Skip to main content

Home/ Groups/ TOK Friends
Rss Feed
Sort By: Most Recent | Popular Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Javier E

Florence and the Drones - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...s-florence-and-the-drones.html

machiavelli realism leadership power checks & balances

shared by Javier E on 09 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • The conventional view is that Machiavelli believed that since people are brutes then everything is permitted. Leaders should do anything they can to hold power. The ends justify the means.
  • In fact, Machiavelli was a moralistic thinker.
  • He just had a different concept of political virtue. It would be nice, he writes, if a political leader could practice the Christian virtues like charity, mercy and gentleness and still provide for his people. But, in the real world, that’s usually not possible. In the real world, a great leader is called upon to create a civilized order for the city he serves. To create that order, to defeat the forces of anarchy and savagery, the virtuous leader is compelled to do hard things, to take, as it were, the sins of the situation upon himself.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • The leader who does good things cannot always be good himself. Sometimes bad acts produce good outcomes. Sometimes a leader has to love his country more than his soul.
  • Since a leader is forced by circumstances to do morally suspect things, Machiavelli at least wants him to do them effectively
  • When you read Machiavelli, you realize how lucky we are. Unlike 16th-century Florence, we have a good Constitution that channels conflict. We have manners, respect for law and social trust that softens behavior, at least a bit. Even in the realm of foreign affairs, we’ve inherited an international order that restrains conflict. Our ancestors behaved savagely to build our world, so we don’t have to.
  • But it’s still not possible to rule with perfectly clean hands. There are still terrorists out there, hiding in the shadows and plotting to kill Americans. So even today’s leaders face the Machiavellian choice: Do I have to be brutal to protect the people I serve? Do I have to use drones, which sometimes kill innocent children, in order to thwart terror and save the lives of my own?
  • When Barack Obama was a senator, he wasn’t compelled to confront the brutal logic of leadership. Now in office, he’s thrown into the Machiavellian world. He’s decided, correctly, that we are in a long war against Al Qaeda; that drone strikes do effectively kill terrorists; that, in fact, they inflict fewer civilian deaths than bombing campaigns, boots on the ground or any practical alternative; that, in fact, civilian death rates are dropping sharply as the C.I.A. gets better at this. Acting brutally abroad saves lives at home.
  • Machiavelli tells us that men are venal self-deceivers, but then he gives his Prince permission to do all these monstrous things, trusting him not to get carried away or turn into a monster himself.
  • Our founders were more careful. Our founders understood that leaders are as venal and untrustworthy as anybody else. They abhorred concentrated power, and they set up checks and balances to disperse it.
  • If you take Machiavelli’s tough-minded view of human nature, you have to be brutal to your enemies — but you also have to set up skeptical checks on the people you empower to destroy them.
Emily Horwitz

Studying the Effects of Playing Violent Video Games - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...aying-violent-video-games.html

psychology violence video games research

shared by Emily Horwitz on 12 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Emily Horwitz on 12 Feb 13
     
    This article talked about the connection for which psychologists are looking between violent video games and actual violence. Some studies have shown that exposure to a violent video game has short term effects, that drive people to act more rudely. However, other studies have shown that an increase in violent video game sales over a period of time have sometimes led to a decrease in crime. I'm interested to see if these psychologists can run some sort of brain scan as well, to see if there really is some sort of biological basis for a difference in behavior. Additionally, it would be great to see if the same phenomena occurred with violent or psychopathic movies or television shows.
Javier E

