‘The Word’ on Obama’s ‘Race Speech’

Cian’s already talked about this, but Obama does it funnier (sorry Cian) (Also, I apologise for the fact that ‘funnier’ isn’t correct English)

Just some quick thoughts on the BBC interview with George W. Bush

It’s a pretty good interview and you can see the whole thing here.
Just a few things that I found interesting -Bush has a very utilitarian ‘end’s justify the means’ view of a lot of his policies. It just comes across in a lot of the things he says and the language he uses, especially relating to Iraq but also to Africa. There’s also the oddest echoes of Jimmy Carter in terms of how he talks about the ‘higher realism of helping Africa’ in the sense that securing African well-being safeguards America’s national interest. What’s also interesting to see is how surprisingly affable Bush is. Nearly too much at times such as when he off-handedly refers to the ‘Dali Lama crowd’ & uses the word ’suicider’ which is just .. awkward. Anyway, I still think he’s a horrible excuse for a President but it’s worth a look.

I’m always amazed when you see this sort of short-sighted reporting

From ABC.Net

A Japanese father has called for his own son to hang after a gruesome murder spree in which the teenager killed three family members before slashing open his mother’s belly and putting a doll inside. The father says he will seek the death penalty for his 18-year-old son, who is a fan of the grisly Hannibal Lecter novels and has written horror stories himself.

Now the part I have emphasised suggests that it was the ‘horror interest’ that made that kid bad no? But further down the article:

The father, who divorced the boy’s mother a decade ago and has been in and out of prison on blackmail charges, admitted he was partly responsible for his son’s poor upbringing.

I really hate the fact that the way that article is written is done in such a way that it clearly places more emphasis on the ‘interests’ of the child than in his upbringing, I mean this sort of crap always happens in the analysis of these ‘youth violence’ incidents, especially in the American media, I mean you can just see this event being used by some ‘moral majority’ jackass to ‘prove’ how ‘horror movies corrupt children’..

Bah, I’m tired and cranky but still… This crap really pisses me off..

The Garden of Eden sucked:

One of the most entertaining things I’ve read in the economist in a while…

Constant warfare was necessary to keep population density down to one person per square mile. Farmers can live at 100 times that density. Hunter-gatherers may have been so lithe and healthy because the weak were dead. The invention of agriculture and the advent of settled society merely swapped high mortality for high morbidity, allowing people some relief from chronic warfare so they could at least grind out an existence, rather than being ground out of existence altogether.

Charlie Rose, Alistair Horne, Henry Kissinger, Algeria and Iraq

Rather interesting (if somewhat long and occasionally disjointed) hour’s worth of talking heads…

The Root of all Evil - Uncut Interview

Interesting interview here - the one thing I really like is how Dawkins comes across as a much more polite and reasonable person in these clips with Alister McGrath:
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The information age in numbers

Interesting stuff:

An Ethical Question:

‘Referring to Kantian ethics - Is it right or wrong to sell parts of your body/organs for financial (or equivalent) reward?’

Anyone have any Ideas where I can get good articles on this? Proving a bit difficult atm..

Dim Saves the World

Is yet another UCC student blog. Detailing the travels of the former Auditor of the UCC Philosoph (my main source of free travel and beer)(*) as he goes from one place to another but mostly across large areas of China, Russia and Turkey. Good stuff.

update: upon re-reading that last part(marked *) I feel I should clarify that the philosoph, and not Dim are my source of free travel and beer.

you’d have to wonder at times…

Today I found myself having a conversation/argument about how Jesus Christ, Jack the Ripper and Santa Claus are three fictional characters based on history..