The Most Influential Books

The Economist magazine, supposedly the most intellectual news magazine, has announced The most influential books of all time:

00:50 - Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
02:54 - A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Wolf
07:00 - Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austin
08:42 - Harry Potter, by JK Rowling

All four written by women.

For comparison, I asked Grok:

The Bible
The Quran
The Republic by Plato
On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
1984 by George Orwell
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

I am stunned by the inclusion of silly children's books, and women's books.

I would have included Euclid's Elements, Ptolemy's Almagest, Newton's Principia, Maxwell's Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, Von Neumann's Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, and Bourbaki's Elements of Mathematics.

Why Couples Therapy Never Works

YouTuber psychologist PsyHacks explains:

I might take some heat for this one, but I'm not a big fan of couples therapy -- mostly because I haven't seen it associated with a very high rate of success. In this episode, I give several reasons why this may be the case, and argue that -- if therapy is needed -- most issues can be more productively addressed in individual counseling. It's very hard to tell the truth that one person can hear; it's almost impossible to tell the truth that two people can hear simultaneously.

In short, there is a myth that relationship problems are caused by a lack of communication, and that they can be solved by a counselor recommending compromises. But communication is almost never the problem, and compromise almost never the solution.

There are some people who say that they were helped, but they probably helped themselves and would have done better without the therapy.

Conventional wisdom is that all psycho therapy is good for you, unless it is directed at normal sexual feelings, which is so objectionable that some states ban it. But that is not so simple, as Joy Pullman writes:

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to 26 state laws at least partly based on studies claiming “conversion therapy” increases LGBT Americans’ suicide risks. Yet every existing study that makes this claim is seriously scientifically unsound, several research reviews recently found.

Not only do all these studies depend on unscientific methods, but the data from one highly cited such study actually shows the opposite of what its authors claim, says a sociologist who reran the study’s data with standard scientific controls the authors omitted.

“The evidence shows that SOCE [sexual orientation change efforts] is fairly effective at preventing suicide attempts,” said Paul Sullins, a research professor at Catholic University and senior researcher for the Ruth Institute, in a press conference released Friday.

So the psychotherapy that works is banned, and the harmful psychotherapy is encouraged.

Almost all psychotherapists are in on this scam. You may think that you know a good one, but I doubt it.

Jewish Shakedown on Twitter again

The Leftist group Media Matters group argues:

As X owner Elon Musk continues his descent into white nationalist and antisemitic conspiracy theories, his social media platform has been placing ads for major brands like Apple, Bravo (NBCUniversal), IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity (Comcast) next to content that touts Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party.

... endorsed the pernicious antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jewish people are supporting “hordes of minorities” who are “flooding” into the country to replace white people. ... X has also reinstated numerous accounts of bigots and paid far-right extremists, ...

Twitter/X has not reinstated Andrew Anglin or Nick Fuentes. They were banned for purely political reasons.

The article goes on with examples like someone quoting Hitler as saying "I believe in truth", and an Oracle ad being on the same page.

Media Matters is dishonest as usual about this, as it found Hitler quotes by searching for Hitler quotes.

Yes, I believe that you should be able to search for Hitler quotes on the internet. I just objected to censoring Osama bin Laden.

Even Biden is in on the act:

The White House denounced Elon Musk on Friday for “abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate,” for his endorsement of what an administration spokesman called a “hideous lie” about Jews.

But is it true that Jews support hordes of minorities flooding into the country?

Not all Jews, of course, but the overwhelming majority, and more than any other ethnic group. Even the NY Times articles on this subject do not deny it.

The New Yorker Radio Hour podcast just addressed this:

The State Department’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, the historian Deborah Lipstadt, says the prejudice is coming “from all ends of the political spectrum, and in between.” It threatens not only Jews, she says, but the stability of democracies. Lipstadt and David Remnick discuss how antisemitic sentiments may overlap in complicated ways with political opposition to Israel, including anti-Zionism.

You would think that she would concerned about the many millions of people who now want to exterminate Jews from Israel. Nope. Her main complaint was about a 2017 rally where some protesters chanted to the effect that they did not want Jews importing hordes of minorities, and some Jews exited a synagogue out the back door to avoid attention from the crowd. She said this was the only time Jews have had to use the back door, and this should never happen.

I was amazed that she would say this, as the world is criticizing Israel for aggressively exterminating the Arabs in Gaza.

NY Times columnist David French writes:

In my years as a Republican and a conservative lawyer, I never witnessed a trace of antisemitism. ...

The ghost of Charles Lindbergh is haunting us. Lindbergh, readers may recall, was the hero aviator who flew solo across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927. He later grew to admire German fascism and gave a famous speech in September 1941 in which he accused Jews of attempting to push America into World War II.

“The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war,” he said, “are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration.” And while Lindbergh expressed sympathy for Jews facing Nazi persecution, he went straight to the same tropes that were deployed last week, claiming that the Jewish people’s “greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.”

French is not Jewish, but he is in the NY Times because he recites the Jewish anti-Trump line.

So while Arabs, leftists, and Moslems support killing Jews in Israel, the Jewish press is on the warpath against right-wingers who occasionally tell the truth about Jewish influence. And American Jews side politically with the leftists.

Anti-semitism is a big hoax. The term is not even used for killing Israeli Jews. It is used by Jews who want to censor online truth-telling.

Apparently the most anti-semitism is on Tik-tok, not Twitter/X:

“What is happening at TikTok is it is creating the biggest anti-Semitic movement since the Nazis,” actor Sacha Baron Cohen said during the call, according to The New York Times.

So now Tiktok has banned searches for "letter to America".

Why America is Uniquely Stupid

Social Psychology professor Jonathan Haidt writes:

This spring, The Atlantic published my essay “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid,” in which I argued that the best way to understand the chaos and fragmentation of American society is to see ourselves as citizens of Babel in the days after God rendered them unable to understand one another.

I showed how a few small changes to the architecture of social-media platforms, implemented from 2009 to 2012, increased the virality of posts on those platforms, which then changed the nature of social relationships. People could spread rumors and half-truths more quickly, and they could more readily sort themselves into homogenous tribes. Even more important, in my view, was that social-media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook could now be used more easily by anyone to attack anyone. It was as if the platforms had passed out a billion little dart guns, and although most users didn’t want to shoot anyone, three kinds of people began darting others with abandon: the far right, the far left, and trolls.

He has a worthwhile theory. He has put his finger to what may be driving much of what is wrong with modern society.

The Atlantic has a story on The secret history of the U.S. government’s family-separation policy. The USA dcoes separate families far more than any other country in the world. But that is not what the article is about. It ignores the millions of citizens who get separated, and focuses on illegal aliens who smuggle in kids with them.

Much of the magazine is filled with left-wing garbage. It has articles by David French, who is known as a cuckservative, and has a deranged hatred for Donald Trump and for Trump supporters. It has an article about how feminists are dissatisfied with the sexual revolution. It has an article about people who would by an AR-15 rifle and a rosary to pray. Most of it is behind a paywall, so I haven't read it.

Update: Here is a good rebuttal to the family separation article.

Talk radio is at the heart of Trumpism

From a NY Times op-ed:

This suspicion that elite institutions — the media, universities, government, Big Tech — are run by hostile liberal gatekeepers seeking to silence conservative voices continues to fuel right-wing anxiety. It also helps explain conservative support for Mr. Trump, who can be accused of many things but not of failing to speak his mind.

Suspicion? It is true that those are run by hostile liberal gatekeepers.

As the article explains, the notable exception is talk radio.

It is funny how left-wing talk radio hosts have failed. In my opinion, it is mostly because leftist political figures are in denial about basic truths, and have to say stuff that they don't believe. They cannot keep it up for 3 hours like Rush Limbaugh. They cannot handle the occasional caller who destroys their arguments. They don't have enough protection for their phony policies.

If Pres. Trump gets re-elected, he should think talk radio, because he does not get a fair shot anywhere else.

German political correctness

Here is a new word:

"Gutmensch," an overly politically correct person, has been named Germany's buzzword of the year 2015. The award pinpoints an awkward or controversial term that has shaped public discourse. ...

"Gutmensch" was selected because, in connection with the current refugee crisis in Germany, it defames "tolerance and helpfulness as naïve, dumb and worldly innocent, as having a helper syndrome or as moral imperialism," the jury president, linguist Nina Janich, told the press. ...

Last year's non-word of the year was "Lügenpresse," or "liar press." The expression was popular at the time among supporters of the German anti-Islamization movement "Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West," or PEGIDA.

Resting Bitch Face

I thought this was a joke:

Queen Elizabeth has it. So does fashion designer Victoria Beckham. And actress Kristen Stewart — poor thing, she’s practically the poster girl.

Among the slew of pop culture icons said to be afflicted with so-called Resting Bitch Face (alternatively known as Bitchy Resting Face), the vast majority are women, though Kanye West is among the male examples. All of them have been mocked by Internet commenters for having a certain unintentional expression when their faces are not in motion — a look best described as vaguely annoyed, maybe a little judgy, perhaps slightly bored.

