This is good — especially the last sentence: “I think research in moral reasoning is important because understanding why good people do evil things is more important than understanding why evil people do evil things.”
If the world is just, only the guilty are tortured. So believers in a just world are more likely to think that the people who are tortured are guilty. Perhaps especially so if they experience the tort…
Category: Asides
short little soundbytes
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This is absolutely true. One key insight: “I know much of success is luck, but I never realized how much the mindset of success comes from who you know. Luckily, who you know is up to you, not luck.”
It’s all who you know? | Derek Sivers
Derek Sivers Home, Blog, About, Projects
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I think panel two is my favorite.
Basic Instructions — Basic Instructions — How to Give Someone Hope
I am away from the internet for a bit, and cannot moderate comments. As such, comments are disa…
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Awesome comment at the end (although I do not know if it is true or not): “Do note that death insurance didn’t sell well until it was given the less accurate but more affable name, life insurance.”
Congestion pricing sounds like something to avoid since neither term is something you want. Eric Jaffe held a contest for replacement terms. Decongestion pricing is one possibility since it at least h…
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I am never sure how much to trust the details in these stories, but one section really leaped out at me: “He told Kim he would have to drop a case. A 9/11 case. “I hate to say it,” he said, “but being a Christian is gonna trump being an American.”
‘Imagine the Worst Possible Scenario’: Why a Guantanamo Prosecutor Withdrew From the Case
Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Couch truly believed Mohamedou Ould Slahi was guilty. He also believed that Slahi’s interrogators had broken the law — tormenting him physically and sexually, and threatening…
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Practical advice on stopping gossip in its tracks.
Pyromaniacs: How to shut down gossip and its nasty kin
First, understand what gossip is. Gossip is spreading harmful information in an ungodly manner — without love, and thus to no positive end. Its bastard stepchildren are the triplets: Strife, Dissensio…
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This is a pretty good chart. It leaves out some options (and a ton of detail), but emphasizes the right things.
Click on the image below to see the full-size version: HT: Josh Byers
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The second quote is the one to focus on. If you are squeamish, be cautious when ordering calimari. For the record, I don’t think this would affect my willingness to eat artificial calimari.
Fred Armisen hosts This American Life as Ira Glass
This week’s episode of This American Life is about doppelgangers, so they decided to have SNL’s Fred Armisen come on the show and
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This is the best summary of the issue I’ve seen yet.
Pastor Disinvited from Giving Inaugural Prayer Because of Sermon on Homosexuality
The message of religious intolerance being delivered by President Obama, his staff, and many of his supporters is unmistakable: If you do not affirm homosexuality then you cannot be fair-minded. The m…
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The economic debacle seems very simple at one level — but it seems that I am regularly learning new facts that illustrate just how complex it all was.
David Henderson reviews the new Alan Blinder book
The review is here, here is one interesting paragraph: Mr. Blinder omits a crucial fact about Lehman, one that, by itself, explains why the huge drop in value of Lehman’s mortgage-backed securities le…