Listening to the American and Iranian presidents, One has the impression they are living in alternate universes. In Obama’s universe, Iran has agreed to stop work on centrifuges and vastly reduce its stockpile of enriched uranium. In Rouhani’s universe, being able to keep 6,000 centrifuges is a major victory, work on new centrifuges will proceed, and uranium will continue to be enriched.
Long before Elon Musk parlayed the $165 million he made from PayPal into the more than $11 billion that underwrite Musk Industries today, he was thinking ahead, envisioning a world that merged science with science fiction, a real world that he, the hero of this story, would bring to fruition.
Lev Davidovichfor the carlin fans.
In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris and Dan Carlin (host of the Hardcore History and Common Sense podcasts) discuss American interventionism, the war on terror, and related topics.
Lev Davidovichbetter review than the last one i posted.
Lev Davidovichand crystallized intelligence takes willpower.
Lev Davidovichinteresting book. here's the conclusion of the review:
"And the book’s message – that English, like all languages, is “culturally shaped, and this has profound consequences for today’s globalizing and English-dominated world” – is an urgent one. In this language’s place, Anna Wierzbicka calls for a “mini-English” of semantic primes and molecules – for “there are no good reasons for historically shaped Anglo English to be treated as the voice of Truth and Human Understanding”."
actually, i can think of a few good reasons.
Lev Davidovicham interested in reading sky's book
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Read the restLev Davidovichwhat books do you recommend rereading?
Vladimir Nabokov tells us, “One cannot read a book: one can only reread it.” Only on a third or fourth reading, he claims, do we start behaving toward a book as we would toward a painting, holding it all in the mind at once. He does not mention forgetting, but it’s clear that this is what he is largely talking about.
Do you ever wonder what it means to really live? Matthew Crawford, this generation’s leading philosopher-cum-motorcycle-repairman, has a pretty definite answer. For him, it is to be entangled with the physical challenges presented by the world as it is. To be living and to be free, as Crawford sees it, consists of “skillfully engaging” with the obstacles and frustrations of reality, as when playing musical instruments, repairing engines, raising children, or sailing boats. In his first book, “Shop Class as Soulcraft,” Crawford detailed his own migration from a life of think-tank paper-shuffling to motorcycle repair. He prizes entanglement with the real, because that, he says, is how we really experience magnificence. “To encounter things in this way is basically erotic,” he writes in his new book, “The World Beyond Your Head,” for “we are drawn out of ourselves toward beauty.”
See the rest of the story at newyorker.com
Related:Lev Davidovichempowerment. nice.
And this story (http://www.startribune.com/indian-couple-sues-to-allow-adoption-to-white-family/306629011/) reminded me of ian mcewan's The Children Act.
Lev DavidovichMMMish. Also, check out this super sweet treehouse brotopia in WA: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/style/escape-to-bro-topia.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=photo-spot-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Lev Davidovichcriminal charges. it's about time.
Jean Hopfensperger at the Star Tribune reports the office of Ramsey County Attorney John Choi will file criminal charges against Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis: "In a noon news conference Choi said the charges stem from the archdiocese’s handling of complaints about former priest Curtis Wehmeyer, who is now serving a prison term for abusing two boys while he was pastor of Blessed Sacrament Church in St. Paul. Choi said church officials failed to enforce their own restrictions for Wehmeyer."
Curtis Gilbert at MPR News reports the Minneapolis City Council may take up the issue of landlords denying rental applications to citizens receiving housing subsidies: "Dave Holt manages about 75 rental properties in Minneapolis. Many of the property owners he works for don't currently accept Section 8 vouchers, and he says the city shouldn't force them to. 'Requiring a landlord to accept a program that now creates more paper work, more administration, more cost is not fair,' Holt said." Council Member Elizabeth Glidden has given formal notice that she'll introduce a measure banning such bias.
Also at MPR News, Nancy Yang asks the difficult questions of how to kill and dispose of thousands of birds on Minnesota farms to prevent the further spread of the avian flu: "Because turkeys aren't caged, a water-based foam containing carbon dioxide is pumped into an infected barn. The bubbles rise until they reach about 2 1/2 or 3 feet from the ground, enough to go over the birds' heads, said Steve Olson, executive director of the Minnesota Turkey Growers Association. The foam eventually dries into a dust. Depending on the size of the flock, the euthanasia process usually lasts a few hours."
