And here we go: Issa, Senior Republican, Asks Businesses Which Rules They Dislike – NYTimes.com http://t.co/OiK4P9Y
2011-01-05 13:09:16 +0000
I had a dream about deer, and woke up to deer tracks on the lawn. It’s quiet enough that I could have heard them subliminally, I guess.
2011-01-05 10:26:08 +0000
Great article on where bad policy ideas come from and why they stick: http://tumblr.com/x3f174l4th
Great article on where bad policy ideas come from and why they stick:
There is no inexorable evolutionary march that replaces our bad, old ideas with smart, new ones. If anything, the story of the last few decades of international relations can just as easily be read as the maddening persistence of dubious thinking. Like crab grass and kudzu, misguided notions are frustratingly resilient, hard to stamp out no matter how much trouble they have caused in the past and no matter how many scholarly studies have undermined their basic claims.
…
Perhaps the most obvious reason why foolish ideas persist is that someone has an interest in defending or promoting them. Although open debate is supposed to weed out dubious ideas and allow facts and logic to guide the policy process, it often doesn’t work that way. Self-interested actors who are deeply committed to a particular agenda can distort the marketplace of ideas.
Stephan M. Walt, “Where Do Bad Ideas Come From (And Why Don’t They Go Away)?,” Foreign Policy, Jan/Feb 2011
2011-01-05 10:05:27 +0000
Baudelaire’s handwritten corrections on galleys for Les Fleurs du mal: http://ow.ly/3yxco
2011-01-05 01:12:46 +0000
@t3dy Thanks for the recos! I’ll check out the Pratico. And I love Alter’s translations as well.
2011-01-04 21:26:59 +0000
Yikes! Another large bird kill reported, this time in Louisiana. http://t.co/dfHartz
2011-01-04 15:03:13 +0000
“using a posture of sensible skepticism to hide an ethical engagement” http://tumblr.com/x3f16xlrcu
2011-01-04 15:02:30 +0000
Once we kill off the birds and bees, what euphemisms can we use to we explain sex to kids? Oh, right, we’ll be dead, too. http://ow.ly/3y0dO
When you say you “can’t believe” something because you can’t be certain, because “we don’t know,” you are using a posture of sensible skepticism to hide an ethical engagement. If we don’t know, we can choose, and you did. And with that, unknowing, you’ve assumed the full ethical burden of your choice.