Thomas Friedman on “drill, baby, drill”

I was remided of George Clooney’s Good Night and Goodluck:

We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the results. We proclaim ourselves indeed as we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world. But we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his, he didn’t create this situation of fear, he merely exploited it, and rather successfully.

(Just replace junior Senator from Wisconsin with Bush, McCain, Gulianni, etc.)

You’ll understand why once you read Friedman’s article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/opinion/14friedman.html?em

Ce tout!

The Nurture Assumption

Yesterday I read the latest article in Satoshi Kanazawa’s Blog: The Scientific Fundamentalist (perhaps my favorite blog) about Harris’ book The Nurture Assumption.

And as I read about some of the the reposes I was once again shocked by how stupid people can be. Her argument (I haven’t finished the book yet, I barely started it) is simply that the people that children socialize with have a greater impact on their psyche’s rather than their parents. It may difficult to see how and why, but it is true.

A child spends more time learning and discussing things with peers than with their parents. Parents, in their selfish desire to protect children from conflict, will hide all of their potentially learning experiences from their children, thus causing children to turn to other people (possibly the media) to gain example of how to deal with problems.

(At this point , I really have no idea if this is even remotely close to the book, but this is only my observation)

I will, naturally, post more after i’ve finished the book and can talk about it in a inteliigent manner.