Happy Thanksgiving! *

I'm taking off for a few days, so I won't be posting. But I leave you with this bit from The New Yorker: Thanksgiving Rules Revised. Hope you all have a good one!

* “Happy Thanksgiving!” is meant only as an encouraging phrase and will not necessarily insure a result like the one depicted in the Norman Rockwell painting.

11:16:31 PM      trackback [] 

A viable policy to deal with terrorism

Dave Pollard has a good essay on the war on terrorism. (Thanks to Euan.)

There is no defense against terrorism, but there is a viable policy to deal with it. Problem is, it's a hot potato: no one really wants to adopt it, because it looks weak and it costs a lot. That policy is to stop attacking countries that don't espouse Western values, and leave them to evolve in their own way at their own rate. That policy is to invest the billions that the US is now spending on arms, to instead provide those countries with humanitarian aid -- money and supplies for education, infrastructure-building, medicines, and civilian technologies and training in how to use them. No strings attached except that we need to be able to audit to ensure the money and technologies are used for their intended purposes. Nothing to be paid back. In fact, for countries whose foreign debt to us is crushing them, making them economic slaves to us, we need to write that debt off. Goodwill is the only dividend we need.

If we did this, there would be nothing for terrorists to react to... [see entire post here]

5:02:25 PM      trackback [] 

Interview with George Lakoff

I posted about George Lakoff several weeks ago. He's the linguist who is examining the metaphors that conservatives are using, he says, to dominate politics. He has formed the Rockridge Institute to "to reframe public debate, to create balance from a progressive perspective." Christopher Lydon has just posted an audio interview with Lakoff at his Blogging of the President blog. I haven't had time to listen yet, but I'm looking forward to it. Interesting stuff.

Love poetry?
If your ears are more tuned to love than politics these days, or you're just looking for a break, tune in to NPR's The Connection today for the first of two parts on Love Poetry. Today's show is on Shakespeare's sonnets.

10:23:49 AM      trackback []