Rafe Coburn: “James Fallows said the following in 1995 when Robert McNamara wrote his memoir expressing his regrets about the Vietnam War:

In the cycles of life, the desire to square accounts is natural, but Robert McNamara has forfeited his right to do so in public. You missed your chance, Mr. Secretary. It would have been better to go out silently, if you could not find the courage to speak when it would have done your country any good.

And today Fallows adds:

My tone then was harsher than I would be now. Perhaps that’s just because I’m older; perhaps because McNamara has now died; perhaps because he had fifteen more years to be involved in worthy causes, mainly containing the risk of nuclear war or accident. But mainly I think it is because of Errol Morris’ remarkable 2003 film The Fog of War, which portrayed McNamara as a combative and hyper-competitive man (in his 80s, he was still pointing out that he had been top of his elementary-school class) but as a person of moral seriousness who agonized not just about Vietnam but also the fire-bombing of Tokyo during World War II, which he had helped plans as a young defense analyst.

I think that there’s another reason for Fallows to leaven his tone, which is that it was not too late for McNamara to help his country. Had the Bush administration taken McNamara’s memoir to heart, the war in Iraq could have been avoided. Had President Obama done so, maybe we would be taking a different course in Afghanistan. Rarely does a week go by where we don’t hear about unarmed drones blowing up dozens of Afghans or Pakistanis. We are still failing to take the lessons McNamara learned too late to heart. But because he did eventually talk about the mistakes he made, we do have the opportunity to learn.”

via rc3.org.

Nicholas Kristoff: “…In a thoughtful book published this year, The Life You Can Save, Professor Peter Singer of Princeton University … explores why we’re so willing to try to assist a stranger before us, while so unwilling to donate to try to save strangers from malaria half a world away.

…There’s growing evidence that jumping up and down about millions of lives at stake can even be counterproductive. A number of studies have found that we are much more willing to donate to one needy person than to several. In one experiment, researchers solicited donations for a $300,000 fund that in one version would save the life of one child, and in another the lives of eight children. People contributed more when the fund would save only one life.

“The more who die, the less we care.” That’s the apt title of a forthcoming essay by Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon who has pioneered this field of research.

Yet it’s not just, as the saying goes, that one death is a tragedy, a million a statistic. More depressing, appeals to our rationality actually seem to impede empathy.

For example, in one study, people donate generously to Rokia, a 7-year-old malnourished African girl. But when Rokia’s plight was explained as part of a larger context of hunger in Africa, people were much less willing to help.

Perhaps this is because, as some research suggests, people give in large part to feel good inside. That works best when you write a check and the problem is solved. If instead you’re reminded of larger problems that you can never solve, the feel-good rewards diminish.” (New York Times op-ed)

Xeni Jardin: “Filmmaker Dianna Dilworth emailed me last week with a link to her documentary about hardcore Michael Jackson fans like the fellow above: We are the Children.

“It's a look at the lives of the fans during the trail a few years back,” she says — specifically, trufans out showing support for their idol during the pop star's 2004-05 trial on child molestation charges.

As folks who follow me on Twitter already know, I find the cable news MJ-death-marathon spectacle to be a sad reminder of the state of — well, the pathetic state of American cable news. I mean, what was that? Nine days of wall to wall “Michael Jackson: STILL DEAD”?

But thoughtful works like Dilworth's film, works that examine the lives of the “happy mutants” who are utterly devoted to this pop culture figure, I find fascinating. Do yourself a favor today: turn off the TV, stream this instead.

You can view Diana's film online for free at SnagFilms, a new ad supported film content site (Flash embed).

Or, you can buy a DVD here.” (Boing Boing )

“Banksy finally unveiled his highly anticipated summer show at the Bristol Museum in the UK today. His largest collection to date, this exhibit has expanded upon the notions of animal cruelty seen in his last showing in New York City, Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill, and included commentary on human worker’s rights.

