The title of the essay Which one? America could do better than Barack Obama; sadly, Mitt Romney does not fit the bill (Economist) sums up its contents, to some degree. The conclusion to which they came is justified given some of their arguments. But some of their other arguments are just not supported by any tangible evidence. That is, the Economist shows in a short and eminently readable essay why you can’t really trust them for cogent analysis. Not only does their ideology gets in the way, but they... [More]

The interview Obama and the Road Ahead by Douglas Brinkley (Rolling Stone) is generally softball and sycophantic. It wouldn’t be worth of noting except that it included a supposed broadside by Barack Obama against Ayn Rand. As usual, those with their panties in a bunch cited it completely out of context. This is a shame, because the broader point is more interesting. It’s not like Obama just slammed Ayn Rand for the hell of it; he actual gave a relatively good justification for why it’s a bad idea to put pure objectivists in... [More]

Republican Rape Definition ChartAlong the left-hand side is a handy chart published with the article The Republican Rape Advisory Chart (AlterNet). It features some of the most stupefying and misogynistic things that politicians have said about rape in the last year or so. We will return to it soon, but let it provide contrast to the French social policies detailed in the article French teens to get the Pill for free (France 24).

The main point is as follows:

“French teenagers aged 15 to 18 will have their contraceptive pills reimbursed 100... [More]”

Wild West

The facts of the case, as described in the article Unarmed and Gunned Down by Homeowner in His ‘Castle’ by Jack Healy (NY Times) are distilled below:

“Mr. Fredenberg […] strode up the driveway […] to confront Brice Harper, a 24-year-old romantically involved with Mr. Fredenberg’s young wife. […] he walked through Mr. Harper’s open garage door […] Mr. Harper aimed a gun at the unarmed Mr. Fredenberg, fired and struck him three times. Mr. Fredenberg crumpled to the garage floor, a few feet from... [More]”

A recent email exchanged that I partially documented in Benghazi: a storm in a teacup continued and the suggestion that I was providing information that “did not make sense” (read as “did not fit into preconceived notions”) and was “not very patriotic.” Again, I tried to respond with more background, though with waning hope.

Email Exchange

Not very patriotic? Me? Good. Patriotism is for those unwilling to think. I think I made my case very strongly that your laser-like focus on Benghazi is... [More]

The following are a series of responses I wrote to a friend in response to accusations that the liberal media was deliberately ignoring the story of what had happened in Benghazi. The implication was that the Obama administration had committed a severe transgression in its handling of the whole affair and was trying to cover it up.

Response #1

I did no special research in order to compose my initial reply, instead relying simply on that which I had picked up in various places.

Benghazi is a... [More]

Hat tip to ”English is a little bit like a child” by Mark Liberman (Language Log) for the reference.

Ze Frank sums up the third debate in five minutes. A taste:

“And of course our military’s in trouble. What’s scarier? A gun with a sword on it? Or a horse with a gun with a sword on it? You know why they phased it out right? Because the guys with the gun with the sword on it, wanted a gun on the end of the sword. And then those guys wanted a sword on the end of the gun. Turtles all the way down … and that’s how you get a budget deficit.”

The Final Debate Finally by Ze Frank (A Show)

2012 Presidential Candidates

The 2012 Presidential Candidate Match (I Side With) is quite nicely done and should be very helpful for most. It takes 5-10 minutes at the most. I recommend choosing “other stance” on almost every question instead of just “yes” or “no” because those choices are much more refined and likely to accurately reflect your opinion. Don’t forget to adjust the more/less important bar on the left to add weight to your more important issues—or to remove weight from those that you either don’t know or care about.
... [More]

The first Obama/Romney debate happened what must seem like an eternity ago in this social-media–mad world, but the pace here at earthli News is a bit slower and more contemplative. Well, slower anyway. This article encompasses reactions and articles related to both debates.

