Walking in 30 Days

Iran's intention is to humiliate the British to bolster its standing in the Arab world. This idea would neatly turn the tables on them.

Fatherhood and Metazoans

In preparation for Pesach, I've started reading Jonathan Sacks' Haggadah. The commentary shows pretty impressive secular scholarship. This passage got my attention:

Fatherhood and motherhood are two distinct phenomena and Judaism attaches equal importance to both. A child derives its biological identity as part of the Jewish people from its mother. The hebrew word for compassion, rachamim, derives from rechem, meaning 'a womb'. A mother, more than a father, is bound to the child through unconditional love.

Fatherhood by contrast, is a social construct. It belongs to culture rather than nature. There are animals including primates, genetically close to human beings, in which fathers do not even recognize their children after a few months. Fatherhood, like fidelity, is not a constant across cultures. The supreme challenge of any civilization said the anthropologist Margaret Mead, is to socialize males and persuade them to invest their energies in the home, the family and children.

I like this idea of the need to socialize fathers, though I'm uncertain that fatherhood is not a genetic drive in human males. Just as love has a physiological basis that varies dramatically between vertebrate species (vasopression receptor expression), it wouldn't surprise me if genetically specifies predisposition for father-child attachment didn't vary widely between and possibly within species, including our own.

With the imminent birth of our baby I've been thinking a lot about fatherhood. In a scurrilous attack piece, New Jersey journalist Matt Katz accused me of plotting to fool my offspring into becoming vegetarian by resorting to mind games. I certainly never said anything of the sort. What I might have said was that I thought as a father I could set a good example in the home but encourage my children to experiment outside the home and come to their own conclusions.

I do wonder if this approach is too liberal and the traditional method of simply instructing children in right versus wrong practice is better. In the end, I think I ascribe a lot of importance to behavioral flexibility. Evolution shows us that many species have died out because they lacked the physiological plasticity to adapt to rapidly changing conditions. I hope that encouraging children to engage in moral reasoning will prepare them best for the many unforeseeable situations they are likely to find themselves in as the world goes through a period of upheaval.

Ferocious Diplomatic Activity

After 5 years of diplomatic activity aimed at curbing the Iranian nuclear program, and several months of active sanctions, its charming that the British believe that they can resolve their problems with Iran through intensive diplomatic activity

We are now in a new phase of diplomatic activity,' Beckett told members of parliament.

'We need to focus all our bilateral efforts during this phase to resolution of this issue,' she added. 'We will therefore be imposing a freeze on all other official bilateral business with Iran until this situation is resolved.'

The freeze means all official inward and outward visits will be stopped, visas to Iranian officials will not be issued, British support for other events such as trade missions to Iran is put on hold and government-to-government business on other issues will cease, the UK foreign office told The Associated Press.

No wonder the Iranians are bold. While trade sanctions are invariably ineffective, Resolution 1737 which selectively freezes the assets of 12 individuals and a few Iranian companies is an enormous joke. Who could possibly imagine that blocking the activity of a handful of named individuals could possibly impact the Iranian nuclear program?

I predict that the British sailors will eventually be released, but not after a well publicised trial designed to exact maximum humiliation and thereby prove to the Iranian population the might of the Ayatollahs against a former world power.

UN Human Rights Council Demolished

Fantastic - this speech was banned by the UN Human Rights council. I wonder why...

The despots who run this council couldn't care less about Palestinians or any human rights ... they also seek to distort and pervert the very language of human rights.

Completely Uncomfortable

Acephalous posts a particularly pithy student complaint letter:

I could have read books in too much detail on my own but that is not what I came to college to do because I already know how to read and I would have told you this but you make me completely uncomfortable with your words so I never said a word.

Where's Osama

This piece on the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden reads like a spy novel:

To discover the whereabouts of the world’s most wanted man, it is best to turn to unofficial yet reliable sources, such as the professional soldiers for paramilitary corporations that attend the annual Soldier of Fortune convention in Las Vegas. The mercenaries (“mercs,” for short) know where he is since they are anxious albeit not willing to collect the $25 million bounty.

Osama bin Laden is alive and well and living in the valley of Dir within the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. He has been there since he escaped from Tora Bora in December 2001.

To substantiate this claim, the mercs produce shabnamas or “night letters” that are circulated among the various tribes within the frontier. The night letters contain updates of Osama at work and play and photos of the al-Qaeda leader with Maulvi Sufi Mohamed, an old and revered Muslim scholar, who maintains a Taliban-style rule over the valley of Dir with public executions of adulterers, homosexuals, apostates, and Christian infidels.

The picture is a Google Earth snapshot of the town of Dir, deep in the Malakand Pass. Is Osama really hiding under a bed somewhere there? Seems like the ideal spot. Probably in an apartment building full of human shields to discourage missile strikes.

Jews, Muslims and Germany

From Ynetnews.com

The first rabbi to be ordained in Germany since the Holocaust is so worried about being identified as a Jew that he often wears a baseball hat over his skull cap.

And while rightwing sympathy is on the ascendant in Germany, the country's largest ethnic minority does not share the secular mainstream's idea of German national identity.

Germany has been for decades a multi-ethnic society but very few Germans imagine Germany as a multicultural society. German intellectuals brag a lot about being secular, well how about secularizing the German State and dumping Christianity and Judaism from the national budget.

German identity is rooted in the past and is culturally tied to race, and ethnicity. Becoming German is very difficult even for those who are born in Germany; speak German better than most natives but happen to look like me rather than Boris Becker.

It's not hard to see how this 'secular' view of national identity provides fertile ground for neo-nazi movements to thrive.

YouTube - Than Shwe's secret home found. Pyinmana map via satellite.

Apparently this YouTube video, showing Burmese dictator Than Shwe's secret home has made quite a stir. It's worth watching, mostly to experience the Burmese rap background track. The caption for the video is also impressive: "One of the world's most notorious dictators, Than Shwe of Burma (Myanmar) has fled away from its people and away from the seaport, due to the risk of American/UN invasion." Scary stuff, the risk of a UN invasion.

Swedish Investigatory Journalism

Apparently its not just the media in the US that feels truth shouldn't get in the way of a good story.

A story in the Swedish press alleging that the Bush administration had banned an album featuring Swedish singer Eva Dahlgren was fabricated, it has emerged.

Major media organizations including Svenska Dagbladet, Sveriges Radio, Metro and TV4 reported that the record 'Lullabies from the Axis of Evil' had been banned.