You can recognize the rare spitting tree-lurker by its plumage. Jim Hammerand of the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal has a post on the Minneapolis Regional Chamber of Commerce mobilizing members against the repeal of lurking and spitting laws: "'The Chamber stands with Council President Johnson on this issue,' Klingel wrote in an email newsletter to members. 'We are about to embark on a $50 million reconstruction of Nicollet Mall (1/2 of the money provided by business). I, for one, do not want to see this effort to make Minnesota's main street more inviting thwarted because people are allowed to lurk in the trees and spit on the lovely new surfaces.'"
Release the swimming monkeys: For this year's Wizard of Oz Festival, the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids is promoting an underwater search of the Tioga Mine pit. Rumor has it one of four pairs of ruby slippers, stolen while on loan to the museum in 2005, was tossed in the pit. Michael Creger of Forum News Service reports: "John Kelsch, director of the Judy Garland Museum, said the dives are a response to a long-held rumor that the slippers were 'sealed in Tupperware with weight inside' and tossed into the deep, water-filled pit. 'People are excited,' he said. 'It may solve the case or maybe someone will come forth.' "
It's not just about sitting in your cubicle getting a sugar rush: Tracy Mumford at MPR News delves into the history behind National Doughnut Day: "National Doughnut Day began as a way to honor the 'doughnut lassies' — women who volunteered with the Salvation Army to bring doughnuts and coffee to soldiers on the front lines. According to the Salvation Army, 250 volunteers traveled to France during the war to provide home-cooked meals, letter-writing supplies and, of course, doughnuts, to troops."
Pay less: After the biggest headquarters layoff in company history, Target execs reach out to local civic leaders. [Star Tribune]
All-female addiction and chemical dependency treatment program in Carlton salvaged. [Duluth News Tribune]
UnitedHealth funds renovation of historic Minneapolis apartments for the homeless. [Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal]
Revising Friday's jobs report: St. Paul Winter Carnival's Vulcanus Rex resigns. [Pioneer Press]
No bikes or beer, but still great: The Minnesota State Fair’s 2015 poster by Twin Cities artist Adam Turman has been unveiled. [h/t @justplainbob]
Plane that led D-Day invasion discovered in Wisconsin. [NewsCut]
City Pages is not bringing back its 10 Thousand Sounds music festival this summer. [Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal]
Lev Davidovichbut really sharing for this: http://www.businessinsider.com/were-starting-to-see-how-the-iran-deal-could-directly-affect-syria-2015-5. certainly worth considering.
A 28-year-old Iranian artist and activist has been sentenced to 12 years and nine in prison for making monkeys out of Iranian leaders.
Read the restLev DavidovichThe conclusion:
"At the turning of the millennium, few imagined that citizens of developed democracies would soon be required to defend the concept of an open society against their own leaders.
Yet the balance of power is beginning to shift. We are witnessing the emergence of a post-terror generation, one that rejects a worldview defined by a singular tragedy. For the first time since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, we see the outline of a politics that turns away from reaction and fear in favor of resilience and reason. With each court victory, with every change in the law, we demonstrate facts are more convincing than fear. As a society, we rediscover that the value of a right is not in what it hides, but in what it protects."
Lev Davidovich"Today in mongering. In fringe conservative World News Daily’s “Faith” section we have this story from Leo Hohmann. “On Friday a camera crew with the David Horowitz Freedom Center released a video posted to Robert Spencer’s blog, Jihad Watch, in which documentary filmmaker Ami Horowitz captures Somali men and women on the streets of Cedar Riverside answering simple questions. … One young man with dark sunglasses and a big smile, followed by another in a plaid dress shirt, and another with long hair stuffed under a Brooklyn Nets baseball cap, all said they would prefer to live under Islamic law rather than American law. ‘I’m a Muslim. I prefer Shariah law,’ the man in the dress shirt said. ‘Shariah law, yes,’ said another. ‘Of course, yeah,’ said the one in the Nets baseball cap. Asked if most of his friends felt the same way, he responded, ‘Of course if you’re a Muslim, yeah.’”
The Bernie Sanders juggernaut rolled through Minneapolis yesterday. For MPR, Matt Sepic says, “Thousands of Bernie Sanders supporters lined up in Minneapolis Sunday morning to see the Vermont Senator who's running for president. Sanders is seeking the Democratic nomination and drew standing ovations as he called for higher taxes on the wealthy, universal pre-Kindergarten, and solutions to climate change. … A Quinnipiac University national poll puts Sanders a distant second behind Hillary Clinton. He has 15 percent support among Democratic-leaning voters compared to Clinton's 57 percent.” I’d like to see a poll that asks how much likely voters agree with Sanders, issue by issue.
