'Prediction," the Danish nuclear physicist Niels Bohr once observed, "is very difficult, especially about the future." For more than 60 years, the folks at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have been merrily discarding this useful piece of advice with dire warnings that the seconds are ticking toward a nuclear and, more recently, climate catastrophe. As of yesterday, their clock stood at six minutes to midnight.
And that's the good news. "For the first time since atomic bombs were dropped in 1945, leaders of nuclear-weapons states are cooperating to vastly reduce their arsenals," the Bulletin announced yesterday, by way of explaining its decision to move the hand of doom back by a minute. "A key to the new era of cooperation is a change in the U.S. government's orientation toward international affairs brought about in part by the election of Obama."
That's a funny judgment. The Administration has failed to negotiate so much as a pause in Iran's nuclear programs or rein in North Korea. Pakistan remains in a precarious political state. Russia and China are building a new generation of nuclear weapons even as the reliability of America's aging arsenal is increasingly in doubt. Meanwhile, the risks of a Middle East arms race involving current nonnuclear states like Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt grows as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad comes closer to getting his bomb. But these facts apparently don't impress the Bulletin's editorial staff or its governing board. The driving motivation here is the familiar mix of apocalyptic politics and utopian dreams that now typifies so much thinking about disarmament and global warming. That both of these causes now march under the misleading banner of "science" tells us more about the times than it does about the future.
#2
To summarize an important chapter in William Stevenson's A Man Called Intrepid:
Bohr was living in Copenhagen during the Nazi occupation. He was cheerfully discussing atomic fission with any scientist who came to visit him, mainly Hitler's rocket men at Peenemunde. Somehow (I forget the details) British Intelligence got through to him that he needed to get out of Denmark. He was smuggled out in a Moon Plane. Shortly afterward, he visited Princess Ingeborg, who told him what the Nazis were doing in Denmark and elsewhere in Europe, especially concerning the butchery of the Jews. Bohr was flabbergasted. "Surely an appeal to Hitler would stop these things!"
Princess Ingeborg replied, "An appeal to Hitler is an appeal to the devil! You lived in the Third Reich and you never understood it!"
Bohr never did get the point entirely. He made statements calling for peaceful use of Atomic Energy, which, of course, assorted bad guys like Stalin and Mao ignored.
The article indicates that Bohr isn't the only genius to be incredibly stupid. Intelligence and wisdom are two vastly different things.
Krugman in NYTimes: The bankers' testimony showed a stunning failure, even now, to grasp the nature and extent of the current crisis. We're in trouble entirely thanks to the dysfunctional nature of our own financial system. Everyone understands this -- everyone, it seems, except the financiers themselves. Upton Sinclair said it better: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it."
Here in Massachusetts, as well as in Washington, a growing sense of gloom is setting in among Democrats about the fortunes of Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley. "I have heard that in the last two days the bottom has fallen out of her poll numbers," says one well-connected Democratic strategist. In her own polling, Coakley is said to be around five points behind Republican Scott Brown. "If she's not six or eight ahead going into the election, all the intensity is on the other side in terms of turnout," the Democrat says. "So right now, she is destined to lose." Be still my heart!
Intensifying the gloom, the Democrat says, is the fact that the same polls showing Coakley falling behind also show President Obama with a healthy approval rating in the state. "With Obama at 60 percent in Massachusetts, this shouldn't be happening, but it is," the Democrat says.
Given those numbers, some Democrats, eager to distance Obama from any electoral failure, are beginning to compare Coakley to Creigh Deeds, the losing Democratic candidate in the Virginia governor's race last year. Deeds ran such a lackluster campaign, Democrats say, that his defeat could be solely attributed to his own shortcomings, and should not be seen as a referendum on President Obama's policies or those of the national Democratic party.
The same sort of thinking is emerging in Massachusetts. "This is a Creigh Deeds situation," the Democrat says. "I don't think it says that the Obama agenda is a problem. I think it says, 1) that she's a terrible candidate, 2) that she ran a terrible campaign, 3) that the climate is difficult but she should have been able to overcome it, and 4) that Democrats beware -- you better run good campaigns, or you're going to lose."
With the election still four days away, Democrats are still hoping that "something could happen" to change the dynamics of the race. But until that thing happens, the situation as it exists today explains Barack Obama's decision not to travel to Massachusetts to campaign for Coakley. "If the White House thinks she can win, Obama will be there," the Democrat says. "If they don't think she can win, he won't be there." For national Democrats, the task is now to insulate Obama against any suggestion that a Coakley defeat would be a judgment on the president's agenda and performance in office.
The private talk among Democrats is also reflected in some public polling on the race. Late Thursday, we learned the results of a Suffolk University poll showing Brown in the lead by four points, 50 percent to 46 percent. That poll showed Obama with a 55 percent approval rating. Also on Thursday, two of Washington's leading political analysts, Stuart Rothenberg and Charlie Cook, each changed their assessment of the Brown/Coakley race from a narrow advantage for Coakley to a toss-up
#1
as of about 2 hours ago, the WH is preparing for BHO to campaign in MA for Coakley on 1-17
maybe they read the '60% like Obama' and think they can leverage this or maybe Obama was ticked that Bill Clinton campaigned for Coakley and will claim Obama was AWOL
Posted by: lord garth ||
01/15/2010 15:17 Comments ||
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#2
OT pay for union on Sunday, but I'd rather be watching the Cowboys/Vikes game.
