfb.livejournal.com]

The problem is that they're changing their opinions based on things that were obvious last March.

Friedman actually is in a separate category, and maybe some of the others should be too: He considered the matter carefully and independently, and decided that there were good reasons to invade Iraq, and then fooled himself into thinking that those were the Bush administration's reasons. That was foolish, but I admit it was not a parrotlike foolishness.

[morganology.livejournal.com]

That's the song that made me fall in love with Mark's voice. I've been lucky enough to see him perform it live and solo. It was mesmerizing.

[marm0t.livejournal.com]

"global dimming"

[joke]