Bristol's City Museum & Art Gallery presents this unique collaboration between the city's foremost cultural institution and one of the region's most infamous artists, tilted Banksy Versus Bristol Museum. Banksy has gained notoriety in recent years by using stencils to paint images on a diverse array of outdoor locations, always pushing boundaries but somehow managing to remain anonymous. This is the first exhibition in a three storey Edwardian museum.

For this massive show, Banksy worked in tandem with the museum's director. Banksy filled three stories of the building with his art in just 36 hours under tight security, as only a few museum staff were aware of the shows' imminent arrival. In fact, apparently many of the museum guides only discovered that they would be working in a Banksy exhibition on Thursday (two day’s prior to its public opening) after being employed via the Job Centre…” (Juxtapoz)

“Sarah Palin has largely stayed under the radar since her surprising and rambling press conference Friday announcing that she will resign as Alaska Governor on July 26th, barely halfway through her first term. However, she has resurfaced a couple times in the form of messages: One on her Facebook page, the other a statement released by her lawyer. Both have taken hard shots at the media for what Palin perceives as unfair coverage.

In her Facebook message, Palin slammed the press for their “predictable” coverage of her resignation and for applying “different standards” when covering her…

Understandably, much of the media coverage has focused on Palin's reasons for resigning, as her lengthy goodbye speech did nothing to clear up the confusion. One oft-repeated theory is that there is a new scandal looming; talk of ethical problems has been swirling around in Alaska for weeks. Palin's lawyer released a statement threatening to sue various media, including the Huffington Post, for what he called “defamatory rumors.”

Palin is known for her hostility towards the media. But she has not been so quick to decry tough scrutiny when it is pointed at other female targets: Hillary Clinton, example. In August 2008, Palin lamented Clinton's complaints about unfair media coverage as 'whining' that is bad for female candidates everywhere.” (Huffington Post)

“A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.

Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same interrelated colony, and will refuse to fight one another.

The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.” (BBC)

“Dans Le Noir translates to English as “In The Dark.” The restaurant is named this for a very good, if on-the-nose, reason: It’s completely, pitch black on the inside. The entire wait staff is completely sightless, and ushers patrons to their tables in completely darkness. The food and drinks are prepared by sighted staff in separate, lit rooms.

But the entire meal is eaten (and all drinks poured – think about that) with no light whatsoever. If you’ve got an Indiglo watch, they take it. All cell phones are confiscated. And don’t even think about going there with LA Lights.

The idea here is to deprive your body of its visual input in order to heighten all the other senses you use to eat: most notably the senses of touch, smell and taste. This means you pour your wine with a finger down the glass, so that you stop when you feel wetness. It also means you don’t know what you’re eating until you’re eating it (and even then, you might not guess).

Although Swiss culinary innovation may seem like a contradiction in terms, the idea of blind dining originated with a blind clergyman from Switzerland, Jorge Spielmann. He wanted diners to be able to better understand his world.”

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says she’d come out ahead if she went one-on-one with fellow jogger President Barack Obama in a long run.

“I betcha I’d have more endurance,” she told Runner’s World magazine in an interview published online Tuesday.

“My one claim to fame in my own little internal running circle is a sub-four marathon” in Anchorage, she said, referring to her 2005 sprint in the Humpy’s Marathon in which she beat the four-hour mark by 24 seconds.” (WCVB )

“Some of the first eerie signs of a potential health catastrophe came as bizarre deformities in water animals, often in their sexual organs.

…Now scientists are connecting the dots with evidence of increasing abnormalities among humans, particularly large increases in numbers of genital deformities among newborn boys. For example, up to 7 percent of boys are now born with undescended testicles, although this often self-corrects over time. And up to 1 percent of boys in the United States are now born with hypospadias, in which the urethra exits the penis improperly, such as at the base…” — Nicholas Kristoff (New York Times op-ed)

‘Australian wallabies are eating opium poppies and creating crop circles as they hop around “as high as a kite”, a government official has said.

