Philosophy students

Two philosophy students. One Jewish, one Muslim. Both gave all so that others can breathe freer. HY"D.

Intelligence Officer Training Program in Colleges

Wow! Had George W. Bush proposed to institute an intelligence officer program in universities in the US we would still be hearing about it. Apparently, Obama has proposed a spy-training with with little fanfare. Not that this isn't a good idea. I have been of the view for a long time that we need a better language training infrastructure in this country and a better infrastructure to gather foreign intelligence.

This should be interesting.

The new black?

Is Jewish the new black? Ask Charles Taylor, Alysa Stanton, or the Bro Mitzvah kid.

Words to the Left and Words to the Right

It is claimed by the Left in scores of articles that Bill O'reilly is somehow responsible for the shooting death of the abortionist George Tiller. I suppose that the left expects that the religious right now do some soul-searching, take some responsibility, and tone down the rhetoric against doctors that provide abortions.

What they are actually doing is creating a climate in which anti-abortion rhetoric is equated with the murder of people who provide them.

But would the same people who have blamed Bill O'Reilly also start to blame the media and left wing intellectuals for the 9/11 attacks or this recent bit where a man killed two soldiers outside a shopping center in Arkansas? After all, the combined anti-military, anti-America, and anti-war rhetoric equating the Army with the greatest of evils are certainly greater and more widely known than anything Bill O'Reilly said. And how much left-wing anti-Israel rhetoric is blamed for the recent plot to blow up synagogues?

To my mind, murders by individuals should generally be blamed on the individual. So whence the double standard blaming people who kill soldiers on no one and when people kill abortion doctors blame the "right-wing media". I'll also bet that the shooting doesn't make it to the Daily Show, nor will the media make a big deal of it. (Bizarrely, this report from Iran refers to the soldiers "helping to recruit armed forces draftees", as if that were either true or possible. The US has no draftees, and if they did they would not need to be recruited.)

I think that we ought to be grateful that free speech is alive and well here and people can speak out against the US, against abortions, against doctors, against the military, against anyone they want. But to suddenly start blaming the exercise of freedom of speech for murders is disingenuous unless it is done by all, and I can't imagine the Angry Left is going to start examining its own speech too carefully in the near future.

Public concert

Some adorable kids held a concert in Brooklyn Heights' Boro Hall.

These kids are from PS 192.

Freedom

As of now I am officially unemployed. I have no jobs, no work, nothing. . . And I can't even blame the economy.

Anthrax

I just got thre first of many anthrax shots. They suck. Apparently some new law authorizes the government to do this.

Finally

I am now at my PhD granting ceremony.  It is now official.

Back in NY

Just got back from a nice weekend in Miami.  I wish grading was over though.

Car show

This was somewhere in a Wallmart parking lot in North Carolinia about a week ago.

Finally . . .

. . . Leaving North Carolinia.

Airlines

I really hate US Airways. It seems like every time I use them (and this is like my 5th time in the past year) they manage to screw my flight up and otherwide provide consistent mediocre service and give bad information.

What is Chavez's address?

At the Summit of the Americas Hugo Chavez gave Obama a copy of Galeano'a Open Veins of Latin America. Though I have not read it, the book is, by all accounts, an account of how the capitalists failed to help Latin America, and how they must therefore be the cause of all the world's ills. The book became an instant best seller on Amazon, as anything a big leftist thug endorses publicly will start to fly off the shelves. Chavez did this before with one of Chomsky's books.

Obama replied with some lame joke about thinking that Chavez wrote a book and wanted to give him one of his own books in exchange. At least I think this was a joke.

When I am in uniform I always carry a copy a copy of the US Constitution in my arm-pocket. It reminds me what I swore allegiance too, and why. One likes to believe that any American president always has some snippets of the Federalist Papers running through his head. this is a document that Chavez could learn a lot from. It tells us that there needs to be a balance of power in a state, and that there is a way to make a country work without a dictator and with political liberties.

What Obama should have done is have his people rush to the nearest Barnes and Noble to purchase a deluxe edition of the Federalist Papers to give to Chavez in exchange. As a matter of fact, if I don't hear about Obama doing that, I will.

Communist protest

There is some sort of big pro-communist protest right outside our madrid hotel.

In Girona

Commemorating Nachmonides in Girona; in the jewish calle.