On Romney’s positions

I read some articles on the first debate. The most staid and steady of these was the article The US presidential debates’ illusion of political choice by Glenn Greenwald (Guardian), which pointed out all of the issues that would not... [More]

I only watched a brief recap (shown below) but I feel like I got the gist of this debate.

VP Debateness by ZeFrank (A Show)

So the buzz is that Biden was a big, fat meanie and not worthy of his office and poor, little, beleaguered, doe-eyed Paul Ryan could barely fluster out his ideas in the face of that mighty onslaught. That’s what I heard from others who neither watched the debate nor have access to anything other than the mainstream American media.

For example, the Washington Post was typically rabidly right-wing in the... [More]

David Gregory—who is pretty much the epitome of a sellout newsman (not a journalist, mind you)—interviewed Stephen Colbert. He was out of character, for once, and was quite eloquent in answering Gregory’s question as to what Colbert thinks of the two candidates:

I wrote recently about my pet theory that Mitt Romney is a deliberate Republican decoy—a red herring—to encourage an otherwise lackluster public to vote for Obama, who is himself a nearly perfect Republican candidate. See Are we not paranoid enough? if you’re interested in hearing more about that argument.

The long-ish article This Presidential Race Should Never Have Been This Close by Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone) also discusses the seemingly improbably inept Romney and wonders how broken the U.S. political system has to... [More]

In recent weeks, the Mitt Romney campaign has had a string of “how could he have said that?” moments where you really have to question his—and his team’s—political savvy. Some comments are so over-the-top nefarious that I’ve started to wonder whether he’s not doing it on purpose, Whether the Republicans’ hatred of Obama is all a sham. Whether their relentless push behind the clearly deeply flawed and vacuous Romney isn’t just a way of goading otherwise unmotivated voters to get behind the... [More]

Olivia Wilde was on the Daily Show recently (full episode) to promote a film. Jon Stewart was not only bedazzled by her, but also by her having had Christopher Hitchens as a babysitter when she was much younger. They lauded good ol’ Hitch for a while ‘cause he was such a stand-up guy, especially for someone who was a raging alcoholic (their words). When Jon asked her how her family had gotten Hitch as a babysitter, she responded that her family was part of a wonderful group of journalists that... [More]

1. Contraband (2012) — 5/10
2. Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011) — 7/10
3. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) — 7/10
4. The Planet of the Apes (2001) — 5/10
5. The Avengers (2012) — 8/10
6. Young Adult (2011) — 6/10
7. Intouchables (2011) (fr) — 8/10
8. Der Verdingbub (2011) (ch-de) — 8/10
9. The Quest (1996) — 6/10
10. Avatar (2009) — 8/10
11. The Number 23 (2007) — 6/10
12. The Big Bang Theory (TV series, 2007-2012) — 7/10
13. Louie (2010-2012) — 10/10
14. Paranormal Activity 2 (2009) — 3/10
15. The... [More]

That’s my favorite quote from that show, but the whole thing was a tour de force, a satirical analytic onslaught by the Daily Show news team. If you’re a fan of the form—or if you’d like a more honest lens (comedic though it may be, it’s more honesty than you’ll get from Wolf Blitzer) through which to view the presidential campaign (the... [More]

Samantha Bee of the Daily Show recently logged an excellent two-minute segment on abortion, a woman’s right to choose and the Republican convention. The whole segment’s quite good but you can start at 01:15 if you’re in a hurry, where Jon Stewart introduces the “human life amendment” plank of the Republican platform that would essentially outlaw abortion as murder by applying the 14th Amendment to the unborn. Romney doesn’t agree with this…and Republicans are fine with it. Why? Because they... [More]

NB: Don’t worry if you don’t understand this introductory paragraph; feel free to blow right through it and see how you fare with the alternate explanations and analogies below.

The news so far is that the scientists at CERN have announced that they have consistently been able to generate bosons at around 126GeV with a certainty of 5 sigmas. The Standard Model of physics predicts that this energy level is sufficient to generate the long–sought-after Higgs boson, which is the only predicted... [More]

If scooping information from the madly bubbling froth of the U.S. media lies at all within your purview, you will no doubt have heard of the latest rage in American literature, called 50 Shades of Grey. A modicum of research reveals that the epithet literature is a good deal more generous a term than the referenced work earns.

It’s more commonly called “Mommy Porn”[1] which seems to be the designator that U.S. culture is going to use to indicate that reading poorly written soft-core pornography... [More]

The first round of the EM—which stands for Europameisterschaft[1], which means European championship in German—is over. The qualifying teams are mostly predictable, with all of the usual suspects making it through to the quarterfinals—France, England, Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal—as well as the Czech Republic and Greece thrown in. Greece won the whole thing with an excruciating defensive style in 2004 and the Czech Rpeublic is often quite solid, so not really a surprise.

Some of the... [More]

1. The Adjustment Bureau (2009) — 7/10
2. The Town (2010) — 9/10
3. Valkyrie (2008) — 7/10
4. The Wicker Man (2006) — 4/10
5. Couples Retreat (2009) — 2/10
6. The Queen (2006) — 3/10
7. The Hangover Part II (2012) — 5/10
8. Star Wars: Episode V − The Empire Strikes Back (1980) — 9/10
9. The Running Man (1987) — 6/10
10. Equilibrium (2002) — 9/10
11. Dorian Gray (2009) — 6/10
12. Star Trek (2009) — 9/10
13. Inside Man (2006) — 9/10
14. Rocky 2 (1979) — 6/10
15. Shrek the Third (2007) — ... [More]

Here’s an interview of Diane Keaton by Stephen Colbert. It’s hard to describe, but it’s very entertaining[1], in a very nonsensical and silly and non-goal-oriented way. Just pure improv; it’s hard to imagine that they rehearsed it.

Diane Keaton Interview by Stephen Colbert in 30.04.2012 (Colbert Nation)

I recently received a request to post an info-graphic (included below) detailing the results of a recent study published by UC Berkeley, called Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior by Paul K. Piff, Daniel M. Stancatoa, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). The original infographic is hosted at a site called Accounting Degree Online, for some strange reason. At any rate, the findings are kind of interesting.

The URL to the graphic includes the text “Rich people are unethical” but it could more accurately be called “Rich people are unethical (so are... [More]

Google has recently begun more aggressively trying to get people to stop using the Opera browser. There are not many of us (less than 2% of the worldwide market), but Opera isn’t exactly so difficult to support. Google products do support the following browsers:

“Google Flight Search has not been optimized for your browser. For best results, please try Chrome, Firefox 3.5+, Internet Explorer 8+, Safari 4+.”

So, browsers that are around 3 years old—Firefox 3.5 and Internet Explorer 8—are... [More]

It’s not that Greece’s financial situation is complex. It’s that the common explanation for Greece’s troubles—that the Greeks as a people are lazy—is not only incorrect—per capita, the average Greek works more than the corresponding famously sedulous German—but deliberately racist and unhelpful.

Greece is currently running a larger deficit because of state-incurred debts. These debts are due not to exorbitant expenditure on a hopelessly top-heavy and overgenerous social apparatus—as... [More]

The post Filosofia monosillabica by Mark Liberman (Language Log) included the image reproduced to the left.

Taking some artistic license, this translates roughly to:

Who can, will not
Who wills[1], cannot
Who knows, does not
Who does, knows not
And so the world
goes badly

The article Israel: No Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program; Barak: Any decision to Strike Iran “Far off.” by Juan Cole (Informed Comment) published a good summary of the current situation vis á vis Iran’s nuclear program. In an effort to provide a public service announcement for right-wing wackos whose lust for war can never be satiated, it is reproduced below.

“Israeli intelligence agencies have worked up an intelligence assessment that Iran has not yet decided whether to begin a military program to construct a nuclear... [More]”