No, apparently it is a real condition.

Buzzfeed corruption exposed

Buzzfeed has gotten enormous publicity for its allegations against Uber, including two NY Times articles, claiming that Uber going to expose a SJW (social justice warrior) journalist. Now it turns out that Buzzfeed's own coverage is corrupt, as it is publishing these articles in order to profit in its investment in an Uber competitor.

The Buzzfeed articles do not includes quotes of the controversial Uber executive remarks, or an explanation of the SJW journalist issue, or a disclosure of its conflict of interest. And yet it got its story out to the mainstream news sites.

I do not have any opinion about Uber. I am just noting how some slimy hired guns like Buzzfeed can manipulate the mainstream press to advantage their financial interests. You cannot trust stories like this.

The Dilbert cartoonist points out:

Michael didn't "suggest" doing anything. Nor did he - then or now - even want to dig up dirt on journalists. Assuming Buzzfeed's reporting of the details is accurate, all he did was make a dinner party intellectual comparison between the evil of the media that was unfairly attacking them (which I assume is true) and their own civilized response to the attacks.

Michael's point, as Buzzfeed reports it, was that horrible people in the media mislead readers and there is nothing a victim can do about it within the realm of reasonable business practices. The Buzzfeed business model is totally legal. But, as Michael explained, probably over a cocktail, the only legal solution to this problem would be to use freedom of the press to push back on the bad actors by giving them a taste of their own medicine.

But it was just private cocktail talk. It wasn't a plan. It definitely wasn't a "suggestion." It was just an interesting way to make a point. The point, as I understand it from Buzzfeed's own reporting, is that Uber DOES play fair in a fight in which the opponents (bad actors in the press) do not. I find that interesting. It is also literally the opposite of what the headline of the story "suggests" happened.

And Michael made his point in a room full of writers/media people. Obviously it wasn't a plan.

It's not as if Michael was talking about manipulating the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. Those publications might get some facts wrong now and then, but they don't have a business model that involves intentionally taking things out of context to manufacture news.

Buzzfeed does have a business model of manipulating the mainstream papers, I guess, and the papers fall for it.

Another obnoxious thing is that Buzzfeed implies that Sarah Lacy (editor of PandoDaily) is some sort of criminal or guilty of something seriously embarrassing. Buzzfeed does not say, and I do not know. I can only assume that Buzzfeed is blackmailing her, and is threatening to expose her if she does not play their game.

RSA paid for crypto backdoor

RSA Security was famous for leaking a backdoor to its biggest crypto product to Chinese hackers, and now it has been exposed to have been paid to have an NSA backdoor:

RSA has issued a statement denying allegations stemming from Friday's bombshell report that the encryption software provider received $10 million from the National Security Agency (NSA) in exchange for making a weak algorithm the preferred one in its BSAFE toolkit. ...

Nothing in the release contradicts the findings of the Reuters article — that RSA accepted $10 million from the NSA in exchange for making the Dual EC_DRBG BSAFE's default pseudo random number generator (PRNG).

This hasn't hit the press yet, but there was a similar story with a Canadian crypto company. Here is the 2003 press release:

Certicom Corp. (TSX: CIC), a leading provider of wireless security solutions, today announced that the National Security Agency (NSA) in Maryland has purchased extensive licensing rights to Certicom’s MQV-based Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) intellectual property. ... This contract, valued at US$25 million, ...

Certicom promoted MQV as an IEEE standard, and the NSA also made it a standard.

One of the stated purposes of MQV was to resist the "unknown key share attack". However the NSA weakened MQV to make it susceptible to that attack, and the weakness was published in 2001. It was the NSA-weakened protocol that Certicom promoted as an IEEE standard.

I was on the IEEE committee, and voted against MQV because it had been broken. I was outvoted. I could never get a clear explanation as to why we were adopting a broken version of a protocol, except that NSA was supporting the broken version. My guess is that Certicom was influenced by that $25M.

I cannot say that any spying resulted from use of MQV. NSA ended up dropping MQV, and I doubt that many others use it. That is too bad, as an improved version, HMQV is quite efficient and secure.

Disclosure: I was involved in a couple of lawsuits against RSA in the 1990s. I alleged antitrust violations and an assortment of patent issues. I ended up getting a judgment with a license to the public key cryptography patents. The RSA claims against me were all dismissed. The patentability issues were never really resolved, as Forbes calls it the most difficult question in patent law and it is currently back before the US Supreme Court.