New Pope? I've Given Up Hope - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ew-pope-ive-given-up-hope.html

papacy church truth eternal

shared by Javier E on 13 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • A gift for eternal truths is as dangerous as the gift of Midas’s touch. The pope cannot undo the eternal truths he has proclaimed.
  • How could Paul VI say that Pius XI, in his 1930 encyclical Casti Connubii, had misled the people in such a serious way? If he admitted it, what would happen to his own authority as moral arbiter in matters of heaven and hell? So Paul VI doubled down, adding another encyclical in 1968, Humanae Vitae, to the unrenounceable eternal truths that pile up around a moral monarch.
  • In 1859, John Henry Newman published an article that led to his denunciation in Rome as “the most dangerous man in England.” It was called “On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine” and it showed that in history the laity had been more true to the Gospel than the hierarchy.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • There were no priests in Peter’s time, and no popes. Paul never called himself or any of his co-workers priests. He did not offer sacrifice. Those ideas came in later, through weird arguments contained in the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews. The claim of priests and popes to be the sole conduits of grace is a remnant of the era of papal monarchy. We are watching that era fade.
Javier E

The Ignorance Caucus - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...gman-the-ignorance-caucus.html

evidence critical science research Republicans motivated reasoning knowledge

shared by Javier E on 13 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Last year the Texas G.O.P. explicitly condemned efforts to teach “critical thinking skills,” because, it said, such efforts “have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”
  • even when giving a speech intended to demonstrate his ope
  • nness to new ideas, Mr. Cantor felt obliged to give that caucus a shout-out, calling for a complete end to federal funding of social science research. Because it’s surely a waste of money seeking to understand the society we’re trying to change.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Mr. Cantor’s support for medical research is curiously limited. He’s all for developing new treatments, but he and his colleagues have adamantly opposed “comparative effectiveness research,” which seeks to determine how well such treatments work.
  • , Hillary Clinton said of her Republican critics, “They just will not live in an evidence-based world.”
  • while Democrats, being human, often read evidence selectively and choose to believe things that make them comfortable, there really isn’t anything equivalent to Republicans’ active hostility to collecting evidence in the first place.
  • the parties aren’t just divided on values and policy views, they’re divided over epistemology. One side believes, at least in principle, in letting its policy views be shaped by facts; the other believes in suppressing the facts if they contradict its fixed beliefs.
  • in his home state of Virginia — have engaged in furious witch hunts against scientists who find evidence they don’t like. True, the state has finally agreed to study the growing risk of coastal flooding; Norfolk is among the American cities most vulnerable to climate change. But Republicans in the State Legislature have specifically prohibited the use of the words “sea-level rise.”
  • for all the talk of reforming and reinventing the G.O.P., the ignorance caucus retains a firm grip on the party’s heart and mind.
  • It would be helpful to these discussions if we had a good grasp of the facts about firearms and violence. But we don’t, because back in the 1990s conservative politicians, acting on behalf of the National Rifle Association, bullied federal agencies into ceasing just about all research into the issue.
Sean Kirkpatrick

North Korea conducts third Nuclear test - 0 views

www.delawareonline.com/...-has-conducted-third-nuke-test

science knowledge research technology

shared by Sean Kirkpatrick on 13 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Sean Kirkpatrick on 13 Feb 13
     
    As i was reading the news journal, this article stuck out to me as I wonder what type of threat North Korea is to our safety in the united states. Is the North Korean leader trying to prove a point? What is this purpose? Also- I observed a lot how they talked about a serious advancement in technology in terms of nuclear weapons in developing nations. What does a nuclear weapon threaten?
Javier E

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: It's Not You, It's Quantitative Cost-Benefit Analysis. - 0 views

www.mcsweeneys.net/...titative-cost-benefit-analysis

romance analysis calculation emotion

shared by Javier E on 14 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Susan, we need to talk. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. About us. I really like you, but ever since we met in that econ class in college I knew there was something missing from how I felt: quantitative reasoning. We can say we love each other all we want, but I just can’t trust it without the data. And after performing an in-depth cost-benefit analysis of our relationship, I just don’t think this is working out.
Emily Horwitz

Studying Recent Human Evolution at the Genetic Level - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...tion-at-the-genetic-level.html

human sciences evolution genetics science

shared by Emily Horwitz on 16 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Emily Horwitz on 16 Feb 13
     
