Al Qaeda Finds Itself at a Crossroads - News Analysis - NYTimes.com
For nearly two decades, the leaders of Al Qaeda have denounced the Arab world’s dictators as heretics and puppets of the West and called for their downfall. Now, people in country after country have risen to topple their leaders — and Al Qaeda has played absolutely no role.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Sunday, February 27, 2011
The war in Afghanistan goes on and on and on
First it was about the hunt for Bin Laden. We had him in our sights and then we blinked. Then it was about the end of the Taliban. We supported opposition groups and the Taliban capitulated but the opposition morphed back into the Taliban. We supported a strongman as president and he largely has been the mayor of Kabul while hoovering up the billions into personal accounts we threw at him for nation building. We railed against Bush because it was his war (as well as other things) and now it's Obama's war and bigger than ever, supported gleefully by the war mongers in congress as they want to be swayed and even the "doves" who have been psy-oped by the military. Meanwhile at home we have economic chaos, horribly wounded soldiers, military families that can't make ends meet and abroad total loss of any shred of respect we ever had.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Blogs waning: I knew this was coming
Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Michael McDonald of San Francisco used to post his videos on a blog, but now he uses Facebook.
By VERNE G. KOPYTOFF
Published: February 20, 2011
SAN FRANCISCO — Like any aspiring filmmaker, Michael McDonald, a high school senior, used a blog to show off his videos. But discouraged by how few people bothered to visit, he instead started posting his clips on Facebook, where his friends were sure to see and comment on his editing skills.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/technology/internet/21blog.html?hp
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Dogs on the run
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/complaint-box-the-running-of-the-dogs/?ref=nyregion
P. C. Vey
I don’t mind admitting that I can be afraid of dogs — can be, rather than am, because it depends on their size and bark. But there’s a reason the New York City Department of Parks
and Recreation requires that dogs in parks be leashed between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m., except in dog runs, and there’s a reason it regulates their behavior even in designated off-leash areas before and after those hours. Dogs are welcome at urban parks, but the parks are primarily for people, and while the vast majority of dogs are domesticated, acts of aggression by roaming dogs are, unfortunately, not uncommon.
Yet, some pet owners routinely flout these policies, their lackadaisical attitudes suggesting that the rules are silly if not unnatural and that anxious civilians like me are nothing short of hysterical. Well, I have been pounced upon by dogs during my otherwise cherished runs in Central Park on more than one occasion. The most recent episode involved a dog that stood taller than my five-foot height — he jumped me from behind. His owner returned my stunned gasp with a chuckle and what he thought was a compliment: “Oh, he was just flirting with you!”
More times than I can count, I have been subjected to lesser intimidation. Perhaps sensing my caution when I see them wildly scurrying about at the park’s West 93rd Street entrance, dogs big and small regularly snarl at me and block my passage. Their masters, never very close by, usually approach with the same amused smile as I struggle to find my way around their barking pets, implicating me as a stickler interfering with innocent play or, worse, a scaredy cat who needs to toughen up if I’m going to survive in the big city. Apparently they haven’t read the city’s Dogs in Parks brochure, which advises, among many guidelines: “Please remember that other park visitors may be afraid of your dog” and “Do not allow your dog to run and jump on other people or dogs without an invitation.”
This winter, the problem has been worse than ever, as repeated snowfalls have blanketed the park, obscured its pathways and transformed it into a wonderland beautiful to behold but not so easy for people to navigate. Devoted runners like me still make it to the park and delight in the briskly luminous setting, but we are outnumbered by the dogs, who, encouraged by their owners, have taken these conditions as an invitation to run wild at all hours, brazenly taking over our turf and leaving their mark — yellow stains defiling otherwise pristine white snow.
There are so many dogs out there now that I routinely have to reroute. Last week, a gorgeous black Lab galloped by the Delacorte Theater, stopping me in my tracks; a few days ago, a husky stared me down by the footbridge overlooking the Tennis Center. On both occasions, the owner was nowhere in sight, so I turned onto a different path, hoping, praying that Mr. Big-and-Frisky was not in a flirting mood.
Jeannie Rosenfeld, a freelance writer specializing in arts and culture, lives on the Upper West Side.
My response
A few weeks ago in Prospect Park a woman's small dog drowned in the lake after falling through the thin ice. Her complaint was that the Parks Department wasn't prepared to rescue her dog. Since she had let it off the leash whose fault was it that the dog drowned? My response is: It's your dog. The law says keep it on a leash. End of story. Don't blame others for your failure when in fact if nothing had happened to your dog and it was still alive and leaping about on people you'd give a chuckle and say: "Oh it's only flirting."
You know dog owners think just like parents do about their children. "Oh they're so lovely how can you not want to love them as I do?" Well surprise surprise we don't. It's time you learn that.
Complaint Box | The Running of the Dogs
By JEANNIE ROSENFELDP. C. Vey Complaint Box
Got a Gripe?
Get a grip. Send your rant — no more than 500 words, please — to: metropolitan@nytimes.com.
