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Simon Blackburn reviews Harry G. Frankfurt’s ‘OnTruth’ (in Powell’s Books in the The New Republic Online) and in the end finds it ‘Bullshit’
“And when I think of Frankfurt’s resolute silence about the philosophical tradition from, say, Protagoras onward, I confess to scenting a whiff of something like — well, negligence with the truth, an affectation of amateur carelessness adopted to mislead or manipulate the audience, and which therefore, by Frankfurt’s own account, characterizes the bullshitter.”

Contrary Brin: More Potpourri - science and politics! is worth it for this quote:
“For many years I have spiced up some speeches (about memes) with the notion that we must “CRUSH every other worldview that does not preach tolerance!” It gets a laugh plus applause… and I say “those of you who ONLY applauded, without laughing at the irony — a deeply cautionary irony — aren’t qualified to wage this holy war. You just don’t get it. In fact, your eager help may only ensure our eventual defeat. The way to truly crush intolerance is the way parents deal with the hysterics of small children. By taking the small hammer-blows, absorbing the tantrum, firmly disallowing any larger harm, and wrapping the frenetic soul in an embrace of patient confidence.
“

democracyarsenal.org: Islam, Andrew Sullivan and The Pope

squareCircleZ � When am I gonna use this stuff?

Stephen’s Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~

EdTechPost: Ulises Ali Mejias on “The Tyranny of Nodes”

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In Digital Web Magazine - The Rise of Flash Video, Part 1 (found via Stephen Downes), Tom Green discusses how apple Microsoft and Real “lost” the video player market.

If Flash is still being developed by the “futureSplash” team who created the product that Macromedia eventually bought and sold under their own brand, then I am not surprised. They always seemed to believe that good technology will eventually trump heavily marketed junk.

RIAA copyright education contradictory, critics say | CNET News.com

This CNetNews article (received via Stephen Downes) points out some of the lies told by Recording Industry advocates. By extending their campaign against “piracy” to become itself a theft of existing public rights they lose any moral authority that their case may have had in the first place.

Michael Geist - 30 Days of DRM

Gratitude may not be quite the word, but this a TPM Online Article by Ronald Aronson does identify a feeling that it may be worthwhile to acknowledge and foster. I too, often find comfort in having a sense of adaptation to the environment (to the extent that it feels as if the environment was designed for my own pleasure rather than vice versa) and of the fact that enjoying that sense is itself part of the adaptation.

Blood on the tracks - The Boston Globe

The Terrorists Among Us by Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal Summer 2006
In what is primarily a review of John Updike’s new book Dalrymple points out that often “The refusal of free inquiry derives from an awareness of the fragility of the basis of religious faith; and since certainty is psychologically preferable to truth, the former often being willfully mistaken for the latter, anything that threatens certainty is anathematized with fury.

Muslims are hardly the only ones, either in the past or the present, who experience difficulty in relinquishing their most cherished ideas and presuppositions. It is a normal human trait. (Darwin, in his Autobiography, tells us that when he came across a fact that threw some doubt upon the theory he was developing, he wrote it down, for otherwise he was sure to forget it.) But when a system of ideas and set beliefs claims eternal validity and infallibility, when people adopt that system as their primary source of identity, and when into the bargain those people find themselves in a position of long-standing and seemingly irreversible technical and economic inferiority and dependence vis-�-vis people with very different ideas and beliefs, resentment is certain to result.”

On Beauty
at Philosophy Talk: The Blog

Differences between the sexes | The mismeasure of woman | Economist.com seems to be a reasonably balanced summary

At the PhilosophyTalk blog, Ken Taylor follows up on a radio discussion of The Future of Philosophy

Contrary Brin: The Decadence Excuse… The Song Sung by All Our Foes. comments on the anti-intellectual attitudes of bushite right wing america

Contrary Brin: An Interesting Guest Posting…

Mark Twain’s “The Late Benjamin Franklin”

In Evil and the Satan Hypothesis mwillet says:

Doesn’t it make sense just to live a good life and avoid doing anything you will later be ashamed of? That’s not to presume there is a life after death, just a working hypothesis that there is probably going to be a day after today and most people want to feel comfortable in their own skin.

Don’t bother asking yourself what would Jesus do because unless you want to be the judicially murdered virgin penniless beggar leader of a new cult it isn’t likely to be a useful answer, ask yourself what the future you would have wanted yourself to have done.