For WCCO-TV, Rachel Slavik reports, “While he may not have the money or name recognition as Clinton, he’s hoping to build solid base of Minnesota supporters. For Sen. Sanders, that means starting early. A campaign organizer said as many as 3,000 people had RSVP’d for the event by Sunday morning. It featured an overflow crowd. … This won’t be Sanders’ only trip to Minnesota between now and the election.”
In the Strib, Patrick Coolican says, “The crowd, with some people standing outside because the hall was full, seemed unconcerned with the conventional wisdom that there is no race on the Democratic side as Hillary Clinton marches toward the nomination with a pile of money, endorsements and party faithful’s love of the Clinton name. … On Sunday, Sanders laid out an agenda in line with the Democratic base, including a major federal infrastructure program to create jobs; a harder line on trade agreements; an increase in the minimum wage; paid sick leave; a tax code with steeper levies on the rich; campaign finance reform; subsidized college for all; and a move toward a socialized health insurance system that would guarantee health care.”
Good editorial piece from the Strib on Obamacare and how to improve it on the state level. “There’s a lot to like about the innovation waivers for ACA’s proponents, too. This section of the law is not a reset button to go back to pre-ACA days. Instead, it’s a timely way to evaluate what has worked during the federal law’s rollout and then allow the states to build on this. In Minnesota, the waiver is a chance to think big and to improve on the state’s medical assistance programs with an eye toward not only improving coverage numbers but improving public health outcomes. Long-term care should be part of this conversation.”
On the Strib’s news pages Glenn Howatt writes, “Minnesota’s Medicaid rolls have soared past the 1 million mark for the first time, driven by two years of explosive growth in government insurance programs in the wake of federal health reform. The enrollment surge — one of the largest in the country and the biggest for the state in 35 years — helped push Minnesota’s uninsured rate down to about 5 percent and has enabled more low-income families to receive regular medical care, doctors say. But it also means that Medicaid and its sister program, MinnesotaCare for the working poor, now rank among the state’s largest health insurers, which could place long-run strains on the state budget.”
The perps are way ahead of the law when it comes to “revenge porn.” Elizabeth Mohr of the PiPress says, “A recent Minnesota Court of Appeals ruling, dismissing a criminal case, said existing laws don’t address the emerging cybercrime. So state Rep. John Lesch, DFL-St. Paul, who is also a criminal prosecutor in the St. Paul City Attorney’s office, is assembling a group of attorneys, lawmakers and free-speech advocates to craft a law to deal with it. ‘Revenge porn is a specific type of crime that needs its own law,’ Lesch said Friday. ‘It can’t crawl under the parameters of a catch-all like criminal defamation or disorderly conduct’.”
Today in mongering. In fringe conservative World News Daily’s “Faith” section we have this story from Leo Hohmann. “On Friday a camera crew with the David Horowitz Freedom Center released a video posted to Robert Spencer’s blog, Jihad Watch, in which documentary filmmaker Ami Horowitz captures Somali men and women on the streets of Cedar Riverside answering simple questions. … One young man with dark sunglasses and a big smile, followed by another in a plaid dress shirt, and another with long hair stuffed under a Brooklyn Nets baseball cap, all said they would prefer to live under Islamic law rather than American law. ‘I’m a Muslim. I prefer Shariah law,’ the man in the dress shirt said. ‘Shariah law, yes,’ said another. ‘Of course, yeah,’ said the one in the Nets baseball cap. Asked if most of his friends felt the same way, he responded, ‘Of course if you’re a Muslim, yeah.’”
Back in the news … the dearth of volunteer firefighters. John Enger of MPR says, “Volunteer firefighters are an aging breed, and the next generation doesn't appear eager to answer the alarm. Nearly a third of small-town firefighters are 50 or older, according to data from the National Volunteer Fire Council. That's double the number of older firefighters volunteering in 1987. Over the same 28-year period, volunteer numbers overall decreased by about 12 percent, said Kimberly Quiros, the group's communications manager. It's becoming enough of a problem that the Federal Emergency Management Agency recently gave $2.39 million to the volunteer fire council for a marketing effort targeting millennial recruits.”
