February 2012
53 posts
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Saving Zelda
At the heart of a tour de force about the manifold problems in Legend of Zelda video games since the 1987 original, and how to make new iterations stronger, Tevis Thompson has the following insight about the idea of heroism upon which all of the Zelda games are based:
The point of a hero’s adventure… is not to make you feel better about yourself. The point is to grow, to overcome, to in some way...
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“Really, who can resist a film about a pirate who prays, who keeps kosher and who...”
– Erol Araf, who is making just such a film:
There may not have been a Silverstein on the high seas in the 17th century, but there were swashbuckling buccaneers called Balthazar and Moses Cohen Henriques and - would you believe? - Rabbi Samuel Pallache. They pillaged and plundered Spanish navy...
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Watch
It’s the fifth episode of The Hero Report; this week, our guest is Drew Jacob. Inspired by the ancient epic poems, Jacob is planning his own heroic journey: He’ll be walking from the northern United States all the way to Brazil.
And, in this very special episode, my (almost) 2-year-old son makes an extended cameo, eventually explaining to all who will listen that he’d prefer...
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Serious Biblical Interpretation
One further word on the post I published this morning about whether or not the Bible necessarily regards conception as the beginning of human life, which has garnered a fair amount of attention. A number of people have pointed out that the English translation of the passage from Exodus, which the author I quoted doesn’t provide, says that there is no punishment to be meted out if the striken...
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Iranian warships dock at Syrian port after... →
The warships reached the Syrian city of Tartous, northwest of the capital Damascus, after crossing the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean Sea.
The crossing was the second in a year by Iranian warships, Iran’s navy chief said.
Last February, the Iranian frigate Alvand and the supply ship Kharg entered the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal, for the first time since 1979.
Rear Admiral...
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The ‘biblical view’ that’s younger than the Happy... →
In 1979, McDonald’s introduced the Happy Meal.
Sometime after that, it was decided that the Bible teaches that human life begins at conception.
Ask any American evangelical, today, what the Bible says about abortion and they will insist that this is what it says. (Many don’t actually believe this, but they know it is the only answer that won’t get them in trouble.) They’ll be a little fuzzy on...
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Victims of State Terrorism No Longer on Their Own →
Mental health professionals in Argentina have accumulated such a wealth of experience in treating victims of state terrorism that they are now sharing it with colleagues across the country’s borders.
Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, which like Argentina were under the yoke of military dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s, now have access to the experience of mental health professionals here by means...
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Inside #Politics
Back in May 2011, I wrote a post that complained about the sad state of the Tumblr Politics tag; I wrote another in July 2011 because I thought there ought to be somewhere to feature more global political content. There’s been a whole lot more written about the tag over the past few days, largely because of one editor’s behavior, but I’ve avoided wading back in because a)...
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Poverty and Terrorism →
A new article in The Journal of Politics (gated) — ”Economic Conditions and the Quality of Suicide Terrorism” (draft 2009, ungated) by Benmelecha, Berrebia, and Klora — examines one of the connections between poverty and terrorism:
This article analyzes the link between economic conditions and the quality of suicide terrorism. While the existing empirical literature shows...
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Mormons apologize for posthumous baptisms of... →
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has apologized for “a serious breach of protocol” in which the parents of the late Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal were posthumously baptized as Mormons.
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The Wiesenthal baptisms violated a 1995 pact in which the church agreed to stop baptizing Jewish Holocaust victims.
I thought for the better part of an...
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“Tehran denies any involvement and accused Israel of attacking its own embassies...”
– In class yesterday, I came up with what I thought was the zaniest possible conspiracy theory about the recent bombings in India, Georgia, and elsewhere … only to have a student immediately point out that the Iranian government was way ahead of me.
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WatchIn this week’s episode of The Hero Report — which might be my favorite episode in this podcast’s young life — we debate the importance of success to heroism. Does a hero need to be successful and what do we mean when we talk about success?
We also spend a few minutes discussing Whitney Houston’s death, Chris Brown’s success at the Grammy Awards, and what heroic...
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“If you want to get to half a million pageviews, you’re always much more likely...”
– My friends at Short Form Blog explain the quote further:
Reuters’ Felix Salmon discusses the changing nature of Web journalism, where the SEO-friendly days of yore are starting to get a bit more social, which is good for high-quality but much-more-expensive reporting. Salmon’s point? The commodity...
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WatchThis report by Matthew Lee about Shavendra Silva, a Sri Lankan war criminal who has now become an advisor on peacekeeping to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is worth your six minutes this morning.
There has been very little press on Silva — or the massacres in Sri Lanka in 2009, really — but, as Lee argues, this move into the UN peacekeeping apparatus by a war criminal who is...
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WatchIn this short clip, Shadi Hamid and Gregory Gause agree that it’s not anyone’s place to tell Islamists to respect women’s rights. I suspect that this point about women’s rights will be regarded as off-putting by a whole bunch of people. It came across that way to me.
That said, this point is part of a larger discussion about the difference between democracy and liberalism,...
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Are Mansions Morally Wrong? →
Gates may have given away nearly $30 billion, but that still leaves him sitting at the top of the Forbes list of the richest Americans, with $53 billion. His 66,000-square-foot high-tech lakeside estate near Seattle is reportedly worth more than $100 million. Property taxes are about $1 million. Among his possessions is the Leicester Codex, the only handwritten book by Leonardo da Vinci still in...
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The Law Is The Law
In response to my post this morning about the Dutch reporters who stand accused of violating the privacy of a Nazi war criminal by secretly taping an interview with him, my friend the Political Prof argues:
Looks like an illegal taping case, and while it’s probably stupid for the prosecutors to care, the law, as they say, is the law. Even for war criminals.
