In The New McCarthyism George Monbiot says: The charge of “anti-Americanism” is itself profoundly anti-American. If the United States does not stand for freedom of thought and speech, for diversity and dissent, then we have been deceived as to the nature of the national project. Were the founding fathers to congregate today to discuss the principles enshrined in their declaration of independence, they would be denounced as “anti-American” and investigated as potential terrorists.
HowGoodInBed.com: is a web front end to a neural network. Every piece of data you add trains the network a little bit more. So what does it do? It tries to correlate externally observable factors (such as age, height, build, hair, skin colouring, social behaviour, chattiness, happiness, physical activity level and intelligence) with sexual attributes (such as viviaciousness, willingness, location, adventurousness and skill). You can enter the network either way – by describing someone you know to get an estimate of their bedroom rating, or vice versa – by describing what you want it will tell you the sort of person to look for.
“Men Are Back” says Peggy Noonan. If she is right might this be the hidden benefit in all that is happening right now? Many writers have attributed a lot of the current ills in society to a world in which men, especially young under-educated men, have low self-esteem constantly reinforced by the messages they receive. So I join with Ms Noonan in extolling the virtues of the manly men who are putting New York back together.
The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) describe themselves as “a political/social organization of Afghan women struggling for peace, freedom, democracy and women’s rights in fundamentalism-blighted Afghanistan.”. Certainly they have some shocking photos of the reality of life in the land ruled by the Taliban.
Oliver James writes in the Guardian to argue the case for adults to be playful. He reports on a study by the Gestalt Institute in Italy that studied flirtation and sex among 1,000 employees, and which concludes that office flirtation is good for relieving workplace anxiety and stress and improves relationships with your partner. Apparently the benefits to productivity and relationships are gained in proportion to the way in which flirting behaviour mimics the play of children in being goal-less fun.
George Monbiot is nudging our consciences again. In his article “Genocide or Peace” he notes “the Afghan winter, like the Russian one, is absolute. Aid workers with long experience of Afghanistan report that after the first week of November, there is nothing you can do” and… One person requires 18kg of food per month to survive. If the UN’s projections are correct, and some 1.5 million manage to leave the country, around 6.
Today I keep finding links that take me to this satirical site. Star piece for today (and surprisingly moving too) is “God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule”. Read it.
Tom Cunliffe at Time for tea pointed me to Annie Mole’s site called London Underground. No, not a trainspotter’s site, but a complete “microculture” – stuff that those of us who use the Tube every day take completely for granted. Or maybe it’s irony?
Doc Searls refers to a list of former WTC tenants, and their corporate websites that in some cases seem untouched by events of the 11th, frozen where they were left in cyberspace. Hmmm.
…is the title of a thought provoking article by George Monbiot (who characterises himself as an “objector”) For him objecting to war is not about appeasing terrorists, nor does he view the events of 11th September as anything other than “a crime against humanity”, but he does argue strongly that if we forgo justice then the terrorists have already won. His approach to resolving this situation, if evidence can be assembled that points to Bin Laden is to “cut out the world war and go straight to Nuremburg”.