Yes, alcohol was involved. Says Paul Walsh for the Strib, “An intoxicated man fell from the side of a hot tub outside a Golden Valley home and onto a fence post, impaling his thigh, authorities said Sunday. Firefighters had to cut the post to free the 30-year-old so he could be sent to the hospital with part of the wrought iron-style post still in his leg, according to police.”
Today in Scott Walker. For the AP, Kathleen Ronayne reports, “Challenged by a New Hampshire woman, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker held firm Saturday on his recent comments about ultrasounds and defended Wisconsin's law that requires doctors to conduct them before performing abortions. … [Mary] Heslin said she typically votes Democratic but tries to attend as many candidate events as possible. She appreciated Walker's frankness and said she plans to look up the details on Wisconsin's ultrasound law, as well as a number of other stats Walker referenced about Wisconsin's economy. ‘I wouldn't back down from where I stand either, so that's fine,’ she said. ‘I can respect that, but it's bad when you have a stand that restricts (rights).’"
To the Governor’s defense comes Jessica Chasmar of The Washington Times. “[Radio host Dana] Loesch then asked if the governor believed the misquote stemmed from anger over the fact that he signed into law legislation that requires a transabdominal ultrasound before an abortion, to which Mr. Walker responded: ‘Oh yeah.’ ‘I think they realize, when people actually hear what’s going on and they can’t win on the left on an issue, they exaggerate things, they make things up, and they take them out of context,’ he said.” The candidate’s staff might want to bring him up to speed on the definition of “context.”
Lev Davidovichcontention builds as they work toward complete disagreement on objective truth and values.
Not sure where this is from but behold!
Lev Davidovichphenomenal share. very much worth reading in its entirety. Open Science Framework's (OSF) attempt to stop the Chrysalis effect is fascinating. Deutsch comes to mind throughout the piece, namely his assertion that empiricism is the way to test conjecture, not necessarily generate ideas or hypotheses. To that point, particularly loved this distinction:
"But if you elect to constrain yourself to a narrow set of objectives before you’ve even done the experiments, don’t you close off potentially fertile avenues that you couldn’t have foreseen? Maybe, says Nosek, but “learning from the data” is not the way to reach reliable conclusions. “At present we mix up exploratory and confirmatory research,” he says. “One basic fact that is always getting forgotten is that you can’t generate hypotheses and test them with the same data.” If you find an interesting new lead, you should follow that up separately, not somehow tell yourself that this is what the experiment was about all along."
Lev Davidovichantiquities for sale, ruminations on partition, and books at the Baghdad book market...
"Never have I returned from a foreign assignment so laden with books, some just published. In Najaf the Shia shrine of Imam Ali was the scene of a book fair, where in two days Lwiss Saliba, a Lebanese theology professor and publisher of comparative religious texts, sold all fifty copies of his new book, Towards a Christian-Shiite Dialogue. It has a picture of Jesus on its front cover. Occupying a prominent place on his stall were his Arabic translations of the Bible, Talmudic tractates, and Baha’i texts. When politely asked by a cleric to remove them, Saliba replied that if the books went, he would go with them. Across the aisle, an Egyptian bookseller displayed his collection of works by Marx, Kant, and Spinoza. Whenever clerics approached, a Baghdad bookseller turned over the covers of collections of Sappho’s poetry sporting disrobed women, and turned them back again once they had passed. This year’s best seller, particularly favored by Najaf’s seminarians, he said, was a new Arabic translation of Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene."
and in other news...
palmyra at risk of destruction http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-32807858
latvia ripe for annexation! http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/21/world/europe/latvian-region-has-distinct-identity-and-allure-for-russia.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
officials insist US ISIS strategy isn't winning or losing. or maybe there isn't a strategy: http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-rethinks-strategy-to-battle-islamic-state-after-setback-in-ramadi-1432079342
“We’re ridding the world of polytheism, and spreading monotheism across the planet,” an ISIS preacher recently said in a video recording. Behind him one could see the ISIS faithful using sledgehammers, bulldozers, and explosives to destroy the eighth-century-BC citadel of the Assyrian king Sargon II at Khorsabad, ten miles northwest of Mosul in northern Iraq, and the colossal statues of human-headed winged bulls that had guarded it.
