In the interest of fostering rational arguments I'm going to present a common fallacy with each day's links. Today's fallacy is: Appeal to Pity

• Naomi Klein: Enough. It's time for a boycott of Israel | Comment is free | The Guardian

  It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa. In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era". The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions was born.



• Dyer: War a bigger disaster for Israel than for Palestinians - Salt Lake Tribune

  The war against Hamas in Gaza looks more and more like the three-week Israeli war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006, which could hardly be called a success. It will last about as long. It will kill about as many Arabs, probably a thousand or so. And it will end with Hamas, like Hezbollah, still able to fire rockets at Israel.



• YouTube - IBM Research's nanoMRI microscope


• Bush's final press conference, laments: The Swamp

  A retiring President George W. Bush, delivering the final and most introspective press conference of his long presidency, acknowledged today the several "mistakes" and "disappointments'' of his tumultuous two terms in the Oval Office, yet voiced a defiant insistence that he made the choices necessary to defend the nation from threats that still persist today.

  (video)


• Inside the Savant Mind: Tips for Thinking from an Extraordinary Thinker: Scientific American


• Language Log » Orwell’s Liar

  Orwell's Politics and the English Language is a beautifully written language crime, though it pretends to lay down the law. Furthermore I just noticed that its final law is rather curious. We'll get to that shortly.

• Get Your Own Official Presidential Pardon from President Bush While the Pardoning’s Good! | Indecision2008 | Comedy Central


• FORA.tv - Neil DeGrasse Tyson: Death by Black Hole(tip to Patrick)


• Secular Philosophy

  Yesterday I went to see The Atheist, a play by Ronan Noone. The only character is a morally bankrupt journalist, played by an excellent Campbell Scott, who cynically manipulates his mother, his colleagues, his girlfriend and the world at large in a single minded and
  ultimately devastating pursuit of fame. Though some of the details of
  the plot are scarcely believable, the character is absolutely
  fascinating, not in small part because of Scott's spectacular
  performance at New York's Barrow Street Theater. The real problem with
  the play is the title.

  "Atheist" here is used as a straightforward and unquestioned synonym
  for amoral (not quite immoral, as the main character never really does
  anything illegal, always teetering on the fuzzy borderlands of
  morality, which greatly contributes to making the play interesting and
  the protagonist intriguing).



• Outpost Gallifrey: Doctor Who RSS News Feed


• The top 100 books of all time | Books | guardian.co.uk


• xkcd - A Webcomic - I'm An Idiot