Update: Certicom also had a hand in the RSA backdoor. None of these weaknesses were particularly secret, as they were always documented on the relevant Wikipedia pages.

Hello, okay, huh

The USA got its language from England, but there are three words universally recognized all over the world, and they are all American.

Okay was invented in 1839 as a misspelled abbreviation of "all correct".

Hello was invented to have something to say when answering the newly-invented telephone.

Huh is impossible to trace and seems to date back centuries, and is now used all over the world. I cannot put my finger on an American inventor in this case, but it is hard to see how such a brilliantly expressive word could spread so widely without American influence.

So please do not say that Americans have no linguistic original. Maybe our 50k other words are stolen, but we are responsible for the three most universal words.

Noncentral Fallacy

Less Wrong claims that the noncentral fallacy is the worst argument in the world:

I declare the Worst Argument In The World to be this: "X is in a category whose archetypal member gives us a certain emotional reaction. Therefore, we should apply that emotional reaction to X, even though it is not a central category member."

Call it the Noncentral Fallacy. ...

"Abortion is murder!"
"Genetic engineering to cure diseases is eugenics!"
"Evolutionary psychology is sexist!"
"Capital punishment is murder!"
"Taxation is theft!"
"Affirmative action is racist!"

He is right, but it is convenient to give an argument in 3 words.

Lying about WikiLeaks

Here is proof that you cannot trust the mainstream media.

The UK Guardian newspaper announces:

A statement from the Guardian said: "It's nonsense to suggest the Guardian's WikiLeaks book has compromised security in any way.

"Our book about WikiLeaks was published last February. It contained a password, but no details of the location of the files, and we were told it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours.

Wait a minute. The UK Guardian published the password in a book? That password was used to decrypt the WikiLeaks archives, but the newspaper says that the book did not compromise security in any way? This is as false as can be.

You can read Schneier's account of the leak. The password was so sensitive that Julian Assange refused to write the whole password on a piece of paper when he gave it to the Guardian.

The other newspapers are also lying to protect each other from criticism:

LONDON (AP) — WikiLeaks disclosed its entire archive of U.S. State Department cables Friday, much if not all of it uncensored — a move that drew stinging condemnation from major newspapers which in the past collaborated with the anti-secrecy group's efforts to expose corruption and double-dealing.

Many media outlets, including The Associated Press, previously had access to all or part of the uncensored tome. But WikiLeaks' decision to post the 251,287 cables on its website makes potentially sensitive diplomatic sources available to anyone, anywhere at the stroke of a key. American officials have warned that the disclosures could jeopardize vulnerable people such as opposition figures or human rights campaigners.

A joint statement published on the Guardian's website said that the British publication and its international counterparts — The New York Times, France's Le Monde, Germany's Der Spiegel and Spain's El Pais — "deplore the decision of WikiLeaks to publish the unredacted State Department cables, which may put sources at risk."

WikiLeaks did not make any decision to make those cables available to the public. It only gave the password to selected newspapers.

For the Guardian to publish a book, it probably had dozens of editors read and review the book before publication. Surely some of them pointed out that publishing a super-sensitive password is foolish. The paper probably asked reviewer to specifically check for whether sensitive info is being released. If the Guardian failed to do this, then it was truly irresponsible.

The left-wing bias of the press is well-documented, but this is very blatant dishonesty.

Trapped miners hate shrinks

I commented last month about the foolishness of letter psychologists control communications to the trapped Chilean miners. Sure enough, it is a disaster, just as I predicted. An Australian newspaper reports:

SAN JOSE MINE, Chile: ''The honeymoon is over,'' explains Alberto Iturra, the lead psychologist in the operation to free 33 men trapped 700 metres deep in San Jose mine. As point man for the psychological health of the trapped men, Mr Iturra is at the receiving end of the rage of relatives of the miners who are upset at the Chilean government's refusal to deliver letters considered ''psychologically inappropriate''. ...

With their health improving and patience expiring after six weeks underground, the 33 miners are restless. On several occasions, they have refused to talk to psychologists, cancelled a series of meetings with doctors, delayed implementation of vaccinations. The men have few problems, however, making their desires clear: cigarettes and wine. ...

As the miners regained weight and strength, however, their antagonism to the daily sessions increased. ''If there is one group that is not exactly disposed to psychologists it is miners,'' said Dr Rodrigo Figueroa, a psychiatrist with Chile's Catholic University who was hired by the Chilean government to monitor the mental health treatment.

