B_C's comments
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- Charlemagne: No time for doubters
- Banyan: Taiwan's commonsense consensus
- China's pre-emptive crackdown: The people doth not protest
- Turkey and Europe: Mr Erdoğan goes to Germany
- China's foreign policy: Setting sail for Libya
- Language and opinion: Framing climate change
- Precautions in Xinjiang: Catching a whiff of jasmine in Kashgar
- Qaddafi and his ilk: Blood and oil
- Turkey's election: A Muslim democracy in action
- Venezuela's economy: Oil leak
Over the past five days
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Over the past seven days
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Regarding that great photo: One wonders how wood from what appears to be a packing crate for a Volkswagen in Brazil ended up becoming a building material in South Africa?
Anyone with a thorough understanding of the history of science will realize that it is the projects with no immediate apparent value - the pure research into the big questions of the universe - that have the most likelihood for surprising and unexpected breakthroughs that revolutionize everything later on.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes on pure research.
You folks complaining about the messiness of the democratic system remind me of my favorite Churchill quote: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried."
Exquisitely put. As an American, I share in the hope for a free Egypt, and while I know danger and opportunity are nearly always linked, I congratulate them on this momentous step.
"The idea that sustainable-resource use and renewable energy is some kind of socialist hippy hobby is incredibly naive and frivolous, and extremely damaging to the American economy."
I am sorry, but the "renewable" technologies so often touted ARE nothing but frivolous. A modicum of scientific literacy would lead to the conclusion that the ONLY real option for near-to-medium-term is the option that the French went with years ago, to their credit. Nuclear power with breeder reactors so that we can reuse the material would give us energy at our current usage levels, with proven reserves, of nearly 1000 years. Nothing else can compete. In fact, most of the renewables so often touted have deleterious effects on local life - windfarms kill birds by the hundreds, and solar covers huge amounts of land. Not to mention all the well established issues with base load and unreliability. Anyone that proposes anything but nuclear as our main energy source is not a serious person, but is indeed frivolous.
In an issue as huge and complex as this, there was always going to be more than enough blame to go around - enough blame to comdemn just about everyone that was even peripherally involved. The attempt at precisely apportioning that blame was a futile exercise before it began.
"The Magnificent" Suleyman, magician of top calibre, complete with magic wand.
Okay maybe not so much.
"What's scary about extreme right-wing rhetoric, to a great extent, is the way it's bound up with a legitimation of private violence as a defence of freedom."
What's scary about extreme left-wing rhetoric, to a great extent, is the way its bound up with a legitimation of removal of many freedoms, with the spectre of violence often used as an excuse.
The reason that cooler heads in America denounced the Black Panthers and the Weathermen was not the idea of violence per se, but that the level of oppression they were fighting nowhere near legitimized it. Violence as the final extreme in defense of freedom is obviously something that has always been a valid idea in America, as long as it remains the final extreme. Any rational reading of American history will pinpoint this as the driving cause behind the right to "keep and bear arms", whether or not one thinks we SHOULD have this right.
But more importantly (as the most recent Krauthammer column so adeptly pointed out) violent rhetoric is by no means the sole realm of the right. He was able to isolate many examples from Obama's own lips with verbage about bringing guns to the knife fight, thrashing, stabbing, shooting, etc. Not to mention Rahm's infamous fishhead mafia allusion.
Personally, being a bit to the right of center, I am perfectly willing to admit that Beck and his ilk are nearly always over-the-top. I nonetheless am always more concerned about destruction from people on the left - ask anyone involved in anything from medical research to mining to any other industry their opinions on how peacable the left wingers are. Ask the recently-burned Bush effigies how little hate there is on some parts of the left. But at least I am intellectually honest enough to know that this is likely my own bias talking, and that there are ridiculous extremists on both sides that would probably be doing everyone a service by shutting their pie holes.
The problem with the so-called "technocrats" is that each has a restricted, often even jaundiced view of the world that stems from their particular specialization. The doctor thinks that the most pressing issue (to the exclusion of considerations of practicality) is the healthcare system. The college administrator thinks the same about education, whereas the climatologist (controversy!) thinks that his work on climate change is the only one that REALLY matters, and that everything else should wait. It of course extends beyond the technocrats: the fireman thinks that fire safety is first and foremost, and the policeman, with his proctological view of society, sees crime everywhere and thinks that this is the real issue. In actuality, all of these issues matter. This inability to see big pictures and overall cultural and real-world considerations is what makes the technocrats so worthy of disdain - or at least distrust. There are innumerable real and important issues facing society, as there always have been. Tackling them in a sensible manner with finite resources requires a broader view, and this increased reliance on one-issue experts to command us is generally for the worse.
Speaking as an American, our recent healthcare debates had been making me wonder if perhaps it wouldnt just be better to make the whole healthcare industry public and be done with it, rather than the mishmash we have now.
I must thank you, then, for helping to to crystalize my position with your self-important "I got mine and there's nothing you can do about it" attitude towards people with serious life and death concerns. I now reaffirm my belief that the private sector, no matter how flawed, is superior to this.