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Index for this page...(Be aware some links below may have expired.)
All The Following Items Were Posted On August 1, 2004 Fahrenheit 9/11 Is Having "Devastating" Impact On Military Morale, Says Soldier Deployed Overseas The National Center for Public Policy Research has posted online an e-mail received from a soldier, Spc. Joe Roche of the 1st Armored Division, who says Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11 is "making the rounds" among soldiers at U.S. military bases overseas and is "shocking and crushing soldiers, making them feel ashamed" of their service in Iraq. The letter has been published online by The National Center without abridgment. The full text can be found HERE. Some excerpts:
Spc. Joe Roche serves with the 16th Engineering Battalion of the 1st Armored Division. He and his unit were deployed in Iraq for 15 months. An archive of his e-mails can be accessed at www.nationalcenter.org/RochePage.html online. Source: The National Center for Public Policy Research, a non-partisan, conservative/free-market think-tank established in 1982 is located in Washington, DC. Television May Prompt Early Puberty Puberty is on setting earlier than in previous generations and scientists think they may have found the reason: Watching television prohibits the production of melatonin, which delays puberty. The Week reports that a study conducted by researchers at Italy's University of Florence discovered that when kids sat in front of the tube at least three hours a day, they had less production of the sleep hormone. But they also found their bodies produced 30 percent more of it after a week with no TV. "What's interesting about this study is that it's stripping TV entirely away from the content," said Syracuse University's Robert Thompson. "This isn't about bad, indecent, or sexual programming. It's about the totally neutral impact of the medium itself." When kids are exposed to the artificial light from a television screen - particularly during nighttime hours - their bodies suppress melatonin production. Various studies say that approximately 19 percent of eight-year-old girls in Australia, the U.S. and the U.K. have already begun puberty, whereas just one generation ago only one percent had. Source: Insider Report from NewsMax.com (If you are not an e-mail subscriber, get Insider Report and other breaking news alerts by Clicking Here.) Pioneer Philosopher John Passmore Dead At 89 John Passmore, a philosopher who saw himself as "semi-detached" from Australia and who pioneered the modern engagement of philosophy with the problems of everyday life, has died in Canberra just short of his 90th birthday. "His book, Hundred Years of Philosophy, revolutionized the history of ideas and his work on environmental philosophy basically established the discipline now known as applied philosophy," Australian National University philosophy professor Frank Jackson said on noting his death. Animal rights champion Peter Singer is one of the more controversial inheritors of the applied philosophical method that Passmore pioneered. Passmore was prolific and wide-ranging, scrutinizing subjects as diverse as art, literature, education, environmental ethics, science and politics. He died in Canberra on July 25th. His last post was emeritus professor in the Australian National University Research School of Social Sciences. Raised a Roman Catholic in the Sydney suburb of Manly, where he was born on September 9, 1914, he went to Sydney University and fell under the sceptical spell of the free-thinking philosopher John Anderson. In the 1940s, Passmore went to the United Kingdom where he began a long association with leading philosophers of the day including A.J. Ayer, Karl Popper and Gilbert Ryle. He was not greatly attracted to fashionable Continental philosophy although he was a Europhile and spent many years away from Australia, hence the title of his 1997 autobiography, Memoirs of a Semi-detached Australian. William F. Buckley - In Hindsight, Iraq War A Mistake William F. Buckley is founder of the highly-influential conservative magazine National Review and is widely viewed as the father of the modern conservative movement. In the months prior to the invasion of Iraq, Buckley and National Review were among the loudest voices demanding war. National Review even denounced numerous prominent conservatives who opposed the war as unpatriotic (and worse). On June 29, however, Buckley -- retiring from National Review -- told the New York Times:
It's too bad Buckley and his associates didn't listen closer to the chorus of antiwar conservative and libertarian voices they were so quick to condemn as "unpatriotic." Thousands of lives and billions of dollars might have been saved. Perhaps Lew Rockwell of the Ludwig von Mises Institute -- who was singled out and damned in National Review for his outspoken opposition to the war -- sums it up best:
Source: LewRockwell.com Support For First Amendment On Post-911 Rebound The good news: American's support for First Amendment freedoms -- deeply shaken by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 -- has dramatically rebounded back to pre-9/11 levels. The bad news: Fully thirty percent of Americans think the First Amendment "goes too far." Forty percent think the press has too much freedom. And huge numbers of Americans don't know much about the First Amendment. These findings, and more, come from the annual State of the First Amendment survey, conducted by the First Amendment Center, an organization which seeks to preserve First Amendment freedoms through education. "The 2004 survey found that just 30 percent of those surveyed agreed with the statement, 'The First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees,' with 65 percent disagreeing. The nation was split evenly, 49 percent to 49 percent, on that same question two years ago, in the survey following the '9/11' attacks," said Gene Policinski, acting director of the First Amendment Center. "Despite the ongoing war on terrorism worldwide and regular warnings from authorities about domestic attacks, a significant majority of Americans continue to support a free and open society," Policinski said. "Still, having about one in three Americans say they have too much freedom is a disturbing figure." The survey found that large numbers of Americans would restrict speech that might offend racial or religious groups and would restrict music that might offend anyone. Also, about four in 10 respondents said that the press in America has too much freedom. Other findings:
Source: The State of the First Amendment 2004 survey at http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org (Thanks to James W. Harris of the Advocates for Self-Government and The Liberator Online for the above information. If you would like a free subscription to the Liberator Online, visit: http://www.self-gov.org/liberator/maintain.html.) "The direct use of force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources and diverse ends that it is rarely employed save by small children and great nations.'' -- David D. Friedman, Law's Order: What Economics Has to Do with Law and Why It Matters. Some interesting & provocative articles on other websites Philosophy Is for Understanding, Not Comfort, by Dr. Mohammed T. Al-Rasheed: The culture of dialogue, to those unaccustomed to its mechanisms, can be a tricky endeavor. If one is accustomed to dictating, ordering, talking and not listening, it becomes harder to convince others when the need arises. Behavior indicative of such brazen lack of give and take can be seen in Dick Cheney's outburst on the floor of the Senate. Low art meets deep thought - Alain de Botton is not a man to underestimate his audience, by Gordon Farrer.: Do philosophy and television mix? Can high-concept slum it in a low-art medium without being so tarnished that it's not worth the 34 centimetre screen on which it appears? Can you get people to watch the result? Writer and philosopher Alain de Botton believes so. New professor should look to his own ethics, by Mort Crim: If you were a college dean, looking for an ethics teacher, what would you want? Somebody with a background in psychology? Sociology? Theology? Maybe a business leader who'd actually faced ethical issues and survived with morals intact? Well, Paul Agutter didn't have any such resume. New study shows child support guidelines in need of reform, by Jeffery M. Leving and Glenn Sacks: A new study of child support has concluded that most states' child support guidelines are poorly designed, inequitable, and in need of reform. California's guidelines, which are among the highest in the nation, exemplify this inequity, and often place such privations on noncustodial parents that they are unable to remain a meaningful part of their children's lives. Wal-Mart Serves Humanity, by Art Carden: The New York Times recently ran an interesting article on everyone's favorite global retailing behemoth, Wal-Mart. It offers an interesting look at Wal-Mart's changing corporate culture (they're apparently beginning to wonder if they should pay off the barbarians at the gate), two stunning examples of economic illiteracy, one misrepresentation of a very heroic deed, and a lovely comparison of Sam Walton to Chairman Mao. The Present Global Culture War, by Herbert London: There is an emerging global culture war. It is one that was neither expected nor easily predicted. In fact, it is a war that goes to the very essence of being human. Hegel summarized the western side of the debate in Philosophy of Mind when he wrote: "When Individuals and nations have once seized upon the abstraction of freedom itself it has more than any other thing, boundless power, just because it is the very being of Mind, its very reality." Speed of light may have changed recently, by Eugenie Samuel Reich: The speed of light, one of the most sacrosanct of the universal physical constants, may have been lower as recently as two billion years ago -- and not in some far corner of the universe, but right here on Earth. I write badly, therefore I am a would-be terrorist, by Charles C. Green: I don't think of myself as a dangerous character. Neither, I