Harry Brighouse thinks this is the best first paragraph of an academic book:
Affluence breeds impatience and impatience undermines well-being. This is the core of my argument. For detail and evidence, go directly to the chapters; for implications, to the conclusion, which also has chapter summaries.
I’d be more amused by the worst first paragraph in an academic book, a contest with a somewhat steeper competitive curve.
The latest evidence that you no longer live in a free country. Remember: citizens as well as non-citizens can now be indefinitely detained without access to a federal court. For your freedom, you have to rely not on the Constitution, but on the beneficence of one man: Dick Cheney. (Yes, I know, strictly speaking that the president is commander-in-chief, but we have learned who really runs the "dark side" of the Bush anti-terror apparatus.) And you can be tortured if he decides it’s in the interests of military necessity.
A Republican macher has been charged with financing Islamist terrorism.
More indispensable reporting from Murray Waas on the Libby trial. Money quote:
In the fall of 2003, as a federal criminal probe was just getting underway to determine who leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame to the media, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the then-chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, sought out Cheney to explain to his boss his side of the story.
The explanation that Libby offered Cheney that day was virtually identical to one that Libby later told the FBI and testified to before a federal grand jury: Libby said he had only passed along to reporters unsubstantiated gossip about Plame that he had heard from NBC bureau chief Tim Russert.
The grand jury concluded that the account was a cover story to conceal the role of Libby and other White House officials in leaking information about Plame to the press, and indicted him on five felony counts of making false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice.
At the time that Libby offered his explanation to Cheney, the vice president already had reason to know that Libby’s account to him was untrue, according to sources familiar with still-secret grand jury testimony and evidence in the CIA leak probe, as well as testimony made public during Libby’s trial over the past three weeks in federal court.
Yet, according to Libby’s own grand jury testimony, which was made public during his trial in federal court, Cheney did nothing to discourage Libby from telling that story to the FBI and the federal grand jury. Moreover, Cheney encouraged then-White House press secretary Scott McClellan to publicly defend Libby, according to other testimony and evidence made public during Libby’s trial.
Did Libby invent a story to protect Cheney from liability? Was Cheney a de facto accessory to perjury? I’m convinced Fitzgerald smells something big here. So do I.
Here's Sam Harris's latest letter to me. It begins:
Hmm…I'm afraid you chased a few red herrings in your last essay. I did not, for instance, beckon you to a world of my delusions, perfectly free of contingency. Nor did I claim that science is the gateway to such a world. I merely asked you to imagine what it would be like if our discourse about ethics and spirituality were as uncontaminated by cultural prejudice as the discourse of science already is. You appear to have misread me. Consequently, much of your last essay targeted terrain that I have never thought to occupy. I did hear some bomb-blasts in the distance. They were magnificent.
You are, of course, right to point out that science is beholden to the limits of human cognition (though it has begun to escape some of these limits with the aid of computers). Our cognitive horizons are clearly bounded by our neurophysiology, and our neurophysiology is a consequence of our evolution on this earth-which, as you know, is teeming with slithering contingencies as far as the eye can see. The point that I was trying to make is that science is not nearly as beleaguered by contingency as religion is. And this is what is so right with science and so wrong with religion. Needless to say, the discourse of science already exists, and it already functions by norms that are quite alien to religion. If applied in religion, these norms would leave very few traditional doctrines still standing. But contrary to your fears on the matter, this would not make religious music, art, or architecture any less beautiful.
This brings me to a related topic of confusion: there is nothing "purely rational" about the world I am advocating. Your comments seem to invoke a stark opposition between reason and emotion that I do not believe exists (and which now seems quite implausible at the level of the brain). The feeling we call "doubt" can be considered an emotion, and this is this feeling that prompts me to object to much of what you have written over the course of our debate. Could I find your reasoning doubtful without the feeling doubt? I don't know. But it has long been clear that people with neurological injuries that impede certain aspects of emotional processing fail at a variety of reasoning tasks. More to the point, perhaps, I do not think there is anything unreasonable about love, or about valuing love, or indeed, about valuing it above most (perhaps even all) things. While love is not reducible to reason, it is not in conflict with it either. So I think it is time we retire facile oppositions between cold rationality and juicy aesthetics, between truth and beauty, between reason and emotion, etc.
Regarding the fate of our children …
It continues here.
(Photo: Rebecca Jones hugs her dad Staff Sgt. Robert Jones during a homecoming ceremony for members of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force February 15, 2007 at Camp Pendleton, California. By Sandy Huffaker/Getty.)
Beyond priceless 1972 Nixon re-election ad and jingle. Sing along!
Readers are hereby invited to find other YouTubes of excruciating or wonderful political advertizing from presidential campaigns in the past. As we head into another election season, it’s worth innoculating ourselves with a bit of ad-irony from history. Please write "Campaign Ad Schlock" in the contents line of your emails.
Obama wants to run for president and give up smoking at the same time? Give yourself a break, dude. Give yourself a break.
The post-2006 bitterness deepens. And no one has made bitterness more of a vocation than Richard Viguerie. Road-testing Rudy among the Christianists continues here. Has any pre-primary season on both sides been this much fun? Or this fluid? I guess I’m revealing my politically dorkish leanings, but I’m riveted by the almost endless possibilities in a wide-open race with so many variables at play.
Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler performs on stage at an exclusive gig to promote ‘Hyde Park Calling’ at The Hard Rock Cafe on February 19, 2007 in London, England. The event, presented by Hard Rock, is set to take place on June 23 and 24 this year and the band will headline on the second of the two days at their first UK concert date in 8 years.
(Photo by Claire Greenway/Getty)
The Dish 