The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
Front-Ranger:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on August 09, 2011, 01:03:32 pm ---I am currently reading the article in the August 8 issue about the mission to take out Osama bin Laden. All American taxpayers should be pleased to learn that the White House orders sandwich platters from Costco instead of from some place more expensive. ;D
On a much, MUCH more serious note, it troubles me to read the quotations indicating that the bin Laden raid was carried out "for God and Country." For "Country" by all means, but, to keep this short, the "God" part troubles me because I think every reference to the Almighty lends credence to claims by radical Islamic fundamentalists that the West is on some sort of "crusade" against Islam.
I simply won't go into what I as a Christian feel about that reference to God, but I will assure you that I'm not in favor of it.
--- End quote ---
That phrase was regrettable. The person who said it, who had just killed "Geronimo" was probably not thinking about the full ramifications of what he was saying. Perhaps he just meant that what was done was for moral as well as political reasons.
The article was one of those that you just can't put down!!
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: Tony-Ranger on August 10, 2011, 03:27:34 pm ---The article was one of those that you just can't put down!!
--- End quote ---
You can say that twice and mean it!
Front-Ranger:
Here's a link to the article, everyone:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/08/110808fa_fact_schmidle
serious crayons:
I actually really liked the article immediately after that, the one by Adam Gopnik about how dogs became dogs (it's thought that wolves started hanging around human settlements to scavenge food; the more friendly ones got fed and rewarded and eventually taken in and, through inadvertent selective breeding of the friendlier ones, become more and more pet-like). I read a National Geographic article a few weeks ago that indicates scientists are now deliberately doing the same thing with foxes. You can't usually take a wild animal in and train it to behave like a pet, but in some cases apparently you can breed it to become a pet after several generations. So they've created foxes that act like friendly dogs.
An interesting but unmentioned sidenote to that piece: At one point, Gopnik mentions that some people tend to describe dog thinking in really mechanical terms (e.g., they act loving to their owners because they get rewarded with food, etc.), and notes that at one time we thought babies didn't have much in the way of nuanced thoughts and feelings, either. But now scientists have discovered that babies actually do complex inner lives (though, like dogs, they aren't based on language). What he doesn't say is that his sister, Alison Gopnik, is a nationally renowned researcher in this very field. She co-wrote "The Scientist in the Crib." I interviewed her a couple of times.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on August 13, 2011, 03:25:17 am ---I actually really liked the article immediately after that, the one by Adam Gopnik about how dogs became dogs.
--- End quote ---
I liked that article, too. I rather like the notion that perhaps humans didn't choose dogs, that instead dogs chose us. ;D
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