Australian results. Jericho rejoices as does Chrenkoff. See O’Sullivan’s warm regard for Australia. Evidently an insufficient number of voters were convinced that the Bali bombing was Howard’s fault. Of course, Bin Laden had always had other motives, including his complaints about Timor. (And then there was the awkward fact that Bali was bombed before the “unilateral” – with Australia – invasion of Iraq.) (Updated.)
Ginny
Style and Technology
Sanford Lakoff’s “Higher Education Needs Guardians of Learning” is nostalgic but acknowledges technology helps us become better writers (as well as freeing us from spending our lives on others’ words). Sure, ink wells and the Palmer method were aesthetically pleasing. (Not that all that penmanship was lovely – ask anyone who has struggled through manuscripts by Thoreau or Faulkner.) The advances are greater than he implies, since the future he describes in his penultimate sentence is here: “Then will come virtual courses, with no need for personal attendance in classrooms.” Nor are the readers of this blog likely to embrace his conclusion: “No wonder Socrates thought that, in a utopia, we would need guardians to set the rules and control change.” Our passion is for the beautifully turned phrase and the precise wording that captures an idea; this is the essence – we respect that whether it is on papyrus or paper or typed or word processed or blogged. We learn from and admire the understanding of the human condition whether it is in Sophocles or Lileks. The traditional genres may win out – but I don’t think we know that yet. Right now, blogs are defining it as we go. We know what we do now is transitory; but, in that future, will it all be? It won’t be guardians but experience and time that will mold this medium–as well as the art of teaching.
R&D and Drug Costs
Some of the issues relating to drug research and costs (and the politics of these issues) discussed a few weeks ago on Chicagoboyz are analyzed in a new TCS article by Sally Pipes and Benjamin Zycher.
Do We Never Learn
Update: (One of those a-ha moments of recognizing the mote in other’s eyes and not my own). Here are the links I should have begun with: Allawi’s speech. And here. And here. To download video and audio go to C-SPAN .
He concludes it with
As generous as you have been, we will stand with you, too. As stalwart as you have been, we will stand with you, too. Neither tyranny nor terrorism has a place in our region or our world. And that is why we Iraqis will stand by you, America, in a war larger than either of our nations, the global battle to live in freedom. God bless you and thank you.
We should have learned one lesson from Vietnam – the battle is about Iraq, not us. So Mark Steyn describes the press conference with Allawi and Bush:
They’re six feet from Iraq’s head of government and they’ve got not a question for him. They’ve got no interest in Iraq except insofar as they can use the issue to depress sufficient numbers of swing voters in Florida and Ohio.
If the press (and Kerry) must obsess, why don’t they obsess about what is really going on in Iraq, why do bloggers have to point out where the deaths are and ask more whys – as Shannon does? The stories in this newspaper from Iraq could have provided a score of questions that we would like (in a real sense need) to see answered. How are things in Basra? What do we need to know about the destruction of the oil pipe lines? How important is the new electricity to the economy? Why, how and by whom were the eighteen professors assassinated? What is the effect of the attacks on police stations? How long before the Italians can get the marshes back to their original state? It could be that the American press would dismiss these as slanted, but, these are hardly pr projects – they are the heart of whether this whole “occupation” is going to work or not.
Whose War Is This?
Having misspent my day staring at blogs, I found myself without an appropriate focus for tomorrow’s comp class. Reaching back into the hard drive for short exercises from our old text, I found an old one but realized I’d ignored its content.
These are the sentences to be revised for brevity:
1. Some Vietnam veterans coming back to the United States after tours of duty in Vietnam had problems readjusting again to life in America.
2. Afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder, a psychological disorder that sometimes arises after a trauma, some of the veterans had psychological problems that caused them to have trouble holding jobs and maintaining relationships.
3. Some who used to use drugs in Vietnam could not break their drug habits after they returned back to the United States.
4. The few veterans who committed crimes and violent acts gained so much notoriety and fame that many Americans thought all veterans were crazy, insane maniacs.
5. As a result of such stereotyping of Vietnam-era veterans, veterans are included into the same anti-discrimination laws that protect other victims of discrimination.