In recent days, the miners have been asked to conduct interviews using a video camera. The videos were then carefully listened to by a team of psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors and nurses. In a further attempt to protect the men's mental health, the 33 men are divided into groups of three, allowing a near constant observation and platform for feedback about the health of each man.

In an effort to dominate the miners, the team of psychologists led by Mr Iturra has instituted a series of prizes and punishments. When the miners behave well, they are given TV and mood music. Other treats - like images of the outside world are being held in reserve, as either a carrot or a stick should the miners become unduly feisty.

In a show of strength, the miners have at times refused to listen to the psychologists, insisting that they are well. ''When that happens, we have to say, 'OK, you don't want to speak with psychologists? Perfect. That day you get no TV, there is no music - because we administer these things,''' said Dr Diaz. ''And if they want magazines? Well, then they have to speak to us. This is a daily arm wrestle.'' ...

While NASA experts brought to Chile as advisers have recommended sending the wines and withholding the cigarettes, the Chileans have done the opposite, saying the miners have nearly two kilometres of ventilated tunnels to smoke a cigarette and relax (as opposed to the confinement of space travel) while further noting the average miner consumes large quantities of alcohol.

''These are not PhD scientists, they are rough and tumble miners,'' said one doctor who asked not to be quoted for fears of losing his post.

I think that these psychologists are experts at torturing
people, and nothing else.

New Apple iphone

If trends continue, the new Apple iphone will be marketed like this.

Examples of linguistic relativity documented

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis says:

The linguistic relativity principle, or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,[1] is the idea that differences in the way languages encode cultural and cognitive categories affect the way people think, so that speakers of different languages think and behave differently because of it. A strong version of the hypothesis holds that language determines thought and that linguistic categories limit and determine cognitive categories. A weaker version states that linguistic categories and usage influence thought and certain kinds of non-linguistic behaviour.

The idea was first clearly expressed by 19th century thinkers, such as Wilhelm von Humboldt who saw language as the expression of the spirit of a nation.

This became very politically incorrect, because of the possible implication that some nationalities could be superior to others in some respects. Eg, Ronald Reagan claimed that the Russian language had no word for "freedom." The whole idea that Russians might be less free because of some linguistic limitation was very offensive to some people.

Now the NY Times reports:

Eventually, Whorf’s theory crash-landed on hard facts and solid common sense, when it transpired that there had never actually been any evidence to support his fantastic claims. The reaction was so severe that for decades, any attempts to explore the influence of the mother tongue on our thoughts were relegated to the loony fringes of disrepute. But 70 years on, it is surely time to put the trauma of Whorf behind us. And in the last few years, new research has revealed that when we learn our mother tongue, we do after all acquire certain habits of thought that shape our experience in significant and often surprising ways.

The article goes on to describe examples, including color, gender, and direction.

Here is one striking difference:

These two sets of directions may describe the same route, but they rely on different systems of coordinates. The first uses egocentric coordinates, which depend on our own bodies: a left-right axis and a front-back axis orthogonal to it. The second system uses fixed geographic directions, which do not rotate with us wherever we turn.

The terminology is misleading. The difference is really between relative and absolute coordinates. The relative coordinates depend on the context, which may or may not be your own body. Most languages have grammars that allow phrases to have a meaning that is relative to the context. Apparently language limitations make it hard for some people to understand directions that are relative to a context.

Another article in the same paper gives other psychological evidence that people from "Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic" nations think differently. They have different perceptions and values.

Sending pills instead of truth

The trapped Chilean miner have some amazing self-disciple. AP reports:

COPIAPO, Chile – Each of the 33 miners trapped a half-mile underground lived on two spoonfuls of tuna, a sip of milk, a bite of crackers and a morsel of peaches. Every other day.

They were so careful in eating what was supposed to be a two-day emergency supply that when the outside world finally reached them 17 days after a mine collapse, they still had some food left.

The discipline the men have already shown will be essential during the four months it may take rescuers to dig a hole wide enough to get them out of their shelter. The first communications with the trapped miners, now able to talk through a fixed line with their rescuers above – show how determined they have been to stay alive.

I would treat these miners as some of the most rational and courageous people on Earth. But instead, the shrinks have persuaded the authorities to treat them as if they were crazy. The Christian Science Monitor reports:

Psychological help will be of great importance, mostly because of the long wait for a rescue.

Families said late Wednesday that antidepressants would be sent to the miners.

