- From Cappadocia to Missouri: Over 30 Gorgeous Cave Houses
- [WebUrbanist - Marc]
- Jewish Groups: ‘We Are Deeply Disturbed’ By Palin’s Use Of Anti-Semitic Term ‘Blood Libel,’ She Should Apologize
- [Think Progress - Alex Seitz-Wald]
It’s worth noting that conservative Instapundit blogger Glenn Reynolds first injected the term into the post-shooting debate this week in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal… But, because Palin is a far more high-profile figure and fashions herself as a national leader, she should choose her words far more carefully than incendiary pundits.
Moreover, the use of a term associated with real evils like genocide to defend oneself in the face of catty punditry shows a startling degree of narcissism — even for Palin. As ThinkProgress’ Matt Yglesias jokes, “Indeed, Jews throughout America can join me in remembering when our ancestors fled Eastern Europe in order to live in a land where nobody would ever criticize us on television.”
[full statements from several organizations at bottom of article]
- The Puzzling Evolution of Guns Versus Bows – Technology Review
- …despite the clear utility of the longbow as a weapon of war, it soon became obsolete [in Europe] as firearms evolved. Within 200 years of Agincourt, it had fallen out of military use almost entirely.
…in China…firearms were used much earlier… One picture dating from the C10th shows a demon wielding a gun of sorts.
And yet Chinese armies still used bows some 800 years later. How come?
…Nieminen, a physicist at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, describes the evolution of the Asian composite war bow, a device he describes as "the best bow available before the advent of modern materials and the modern compound bow"…
…the bow was lighter and easier to carry than its European cousins. (Nieminen goes on to give a quick and fascinating account of the physics of bows.)…
- Reflective Equilibrium
- [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Norman Daniels]
Many of us, perhaps all of us, have examined our moral judgments about a particular issue by looking for their coherence with our beliefs about similar cases and our beliefs about a broader range of moral and factual issues. In this everyday practice, we have sought "reflective equilibrium" among these various beliefs as a way of clarifying for ourselves just what we ought to do.
…a “reflective equilibrium” is the end-point of a deliberative process in which we reflect on and revise our beliefs about an area of inquiry, moral or non-moral… We can also refer to the process or method itself as the “method of reflective equilibrium.”
- The psychophysics of policy positions
- [Mind Hacks 2.0 - tomstafford]
- Aerial photos of destruction in Haiti, one year later
- [FlowingData - Nathan Yau]
In memory of the devastating earthquake that hit Haiti one year ago on January 12, 2010, the New York Times shows aerial photos of Port-au-Prince from GeoEye and Google in this interactive. See views form before the earthquake, a few days after, and now.
Above is a current view of the Pétionville tent city, a golf course that now houses an estimated 60,000 displaced Haitians. Here it is before the earthquake:…
- Trove of Gold Rush artifacts found in Australia
- More than a thousand gold rush artifacts have been found in an old sewerage pipe in Victoria, Australia.
"…many [of the artifacts] once [belonged] to members of Ballarat’s mid-19th century Chinese community. As well as European pottery and bottles, they found medicine vials stamped with Chinese characters, intact fig jars, coins, tokens and imported Chinese porcelain."
- Songbird’s testosterone surges at sight of thistle blooms
- Seeing the flowers in summer temperatures triggers male goldfinches' reproductive readiness
- Christian Identity: The scary religion you don’t know about
- [Skepchick - bug_girl]
…Christian Identity is a particularly virulent (and violent) form of creationism and apocalyptic thinking…
There are many different flavors of the Identity creation story that lays out exactly how the origins of “mud people” are separate from (white) Adam and Eve–but the gist is the same. Jews, Folks of Color, Homosexuals, and whoever else you happen to hate today are Demonic in origin. Or soulless animals. In other-words, non-white people are literally spawn of the devil. And, so, it’s your CHRISTIAN DUTY to kill them…
…The official number [of believers] floats around 45,000 or so in the US… The real question is how much influence these groups wield, and how much violence they cause. Nearly all major US terrorist incidents in the 90s–including the Oklahoma bombing and the Atlanta Olympics bombings–involved Christian Identity believers. I started to make a list of more recent shootings, but I got too depressed.
- AZ Republicans Resign After Giffords Shooting, Citing Threats From Local Tea Partiers
- [Think Progress - Ben Armbruster]
Just hours after [Loughner's shooting spree], Legislative District chairman Anthony Miller, a Republican, announced that he would resign his position. In an email to the state’s GOP chair, Miller cited “constant verbal attacks” after his election last year “and Internet blog posts by some local members with Tea Party ties made him worry about his family’s safety.”…
Miller had been on the receiving end of attacks from the GOP’s right-wing activists, particularly because he had worked for Sen. John McCain’s Senate reelection campaign last year against Tea Party favorite J.D. Hayworth:…
“I wasn’t going to resign but decided to quit after what happened Saturday,” Miller said. “I love the Republican Party but I don’t want to take a bullet for anyone.” Meanwhile, AZ GOP state senator Lori Klein brought a gun with her to the state Capitol this week.
- Sexism Watch: ABC New Pilot Title
- [Women & Hollywood - Melissa Silverstein]
According to EW, ABC is about to pick up a new series entitled Don’t Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23.
- Nine Years of Guantánamo
- [ACLU Blog - Suzanne Ito]
Nine years ago today, a Department of Defense C-141 transport plane carrying 20 prisoners arrived in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. On that day, January 11, 2002, the naval base began operating as a detention center for men captured in President Bush's so-called "war on terror." Today, the detention center at Guantánamo Bay enters its 10th year of operation. More than 170 prisoners continue to be detained indefinitely there.
Although President Obama signed an executive order on his first full day in office to close the prison camp, Guantánamo remains open, and its very existence continues to be a stain on America's reputation at home and abroad…
President Obama vowed to close Guantánamo. Today's the day to remind him of that promise. Send him a message: tell him to act now.
none
- Trust in soothing fictions to stop mass murder?
- In what may really win the award for tastelessness in the ongoing contest of conservatives to see who can deflect criticism of their lies and eliminationist rhetoric the hardest, Erick Erickson may win with using the occasion of the attempted murder of a Jewish congresswoman (and the deaths of six others) to launch a maudlin recruitment ad for Christianity. (Though, it’s hard to [beat] conservatives using the occasion of an attack on a Jewish woman to claim that criticizing them is “blood libel”.) …amongst fundamentalists, blaming atheism (and evolutionary theory) for murder and mayhem is a favorite tactic.
[blockquote redacted]
…I don’t really feel comfortable around people who claim the only thing standing between them and mass murder is their relationship with an imaginary friend.
[In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. Signal boosts are awesome! --L.]
The Of interest (Wed, Jan 12th, 9am) by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.