    This article provided some interesting insight on how/why different races look the way they do. On one hand, genetic mutations are propagated because of distinct advantages; on the other hand, the more "attractive" traits are propagated, no necessarily because they make people survive longer, but because they increase the rate of mating. Like we discussed in the human sciences, the process of human evolution has multiple causation.
Javier E

The Oscar for Best Fabrication - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...scar-for-best-fabrication.html

History fiction historical fiction verification lincoln

shared by Javier E on 17 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Hollywood always wants it both ways, of course, but this Oscar season is rife with contenders who bank on the authenticity of their films until it’s challenged, and then fall back on the “Hey, it’s just a movie” defense.
  • “Lincoln,” which had three historical advisers but still managed to make some historical bloopers. Joe Courtney, a Democratic congressman from Connecticut, recently wrote to Steven Spielberg to complain that “Lincoln” falsely showed two of Connecticut’s House members voting “Nay” against the 13th Amendment for the abolition of slavery.
Javier E

Quitters Never Win: The Costs of Leaving Social Media - Woodrow Hartzog and Evan Seling... - 2 views

www.theatlantic.com/...273139

privacy social media protection

shared by Javier E on 17 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Manjoo offers this security-centric path for folks who are anxious about the service being "one the most intrusive technologies ever built," and believe that "the very idea of making Facebook a more private place borders on the oxymoronic, a bit like expecting modesty at a strip club". Bottom line: stop tuning in and start dropping out if you suspect that the culture of oversharing, digital narcissism, and, above all, big-data-hungry, corporate profiteering will trump privacy settings.
  • Angwin plans on keeping a bare-bones profile. She'll maintain just enough presence to send private messages, review tagged photos, and be easy for readers to find. Others might try similar experiments, perhaps keeping friends, but reducing their communication to banal and innocuous expressions. But, would such disclosures be compelling or sincere enough to retain the technology's utility?
  • The other unattractive option is for social web users to willingly pay for connectivity with extreme publicity.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • go this route if you believe privacy is dead, but find social networking too good to miss out on.
  • While we should be attuned to constraints and their consequences, there are at least four problems with conceptualizing the social media user's dilemma as a version of "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen".
  • The efficacy of abandoning social media can be questioned when others are free to share information about you on a platform long after you've left.
  • Second, while abandoning a single social technology might seem easy, this "love it or leave it" strategy -- which demands extreme caution and foresight from users and punishes them for their naivete -- isn't sustainable without great cost in the aggregate. If we look past the consequences of opting out of a specific service (like Facebook), we find a disconcerting and more far-reaching possibility: behavior that justifies a never-ending strategy of abandoning every social technology that threatens privacy -- a can being kicked down the road in perpetuity without us resolving the hard question of whether a satisfying balance between protection and publicity can be found online
  • if your current social network has no obligation to respect the obscurity of your information, what justifies believing other companies will continue to be trustworthy over time?
  • Sticking with the opt-out procedure turns digital life into a paranoid game of whack-a-mole where the goal is to stay ahead of the crushing mallet. Unfortunately, this path of perilously transferring risk from one medium to another is the direction we're headed if social media users can't make reasonable decisions based on the current context of obscurity, but instead are asked to assume all online social interaction can or will eventually lose its obscurity protection.
  • The fourth problem with the "leave if you're unhappy" ethos is that it is overly individualistic. If a critical mass participates in the "Opt-Out Revolution," what would happen to the struggling, the lonely, the curious, the caring, and the collaborative if the social web went dark?
  • Our point is that there is a middle ground between reclusion and widespread publicity, and the reduction of user options to quitting or coping, which are both problematic, need not be inevitable, especially when we can continue exploring ways to alleviate the user burden of retreat and the societal cost of a dark social web.
  • it is easy to presume that "even if you unfriend everybody on Facebook, and you never join Twitter, and you don't have a LinkedIn profile or an About.me page or much else in the way of online presence, you're still going to end up being mapped and charted and slotted in to your rightful place in the global social network that is life." But so long it remains possible to create obscurity through privacy enhancing technology, effective regulation, contextually appropriate privacy settings, circumspect behavior, and a clear understanding of how our data can be accessed and processed, that fatalism isn't justified.
Javier E

