July 2011
39 posts
Hitler's Talking Dogs
“There were some very strange experiments going on in wartime Germany, with regard to dog-human communication,” Bondeson writes, wondering: “Were the Nazis trying to develop a breed of super-intelligent canine storm troopers, capable of communicating with their human masters of the Herrenvolk?”
He discovered a 1943 Nazi magazine piece about the headmistress of the canine school, a Frau Schmitt,...
Watchheh heh heh, wrap it up android failures
The Just-world Hypothesis
The just-world hypothesis (also called the just-world theory, just-world fallacy, just-world effect, or just-world phenomenon) refers to the tendency for people to want to believe that the world is fundamentally just. As a result, when they witness an otherwise inexplicable injustice, they will rationalize it by searching for things that the victim might have done to deserve it. This deflects...
Chomsky on Libertarianism
The most extreme types, like Murray Rothbard, are at least honest. They’d like to eliminate highway taxes because they force you to pay for a road you may never drive on. As an alternative, they suggest that if you and I want to get somewhere, we should build a road there and charge people tolls on it. Just try generalizing that. Such a society couldn’t survive, and even if it could,...
“Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.”
– Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract
