Although as a child I had turtles named Disraeli and Gladstone, I was never invited to sip Champagne with the queen until yesterday. Although I’ve been an Anglophile all my life, I was never able to participate in a fawning orgy of Albion worship until the British ambassador’s party for the monarch yesterday afternoon.

It was wonderful.

I got to enjoy many of the features I love about Britain: repressed emotions, overarticulate conversationalists and crustless sandwiches. It reminded me why over the decades so many of my Jewish brethren have gone in for the “Think Yiddish, Act British” lifestyle — shopping at Ralph Lauren and giving their sons names that seem quintessentially English: Irving, Sidney, Norman and Milton. More deeply, it reminded me why Britain is such a successful country.

haha
looking at u looking at us

Where History Reigns - New York Times

But spin – the pronouncing on things from an interested angle – is not a regrettable and avoidable form of suspect thinking and judging; it is the very content of thinking and judging

Stanley Fish on his home territory -- lovely essay but he himself is guilty of making assertions about the nature of thought and language which, as i understand it, psychologists would say was at best unproven: we need more empiricism on the topic and less art faculty assertion and rhetoric. But i do have to acknowledge his expertise on the topic of language since i came up against his work whilst doing my degree and didn't agree with it but couldn't defeat his arguments.

Stanley Fish - Think Again - Opinion - TimesSelect - New York Times Blog

In 1950, the psychoanalyst Erik H. Erikson, in a famous treatise on the phases of life development, identified wisdom as a likely, but not inevitable, byproduct of growing older. Wisdom arose, he suggested, during the eighth and final stage of psychosocial development, which he described as “ego integrity versus despair.” If an individual had achieved enough “ego integrity” over the course of a lifetime, then the imminent approach of infirmity and death would be accompanied by the virtue of wisdom. Unfortunately for researchers who followed, Erikson didn’t bother to define wisdom.

Baby Boomers - Aging - Wisdow - Middle Age - Medicine and Health - New York Times

He's a poet, a fisherman, a chess-player, a family man described as considerate and thoughtful, somebody who cares about nature and the environment, passionate yet even-tempered.

He enthuses about nature, especially the rugged heaths of Donegal: "Purple-heathered hillsides clothe the peaty bogs, leaching streams of water, swimming pools for frogs." He's good at relationships and a conspicuous success at most things.

But no, this is not some dreamy, liberal luvvy: this is Martin McGuinness, icon of republican militancy. That poem, which is being auctioned this weekend in south Armagh, is dedicated to a republican who was shot dead. From Tuesday, McGuinness will be running Northern Ireland together with the Rev Ian Paisley. Unlikely is far too mild a word to describe this emerging partnership between two lifelong adversaries, the dedicated republican and the staunch loyalist.

Martin McGuinness: Peacemaker and poet - Independent Online Edition -- Profiles

Blunders, romance and tales from far-flung places which find their way into email users' inboxes could soon be archived alongside the stirring speeches of Churchill and the works of Shakespeare.

The British Library, home to some of the world's most historic documents, has asked Britons to forward all manner of emails to create what it says will be the first email archive.

Become part of history: email the British library | UK | Reuters

The paper cited sources who say Microsoft, having already made an offer to acquire Yahoo! several months ago, is now urgently courting the web firm to re-enter formal negotiations.

Yahoo!, which is valued at around $50 billion, is reported to have aggressively rejected the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant's initial attempts to discuss a takeover.

For its part, Microsoft is said to be more determined than ever to strike a deal after Google last month snatched DoubleClick for $3.1 billion from under its nose.

"They're getting tired of being left at the altar," one banking source, who has recently had talks with Microsoft , told the Post. "They now seem more willing to extend themselves via a transaction to get into the game."

I hope this doesn't happen. Yahoo has some useful services which MS would inevitably fuck up.

AppleInsider | Microsoft eyes Yahoo! in proposed takeover

"Blade Runner," is considered to be a classic movie by many science fiction fans. Director Ridley Scott has stated that he had never been happy with the way the movie turned out.

...

I hope he doesn't tinker with it too much. I was just hoping for a cleaned up remastered version with maybe some footage that got dropped on the cutting room floor. If what Lucas did with the Star Wars flicks is any indication, the formula of mixing new tech with a film from an older period usually clashes on screen.

Did he ever do this with any of the Alien re-releases? Might be a reference point to see if he's any good at mixing new back into old.

At any rate, glad to see some more info about this finally.

New Info about Blade Runner 25th Anniversary Re-Release

Mr. Rieckhoff is convinced that if the public heard more from the soldiers and marines who have actually experienced combat, including those who have been wounded and suffered emotional trauma, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would be viewed more seriously. Part of the problem, he said, is that too many civilians have little or no understanding of what war is really like, and of the toll it takes beyond the obvious toll of the dead and wounded.

Among other things, there are family problems, drug and alcohol abuse, untreated post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and suicide — all directly attributable to service in a war zone. “Incredibly,” he writes in his book, “no government agency keeps track of the number of veterans who kill themselves after their service has ended — another sign of how little value is placed on veterans’ long-term well-being.”

An Invisible War - New York Times

The depth at which ice can be found below the surface of Mars varies greatly, new temperature maps made by NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft reveal. The 'bumpy' ice appears to be involved in an active martian water cycle.

'Bumpy' ice on Mars points to active water cycle - space - 02 May 2007 - New Scientist Space

Catonic wrote:
Succinct and to the point.

Ok, I'll bite. This "illegal is illegal" talk on the part of the anti-illegal immigration movement, far from being "succinct and to the point," represents 3 basic logical fallacies, its a straw man argument, its an over simplification, and it represents circular reasoning.

1. The Straw Man Argument: "My opponent argues that illegal immigration isn't illegal. Clearly that position is wrong, as evidenced by the fact that illegal immigration is, by definition, illegal. Therefore, my opponent is wrong and my views on the issue are correct."

No one is, in fact, arguing that illegal immigration isn't illegal. Demonstrating this rather obvious point does not collapse the debate, but rather, it avoids the debate. There are some who suggest that some kinds of illegal immigration shouldn't be illegal. As laws are a matter of policy, discussing what they should and should not be is, in fact, the purpose of political dialog in a Democracy.

2. The Over Simplification: All crimes are not equal. Both murder and jay walking are illegal, but they are not similarly serious crimes. Saying that "illegal is illegal" is precisely the same thing as saying that "jay walking is just like murder."

Most of the debate regarding illegal immigration concerns the perception on the right that illegal immigration is a crime like murder, and we should devote huge amounts of resources to stopping it and severly punish those who commit it, and the perception on the left that illegal immigration is a crime like jay walking, which while illegal does not warrant severe punishments or huge investments in policing. The statement that "illegal is illegal" contributes nothing to understanding where in the spectrum between these two positions our policy should lie, other than to argue that the United States should treat all crimes exactly the same way and should hand out exactly the same punishments for all crimes, which is ridiculous on it's face.

3. Circular Reasoning: Many people in the anti-illegal immigration movement start their argument by claiming that they are upset by illegal immigration because it is illegal. A good litmus test is to ask whether they would support creating a legal process for short term immigration by manual laborers. The answer is consistently no. Which means the REAL problem isn't that its illegal, as we get to decide whether or not its illegal (see point one). The real problem is something else, and by focusing on the legality rather than on the something else that actually motivates them, they fail, again, to contribute to the discussion in a useful way.

Now I'll be the first to agree with the general statement that "we have a problem with illegal immigration in this country." There simply should not be 12 million people living here illegally. It does not follow directly from that observation that the right answer is a "crackdown." There ar... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]

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