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Sunday, August 27, 2006
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Bruce Schneier has an article at his blog that also appeared on Wired.com.
The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act. And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want. We're all a little jumpy after the recent arrest of 23 terror suspects in Great Britain. The men were reportedly plotting a liquid-explosive attack on airplanes, and both the press and politicians have been trumpeting the story ever since. In truth, it's doubtful that their plan would have succeeded; chemists have been debunking the idea since it became public. Certainly the suspects were a long way off from trying: None had bought airline tickets, and some didn't even have passports.
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Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat. And if we're terrified, and we share that fear, we help. All of these actions intensify and repeat the terrorists' actions, and increase the effects of their terror.
(Via The Lippard Blog.)
12:51:04 PM 
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Funny stuff from The Onion:
Arabs and Israelis alike are embracing their faith as a way to make sense of the violence from which there seems to be no escape....
"It's always frightening to be...
...
(Via Nanovirus.)
12:47:46 PM
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More science stupidity from the Republicans:
Scientific inquiry and ID provide useful angles of approach to ultimate questions. Here's how to make both sides happy: Let science teachers tell kids that science is a matter of inspired guesswork, not of invincible decree. Eventually, new theories will arise to wipe away weaknesses and inconsistencies in today's scientific orthodoxy.
Also, let students know that a sizeable number of scientists believe in a Designer, since science involves a quest to discover and decode universal design. (A sizeable number of scientists also don't believe in G-d.) Meanwhile, issue similar warnings against silly abuses of holy writ, since scripture has little or nothing to say about matters of "hard" science.
12:18:01 PM
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A paragraph of Nabokov will brighten any day. From Invitation to a Beheading :It was a bound magazine, published once upon a time, in a barely remembered age. The prison library, considered the second in the city for its size and the rarity of its volumes, kept several such curiosities. That was a remote world, where the simplest objects sparkled with youth and an inborn insolence, proceeding from the reverence that surrounded the labor devoted to their manufacture. Those were years of universal fluidity; well-oiled metals performed silent soundless acrobatics; the harmonious lines of men's suits were dictated by the unheard-of limberness of muscular bodies; the flowing glass of enormous windows curved around corners of buildings; a girl in a bathing suit flew like a swallow so high over a pool that it seemed no larger than a saucer; a high-jumper lay supine in the air, having already made such an extreme effort that, if it were not for the flaglike folds of his shorts, he would seem to be in lazy repose; and water ran, glided endlessly; the gracefulness of falling water, the dazzling details of bathrooms; the satiny ripples of the ocean with a two-winged shadow falling on it. Everything was lustrous and shimmering; everything gravitated passionately toward a kind of perfection whose definition was absence of friction. Reveling in all the temptations of the circle, life whirled to a state of such giddiness that the ground fell away and, stumbling, falling, weakened by nausea and languor -- ought I to say it? -- finding itself in a new dimension as it were...Yes, matter has grown old and weary, and little has survived over those legendary days -- a couple of machines, two or three fountains -- and no one regrets the past, and even the very concept of "past" has changed. [ellipsis in original]
(Via The Mumpsimus.)
12:10:15 PM
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Like this is at all believable.
11:39:40 AM
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This blog that calls itself Brutally Honest quotes a poll to the effect that Iraqis, "who live in Iraq," think things are going swimmingly. Of course it's the nefarious MSM that doesn't tell us that. Of course "brutally honest" doesn't point to this poll that shows that 90% of Iraqis want the US out of the country immediately.
The percentage of Iraqis who said they would not want to have Americans as neighbors rose from 87 percent in 2004 to 90 percent in 2006. When asked what they thought were the three main reasons why the United States invaded Iraq, 76 percent gave "to control Iraqi oil" as their first choice.
(Via Brutally Honest.)
11:11:04 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Steve Michel.
Last update: 9/1/2006; 6:59:09 PM.
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