From the Hampton Institute:

  I assume that anyone reading this notices, like most Americans who are either literate or have a TV, or who listen to drive-time AM radio, that we are heavily involved in the Middle East. We have at least a general knowledge of how the last thirty years or so have played out. If we are intellectually honest [IMO] we admit and acknowledge that the USA has no business being there as an influential power except for the business of business.

It Is Time To Put Martin Luther King Jr.

As I commented on one of Maiello’s blogs: “Annie Hall is still one of my favorite movies, in part because it treats relationships in a sentimental but unsentimental way that is rare in the movies. But it also has some of the best off beat humor.” One scene that I didn’t mention in the comment was a conversation between Singer and Hall when they first started to get to know each other:

Annie Hall: Oh, you see an analyst?
Alvy Singer: Yeah, just fifteen years.
Annie Hall: Fifteen years?
Alvy Singer: Yeah, I’m going to give him one more year, and then I’m going to Lourdes.

I’ll be honest that until I began working on another blog using this quote (which about a year ago), I had no idea as to what “Lourdes” was a reference to. I assumed it was probably some kind of place like the Vienna Circle, except it was place with the current top-notch psychologists or neuroscientists of the day.  In other words, that particular part of the joke went over my head.  It turns out that Lourdes is

...in the Hautes-Pyrénées department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in south-western France,…[where] The Blessed Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to Bernadette Soubirous on a total of eighteen occasions [said to have occurred between 11 February and 16 July 1858]….To date, 69 miracles cures have been recognized, to have occurred and certified by the Lourdes International Medical Committee which has been in  existence since 1947.

John Plotz (He of the unfortunate last name...) sums up the judgement of Slate's political gabfest team in re: Hillary Clinton's recently released presidential campaign tocsin  memoir.While the verdict of the panel (Plotz plus the estimable Emily Bazelon and beautifully-mothered John Dickerson) is of interest (they ultimately conclude that the book is intended to freeze the competition while Hillary mulls things over), the best moment yet to proceed from this literary event is (IMHO) the intrusion into R

One of the things about approaching the age of fifty is that one is constantly reminded of the fact because everything that occurred during the year one was born is also reaching its 50th anniversary.  In some ways, it is interesting because one is able to see more clearly the culture and Zeitgeist into which one was born. And since we are on the topic of insanity and violence it seems, it is fitting that recently one of the great films of all time Dr. Stangelove had its 50th anniversary.

David Denby in The New Yorker has written an excellent article, "The Half-Century Anniversary of 'Dr. Strangelove',"  regarding Kubick film including the dynamics of its development of the film.

If you want to quickly establish a character in a movie as some crazy paranoid person, having them say that something like the CIA has put some kind of listening chip into their head will do the trick.  I suppose now, the person would say the it was the NSA or Homeland Security.  

Recently on the NPR website I came across an article that will have these crazy folks even more paranoid:

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, is launching a $70 million program to help military personnel with psychiatric disorders using electronic devices implanted in the brain.

The goal of the five-year program is to develop new ways of treating problems including depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, all of which are common among service members who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan.

I am a radical in life. Why? Despite all evidence to the contrary, I still believe in people.

The news will definitely get you down and much of your personal experience may get you down too. It's common to hear people screaming at one another in this world and the constant barrage of drug and gun deaths certainly makes one feel as if humanity is resigned to a horrible fate.

Recently in The Independent, Stephen Hawking, with co-authors Stuart Russell, Max Tegmark, and Frank Wilczek, warn of dangers of Artificial Intelligence.

….it's tempting to dismiss the notion of highly intelligent machines as mere science fiction. But this would be a mistake, and potentially our worst mistake in history….
…..
Looking further ahead, there are no fundamental limits to what can be achieved: there is no physical law precluding particles from being organised in ways that perform even more advanced computations than the arrangements of particles in human brains. An explosive transition is possible...

One can imagine such technology outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand. Whereas the short-term impact of AI depends on who controls it, the long-term impact depends on whether it can be controlled at all.