Lev Davidovich"Being from Pakistan, I tend to be more concerned about the spread of the Islamic extremism than the spread of the new Russian empire. But I was struck nevertheless that the new rhetoric that is emerging from Russia about nuclear weapons—including statements in the Russian media last year that Russia is “the only country in the world capable of turning the USA into radioactive dust”—is in some ways as chilling as the Islamic State discussing the annihilation of all Shia Muslims and minorities such as the Yazidis in the Middle East."
At the Tallinn conference, Baltic presidents and NATO officials were unusually blunt in describing how Russia poses the gravest threat to peace since World War II, and how the conflict in Ukraine and the loss of the Crimea has left the Baltic states on the front line of an increasingly hostile standoff. Amid these tensions, the thought of a plane crash leading to war seems scarily plausible.
Lev Davidovichgerm games. interesting.
and, the latest gawande: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/11/overkill-atul-gawande
Lev DavidovichISIS in MN at MCTC: http://www.wsj.com/articles/reach-of-isis-confounds-a-minnesota-college-campus-1431423003
Wednesday night, Sen. Tom Cotton went on Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room to talk about Iraq and ISIS. He said something surprising.
"We just haven't rolled back the Islamic State at all over the last six or seven months since we began our air campaign," he said. "They've continued to hold the ground they always have. They haven't advanced, but we haven't rolled them back, either. And that's not going to be enough to defeat them."
"The Islamic State seems to be winning now," Cotton later added.
This is, in fact, the exact opposite of what is occurring. ISIS is losing substantial ground in Iraq, and it's hard to imagine why Cotton is insisting otherwise.
Let's start with his claim that ISIS "hasn't been rolled back" in the past six or seven months. Here are a few places where ISIS has, in fact, been rolled back:
This is pretty well-established among analysts. As Iraq experts Michael Knights and Alexandre Mello write in the Sentinel, the journal of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, "The Islamic State has been on the defensive in Iraq for more than eight months and it has lost practically every battle it has fought."
"After peaking in August 2014, its area of control has shrunk, slowly but steadily," Knights and Mello add. There's just no way, in other words, to interpret Cotton's statement that ISIS "continued to hold the ground they always have" as correct.
Cotton's implication that American airstrikes have played no role in hurting ISIS is also quite clearly wrong. Knights call "Western air/intel" a "key determinant" of ISIS's defeats, as it "greatly reduces [ISIS's] ability to surprise, evade, [and] counterattack" against increasingly effective Iraqi forces.
All of this suggests that Cotton's ultimate conclusion — ISIS is winning — is wrong. In fact, it's been obviously wrong for months.
"The Islamic State ... will lose its battle to hold territory in Iraq," Douglas Ollivant, national security council director for Iraq from 2008 to 2009 and current managing partner at Mantid International, wrote in War on the Rocks in February. "The outcome in Iraq is now clear to most serious analysts."
So why is Cotton so insistent on arguing that ISIS is on a super-successful victory march when it clearly isn't? One hint might be how eager Cotton appeared to be to blame Obama for it all.
"I've lost confidence in President Obama and his administration, and the way that they're executing their strategy," Cotton said. "We need to be more aggressively executing our air campaign, and more aggressively working with our allies on the ground."
There are certainly plenty of legitimate criticisms of the Obama administration's handling of Iraq. They basically ignored Iraq diplomatically after the US troop withdrawal. The current strategy empowers dangerous, Iran-controlled Shia militias who commit atrocities against Sunni civilians. And they have no obvious plan for addressing the root cause of sectarian violence in Iraq: deep disputes between Iraqi Sunni and Shias over who controls the government and how it should work.
Cotton could have made those criticisms — and he would have been right. Instead, the senator constructed a fictitious world in which ISIS is steadfastly holding its territory and winning glorious victories against the West.
Lev Davidovichfull essay here: http://nautil.us/issue/23/dominoes/five-short-stories-about-the-life-and-times-of-ideas
Lev Davidovichgreat reporting update from rashid, as well reviews of some worthy books fiction and non.
No one should be surprised to read that in Pakistan the army has taken charge, established military courts, derailed democracy, brought television and other media under military control. Nor should one be surprised to learn that foreign policy and national security were being directly run by the army. Many similar situations have occurred in Pakistan since 1958, when the army first came to power in a gradual coup, declared martial law, and ruled for a decade. The country has for years been under partial military rule, outright martial law, or military authority disguised as presidential rule. But the arrangement that has evolved over the last six months is the strangest so far.