Politics:
Dick Morris Thinks Convincing the Japanese to Develop Nuclear Weapons is the Solution to Dealing With North Korea (Oh, yeah, that's the ticket! Bring all of Northeast Asia into a nuclear arms race. No, thank you!)
Another Ralph Peters idea: Eventually, soldiers will need to start killing the media too (Yesterday, I linked to a post where Col. Ralph Peters suggested we should just kill all the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Some people have been looking into his previous statements, and found that he's also suggested that the military kill the media as well: "Rejecting the god of their fathers, the neo-pagans who dominate the media serve as lackeys at the terrorists’ bloody altar. ... Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media." Unthinkable now, unthinkable in the future, too, you nitwit!)
Fox News Embraces Right-Wing Theory That Obama Is Forcing GOP-Owned Car Dealerships To Close (Of course, no one seems to consider that "...all car dealers are, in fact, overwhelmingly more likely to donate to Republicans than to Democrats — not just those who are having their doors closed.” But why let facts get in the way of a good hysteria? See also TBogg's Negro president locks Republican car dealers in the trunk and Yet another intrepid Malkin 'investigative scoop' goes pffffft.)
Was Rape an Enhanced Interrogation Technique? (The answer: YES! No wonder the Obama administration is trying to keep the new photos from Abu Ghraib secret.)
Rachel Maddow Responds to Tancredo's Racist Screed
Countdown: Jesse Ventura on Torture Prosecutions and Waterboarding (Ventura on "why he thinks we haven't had any prosecutions for torture in the United States, 'Mancow' Muller's waterboarding and Sean Hannity never agreeing to go through it himself.")
How to talk to a right winger ("What was ostensibly good for Israel for 40 years will also be good for another 400 years. For 40 years we were able to deceive ourselves, to mock the world, to occupy, to oppress, to trample and to kill. So why shouldn't we continue?")
The Potential Korea Escalation
Economics:
Yield Curve
"Fermi Problems" (Fermi Problems are interesting; I've run into a few, and I know that Microsoft has used them as part of their recruiting process. Thoma mentions that "Watching someone work out a Fermi problem in real time reveals a lot about their brainpower." More specifically, what it really does, IMO, is show how one works through a problem: the assumptions made and the logic necessary to solve the problem itself. Whether the solution itself is correct is mostly irrelevant. How one comes up with the solution is what's at stake.)
Are Durable Goods Orders Bottoming? (Another sign that might indicate the recession is beginning to fade.)
Islam/Muslim Blogs:
A quote to remember...
Miscellaneous:
Closer: The Cutout Of Delight (Always carry an extra hand in your purse, my dear?)
Russian police find feral girl in Siberia (Astaghfirullah! Poor girl. Russian police have taken into care a 5-year-old girl who has been shut up in a flat in the company of cats and dogs for her entire life, police said on Wednesday. ... The girl, who lived in the Eastern Siberian city of Chita, could not speak Russian and acted like an dog when police took her into care. ... "For five years, the girl was 'brought up' by several dogs and cats and had never been outside," a police statement said.)
Crater on Mars named for Isaac Asimov (An asteroid was already named after him, but this is still an overdue honor.)
2 comments:
Muslims often prefer to use the word "revert" rather than "convert", because they believe that all humans are essentially born Muslim.
Isn't this contradicted though by the fact that some feral children (such as Victor of Aveyron) were extremely reluctant to wear clothes?
After all, Islam is notorious for its emphasis on bodily modesty...
You're comparing apples with oranges, George. When Muslims talk about people being born Muslim, we're referring to the term fitrah, which is primarily with respect to tawhid, God-consciousness. (As the Wikipedia entry notes, there is a physical element to the concept of fitrah as well, but that has to do with the beauty and perfection of the human body as created by Allah (swt). However, that has nothing to do with modesty.)
As for modesty itself, after observing my ten-month-old baby's desire to remain unclothed after having her bath or getting her diaper changed, I suspect that modesty is a learned trait rather than innate. ;)
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