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Stewart v McCain April 28, 2007

Posted by ocmpoma in : society , 2comments

If you haven’t seen John Stewart’s Daily Show interview of Senator McCain, you should.

I tried embedding the video from Comedy Central’s Motherload site; however I couldn’t get it to work and I couldn’t find the video anywhere else.

Following this link will take you to the Motherload site; you can find the interviews there.

Update: PanAtheist points out that the video can be found here, at onegoodmove.org.

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paging Dr Freud April 27, 2007

Posted by ocmpoma in : politics , add a comment

So, the US and Russia are in an ongoing tiff over plans to set up a US anti-missile defense in Eastern Europe. Putin is now saying that Russia will cease to comply with the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, which exists to control and reduce tensions stemming from, well, from conventional forces in Europe.

Of course, our diplomats aren’t really helping the situation…

“The idea that somehow 10 interceptors and a few radars in Eastern Europe are going to threaten the Soviet strategic deterrent is purely ludicrous…
[snip]
The idea that you can somehow stop the Soviet strategic nuclear deterrent with a few interceptors just doesn’t make sense.”
(emphasis mine -oc)

That’s US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Keep in mind that those quotes are from 26 April 2007, not 26 April 1987.

(hat tip to MTMB)

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food bill April 27, 2007

Posted by ocmpoma in : economics, politics , add a comment

Michael Pollan argues in an article at the New York Times that a fairly large number of the hot-botton topics in the US today are linked to one (rather unwieldly large) piece of legislation. The topics include:

-Immigration
-Environment
-Globalization
-Obesity

The legislation? The Farm Bill (2002 Bill — 421 glorious pdf pages).

“The devil is in the details, no doubt. Simply eliminating support for farmers won’t solve these problems; overproduction has afflicted agriculture since long before modern subsidies. It will take some imaginative policy making to figure out how to encourage farmers to focus on taking care of the land rather than all-out production, on growing real food for eaters rather than industrial raw materials for food processors and on rebuilding local food economies, which the current farm bill hobbles. But the guiding principle behind an eater’s farm bill could not be more straightforward: it’s one that changes the rules of the game so as to promote the quality of our food (and farming) over and above its quantity.”

(via Marginal Revolution)

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Weekly Photo #28: Bronze Horseman April 27, 2007

Posted by ocmpoma in : other , add a comment

Bronze Horseman
This is “Bronze Horseman”, taken back in mid-August of ‘03. For those who don’t know (shame on you), this is a famous sculpture by Falconet called, obviously, “The Bronze Horseman”. It’s a statue of Peter the Great, with “To Peter the First, From Catherine the Second, 1782″ tacked on by ol’ Catherine the Great.The statue, as well as the rock it’s standing on, has got an interesting history, and I strongly advise that you check out the Wikipedia article (linked above) on it. It’s also part of the inspiration for Pushkin’s great poem, Медный вÑадник:

Люблю тебÑ, Петра творенье,
Люблю твой Ñтрогий, Ñтройный вид,
Ðевы державное теченье,
Береговой ее гранит,
Твоих оград узор чугунный,
Твоих задумчивых ночей
Прозрачный Ñумрак, блеÑк безлунный…

I love you, work of Peter,
I love your austere, linear scenes,
The Neva’s majestic flow,
Her shorelining granite,
The cast-iron pattern of your walls,
Your pensive nights’
Transparent dusk, moonless luster…

(translation mine -oc)

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Near Misses April 25, 2007

Posted by ocmpoma in : atheism , 2comments

I seem to be turning into some sort of ScienceBlogs commentator…

Any way, Chris over at Mixing Memory has a post up about the schism between uppity, mean, or new atheists and the rest of the atheists.

I tend to agree with most of the post:
(more…)

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One Hundred Billion April 24, 2007

Posted by ocmpoma in : society , add a comment

Dynamics of Cats has a post up about lost opportunities.

Of course, if the sum in question hadn’t been used in the manner in which it was, it wouldn’t have been put to any of the uses mentioned in the post.

Which is, of course, even more shameful.

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Do svidaniya, Mr Yeltsin April 23, 2007

Posted by ocmpoma in : politics, society , add a comment

Defiant

At the BBC, CFR, and The Economist. The Wikipedia article.

My short, pithy take: Yeltsin was willing and able to seize the moment in 1991; but he was far from capable enough to handle the aftermath. His failures were all the greater given the hopes that were riding on him. The idealist in me, however, will always remember the man who stood on that tank on a summer day.

(photo from here)

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Reactions April 23, 2007

Posted by ocmpoma in : atheism , 2comments

There have been a few reactions at ScienceBlogs to PZ’s post (and apparently one at Pandagon) comparing atheists and suffragettes:

Thoughts From Kansas talks about the Overton Window. Is it me, or isn’t that exactly what us mean atheists are trying to do? Am I missing something, or is Mr Rosenau?

Mixing Memory has an interesting read: an article from the 19th century which is all-too familiar.

And, Mike the Mad Biologist says it’s not suffragettes atheists need to think like, it’s Jews.

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A Coupe By Any Other Name… April 23, 2007

Posted by ocmpoma in : language , add a comment

Arnold Zwicky has a post over at Language Log about product names that affect sales in certain regions. The lead example of this provided is that of Mitsubishi’s coupe, the Lancer.

Or, more specifically, the Lancer Evolution. Guess where it doesn’t seem to sell all that well?

(note — The LL post mentions, and I agree, that more investigation is needed to determine how much correlation might be causation in this case; I still find the relationship interesting.)

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