Month: July 2009

by Chris Bodenner

Tom Friedman writes:

In grand strategic terms, I still don’t know if this Afghan war makes sense anymore. I was dubious before I arrived, and I still am. But when you see two little Afghan girls crouched on the front steps of their new school, clutching tightly with both arms the notebooks handed to them by a U.S. admiral — as if they were their first dolls — it’s hard to say: “Let’s just walk away.” Not yet.

Ackerman pwns:

I have no desire to "just walk away" from Afghanistan, but if I did, I couldn't possibly be persuaded by the idea that a bloody and complex war is redeemed by the sight of a tiny schoolgirl receiving a notebook from an admiral. […] To believe otherwise is to substitute reasoning for emotion, which is deeply irresponsible in matters of life and death.

It also bears mentioning that Friedman got his color for this column by accompanying the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on a bit of a PR tour. The day that I write a column abdicating my critical thinking skills because I accompanied a powerful man on a junket is the day I want to have my writing privileges taken away.

by Chris Bodenner

Steve Chapman spots a new form of anxiety within the Republican base:

Am I the only one to notice that President Obama's angrier critics have a curious habit of associating him with an extremely unpleasant form of bodily invasion?

Apparently you're never too young to learn about forced sodomy.

by Patrick Appel

Tyler Cowen wrestles with wealth, happiness, and taxes.

by Conor Friedersdorf

The moon is not enough! That's the thrust of Tom Wolfe's argument in The New York Times, where he laments America's longtime failure to do anything impressive in space. He lays blame for this post-Apollo problem on a lack of big thinkers at NASA.

That's a sound way to think about the space program. Robert Heinlein put it this way: "The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in."

But look. Earth is going to be hit by another extinction level asteroid long before the sun is going to burn up. An obligation to preserve the only meaningful life that we know suggests that we spend money on scanning the sky for gargantuan rocks hurtling toward us, safeguarding humanity against pandemic diseases and stopping nuclear proliferation. I'd be thrilled to learn that we'll survive half as long as it takes the sun to burn up!

by Patrick Appel

Nate Silver poses a challenge to climate change denying bloggers.

by Patrick Appel

Clive Crook isn't optimistic about health care reform controlling costs:

Marc explains their logic:

The basic problem with the cost argument is that it elides over an important point, one that the White House wants to make publicly but cannot: in order to reduce costs in the short term, reform will cost something extra in the near-term. A deeper point they cannot make: it may take MORE money to build a better system. Only when that system produces better outcomes — this would be years off — can true cost-savings be realized.

The White House allows for a ten-year window for health care to become deficit neutral. The CBO's fairly static (and bottom-line tough) scoring of health care legislation, a legacy of Orszag's tenure over there, is certainly complicating the argument from cost.  But it's the only major argument that plays well with the voters (and members of Congress) the White House believes are crucial to getting something done.

by Chris Bodenner

Juan Cole crafts an excellent analysis of Rafsanjani's speech:

He points out that the parliament, president and members of municipal councils are directly elected. But the Supreme Leader is indirectly elected, since he is chosen by the Assembly of Experts. But they in turn are directly elected by the people (i.e. the Experts are a sort of electoral college in American terms). Opinion polling shows that Iranians mostly want the Supreme Leader to be directly elected. But Rafsanjani's point is that even the Supreme Leader, whom some see as a theocratic dictator, derives his position from the operation of popular sovereignty.

Brian Ulrich adds:

It places him squarely in the reformist camp in a way he simply wasn't before, endorsing not only their candidate as an opponent of the principlists, but their core tenets, as well. Coming from a pillar of the establishment in such a high-profile setting, it also contributes to a weakening of the aura surrounding the office of the Supreme Leader, and sends a strong signal that the Green Wave is not over, even if it's path to victory is not yet apparent.

by Chris Bodenner

Slate‘s Daniel Engber delves into the mysterious world of animal masturbation:

Still, neither the fresh-sperm hypothesis nor its discredited cousin, the kamikaze-sperm hypothesis, can account for more than a small subset of animal masturbation. Reloading might explain the behavior of bucks, bulls, and male primates, all of which tend to ejaculate at the end of an autoerotic episode. But many other animals never reach that point. Horses rarely climax, despite masturbating dozens of times per day—so what motivates the dalliance of a stallion or, for that matter, a mare? Can evolution account for female masturbation in the animal kingdom? We don’t really know.

And yes, there’s a video slideshow. (I’m obliged to point out, per my contract, that a bull terrier makes an appearance.)

by Chris Bodenner

The Iran blog "Keeping The Change" reports:

[P]aint balls not only may be being used to disperse the crowds, but also that a more nefarious strategy may lie behind the tactic. According to this person, the security forces use these paint balls to single out protestors, who they believe should be arrested. Sharp shooters are positioned in nearby locations (where they cannot be seen by the demonstrators) and launch paint balls at selected targets, leaving colored paint on these individuals' clothes. The plainclothes policemen who regularly mix in with the crowds of protestors then identify these targeted demonstrators by the paint on their clothing, arresting them on the spot.

The blog also claims – though unverified – that some of the ammunition is coming from Pev's Paintball, a chain of superstores based in the US.

by Chris Bodenner

Eli Lake reports:

One of the world's largest engineering firms, Siemens, could lose hundreds of millions of dollars in sales to the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) because it sold Iran equipment used to spy on dissidents. […T]he German company participated in a joint venture with Nokia in 2008 to sell Iran's telecommunications company a monitoring center that, according to the joint venture's own promotional literature, can intercept and catalog e-mails, telephone calls and Internet data.

Meanwhile, The Guardian reported last week that demand for Nokia handsets in Tehran fell by as much as half following calls for boycotting the company. Also, according to Tehran Bureau, advertising revenue for Iranian state TV has taken a big hit as well.