I don’t mind admitting that I can be afraid of dogs — can be, rather than am, because it depends on their size and bark. But there’s a reason the New York City Department of Parks
and Recreation requires that dogs in parks be leashed between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m., except in dog runs, and there’s a reason it regulates their behavior even in designated off-leash areas before and after those hours. Dogs are welcome at urban parks, but the parks are primarily for people, and while the vast majority of dogs are domesticated, acts of aggression by roaming dogs are, unfortunately, not uncommon.Yet, some pet owners routinely flout these policies, their lackadaisical attitudes suggesting that the rules are silly if not unnatural and that anxious civilians like me are nothing short of hysterical. Well, I have been pounced upon by dogs during my otherwise cherished runs in Central Park on more than one occasion. The most recent episode involved a dog that stood taller than my five-foot height — he jumped me from behind. His owner returned my stunned gasp with a chuckle and what he thought was a compliment: “Oh, he was just flirting with you!”
More times than I can count, I have been subjected to lesser intimidation. Perhaps sensing my caution when I see them wildly scurrying about at the park’s West 93rd Street entrance, dogs big and small regularly snarl at me and block my passage. Their masters, never very close by, usually approach with the same amused smile as I struggle to find my way around their barking pets, implicating me as a stickler interfering with innocent play or, worse, a scaredy cat who needs to toughen up if I’m going to survive in the big city. Apparently they haven’t read the city’s Dogs in Parks brochure, which advises, among many guidelines: “Please remember that other park visitors may be afraid of your dog” and “Do not allow your dog to run and jump on other people or dogs without an invitation.”
This winter, the problem has been worse than ever, as repeated snowfalls have blanketed the park, obscured its pathways and transformed it into a wonderland beautiful to behold but not so easy for people to navigate. Devoted runners like me still make it to the park and delight in the briskly luminous setting, but we are outnumbered by the dogs, who, encouraged by their owners, have taken these conditions as an invitation to run wild at all hours, brazenly taking over our turf and leaving their mark — yellow stains defiling otherwise pristine white snow.
There are so many dogs out there now that I routinely have to reroute. Last week, a gorgeous black Lab galloped by the Delacorte Theater, stopping me in my tracks; a few days ago, a husky stared me down by the footbridge overlooking the Tennis Center. On both occasions, the owner was nowhere in sight, so I turned onto a different path, hoping, praying that Mr. Big-and-Frisky was not in a flirting mood.
Jeannie Rosenfeld, a freelance writer specializing in arts and culture, lives on the Upper West Side.
My response
A few weeks ago in Prospect Park a woman's small dog drowned in the lake after falling through the thin ice. Her complaint was that the Parks Department wasn't prepared to rescue her dog. Since she had let it off the leash whose fault was it that the dog drowned? My response is: It's your dog. The law says keep it on a leash. End of story. Don't blame others for your failure when in fact if nothing had happened to your dog and it was still alive and leaping about on people you'd give a chuckle and say: "Oh it's only flirting."
You know dog owners think just like parents do about their children. "Oh they're so lovely how can you not want to love them as I do?" Well surprise surprise we don't. It's time you learn that.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Questions
More evidence that Bush and Palin are the Real Problem . . .
by Mark Goldblatt on Wednesday, February 16, 2011 at 9:01am
My comment:
Back again. I just don't understand your point. What does Bush and/or Palin or by extension any politician in the U.S. have to do with a girl or a woman, not an American citizen, being raped & murdered in her country of birth. A domestic crime was committed and that crime must be addressed in that country. We can talk about human rights and moral absolutes, and who is inferior to whom, but this is something that has gone on throughout the world and we're just beating our gums by acting as though our morality is so much more superior. Of course you can't compare U.S. violent crimes to what has happened in the Congo, Darfur, Iran, to name a few, the systematic, governmental sponsored war on women, Such violent acts are not a matter of moral relevance or situational ethics. They are purposely done in order to degrade, demoralize & weaken an opponent.
The domestic issues of violence towards girls and women in Bangladesh can be raised and addressed but we have no power to do anything. Better to focus on the home front because all you have to do is look at our own front pages and news reports in regard to domestic abuse & violence towards women and not just in immigrant neighborhoods (where by extension you might think there is moral inferiority.)
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Fitch's paradox of knowability
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fitch's paradox of knowability is one of the fundamental puzzles of epistemic logic. It provides a challenge to the knowability thesis, which states that any truth is, in principle, knowable. The paradox is that this assumption implies the omniscience principle, which asserts that any truth is known. Essentially, Fitch's paradox asserts that the existence of an unknown truth is unknowable. So if all truths were knowable, it would follow that all truths are in fact known.The paradox is of concern for verificationist or anti-realist accounts of truth, for which the knowability thesis is very plausible, but the omniscience principle is very implausible.
The paradox appeared as a minor theorem in a 1963 paper by Frederic Fitch, "A Logical Analysis of Some Value Concepts". Other than the knowability thesis, his proof makes only modest assumptions on the modal nature of knowledge and of possibility. He also generalised the proof to different modalities. It resurfaced in 1979 when W.D. Hart wrote that Fitch's proof was an "unjustly neglected logical gem".
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Mubarak and Obama speeches
I've been annoyed with the Obama administration, but I think today that it has become clear that Mubarak is a stubborn old man like a parent who won't move into a retirement home but is incapable of taking care of himself. Obama I think is trying to finesse him and it may be the best he can do given the circumstances.
London by William Blake
London
William Blake
I wander through each chartered street,And mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:
How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.
But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.
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