think, do the lively old ladies who routinely trample me on the escalators at Neiman Marcus. Nor the other software salesmen who race past me into early retirement. Nor, above all, the publishers and agents who seem to take unabashed pleasure in routinely shredding my dream of hanging up my salesman's shoes and becoming an author. Torture as Due Process, by James Bovard: After 9/11, the word of the president was supposedly the only protection that the rights and liberties of the American people needed. After 9/11, President Bush granted himself unlimited, unchecked power over anyone in the world suspected of being a terrorist. Moore's Ax Falls on a Derelict Media Too, by Neal Gabler: No one can accuse documentarian and bedraggled, beer-bellied gadfly Michael Moore of having a hidden agenda. He has raised a firestorm of controversy and generated a torrent of publicity not only by bludgeoning President Bush with his feature-length attack, "Fahrenheit 9/11," but also by declaring that he made the film in hopes of booting Bush from office. Nicotine fix, by Apoorva Mandavilli: Could the long-standing villain in tobacco yet prove a hero in medicine? Mounting evidence suggests that nicotine can help in certain diseases -- but researchers are wary of giving cigarettes a good name. The Reluctant Anarchist, by Joseph Sobran: My arrival (very recently) at philosophical anarchism has disturbed some of my conservative and Christian friends. In fact, it surprises me, going as it does against my own inclinations. Can George Bush Be Americanized?, by Harry Browne: A few weeks ago, America was absorbed with the death in Afghanistan of Pat Tillman, the athlete who gave up a lucrative career as an NFL football star in order to fight for his country. Every night for almost a week, ESPN's Sports Center show had a segment on Tillman &emdash; as did so many other news shows. I found the celebration of death to be upsetting, but I couldn't find the right words to express my feelings. The Psychology of Michael Moore, by Brandon L. Millett: On Saturday, with all the enthusiasm of a man forced to pay alimony, I finally plunked down my hard-earned $5.50 ($17.00 with popcorn, pretzel and drink) to see His film, Fahrenheit 911. Truth be told, this was NOT how I wanted to spend my Saturday. I know something of Michael Moore. I've seen his movies, read a couple of his books, and had the grave misfortune of channel surfing my way right into his tasteless Oscar speech. A Glorious Sunset - On assault weapons and laws that fade away, by Brian Doherty: On September 13, according to a squad of concerned ex-presidents, the streets of America will return to a grim, bloody age of semi-automatic gun murder run amok -- all because current President Bush and a feckless Congress seem on track to allow the sunsetting of portions of 1994's Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, popularly known as the "assault weapon ban." The Hoax of the Food Desert, by William L. Anderson: Murray Rothbard once observed the seasonal discovery of "some brand-new category of the pitiable." The "homeless" fell into this class and he also wondered what the new category would be. The unclothed? The ill-shod? The thirsty? The candy-deprived? "How many more millions are standing in line, waiting to be trotted out for consideration," he asked? No panic over school child abuse, by Wendy McElroy: A report claiming that close to 10 percent of children in public schools -- more than 4.5 million -- endure sexual abuse or misconduct by school employees has recently touched off a media-fueled panic. However, "Educator Sexual Misconduct," by Carol Shakeshaft of Hofstra University, is seriously flawed, both in its methodology and in the way researchers defined sexual abuse and misconduct. Of black swans and Google, by Rajesh Jain: I recently came across a 1999 report on search engines. Among the companies it discussed was Google. As I read it, I wondered if I (or anyone else) could have imagined then that this start-up five years later would have so transformed the search space, built the world's largest computing platform and be getting ready to do an IPO that will create $25 billion of wealth for its founders, employees and investors. Are We Really Force Fed?, by P. Gardner Goldsmith: We are advised that America is experiencing an "Obesity Epidemic", as if it is some sort of contagious disease. Government "officials" tell us that Americans are becoming obese at an alarming rate; they appear on network news programs warning of the health consequences of being overweight. Jabbing JibJab - Copyright law vs. political satire, by Jesse Walker: It seems like every blog and e-mail list has linked to This Land!, that corny but funny cartoon where John Kerry and George W. Bush trade insults to the tune of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land." At this point, you can measure how much time someone spends online by how long it takes him to find the film and forward you the URL. Everyone eventually does. It's merely a matter of time.
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