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Friday, March 14, 2003

Art That Transfigures Science. What exactly does science have to offer the arts? What are the particular ways in which science provokes us, inspires us and examines who we are? By Alan Lightman. [New York Times: Science] 11:12:37 PM  Permalink  comment []

It's worse than a crime; it is a mistake Michael Lind. on "The Three Strategic Fallacies of the Bush Administration": The United States is now more isolated from its major allies... [Electrolite] Very good reading. A sample paragraph:  It is not clear whether the Bush administration regards preventive war as a prerogative of the United States alone, or as a newly recognized right of all countries. If the former is the case, then the U.S. is claiming that it is exempt from the rules that govern other nations. If the latter is the case, then Pakistan could wage a preventive war against India today, on the grounds that India might be a greater threat in a decade or two. The distinction between wars of defense and aggression would collapse entirely, if the United States, alone or along with all other nations, had the right to wage war on the basis of speculative future threats. And it is deeply troubling that the Bush administration has now adopted, as its own strategy, a “Pearl Harbor” strategy for which Japanese war criminals were hanged by the U.S. after World War II. 2:11:22 PM  Permalink  comment []

NASA Prepares for Return to Space. Voice of America - The US space agency is hoping to resume shuttle flights as early as late this year, if the problems with the doomed shuttle Colombia can be identified and corrected. Jeez, but it's going to take some balls to ride that shuttle from now on. 2:07:12 PM  Permalink  comment []

Ben Hammersly points out The Litris Reading Room. [Ben Hammersley.com] He's right that reading this bold-faced HTML on the screen is a pain. I've briefly looked at Micrsoft's ebook reader, but haven't wanted to download it, and of course, it doesn't provide, so far as I can see, a way to read texts like those at ex libris. One thing that's nice about reading on screen is that it's easy (or should be, if the page is authored correctly) to change the size and style of the text. Thanks to Ben for pointing out John Buchan, author of Greenmantle and The Thirty-Nine Steps. Litris includes one of my two or three favorite stories of all time Robert Louis Stevenson's The Beach at Falesa, and James Branch Cabell's Jurgen which I enjoyed many years ago, among other titles. 8:20:33 AM  Permalink  comment []

© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.