Of Cannibals, Kings and Culture: The Problem of Ethnocentricity - NYTimes.com - 0 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...on-ethnocentrism

ethnocentrism relativism moral reasoning morality

shared by Javier E on 18 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Ethnocentrism – our culture’s tendency to twist our judgment in favor of homegrown beliefs and practices and against foreign alternatives – is not, I take it, a phenomenon in need of further empirical confirmation
  • in his recent book, “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,” Jonathan Haidt argues that, far from being a way of holding our moral beliefs up to critical scrutiny, moral reasoning is generally something we use merely to convince others of long-held beliefs that we are unwilling to abandon.
  • often, no amount of persuasive reasoning, clear argument or exposed contradiction can shake us from what we already believe.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Is ethnocentrism something we’re doomed to? Can we avoid it? If so, should we avoid it? Is it even a bad thing?
  • Philosophers have responded to the pervasive influence of culture on our moral beliefs in various ways. Many have embraced some form of skepticism.
  • Many have argued, for instance, that the influence of culture on our moral beliefs is evidence not of error theory but of moral relativism: the idea that the moral truth, for any given people, is determined by their culture — the set of shared practices and beliefs that they ascribe to.
  • it is nevertheless very hard to prove that our moral beliefs are entirely determined by our culture, or to rule out the possibility that cultures themselves take some direction from objective moral facts.
  • it’s not at all clear why the influence of culture on our moral beliefs should be taken as evidence that cultures influence the moral truth itself — so that, for instance, child sacrifice would be morally permissible in any community with enough members that believe it to be so. Not only does that conclusion seem unmotivated by the phenomenon under discussion, it would also paradoxically convert ethnocentrism into a kind of virtue
  • there are other, more straightforward, and less overtly skeptical, ways of responding to ethnocentrism. Chief among these, in my view, is the simple but humbling acknowledgment that ethnocentrism is a danger that confronts us all, but not one that should disillusion us from the pursuit of truth altogether.
  • The fact that our deepest-held beliefs would be different had we been born elsewhere on the planet (or even, sometimes, to different parents farther down the street), should disconcert us, make us more open to the likelihood of our own error, and spur us to rigorously evaluate our beliefs and practices against alternatives, but it need not disillusion.
Zack Lessner

Lab Rats 'Acquire Sixth Sense - 1 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...science-environment-21459745

science knowledge research brain science

shared by Zack Lessner on 18 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Zack Lessner on 18 Feb 13
     
    Some rats at Duke University can now touch infrared light.
Emily Horwitz

Long Prison Terms Eyed as Contributing to Poverty - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...s-contributing-to-poverty.html

human sciences economics prison poverty

shared by Emily Horwitz on 20 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Emily Horwitz on 20 Feb 13
     
    A very eye-opening (albeit very long) article about the devastating effects that a stint in prison can have on a family. The article noted that many men who are sent to jail are often given sentences that are too long, so that, by the time they are released, they are way past the average age for committing crimes, and have missed out on valuable life experiences that could have aided them in getting a job. As a result, many of these men find it difficult to get a job, falling into a cycle of poverty, and perhaps, again, to crime. Additionally, for those who have spouses and/or children, time in prison can drastically harm the economic status of a man's family; without the extra income, these families may become homeless, as did the woman, Ms. Hamilton, in the article. Especially intriguing to me was the racial implications of the article; the author pointed out that African-American men are more likely to be incarcerated than they are to have a job, if they did not receive a high school diploma. In terms of TOK, this article showed that all the facets of the human sciences are related - from social problems to economic problems, times in prison can have a devastating effect on not only the jailed man, but his family as well.
Javier E

