Archive for: September 2006

Weekly aggregation o’ Afghan News is up.  Also, if you click on the image below – please let CFC-A (Combined Forces Command – Afghanistan) know if you have seen this truck.  Rumored to have been seized not …

One of my consuming interests is the upcoming singularity and the friendliness problem for strong AI.  Now, Jeff will be back sunday for his keys, and in our tenure as guestbloggers there has …

In the past 5 years, beginning very soon after 9/11, I have attempted to read as much as I can about Islamic/Middle Eastern religion, culture, art, architecture, history, etc.  And I can say that I’ve learned a great deal, and …

I am travelling, so I haven’t had a lot of time to post or to read what has been going on on the Intertubes.  But I have been watching the Dean Esmay-Michelle Malkin dustup with a little bit of interest, …

On Halloween weekend in Portland, Oregon, more than 800 canvassers will dress up in costumes and go door to door to hand out election info…along with a piece of penny candy (Smith calls it “Reverse trick-or-treating.”) “We always give out …

The guestbloggers here at PW have spent a lot of time arguing over what to call the enemy. Folks like Nishizono and Dan Collins have been doing so overtly. I have been doing so more obliquely (e.g., if the current violence in Iraq is tribal revenge killing, does it pose the same type of threat to the US national security as jihadi terror attacks?) I have seen some commenters wonder why this horse is being beaten. I would suggest that the reason the issue is being debated at length is that what we call the enemy necessarily relates to the issue of how we define the enemy. That definition guides our understanding of the enemy or threat. And a proper understanding of the nature of the enemy or threat may be necessary to developing effective strategies to defeat the enemy.

For example, Nishizono has criticized Pope Benedict XVI for using a historical anecdote to directly criticize Islam. She has also criticized Victor Davis Hanson for referring to the enemy as Islamofascists as opposed to Islamic fundamentalists. Initially, I note the potential tension lurking in those two positions. On the one hand, the Pope is wrong to directly point to the distinguishing characteristics of Islamic fundamentalism as the source of the problem we face. On the other hand, VDH is wrong to avoid identifying the distinguishing characteristics of Islamic fundamentalism as the source of the problem we face. No doubt Nishizono would respond that that there is a “sneaky” middle ground, but (setting aside the unknowable efficacy of the theorized “sneaky” method) the underlying issue is the extent to which we believe the problem is inherent to the distinguishing characteristics of Islamic fundamentalism. Indeed, these arguments—and the responses to them by Dan Collins, Ric Locke and others here—relate to the larger issue of how we define the nature of the war in which we find ourselves.

So, if you’re ready to Know Your Enemy, open this link in a separate window, select “A Taste of Honey” and

On the heels of Jeff’s interesting post on the possibility of a creator, I got to thinking about why I believe in a creative force–despite having been raised an atheist. As I said in a comment, I think we believe a thing is true despite logical arguments; we believe a thing is true because we choose to believe. It’s a decision.

For example, I choose to believe in a prime force because I’m laboring under the impression that I can sense another reality–parallel to this one–hovering just over the edge of my consciousness. I may very well be crazy, but I believe we get signs from this other dimension even when we’re not looking for them–even though we don’t believe in them.

Physicist Michio Kaku theorizes that we might be able to tune in to any one of a number of parallel universes–just as we tune into a radio frequency–if we just had the technology. (In every other universe, I’ll have you know, I’m thinner and have a job.) Of course, Kaku could be cuckoo; I don’t know if he’s the most reliable physicist out there. (I like his eyebrows, though.) My question is this: what if we really are able to tune in to this other reality? What if we graze by other dimensions daily without realizing it?

Before you get too far into your essay, Karl, I think that we ought to agree on some workable definition of fascism.  I rather like this:

A recent definition is that by former Columbia University Professor Robert O. Paxton:…

Apropos of nothing, here are some clips that feature bassists:

Here’s Tim Bogert hot-dogging with Vanilla Fudge on The Ed Sullivan Show.  Amazingly, the full six-minute version of this song is not much less frenetic–but in this made-for-TV rendition it’s …

Do you make it with ice cream, like in olden times, or is it one of those synthetic ones you can get from any McDonald’s?

Note: This song came out in the 2000s.

see here for an explanation of the category