The notion of being trapped underground for up to four months, as has been suggested by some Chilean officials, is what the families of the miners say worries them the most about the men staying optimistic. Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter said that it would be detrimental to tell the miners in detail how long it might take to dig them out — although he said they are aware it will take some time.

This is cruel. This is torture. They are trapped underground, and they will soon figure out that the authorities are systematically lying to them about their prospects, and sending them antidepressant pills instead! The miners should be told the straight truth.

How facts backfire

Here is another story about how people refuse to accept facts contrary to their beliefs:

New research, published in the journal Political Behavior last month, suggests that once those facts — or “facts” — are internalized, they are very difficult to budge. In 2005, amid the strident calls for better media fact-checking in the wake of the Iraq war, Michigan’s Nyhan and a colleague devised an experiment in which participants were given mock news stories, each of which contained a provably false, though nonetheless widespread, claim made by a political figure: that there were WMDs found in Iraq (there weren’t), that the Bush tax cuts increased government revenues (revenues actually fell), and that the Bush administration imposed a total ban on stem cell research (only certain federal funding was restricted). Nyhan inserted a clear, direct correction after each piece of misinformation, and then measured the study participants to see if the correction took.

For the most part, it didn’t.

The paper is here (and also here), and I don't find it so convincing. It seems possible that the revenue decline was caused by an economic downturn, and that the tax cuts led to more tax revenue than there would have been without the tax cuts.

The correction is not so effective. If the US President says one thing, and some reporter says something different, then why should I believe the reporter over the President? In the experiment, the reporter was not explicitly saying that the President was lying, so maybe the reader might infer that the President is correct.

Empathy is the latest political buzzword

Last year, Pres. Barack Obama was justifying his Supreme Court appointment on the grounds that she had empathy, and people wondered why that was so important for a judge. Now the situation is reversed. Obama latest court appointment does not have any empathy to brag about, and Obama now has his own Katrina because of his own lack of empathy for Louisiana.

A blog comments:

I happened to catch The Bill Maher Show the other night and overheard a discussion about President Obama's handling of the Gulf disaster. Regardless of one's perception of how well or poorly Obama has done, Maher said, he lacks 'the empathy gene.'

I found the observation particularly astute. Obama does lack the empathy gene and reminds me of what I've read about President Woodrow Wilson.

The Wash. Post reports:

President Obama recorded his weekly Internet address from Grand Isle, La., on Friday, with a message of empathy for the people of the Gulf Coast who are suffering from the effects of the oil spill.

I am sure Obama's advisors are studying Bill Clinton's tapes where he would say, "I feel your pain", and speak of tears.

I just don't think that the public is any judge of empathy anyway. Millions of voters were fooled into thinking that John Edwards had empathy. He seemed like the phoniest of the presidential candidates to me. By the time these politicians get on the national stage, all of their emotions are faked.

The insult apology

The NY Times (or Int. Herald Tribune) has avery strange apology. You may know the non-apology apology, which pretends to apologize, but only expresses regret that anyone was offended. This Times apology is the insult apology. It pretends to apologize, but really repeats and emphasizes the insult for anyone who may have missed it the first time. It essentially says:

We made a deal with Lee not to call him a crook, but we broke that deal. So we are now saying that we did not intend the reader to infer that Lee is a crook, and we apologize to Lee for the distress of being labeled a crook.

This apology is much more insulting than saying nothing, because it suggests that the paper accidentally told the truth that Lee is a crook, in spite of some underhanded deal to cover up the truth. Perhaps the newspaper was only allowed to operate in Singapore if it was sufficiently respectful of the govt.

I had no idea that it was respectable to use such a brazenly insulting apology. I think that I will try it out myself.

I want to apologize for blog comments that some readers may construed to say that the new Apple iPad is a useless piece of junk. I had promised Steve Jobs that I would not point out the long list of shortcomings to that product, and not explain that it is a useless piece of crap. I wish to state clearly that I was not intending my readers to think that I had broken my promise to Jobs. I apologize to Jobs for any distress or embarrassment caused by any breach of my promise.

Failure to communicate

Some people foolishly believe that communication can solve all problems. Here is a recent example:

Imagine if somebody were to really sit down with Osama Bin Ladin and say, ‘listen man, what is it that you’re so angry at me about that you’re willing to have people strap bombs to themselves, or get inside of airplanes and fly them into buildings.’ That would be the miracle if we can get, sit down and talk to our enemies and find a way for them to hear us. – Matthew Modine

Modine was an actor in the movie Full Metal Jacket. Bin Laden has made himself clear enough.