Posted by: Tom- Pa ||
01/15/2010 15:32 Comments ||
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#3
Bammo is going to MA on Sunday, even though he knows it will hurt Coakley. There is losing, and there is losing big. A brown victory falls into the first category. A stampede of Congressional Dems away from Bammo and his legislative priorities falls into the second category. Bammo must avoid the perception that he didn't even try to help out a Dem candidate in need.
#4
yeah, nobody in Massachusettes will be watching the football playoffs Sunday, they'd rather be shaking hands with Obama and Coakley in the cold at Fenway Park...er.....Nice that he can put off Haiti, the Newsweek Cover story he's ghost writing on Haiti, and the unemployment issue to campaign for toots in MA.
"Nice job light Brownie!"
/stolen shamelessly at AOSHQ commenters
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/15/2010 18:09 Comments ||
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#5
Coakley will win once the votes are counted. They may have to find a few lost boxes of ballots in car trunks, but she'll win.
#2
just shared this with a 'friend'... thier reply "you cant believe that.. it is on fox, and they are nothing but a mouthpiece for the Republicans... everyone knows they have been totally discredited as a 'news' org."
i kid you not. :(
after i argued a bit, it was "well, Bush and the pubs did much much worse.. la la la la la... i cant hear you "
Posted by: abu do you love ||
01/15/2010 20:07 Comments ||
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#1
Another Zero Hedge reader. An interesting site. I especially like Reggie Middleton's exposes of hidden bank toxicity, and their occasional posting of David Rosenberg's macro-economic analyses. And of course there's Robot Trader. Also a fair number of whackos.
Posted by: Number 673927 ||
01/15/2010 18:08 Comments ||
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To varying degrees, thinkers and theologians identified with the democratic movement have been offering a new reading of Shiism that makes the faith more amenable to democracy and secularism. The most significant innovation—found in essays, sermons, books, and even fatwas—is the acceptance of the separation of mosque and state, the idea that religion must be limited to the private domain.
The clear target of these new teachings is the Ayatollah Khamenei. At the time of his ascension, he was merely a junior cleric. Khamenei has angrily resisted this revolt within the clergy. Several seminaries and residences of these reformist ayatollahs have been attacked by hired mobs working for the regime. Then there's the case of the Ayatollah Sanei. As I have mentioned, he is one of the most important thinkers in this new movement. But he has, in recent days, been declared unfit to be an ayatollah by the influential Qom-based cleric Ayatollah Yazdi, notorious for his corruption and conservatism. Yazdi's statement is ominous. Sanei, who has been accepted as an ayatollah for more than twenty years, is now accused of issuing dangerous fatwas.
Posted by: lord garth ||
01/15/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Reminds me of erstwhile "Sovient Experts" bull.
#2
I don't know, grom, it sounds a lot like the Islamic Reformation everyone's been asking for, or at least an approximation of the pre-reformation Erastian humanist precursors. On the other hand, it could be a western mis-conception of conservative anti-vilayet el faqih sentiment. It's important to remember that the Iranian Revolution is based on a Shia heresy, not settled doctrine.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
01/15/2010 9:54 Comments ||
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#3
IMO, Islam cannot be fixed---because it's not broken. To wit, it's a perfect ideology for people who profess it. Without it they'd just die out because they cannot compete on our terms.
#4
g(r)omgoru: But that's precisely the point. Reform in religion is to ignore the literal, and with a straight face, reinterpret it to mean something completely different.
An excellent example of this in Islam would be to change the meaning of Jihad, from an external act to an internal one. That good Muslims must have Jihad within themselves, but never express it outwardly, or direct it at others.
Another trick is to change the emphasis of parts of religion, downgrading the violent parts and upgrading the peaceful parts.
#6
g(r)omgoru: There's a lot of potential depth in traditional Islam than we see today. Islam had something of a "midpoint", when its sense of philosophy and science peaked, in about the 11th Century, but which ironically lead to its "freezing of thought" and intellectual stagnation since.
This has been attributed to Islam's perhaps greatest philosopher, Al-Ghazali:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ghazali
The interpretation of whose works eventually shut down most science and technological study in the Muslim world, resulting in the stagnant and decrepit Islam seen today.
However, there are now Islamic scholars who are trying to break the ice with a Reformation of Islam, if they can just overcome the intellectual logjam and inertia.
Hopefully the end result will be as divorced from traditional Islam as the Universal Life Church is from Greek Orthodox Christian.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A mix of apocalyptic politics and utopian dreams.
A plan to ban the wearing of the burqa in public stokes new controversy
Here in Massachusetts, as well as in Washington, a growing sense of gloom is setting in among Democrats about the fortunes of Democratic Senate candidate Martha Coakley. "I have heard that in the last two days the bottom has fallen out of her poll numbers," says one well-connected Democratic strategist. In her own polling, Coakley is said to be around five points behind Republican Scott Brown. "If she's not six or eight ahead going into the election, all the intensity is on the other side in terms of turnout," the Democrat says. "So right now, she is destined to lose." 