How Capitalism Creates The Welfare State « The Dish - 0 views

dish.andrewsullivan.com/...lism-creates-the-welfare-state

capitalism cultural contradiction welfare state

shared by Javier E on 20 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • The two concepts are usually seen in complete opposition in our political discourse. The more capitalism and wealth, the familiar argument goes, the better able we are to do without a safety net for the poor, elderly, sick and young. And that’s true
  • the cultural contradictions of capitalism, brilliantly explained in Daniel Bell’s classic volume, are indeed contradictions. The turbulence of a growing wealth-creating free market disrupts traditional ways of life like no other. Even in a culture like ours used to relying from its very origins on entrepreneurial spirit, the dislocations are manifold. People have to move; their choices of partners for love and sex multiply; families disaggregate on their own virtual devices; grandparents are assigned to assisted living; second marriages are as familiar as first ones; and whole industries – and all the learned skills that went with them – can just disappear overnight
  • Capitalism is in this sense anti-conservative. It is a disruptive, culturally revolutionary force through human society. It has changed the world in three centuries more than at any time in the two hundred millennia that humans have lived on the earth. This must leave – and has surely left – victims behind. Which is why the welfare state emerged. The sheer cruelty of the market, the way it dispenses brutally with inefficiency (i.e. human beings and their jobs), the manner in which it encourages constant travel and communication: these, as Bell noted, are not ways to strengthen existing social norms, buttress the family, allow the civil society to do what it once did: take care of people within smaller familial units according to generational justice and respect. That kind of social order – the ultimate conservative utopia – is inimical to the capitalist enterprise
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Which is why many leaders in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, conservatives as well as liberals, attached a safety net to such an unsafe, bewildering, constantly shifting web of human demand and supply. They did so in part for humane reasons – but also because they realized that unless capitalism red in tooth and claw were complemented by some collective cushioning, it would soon fall prey to more revolutionary movements. The safety net was created to save capitalism from itself, not to attack capitalism.
  • the sheer speed at which this is now happening. It makes the conservative project all but impossible, if still necessary. It does require a defense of the family, of marriage, of personal responsibility. But it also demands a compassion toward the victims of this economic and social change, an understanding of their bewilderment
  • One reason, I think, that Obama’s move toward a slightly more effective welfare state has not met strong resistance – and is clearly winning the American argument – is that the sheer force of this global capitalism is coming to bear down on America more fiercely than ever before. People know this and they look for some kind of security
  • it is precisely capitalism’s post-1980s triumph that has helped create the social dependency so many conservatives bemoan today. And this time, there is even a sense that whole industries are disappearing faster than ever before – not simply because of outsourcing but because of technology itself
  • The forces of global capitalism – now unleashed on an unprecedented global scale with China, Russia, Brazil and India – are destroying the kind of society which allows and encourages stability, traditional families, and self-sufficient community.
  • in my bleaker moments, I wonder whether humankind will come to see this great capitalist leap forward as a huge error in human history – the moment we undid ourselves and our very environment, reaching untold material wealth as well as building societies in which loneliness, dislocation, displacement and radical insecurity cannot but increase.
Emily Horwitz

News from The Associated Press - 0 views

hosted.ap.org/...US_OSCARS_FACT_OR_FICTION

historical movies truth fiction

shared by Emily Horwitz on 20 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • If you saw the film "Argo," no, you didn't miss this development, which is recounted in Mendez's book about the real-life operation. It wasn't there because director Ben Affleck and screenwriter Chris Terrio replaced it with an even more dramatic scenario, involving canceled flight reservations, suspicious Iranian officials who call the Hollywood office of the fake film crew (a call answered just in time), and finally a heart-pounding chase on the tarmac just as the plane's wheels lift off, seconds from catastrophe.
  • they've caught some flak for the liberties they took in the name of entertainment.
  • And they aren't alone - two other high-profile best-picture nominees this year, Kathryn Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty" and Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln," have also been criticized for different sorts of factual issues.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • But because these three major films are in contention, the issue has come to the forefront of this year's Oscar race, and with it a thorny cultural question: Does the audience deserve the truth, the whole truth and nothing but? Surely not, but just how much fiction is OK?
  • In response to a complaint by a Connecticut congressman, Kushner acknowledged he'd changed the details for dramatic effect, having two Connecticut congressmen vote against the amendment when, in fact, all four voted for it. (The names of those congressmen were changed, to avoid changing the vote of specific individuals.)
  • "Maybe changing the vote went too far," says Richard Walter, chairman of screenwriting at the University of California, Los Angeles. "Maybe there was another way to do it. But really, it's not terribly important. People accept that liberties will be taken. A movie is a movie. People going for a history lesson are going to the wrong place."
  • Kushner said he had "adhered to time-honored and completely legitimate standards for the creation of historical drama, which is what `Lincoln' is. I hope nobody is shocked to learn that I also made up dialogue and imagined encounters and invented characters."
  • Walter says he always tells his students: "Go for the feelings. Because the only thing that's truly real in the movies are the feelings that people feel when they watch."
  • No subject or individual's life is compelling and dramatic enough by itself, he says, that it neatly fits into a script with three acts, subplots, plot twists and a powerful villain.
  • Futterman says he was sympathetic to those concerns and would certainly have addressed them in the script, had he anticipated them.
  • "This is fraught territory," he says. "You're always going to have to change something, and you're always going to get in some sort of trouble, with somebody," he says.
  • Futterman also doesn't begrudge the "Argo" filmmakers, because he feels they use a directorial style that implies some fun is being had with the story. "All the inside joking about Hollywood - tonally, you get a sense that something is being played with," he says.
  • Reeves, who actually gave the "Lincoln" script a negative review because he thought it was too heavy on conversation and lacking action. He adds, though, that when the subject is as famous as Lincoln, one has a responsibility to be more faithful to the facts.
  • Of the three Oscar-nominated films in question, "Zero Dark Thirty" has inspired the most fervent debate. The most intense criticism, despite acclaim for the filmmaking craft involved, has been about its depictions of interrogations, with some, including a group of senators, saying the film misleads viewers for suggesting that torture provided information that helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden.
  • have been questions about the accuracy of the depiction of the main character, a CIA officer played by Jessica Chastain; the real person - or even combination of people, according to some theories - that she plays remains anonymous.
  • screenwriters have a double responsibility: to the material and to the audience.
  • The debate over "Argo" has been much less intense, though there has been some grumbling from former officials in Britain and New Zealand that their countries were portrayed incorrectly in the film as offering no help at all to the six Americans, whereas actually, as Mendez writes, they did provide some help.
  • "When I am hungry and crave a tuna fish sandwich, I don't go to a hardware store," he says. "When I seek a history lesson, I do not go to a movie theater. I loved `Argo' even though I know there was no last-minute turn-around via a phone call from President Carter, nor were there Iranian police cars chasing the plane down the tarmac as it took off. So what? These conceits simply make the movie more exciting."
  • Emily Horwitz on 20 Feb 13
     
    This article reaffirmed my feelings that we can't trust everything that we see or hear through the media, because it is often skewed to better captivate the target audience. As the article stated, there appears to be a fine line in catering to the attention span of the audience, and respecting the known facts of a given event that is portrayed by a movie.
Chris DiMaria

New Perspective on our Home Planet - 0 views

www.upworthy.com/-astronauts-returning-to-earth

science research technology

shared by Chris DiMaria on 21 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Chris DiMaria on 21 Feb 13
     
    I love this video. Not only for the incredible imagery that it provides, but also for the perspective it offers from those that have worked on these missions and those that have seen the Earth like we see the moon. They articulate it so well it goes along perfectly with the topic of perception in TOK
Javier E

A Great Debate - NYTimes.com - 0 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...a-great-debate

debate political discourse reason argumentation US

shared by Javier E on 21 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • our political “debates” seldom deserve the name. For the most part representatives of the rival parties exchange one-liners: “The rich can afford to pay more” is met by “Tax increases kill jobs.” Slightly more sophisticated discussions may cite historical precedents: “There were higher tax rates during the post-war boom” versus “Reagan’s tax cuts increased revenues.”
  • Such volleys still don’t even amount to arguments: they don’t put forward generally accepted premises that support a conclusion.
  • Despite the name, candidates’ pre-election debates are exercises in looking authoritative, imposing their talking points on the questions, avoiding gaffes, and embarrassing their opponents with “zingers”
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • There is a high level of political discussion in the editorials and op-eds of national newspapers and magazines as well as on a number of blogs, with positions often carefully formulated and supported with argument and evidence. But even here we seldom see a direct and sustained confrontation of rival positions through the dialectic of assertion, critique, response and counter-critique.
  • As a result, partisans typically remain safe in their ideological worlds, convincing themselves that they hold to obvious truths, while their opponents must be either knaves or fools — with no need to think through the strengths of their rivals’ positions or the weaknesses of their own.
  • In the second session, the Republican asks the Democrat a series of questions (no more than one minute per question and three minutes per response) on the debate topic. In the third session, the Democrat questions the Republican. In the fourth session, each side has 15 minutes to present a final argument.
  • A first condition is that the debates be focused on specific points of major disagreement.
  • Is there any way to make genuine debates — sustained back-and-forth exchanges, meeting high intellectual standards but still widely accessible — part of our political culture?
  • Here’s one suggestion for an effective exchange. The debate would consist of a series of four half-hour televised sessions, carried out on successive days. In the first session, the Republican, say, presents a pre-written case for a particular position
  • Another issue is the medium of the debate. Written discussions, in print or online could be easily arranged, but personal encounters are more vivid and will better engage public attention. They should not, however, be merely extemporaneous events, where too much will depend on quick-thinking and an engaging manner. We want remarks to be carefully prepared and open to considered responses
  • they will set much higher standards of discussion, requiring fuller explanations of positions and even modifications to make them more defensible. It’s unlikely that either side would ever simply give up its view, but, politically, they would have to react to a strong public consensus if they had not made a respectable case. Further, the quasi-official status of the participants, as representatives chosen by their parties, would make the parties’ politicians answerable to points the representatives have made.
  • The only major obstacle to implementing this proposal would be getting the parties to participate. Here, I suggest, shame would be a prime motivator.
  • Facts and reasoning will never settle political issues. All of us have fundamental commitments that are impervious to argument
  • But rationality almost always has some role in our decisions, and more rationality in our political discussion will at a minimum help many to better understand what is at stake in our disputes and why their opponents think as they do.
  • So why not give reason a chance?
Javier E

Little Statesmen and Philosophers - NYTimes.com - 0 views

krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/...tle-statesmen-and-philosophers

consistency careerism career political discourse bias

shared by Javier E on 24 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
  • a large part of the reason we’re locked into such a mess is careerism. And yes, that’s quite vile, if you think about it: politicians and pundits alike letting the world burn — probably unconsciously, but still — because their personal position would be hurt if they admitted to past mistakes.
sophie mester

