Globally Rational

You are browsing the archives of 2008 August.

//In case you haven’t heard yet, Obama officially announced yesterday that Joe Biden will be his running mate.  I don’t think anybody will deny the fact that Biden’s “experience” played a major role in the decision… Obama has been criticized for lack thereof, so he needed a running mate who has been in Washington for […]

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//Recently, a Chinese blogger visited Beijing to write about the Olympics. He ended up getting a visit from the local authorities, who aren’t exactly big fans of free press (China is ranked 163rd out of 169 countries on the worldwide Press Freedom Index). They escorted him out of the city and took him […]

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//Following is the second guest post by Zartost.  He gives us an occasional dose of philosophy among our random worldly ocncerns.
This is the first draft of my first attempt at poetry. I am just bored w/ the mundane discussion of worldly matters … so despite my obvious weakness in my command of English language, I […]

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//Recently, Russian forces intervened to help control the violence in neighboring Georgia, much to the anger of the international community.  The US and the EU have condemned Russia’s “invasion” of a sovereign nation, saying that Georgia should be allowed to handle its own problems in its own way.  Apparently, international intervention is no longer acceptable.
Am […]

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//I don’t think I’m the first one to notice that we tend to group people in a way that makes us believe that they’re “all the same”.  Most Americans, for instance, think that India is one large country with one huge, homogeneous population… in fact, India is about as culturally diverse as Europe.  Similarly, I’ve […]

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//I’ve been writing every day for a few months now (with the exception of the last couple of days) and I am starting to wonder… does anybody actually take it seriously?  I’ve noticed that, in a lot of cases, cognitive dissonance sets in and people seem to automatically associate the facts with their predetermined opinions.  […]

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//There were two firebombings today at the University of California-Santa Cruz.  Many people have dubbed this a terrorist attack.  So who could be at fault?  Al-Qaeda again?  Or are Hamas or Hezbollah infiltrating US soil?  Maybe we should just blame Islam in general…
Or wait… it turns out that the bombings were the work of a […]

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//I came across an interesting article today; you should check it out before you read this post.
People often tell me that Muslims deserve the treatment they get because we tend to produce more extremists than other religions. Let’s disregard all other factors (for example, the fact that Christian extremists have been common in the past, […]

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//It seems to me that the entire idea of a “war on terror” is fundamentally flawed.  Typically, a war is waged between two specific entities; terror, on the other hand, is an entire concept.  You can’t fight an ideal by sending guns and launching bombs.  You can’t fight an ideal by killing civilians and occupying […]

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