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Saturday, September 23, 2006
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Conservatives were quick to lash out at Hugo Chavez for calling President Bush a "devil," but that's exactly what Rush Limbaugh was calling Democrats only a few years ago.
(Via AlterNet.org.)
2:20:13 PM 
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This time you must:
People and societies don't just wake up one morning to find they no longer recognize themselves. It's a process. And we are in the process in this country of "defining deviancy down" in ways I never thought possible. We are legitimizing torture and indefinite detention --- saying that we will only do this to the people who really deserve it. One cannot help but wonder what "really deserves it" will mean in the years to come as we fight our endless war against terror.
Sure, right now it's just a bunch of foreigners and I guess we don't feel foreigners are entitled to basic human rights. They must not be human --- or at least not as human as "we" are. In fact, it not even "we." Right wingers make millions of dollars writing books about how liberals are godless, death-loving, traitors within. Many people who read those books probably believe these liberals are only one step away from being sub-human too ---- they are, after all, godless traitors.
How some major paper doesn't offer Digby a big wheelbarrow of cash to right editorials I don't know. Oh that's right, progressive. Must have Bobo Brooks instead.
(Via Rising Hegemon.)
2:09:12 PM
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J-Walk Blog has way too much time on his hands. This is the kind of thing I'd do, when I should be looking for work. Since I'm gainfully employed (if you more or less leave out the gainfully part), I don't to have this kind of fun.
2:07:13 PM
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Saying he opposes government-run health care, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger followed through Friday on his promise to veto a Democratic bill that would have set up a universal health care system covering all Californians.
(Via Bay & State.)
1:56:23 PM
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AP - Now the death toll is 9/11 times two. U.S. military deaths from Iraq and Afghanistan now match those of the most devastating terrorist attack in America's history, the trigger for what came next. Add casualties from chasing terrorists elsewhere in the world, and the total has passed the Sept. 11 figure. The latest milestone for a country at war came Friday without commemoration. It came without the precision of knowing who was the 2,973rd man or woman of arms to die in conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. The terrorist attacks killed 2,973 victims in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
The Pentagon's report Friday night of the latest death from Iraq, an as-yet unidentified soldier killed a day earlier after his vehicle was hit by a roadside bombing in eastern Baghdad, brought the U.S. death toll in Iraq to 2,695. Combined with 278 U.S. deaths in and around Afghanistan, the 9/11 toll was reached.
Not for the first time, war that was started to answer death has resulted in at least as much death for the country that was first attacked, quite apart from the higher numbers of enemy and civilians killed.
(Via UNDERNEWS.)
1:35:43 PM
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Andrew Sullivan:
It is one of history's great tragedies that American conservatism, born in part in resistance to Soviet torture, should end by endorsing it in America, by Americans. And not just endorsing it, but brandishing the use of it as a tool to gain re-election and maintain power. If there is a conservative soul, and I believe there is, the current "conservative" leadership is bent on
(Via No More Apples.)
1:28:23 PM
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William James would have loved this paper. Then again, maybe he'd be dissapointed:
Neuroscientists investigating a young woman with epilepsy believe they have stumbled on an explanation why some people feel a ghostly presence nearby or develop paranoia or persecution.
The 22-year-old woman was being assessed for brain surgery for epilepsy but was otherwise psychologically healthy.
Part of this evaluation was to pinpoint the area needed for surgery, using thin electrodes implanted into a region of the brain.
Reporting the case in tomorrow's issue of Nature, the weekly British science journal, the doctors said that when they sent a small current to the woman's left temporoparietal junction, she said she had the impression there was somebody behind her.
The person was a "shadow", young and of indeterminate sex and did not speak, she said.
The doctors slightly increased the current and changed the woman's position from lying down to seated, and got her to hug her knees.
She then said she felt the creepy presence of man who was also sitting and who was clasping her unpleasantly in his arms.
The current was slightly increased further and the woman, this time seated, carried out a language test, reading from a card held in her right hand. She reported the presence of a sitting "person," this time displaced behind her to her right, who tried to interfere with the test.
"He wants to take the card... he doesn't want me to read," she said.
The sensation was so real that at no time did the woman realise that it was an illusion generated by her own mind, said the Swiss authors of the case sudy.
The temporoparietal junction is used for social reasoning - to assess oneself and distinguish oneself from others.
"Our findings may be a step towards understanding the mechanisms behind psychiatric manifestations such as paranoia, persecution and alien control," the authors said.
(Via ScienceBlogs : Combined Feed.)
1:15:01 PM
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 At the Morgan Library in NYC via The Gothamist
"Bob Dylan's Bob Dylan's American Journey, 1956–1966, is the
first comprehensive exhibition devoted to Bob Dylan's formative early
career. The exhibition examines this critical ten-year period by
charting Dylan's transformation from folk troubadour to rock innovator
during a momentous, turbulent time in American history. Bob Dylan's American Journey, 1956–1966 is organized by Experience Music Project, the music museum in Seattle, Washington."
"The exhibit, which includes works from the Morgan's collection of Dylan
manuscripts and other material given to the Morgan from 1997 to 1999 by
collector George Hecksher, follows Dylan's personal and artistic
development from his teenage years in Hibbing, Minnesota, to early live
performances in Greenwich Village to the historic "electric"
performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival."
"This ten-year span also encompasses the release of some of Dylan's seminal albums, including The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Highway 61 Revisited (1965), and Blonde on Blonde
(1966). The exhibition blends historic artifacts—including handwritten
lyrics and letters by Dylan, instruments, rare memorabilia, and
photographs—and interpretive films featuring rare performance footage
and interviews with Dylan and other artists. Listening stations feature
selections from several albums of the period covered by the exhibit."
(Via Bedazzled!.)
11:07:34 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Steve Michel.
Last update: 10/2/2006; 1:34:00 PM.
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