Oh. Dear.

Do you remember how the 9/11 attacks happened, and then there was an investigation into whether anything could have been done differently to prevent it, and it turned out that the various government agencies hadn’t been sharing intelligence and information very well? And do you remember how George W Bush (“He Kept Us Safe“) fixed [...]

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The Friday Freebie

The Friday Freebie is where I share an online, open-access resource that I think readers might find interesting and useful. Each week, I will introduce a free resource that I think will be useful to teh angry Leftists – books, podcasts, web sites, etc. The aim is to compile a toolkit for understanding and advancing [...]

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Still not sorry

Phil of the Dead:
My view is that one should not apologise for seeking to ensure that matters that tragically occur that involve terrorist acts are thoroughly investigated to see whether or not there are any implications for Australia.

You know what? I agree with Phil.
But there’s just one problem with his argument about why an apology [...]

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Blamelessness

Today, we have two stories that illustrate how a Government can render itself blameless:

Here at home, the Clarke Inquiry has found that Mohamed Haneef should never have been charged, but that Kevin Andrews did not use the Haneef case for political advantage and acted out of “grave suspicions”. But, as much as some might claim [...]

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Outrage depends on perpetrators and consequences

My plan to start a regular feature on behavioural and social science topics has been delayed due to pressing issues at work. But even though I don’t have time for commentary at the moment, I want to link to this article in the Washington Post about moral reasoning and outrage.
It relates to the difference in [...]

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Counting the cost – numbers, not nations

The horror of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai is still not over. There has been a lot of excellent reporting, both professional and amateur, about the situation on the ground as well as the people and issues driving the attacks. But there are a couple of threads of reductionist reporting that disappoint me:

The filtering of [...]

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Mumbai

Obviously the news tonight and tomorrow morning will be dominated by the violence in Mumbai. The situation is far from settled, the death toll not known and the perpetrators not identified. A few links to resources for keeping an eye on things:

CNN has a collection of stories.
Foreign Policy Passport discusses theories about who might be [...]

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‘I don’t know’

I’m hoping not to say much more about Sarah Palin, because in a couple of weeks I think we’ll be able to put her political career to rest, but this has left me flabbergasted:

I cannot comprehend how anyone can sit there and say that it is unclear whether acts of violence [...]

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Confirmation bias

The AFP has finally released a public version of its submission to the Clarke inquiry into Mohamed Haneef’s detention; The Oz has coverage, and the full submission is available [255kB PDF].
It’s a pretty good demonstration of how confirmation bias operates; the suspicion-arousing elements were fed into a theory that Haneef was connected to the crimes [...]

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Extended holidays cancelled

The House of Lords shows some common sense. People in Britain can still be locked up for four weeks without charge, but at least it’s not six. If you think someone is dangerous enough that you want to lock them up for 28 days and yet you can’t find enough evidence to charge them, I [...]

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