Is Your Mouth A Little Weak . . .

When you open it to speak

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23 days to Valentine's Day

This is the Present that Kooks and Whackjobs Have Been Fighting to Delay

I remember 2001 when Pres. Bush made his announcement on television regarding stem cells. I was in Israel at the time. Nearly 8 years later, think of all the people whose lives could be better, how much farther along research could be, and how much broader the body of human knowledge might span if ignorance, fear, politics and kooks didn't play a role in important national science policy. How foolish they will all look.

fMR-stupid

As if i needed any more reason to always skip fMRI articles:

Samuel Phillips Huntington: April 18, 1927–December 24, 2008

I guess news moves a little more slowly over the holidays. I had no idea Dr. Huntington had died until I opened the Economist today. Below, an excerpt from the commentary article.

I recall my professors spoke of him dismissively, before 09/11 that was. Is optimism inherently dangerous? Are liberalism and culture diametrically opposed?


"Both well and badly. Huntington came as close as anybody to predicting September 11th and the “war on terror” with his strictures about Islam’s “bloody borders”. He also came as close as anybody to predicting America’s agonies in Iraq by pointing out that democracy is the product of very specific cultural processes. His argument that modernisation does not necessarily entail Westernisation also looks prescient: why should the Chinese embrace the American economic model when it seems to produce such economic havoc? And why should authoritarian regimes in the Middle East embrace democratisation when it might mean handing power to Islamists? The master emerges better than his pupil, Mr Fukuyama."

Who Said NY is Rude and Pushy?

CNN reports that Carnegie Hall has made the following offer in an effort to extricate its most decrepit form of furniture …

“Carnegie Hall has offered to pay for the rent-control tenants' relocation expenses and move them to apartments which are "equivalent or better" in the neighborhood. The Hall also is offering to pay the difference in rent to each of those tenants for the rest of their lives.”

A remarkably generous offer from a private foundation; a foundation which embodies no public obligation beyond that of any other private entity.

Any rational person would assume this generous offer precludes the possibility of conflict. However, this rationality fails to account for a significant X factor: the stupefying ego of a 96 year old woman.

"They can pay me $10 million. I'm part of history," she said. "You want to tell me they don't have enough rooms? They have a building of rooms. This place is history, and I think Carnegie, the people running it, I don't think they think about that."

Imagine a resident, any resident, of Beijing telling this same story. When did the founding principal of each individual “created equal” morph into “created special”. This woman is only remarkable because of the place in which she happens to reside. I say send in the New York County Sheriffs to remove her for trespassing.

Merry Christmas

Wishing a Merry Yule to all the fine members and readers of this blog.

Scariest Sentence of the Day

I didn't think it possible to epitomize everything that urbanites fear about the rest of America in one sentence. The NY Times (who else?) has proven me wrong:

"This year, news talk ranked as the most popular radio format in the United States, surpassing country music for the first time ever."

- From For Conservative Radio, It’s a New Dawn, Too