10 days in Japan, visitors afterwards, fighting off a cold/something, and the internet continues unabated. Insensitive bastards.
Freedom of Speech means nothing unless it includes speech you don't agree with... Is "Redskins" Really an Offensive Name for a Football Team? - Reason.com:
"...the right not to be offended is not a serious right. The desire to never feel offence is just sensitivity disguised as a right, emotional weakness dolled up as a “freedom from offence,” and it is used as a battering ram against real liberties that actually matter—particularly the liberties of speech and association...
Some context might be useful here: British football fans have of late been subjected to extraordinary levels of speech-policing. At some stadiums, stewards wear head cameras to capture offensive chatter among fans. Liverpool football club has drawn up an actual list of words you are not allowed to say in its stadium, including everything from “nigger” and “queer” to everyday phrases like “man up” (sexist, apparently.) In Scotland, a new law—the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act—forbids fans from singing sectarian and political songs..."
"Interestingly, Cheney describes his fears as relating to the actions of potential "terrorists." This is because, as we all know, if you kill a US official, it's terrorism, while when a US official does the killing, it's merely an "operation pursuant to a lethal authority" or a "kinetic action" or a "targeted killing." Or sometimes, when we make an oopsy, it's "collateral damage." Even bombing Syria wouldn't be a war -- as long as we're the ones doing the bombing."
Is there anything Joseph Gordon Levitt isn't awesome at? Jesus. I hate him a little bit. Lip Sync Battle with Joseph Gordon Levitt, Stephen Merchant and Jimmy Fallon - YouTube
"Colonel Gentile's object is equally clear: "to drive a stake through the heart of the notion that counterinsurgency has worked in the past and will therefore work in the future." Specifically, he challenges the widely accepted idea that America's counterinsurgency wars-in Vietnam, Iraq, and now Afghanistan-"were made better simply by enlightened generals and improved tactics."
...This myth of the better war waged by better men has been used to rally the American people to support foreign interventions and re-interventions into situations that seemed lost. An exaggerated faith in counterinsurgency (COIN) will encourage similar misadventures in the future, he warns...
When the United States or any other foreign power intervenes on behalf of that government, it can only help to the extent that that foreign partner is in a position to eventually command respect-and recover its authority-from a substantial portion of the disgruntled population. Washington could not force the South Vietnamese government to implement crucial reforms in order to win over the Vietnamese people. Contrary to the claims of the "better war" school, the communists had a deep core of support, not least because of the pervasive corruption within all levels of the South Vietnamese government. The United States' nation-building failures, in short, cannot be reduced to military personnel employing the wrong tactics or weak-kneed American politicians unwilling to pursue victory at all costs. They reflect the deep political dysfunction in places that are nation-states in name only. Not all countries will be as deeply divided as Iraq; not all will be as poor as Afghanistan. But most nation-building missions fail, and the few successes take extraordinary expenditures of time, blood, and money."
The addiction model of human behavior remains seriously flawed - Research Shows That Cocaine and Heroin Are Less Addictive Than Oreos - Hit & Run : Reason.com:
"...first note that the study's findings could just as truthfully be summarized this way: "Drugs Are No More Addictive Than Oreos." The specific drugs included in the study were cocaine and morphine, which is what heroin becomes immediately after injection. So the headline also could have been: "Research Shows That Heroin and Cocaine Are No More Addictive Than Oreos." Putting it that way would have raised some interesting questions about the purportedly irresistible power of these drugs, which supposedly justifies using force to stop people from consuming them. But the researchers are not interested in casting doubt on the empirical basis for the War on Drugs..."
"DS: My mom got sober when I was nine or ten. She was an immediate zealot. She got fired from bartending jobs because somebody would ask for a third drink and she'd start talking AA to them. And then she trailed off, as a lot of people do. She'd still preach it, but she'd just not go to meetings. And then she started drinking at some point later in life. Four years before she killed herself.
SR: I thought the ten-minute bit about your mom on Beer Hall Putsch [Stanhope's latest album] was beyond compare.
DS: It's been five years in the making, five years since she died.
SR: She was sober and then started drinking again?
DS: I found out through my mother's neighbor. My mom would break into English accents when I'd call after six or seven at night. "Hellooo?" "Oh, Mom, you found your old sense of humor. Where was it?" Oh, in one of those cough-medicine bottles."
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