When the Bush administration started dealing with the North Korean regime, I thought they were giving Kim Jong-il enough rope to hang himself (i.e., letting Kim prove by his actions, once again, that proponents of engagement were wrong about North Korea). But, apparently, the Bush admin is more interested in a pseudo-legacy than solving the problem. The worst part is that some of the targeted sanctions were working far better than they have been given credit for.

It would be incredibly ironic if Hillary inherited the problem her husband swept under the rug (warning of an HEU program, 1997-1999) and passed on to Bush. But of course ignoring the problem makes it go away, at least until North Korea produces, tests, or sells uranium-based nuclear weapons.

I also find it amazing that anyone takes Dawkins’ vitriolic take on religion through provoking.

YH: Good to know you’re off the fence finally =)

Chirol & Curzon, don’t you guys check your mail any more?

Analizing my last “change of mind”s of this year, I think that the most important is the opinion and the sympathy shifting from Turkey to Greece.
Even if it’s against the logic of an opportunistic, geopolitic thinking. Even if all my previous thoughts about behaviour like the grece-russia political proximity already in the cold war era, the contacts and help to terrorists and many other things gave me no simpaty for this country, studying the story of the events of this last fifty years I came to the conclusion that many of this behaviour was and is mostly justified.

I give “god” a pretty low probability of existance, but I’m not in a position to be %100 certain that he’s a myth

Dawkins’ himself says he is in this category. I remember him explaining the spectrum of belief and specifically not putting himself at the 100% NO side because that would be dogmatic and he is a scientist. I moved to this category from a position of complete agnosticism of the question. I was like: I am not religious; there may be something out there; nobody knows; religion is a personal thing; meh. I hadn’t even deeply thought or investigated the question. Then I ran into a couple of philosophy books, saw the Dawkins TED presentation and thought I would try his book out. I’m glad I did.

Dawkins has a knack for making some seriously aggressive soundbites, but once you read him I think he makes more sense. The big difference with him is he is more than atheist, he is anti-religious. That’s what gets everybody’s hackles up.

I thought that Douglas Adams dealt with the problem most convincingly when he introduced us to the Babel Fish:

“Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindboggingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

“The argument goes something like this: ‘I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God, ‘for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’

“‘But,’ says Man, ‘The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’

“‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.

“‘Oh, that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.”

– Douglas Adams, the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy