It’s an Interesting World: 1
“It’s a Interesting World” is my attempt to provide a coherent update on this blog every week. In the process of looking through various websites for research purposes, reading Twitter streams, following links on Facebook and then following those links to other links (etc, etc in an endless cycle of reading and attempting not to [...]

“It’s a Interesting World” is my attempt to provide a coherent update on this blog every week. In the process of looking through various websites for research purposes, reading Twitter streams, following links on Facebook and then following those links to other links (etc, etc in an endless cycle of reading and attempting not to get lost, Bing advertisement style), I come across some odd, interesting and often times, seemingly useless pieces of information that I get a kick out of reading. And you might too!

You might argue over whether everything I post is “interesting” but let’s not argue semantics. Deal with it! Here goes!

It’s an Interesting World: 1

Quote of the week:

“…he ended by warning the students to be ever mindful of those “threats that come from elevating the values of consensus, conformity, and comfort above the value of truth.”

An excerpt from Larry Summer’s 2006 Harvard address, his last as president of the university, in a Oct 12 New Yorker profile piece

If you want to while away a couple of hours chuckling in front of the computer (most of these updates will detail ways to do that), then I would strongly recommend reading the Reuters blog “Oddly Enough“, which is, well, there’s no way to describe it really. Blogger Robert Basler writes satire at its best. Lately Blaser’s target has been the fashion industry, a veritable buffet of things to mock!

We picked the apples, we baked the pie. Yes, it’s true. Justin and I took on the envious task of baking an apple pie this week. The result was pure deliciousness! The recipe was incredibly easy (we used six Fuji apples we picked in New Paltz over the weekend) and I did a half-decent job on the lattice cover. I used a combination of recipes, but took most of my guidance from Pillsbury’s Perfect Apple Pie recipe, which was provided conveniently on the box of dough we bought. No, I did not make the crust from scratch. Not on a work night! I am both proud of myself and slightly disturbed at my domestic bliss.

An update on Maddoff: The Daily Beast’s Cheat Sheet picked up a story on Wednesday from the Huffington Post on what Maddoff is up to in jail. The highlight of this summary? Maddoff enjoys pizza cooked by a child molester and bunks with a drug offender. Finally company worth of the man!

Favourite find of the week: I only recently discovered that the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University has made several of its lectures available on iTunes U for free. They’ve been doing it since 2008, so I’m a bit late to the game, but I think it’s fantastic. Now the subway mornings are made more interesting a “romp through the history of philosophy”. Lectures AND handouts from the John Locke Lecture philosophy series are available for download as well: http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/lectures/john_locke_lectures. I love the Interwebs!

Weirdness that makes me angry: Only Rush Limbaugh would compare environmentalists to suicide bombers. Media Matters explains the whole debacle quite nicely, but here’s a brief breakdown. New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin recently wrote a column describing the correlation between population growth and carbon emissions (a pretty basic causal relation). He discussed how carbon dioxide emmissions could be reduced simply by making birth control accesible to millions of woman worldwide. He also more controversially described a “thought experiment” in which families might one day participate in the carbon credit economy – those with less children would recieve carbon credits for offsetting their carbon emmissions.

Rush Limbaugh, known (by some) for his wildly offensive statements and inability to participate in constructive debate and rational and fair public discourse responded to this on his radio show by saying:

“I think these militant environmentalists, these wackos, have so much in common with the jihad guys. Let me explain this. What do the jihad guys do? The jihad guys go to families under their control and they convince these families to strap explosives on who? Not them. On their kids. Grab your 3-year-old, grab your 4-year-old, grab your 6-year-old, and we’re gonna strap explosives on there, and then we’re going to send you on a bus, or we’re going to send you to a shopping center, and we’re gonna tell you when to pull the trigger, and you’re gonna blow up, and you’re gonna blow up everybody around you, and you’re gonna head up to wherever you’re going, 73 virgins are gonna be there. The little 3- or 4-year-old doesn’t have the presence of mind, so what about you? If it’s so great up there, why don’t you go? Why don’t you strap explosives on you — and their parents don’t have the guts to tell the jihad guys, “You do it! Why do you want my kid to go blow himself up?” The jihad guys will just shoot ‘em, ’cause the jihad guys have to maintain control.

“The environmentalist wackos are the same way. This guy from The New York Times, if he really thinks that humanity is destroying the planet, humanity is destroying the climate, that human beings in their natural existence are going to cause the extinction of life on Earth — Andrew Revkin. Mr. Revkin, why don’t you just go kill yourself and help the planet by dying?”

What I find most disturbing about his statement (beyond his suggestion that Revkin commit suicide) is the notion that human beings currently live a “natural existence.” I’d have to disagree. With the amount of energy we consume and waste we produce, it’s hardly natural!

And that’s this week’s post, let me know what you think!
Jax