…Rick Rockliff, a spokesman for poppy producer Tasmanian Alkaloids, said the wallaby incursions were not very common, but other animals had also been spotted in the poppy fields acting unusually.

“There have been many stories about sheep that have eaten some of the poppies after harvesting and they all walk around in circles,” he added.’ (BBC )

“…[Howard] Gardner, a professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who won a prestigious MacArthur Foundation “genius award” in 1981, has had enormous influence, particularly in our schools. Briefly, he has posited that our intellectual abilities are divided among at least eight abilities: verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, visual-spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, naturalistic, musical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. The appealing elements of the theory are numerous.

Multiple intelligences put every child on an equal footing, granting the hope of identical value in an ostensible meritocracy. The theory fits well with a number of the assumptions that have dominated educational philosophy for years. The movements that took flower in the mid-20th century have argued for the essential sameness of all healthy human beings and for a policy of social justice that treats all people the same. Above all, many educators have adhered to the social construction of reality — the idea that redefining the way we treat children will redefine their abilities and future successes. (Perhaps that’s what leads some parents to put their faith in “Baby Einstein” videos: the hope that a little nurturing television will send their kids to Harvard.) It would be difficult to overestimate the influence of Gardner’s work, both in repudiating that elitist, unfair concept of “g” and in guiding thought in psychology as it applies to education.

The only problem, with all respect to Gardner: There probably is just a single intelligence or capacity to learn, not multiple ones devoted to independent tasks. To varying degrees, some individuals have this capacity, and others do not. To be sure, there is much debate about Gardner’s theory in the literature, with contenders for and against. Nonetheless, empirical evidence has not been robust. While the theory sounds nice (perhaps because it sounds nice), it is more intuitive than empirical. In other words, the eight intelligences are based more on philosophy than on data.” (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

“It is no myth that repressive regimes are becoming increasingly more savvy in their ability to effectively employ sophisticated filtering, censoring, monitoring technologies (often courtesy of American companies like Cisco) to crack down on resistance movements. In other words, political activists need to realize that their regimes are becoming smarter and more effective, not dumber and hardly clueless.

That said, there are notable—at times surprising—loopholes. During the recent election violence in Iran, for example, facebook.com was blocked but not facebook.com/home.php. In any case, repressive regimes will continue to block more sites impose information blockades because they tend to view new media and digital technologies as a threat.

Perhaps technologies of liberation are a force more powerful?

In order to remain on the offensive against repressive regimes, nonviolent civil resistance movements need to ensure they are up to speed on digital security, if only for defense purposes. Indeed, I am particularly struck by the number of political activists in repressive regimes who aren’t aware of the serious risks they take when they use their mobile phones or the Internet to communicate with other activists.” — Patrick Meier (iRevolution via walker)

An international consortium of researchers is sequencing the 3 billion bases that make up the genome of our closest relative – the Neandertal

The sequence is generated from DNA extracted from three Croatian Neandertal fossils, using novel methods developed for this project.

The Neandertal genome sequence will clarify the evolutionary relationship between humans and Neandertals as well as help identify those genetic changes that enabled modern humans to leave Africa and rapidly spread around the world, starting around 100,000 years ago. (Max Planck Institute)

“A reader writes:

So here's what we have:

They're afraid of murdering too many protesters all at once. Eventually the protesters will come to understand how to work around this.” — The Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan (The Atlantic)

Black holes are perhaps the most outrageous prediction of science, and even though we can paint fine theoretical pictures of them and point to evidence for many objects that seem to be black hole-ish, nobody has ever actually seen one.

All that could change in the next few months. Astronomers are working to tie together a network of microwave telescopes across the planet to make a single instrument with the most acute vision yet. They will turn this giant eye towards what they believe is a supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy, code name Sagittarius A. (New Scientist)