Not Prejudiced At All

This news story brings us word of a new robot developed by Japanese researchers. The latest in interactive robotics, the only thing it can do is create expressions when it recognizes various keywords.

The author of the Reuters article seems to take great delight in pointing out that the robot is programmed to react with fear and disgust when it hears the words “President”, “Bush”, “Iraq” or “war”. Or at least it seems that they are delighted to me. After all, the only word mentioned that brings a positive reaction is “sushi”.

Since the robot is nothing more than a disembodied head, I can’t help but wonder if the researchers programmed it to react in the most negative way to the words “al Qaeda”, “captive” or “militant”. Something tells me that the robot would just sit there and give you a blank stare if you said anything like that in it’s hearing.

After all, the researchers wouldn’t be praised as being “brave” or “daring” if they criticized people who actually sawed innocent people’s heads off.

The ‘Return of the Latin American Idiot’

Alvaro Vargas Llosa writes at the website of The Independent Institute:

Ten years ago, Colombian writer Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, Cuban writer Carlos Alberto Montaner, and I wrote Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot, a book criticizing opinion and political leaders who clung to ill-conceived political myths despite evidence to the contrary. The “Idiot” species, we suggested, bore responsibility for Latin America’s underdevelopment. Its beliefs—revolution, economic nationalism, hatred of the United States, faith in the government as an agent of social justice, a passion for strongman rule over the rule of law—derived, in our opinion, from an inferiority complex. In the late 1990s, it seemed as if the Idiot were finally retreating. But the retreat was short lived. Today, the species is back in force in the form of populist heads of state who are reenacting the failed policies of the past, opinion leaders from around the world who are lending new credence to them, and supporters who are giving new life to ideas that seemed extinct.

The Idiot’s worldview, in turn, finds an echo among distinguished intellectuals in Europe and the United States. These pontificators assuage their troubled consciences by espousing exotic causes in developing nations. Their opinions attract fans among First-World youngsters for whom globalization phobia provides the perfect opportunity to find spiritual satisfaction in the populist jeremiad of the Latin American Idiot against the wicked West.

Read the whole thing, the article is well worth the time. Llosa describes the various species of predatory socialists who rule some key countries in South America and goes on to argue that there currently is a major conflict between pro-Western forces and those who would like to keep it on its present course. The negative influence of European and American intellectuals could well make it impossible to overcome the ‘Latin American Idiot’ and so finally get over economic stagnation and the subsequent, widespread lack of trust in democratic institutions.

The article also is very timely, the (mostly) European variety of economic and ideological idiot is currently preparing to protest the upcoming G8 Summit.

WTC 7 Was Imploded, and Microevolution Never Leads to Macroevolution

Via the usual sourceRosie O’Donnell 9/11 Conspiracy Comments: Popular Mechanics Responds.

I don’t mean to claim originality here; there will always be people who can’t read the signs of the times. The interesting thing is to see how similar their illogic is across supposedly insurmountable political boundaries. Consider WTC conspiracy theorists and antievolutionists.

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Egalitarian Empires

For centuries, scholars have debated the causes of the rise and fall of empires.

The most widely held model holds that empires arise due to the unusually aggressive nature of their parent-societies which sweep over their more pacific neighbors. Such empires support themselves by large-scale pillaging which drives them ever to new wars. When they overextend themselves or run out of pillage to fuel their war engines, the empires collapse.

People evoke this model readily when seeking to criticize the war du jour of a Western nation. They always claim the nation acquired its wealth from a modern form of pillage, that it needs pillage to prosper but that the current conflict represents the fatal overextension that will bring its doom.

Yet does this model reflect the true causes that drive the life-cycle of empires, even on an abstract and simplified level?

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