I think I want to push all of my chips...
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Two Dutch reporters have been ordered to appear in a German court this week, following a complaint from a 90-year-old convicted Nazi war criminal who claims that the journalists violated his privacy by using a hidden camera to record an interview with him.
The reporters, Jelle Visser and Jan Ponsen, claim that they were serving the public interest by recording their conversation with the war...
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Hypocrisy or Heuristics?
What follows is a guest blog post, written by Carly M. Jacobs, a Ph.D. student in Political Science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her research interests include group identity, political psychology, biology and politics, and political behavior.
Accusations of hypocrisy are standard ammunition for liberals and conservatives alike. After all, what could be more damning than pointing...
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How Repulsive Is Progressive Hypocrisy? →
In a piece on Wednesday, Glenn Greenwald made ample use of a new Washington Post/ABC News poll that highlights how progressives are willing to tolerate (or even support) Barack Obama’s policies that they vehemently protested when they were carried out George W. Bush:
[L]ong before Barack Obama achieved any significance on the political scene, I considered blind leader loyalty one of the...
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Spanish Judge Guilty of Misusing Authority →
The Spanish judge celebrated for pursuing international human rights cases was convicted of overstepping his jurisdiction in a domestic corruption probe Thursday and barred from the bench for 11 years, completing a spectacular fall from grace for one of Spain’s most prominent people.
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He is still awaiting a verdict in a separate trial on the same charge — knowingly...
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When Rights Conflict
In light of the discussion occasioned of yesteday’s post about why it seems Rick Santorum doesn’t understand rights, I thought I might say just a little bit more. In particular, it’s important to note that Santorum isn’t alone when it comes to misunderstanding what the language of rights actually means.
I’m reminded of the beginning of Mary Ann Glendon’s book...
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Federalist #78
After reading my most recent post — Rick Santorum Doesn’t Understand Rights — the Tumblr user corroborate sent the following note:
“Except we all know that the judiciary exists in order to check the excesses that might occur as a result of the democratic process.” I think that if I were you, I’d re-read the Federalist papers.
It might be helpful to provide a brief reply.
I...
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Rick Santorum Doesn't Understand Rights
7M Californians had their rights stripped away today by activist 9th Circuit judges. As president I will work to protect marriage.
— Rick Santorum (@RickSantorum) February 7, 2012
It’s not at all interesting or surprising that Rick Santorum opposes the 9th Circuit ruling.
What’s interesting, at least to me, is that he seems not to understand what rights are or what they do. Say...
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Watch
Here, for your viewing pleasure, is the third episode of The Hero Report; this week, our guest is Mike Dilbeck.
We discuss the Every|Day Hero Campaign, the difference between teaching people not to be bystanders and encouraging them to be heroes, and the importance of having personal heroes.
Tell us what you think, discuss these issues with us on Twitter (Matt Langdon / Ari Kohen), and join us...
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“Why are some people prepared to risk their lives to help a stranger when others...”
– Are We Ready for a ‘Morality Pill’?
This is, of course, one of the questions that most interests me and that is motivating my current research on heroism. It’s also one of the questions that comes up with regularity on The Hero Report podcast. I wonder if Peter Singer, who wrote...
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WatchIf you have any interest whatsoever in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, I recommend watching the entirety of this Bloggingheads episode.
Robert Wright has done a series of really interesting interviews with members of the Israeli Left over the past couple of months and, with each one presenting a different solution or solutions, all of them taken together nicely highlight the myriad ways in...
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Governor Plays Politics With Cancer Research →
Gov. Dave Heineman compared the University of Nebraska to a wealthy “special interest group” with its hand out for taxpayer dollars while the state’s citizens want tax relief.
Heineman, in an interview Friday, said that his top priority remains passage of his proposed tax-cut package and that the university needs to reprioritize its spending or use private dollars from its...
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No habrá paz para los malvados. ”No rest for the wicked”. That’s the biblically inspired title of a recently released Spanish thriller about crime and revenge. But in the real Spain, the wicked may be having some rest after all. While prominent corruption trials come to nothing, star judge Baltasar Garzón, seen all over the world as an embodiment of the principle of universal...
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Intervention in Syria?
In vetoing a Security Council resolution calling for Bashar al-Assad to step down in Syria, Russia and China have provided cover for the regime’s on-going brutal crackdown and, as such, criticism from the U.S., France, and a host of other countries and organizations was immediate and forceful.
So now what?
If the Security Council can’t even call for Assad to step down, it’s...
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NCAA fines, places NU Athletic Department under... →
If you already don’t like the way the NCAA deals with the whole concept of paying student-athletes, then you’re really not going to like this right here:
The NCAA has placed the University of Nebraska Athletic Department under two years’ probation and enforced a $38,000 fine, which has gone to local charities, after what the department committed what the NCAA called...
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“The world is more prepared to act to stop atrocities than it was just a short...”
– The Cynics at the Gates - By James Traub
There has been a great deal of debate over the question of military intervention in Syria. An English think tank focused on Syria has even produced an assessment, mostly positive, of the case for establishing a “safe haven,” like Benghazi in...
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The Hero Report Broadcasts
Since it’s Friday morning, I wanted to remind RC readers that The Hero Report podcast will be broadcast live on Google+ this afternoon at 4pm Eastern. Our guest this week will be Mike Dilbeck, whose Every | Day Hero Campaign got under way recently.
We’ve only done one live broadcast — last week — and we’re hoping to use this feature in as many interesting ways as...
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