David Lynch Is Back … as a Guru of Transcendental Meditation - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...transcendental-meditation.html

shared by sophie mester on 25 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • As the car hummed along and we relived his spiritual journey, I asked Lynch what he really believed. Did he see Transcendental Meditation as simply a technique for relaxation, perfect for young Hollywood actresses, or rather as an all-encompassing way of life, as Maharishi had encouraged — one with peace palaces and an army of meditators fomenting world peace? Lynch paused, and then spoke for more than five minutes, explaining that T.M. was the answer for all seeking true inner happiness. He ended with this thought: “Things like traumatic stress and anxiety and tension and sorrow and depression and hate and bitter, selfish anger and fear start to lift away. And that’s a huge sense of freedom when that heavy weight of negativity begins to lift. So it’s like gold flowing in from within and garbage going out. The things in life that used to almost kill you, stress you, depress you, make you sad, make you afraid — they have less and less power. It’s like you’re building up a flak jacket of protection. You’re starting to glow with this from within.”
    • sophie mester
      sophie mester on 25 Feb 13
       
      belief that TM allows a person to consciously influence their emotions, and the power those emotions have over their lives.
  • I still meditate. For 20 minutes or more, twice a day, I’m able to step back from the news scroll of thoughts and be truly quiet. I use T.M. to deal with anxiety and fatigue and to stave off occasional despair. But that’s because, in my head, I’ve managed to excise the weird flotsam of spirituality that engulfed T.M. for the first part of my life. Now, for me, it is something very simple, like doing yoga or avoiding dairy. Objectively speaking, meditation has been shown to decrease the incidence of heart attacks and strokes and increase longevity. The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense commissioned studies to determine whether T.M. can help veterans alleviate post-traumatic stress disorder. Thanks to the David Lynch foundation, low-performing public schools have instituted “Quiet Time,” an elective 10 minutes, twice a day, during which students meditate, with some encouraging results.
    • sophie mester
      sophie mester on 25 Feb 13
       
      Objective support for the power of TM - decrease incidence of heart attacks/strokes, increase longevity, help those suffering from PTSD.
  • The office of the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace in New York is filled with young adults, many of whom grew up practicing Transcendental Meditation. Since Lynch started spreading the good news about T.M., the number of people learning the technique has increased tenfold. Close to Lynch’s heart are those suffering from PTSD, it seems, but it is in his own industry that he has made a more visible impact. Roth, who runs the foundation, spends much of his time flying around the world as well as initiating a long list of public figures: Gwyneth Paltrow, Ellen DeGeneres, Russell Simmons, Katy Perry, Susan Sarandon, Candy Crowley, Soledad O’Brien, George Stephanopoulos and Paul McCartney’s grandchildren.
    • sophie mester
      sophie mester on 25 Feb 13
       
      large following of TM suggests its potential to have a positive mental impact.
Javier E

Vikings' Struggles Come to Life in History Channel's Series - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...n-history-channels-series.html

history vikings bias interpretation commercial

shared by Javier E on 25 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Propelled by the tale of the legendary Norse adventurer Ragnar Lothbrok, his family and his band of followers, the lushly produced, effects-enhanced series dazzles with evocative scenery and dynamic displays of superherolike derring-do and physical stamina.
  • Mr. Hirst immersed himself in what had been written about Viking culture — basically documentation by outside observers since theirs was an illiterate society. He found the material limited and biased.
  • “They’re always the guys who break in through the door, slash up your house and rape and pillage for no good reason, except that they enjoy the violence,” he said. “I wanted to tell the story from the Vikings’ point of view, because their history was written by Christian monks, basically, whose job it was to exaggerate their violence.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Despite History’s mantle of preserving and purveying an accurate picture of the past, hewing to the letter of historical accuracy wasn’t possible in the case of a dramatic series based on fragmented documentation, hence a large degree of dramatic license was employed.
  • “I especially had to take liberties with ‘Vikings’ because no one knows for sure what happened in the Dark Ages,” Mr. Hirst said. “Very little was written then.” The bottom line, he explained, was: “We want people to watch it. A historical account of the Vikings would reach hundreds, occasionally thousands, of people. Here we’ve got to reach millions.”
  • he was hard put to replicate authentic fabrics and woods. One of the biggest challenges he faced, he added, was improvising lighting sources for Viking homes and halls, which had no windows, making engaging photography of a strictly realistic interior setting impossible.
« First ‹ Previous 681 - 700 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page