Wednesday

 

From global to local

Joe Klein, who has been, for good reason, a favorite target of many liberal bloggers for years, and still is when it comes to, e.g. FISA-reform, had a good post yesterday reacting to David Brooks's “The surge is so great, you anti-war types can suck a lemon” column. I actually think Joe doesn't take seriously enough the idea that violence would have gone down irrespective of the surge strategy (not to say it would have decreased by the same amount, but that the difference in amounts is hard to know), and that a withdrawal strategy would have created more space for political reconciliation in Iraq, given us more issues to negotiate with Iran over (it's hard to persuade a nation not to interfere in the country next to them while we're increasing our presence there), allowed more use of resources in Afghanistan and freed up funding for domestic priorities, and that therefore the surge is a failure despite the reductions in violence, but I could be wrong about that, and the piece is good either way.

Following up on yesterday's post which poorly applied concepts from political philosophy to statements of James Dobson and then discusse about how poor Richard Cohen's column was, Fontana Labs has a good post applying John Doris's (and other's) work on situationalism and the fundamental attribution error to that same Richard Cohen column. If you don't know what those things are, his post makes it clear (though doesn't use those terms) and is interesting besides.

Lots of people in my neighborhood have Obama signs in their window. I wonder if this would be legible if I put it in mine.

Finally, a guide to every slice-serving pizzeria in Park Slope, which will be of great use to me in my new digs. The only one in the guide which I've been to is Joe's Pizza of the Village, which seems to be his third or fourth favorite (he's only specific about ranking the top two, and otherwise mostly discusses the characteristics of each slice), I liked it and am excited to try out a lot of the others.

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