Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2854

Quiet Time

George Prochnik pursues silence:

There's that beautiful line from Thoreau, that silence has variousdepths of fertility, like soil. I felt again and again when I wastraveling how each one of these different microclimates of silence, apocket park or a monastery or a Zen garden or a neurobiologylaboratory, had such a different texture to it. And with the array ofsilence that is out there, I think if we made a commitment to try tohelp people who don't have any access to any kind of silence...

In The Red

Jonathan Bernstein eyes the deficit:

If it's true that long-term deficits are mostly driven by health carecosts (and I tend to believe that), then the same logic that drove theACA could easily appear again in a (Democratic-majority) future, withthe Dems simply shifting their interest group alliances and hitting oneof the groups (doctors, hospitals, drug manufacturers) that they cut adeal with this time around.  The logic, that is, would be thatDemocrats and groups allied with the Democrats...

The Office Of The Repealer, Ctd

A reader writes:

I'm not trying to dismiss a relatively decent idea out of hand, but Kansas is facing a huge budget hole that the outgoing governor is going to the mat to try to patch. All we get out of the Brownback office is a legislative gimmick and a lack of any details on how the Senator might actually, you know, govern. Or to quote the headline in the local paper here in Lawrence, Kansas: "Brownback proposes Office of Repealer, but doesn't have specifics on what he'd like repealed."

Anoth...

Clouds, Not Clocks, Ctd

A reader writes:

Sure, the media play their part in the "cycle of anticipation and disappointment" with science, but scientists profit from it immensely as well. The recent New York Times article on the Human Genome Project's failure to produce miracle cures demonstrates the "disappointment" part of the cycle. But it also points out the ways in which scientists themselves were fueling the anticipation with grandiose promises of miraculous advances in medicine. Blaming the media for this cycle...

Check, Please, Ctd

A reader writes:

The problem with people on the "terrorism watch list" being able to buy guns is a problem with the "terrorism watch list," not gun-rights advocates. There's no judicial process involved in the list, no legal way to get yourself taken off of the list once you're on it. (The ACLU's critique of "watch lists" is here.) Blaming the "gun rights lobby" for preserving the right of legally innocent, untried Americans to buy guns is akin to blaming the ACLU for protecting the right of...

Face Of The Day

Japanese post-graduate student Kosuke Nakamura shows off the robot babynamed Noby (short for 'nine-month-old baby'), that is 71 cm in heightand weighs 7.9kg, at a laboratory at the Tokyo University on June 15,2010. The baby robot has two cameras and two microphones on its headand is also equipped with some 600 touch sensors in the artificial skinof his body. The robot is designed to simulate the behaviour and growthof a real infant, an invention it is hoped will help researchers...

Iran - A Year Later, Ctd

Joe Klein reads Reuel Marc Gerecht's latest op-ed:

I do believe that Gerecht overstates the capacity of the Green Movementto succeed in toppling the current, odious regime. To win, thereformers will have to find an alliance with the quietist members ofthe religious community; the bazaaris, whose businesses arebeing hurt by Iran's increasing commercial isolation (not just thesanctions, but the unilateral decision by an increasing number ofinternational corporations not to do business with this...

Those Whiny Brits

Clive Crook, like me, is underwhelmed.
















United States - Clive Crook - Politics - History - United States Congress

The Birds, Ctd

A reader writes:

If we're going to talk about bird collisions, we can't forget the greatest one of all time:  A goose hitting Fabio in the face on a roller-coaster.  It really doesn't get any better than that.

Bird - Recreation - Organizations - Home - BP

What Would Libertarians Do About The Gulf?

Edward Glaeser wants to know:

Consider the purely hypothetical case of a massive oil spill in theGulf of Mexico. The traditional libertarian would argue that regulationis unnecessary because the tort system will hold the driller liable forany damage. But what if the leak is so vast that the driller doesn'thave the resources to pay? The libertarian would respond that thedriller should have been forced to post a bond or pay for sufficientinsurance to cover any conceivable spill. Perhaps, but...