Friday, July 22, 2005

Allison Perkins phones in from Iraq. 2:45:53 PM   permalink   comment []

Paul Jones and Charles Cunningham push back on James Webb's view of the Scotch-Irish (some conversation about the proper name for the group, too). Jones: "(T)he Celts and even Scots (or Scotch) Irish are neither a racial group nor much of a unified culture...it is not unrealistic to say that the South created its own cultures and often offers up various excuses for our own bad behaviors blaming them on our collective genes... Nothing in the understanding of Gaelic Studies nor in the history of the building of America supports Webb. Only our own desires for a simple overarching myth and an easy set of excuses and explanations are fulfilled by his screed." Cunningham: "The problem is not the idea of tracing the geographic origins of peoples, which is interesting. It's the racializing of these origins and then converting them to explanatory categories; in other words confusing a geographic heritage with inherent or innate qualities. The other danger is ethnic or racial nationalism, which inevitably pits groups against one another." UPDATE: More disagreement with Webb. "But the factual errors are probably less troubling than the framework of interpretation - or more accurately, personal projection - he uses in his discussion of Scottish history." 2:35:45 PM   permalink   comment []

Since there's not a Rhino blog, people just talk about it over at JR's place. 2:21:19 PM   permalink   comment []

RMac gets interviewed by Newsweek about her reporting on US tech companies that bend over to do business with China. "Newseek's reputation for sloppiness is well deserved." 9:30:43 AM   permalink   comment []

Earl Sherrod on the way we see November 3, 1979: "You know the tragedy in this whole matter is that it has always been viewed as 5 members of the CWP were killed, not five people." 9:26:52 AM   permalink   comment []

Frederick Turner: Darwin Among the Believers "(W)hat opponents of evolution do not perhaps realize is what they are up against in terms of sheer human and civilizational achievement based on the evolutionary paradigm." There are at least 50 major journals in the academic field of biology. All accept without question the theory of evolution.... they would be nonsense without the theory of evolution, just as engineering would be nonsense without gravity...opponents of evolution must find a way of matching and disproving, experiment by experiment, observation by observation, and calculation by calculation, at least two million pages of closely reasoned scientific text, representing roughly two million man-years of expert research and perhaps trillions of dollars of training, salaries, equipment, and infrastructure. But the task of the opponent does not end here. For biology is not the only field for which the theory of evolution is an essential foundation. Geology, physical anthropology, agricultural science, environmental science, much of chemistry, some areas of physics (e.g. protein folding) and even disciplines such as climatology and oceanography (which rely on the evolutionary history of the planet in its calculations about the composition of the atmosphere and oceans), are at least partially founded on evolution. Most important of all for our immediate welfare, medicine is almost impossible as a research discipline without evolutionary theory. 9:23:14 AM   permalink   comment []

N&R readers said loud and clear that they didn't want to lose Thomas Friedman when the paper chose not to renew its NYT service. It's even worse than it appears: The Times will soon pull Friedman's columns behind its online paywall, so you won't be able to feed your jones for international commentary there, either, at least without coughing up some dough.  Here's the good news: the staff at EdCone.com will read Friedman for you at no additional charge. That's right, the Friedman International Analysis Summary Collated Online (FIASCO) is free to readers of this site -- and worth every penny. Tell a friend, or an enemy. Today, Friedman's piece is headlined "Giving the Hatemongers No Place to Hide." It begins in England, where cops were "combing through the Iqra Learning Center bookstore in Leeds for clues to the 7/7 London bombings. Some of the 7/7 bombers hung out at the bookstore. And I won't be surprised if today's bombers also sampled the literature there." The nut graf: "Guess what: words matter. Bookstores matter. Video games matter....the primary terrorism problem we face today can effectively be addressed only by a war of ideas within Islam - a war between life-affirming Muslims against those who want to turn one of the world's great religions into a death cult." "...We need to shine a spotlight on hate speech wherever it appears. The State Department produces an annual human rights report. Henceforth, it should also produce a quarterly War of Ideas Report, which would focus on those religious leaders and writers who are inciting violence against others." Include everyone, he says, including "names of the Jewish settler extremists who wrote 'Muhammad Is a Pig' on buildings in Gaza right up there with Sheik Abd Al-Rahman Al-Sudayyis, a Saudi who is imam of Islam's holy mosque in Mecca." "...Sunlight is more important than you think. Those who spread hate do not like to be exposed, noted Yigal Carmon, the founder of Memri, which monitors the Arab-Muslim media." Friedman says we should also expose "excuse makers" who try to justify terrorists acts, and celebrate "truth tellers" who speak out against extremism from within its own culture. 9:05:46 AM   permalink   comment []

Backwards City #2 is so close you can almost taste it. Or read it. Whatever. Order yours here. 8:39:05 AM   permalink   comment []

Krugman on the importance of China's currency move: "It's all about which way the capital is flowing." "...In the long run, the economic effects of an end to China's dollar buying would even out. America would have more industrial workers and fewer real estate agents." That might help North Carolina a bit. But there is more: "And what about the strategic effects? Right now America is a superpower living on credit - something I don't think has happened since Philip II ruled Spain. What will happen to our stature if and when China takes away our credit card?" 8:36:57 AM   permalink   comment []