Category Archives: Politics

Counterexample

From Scientific American: Researchers insist they can tell someone’s politlcal affiliation by looking at the condition of their offices and bedrooms. Messy? You’re a lefty. A neatnik? Welcome to the Right. According to a controversial new study, set to be published in The Journal of Political Psychology, the bedrooms and offices of liberals, who are […]

What Motivates Islamic Radicals

A friend and I keep having different permutations of the same conversation, which revolves around this question: what is the essential explanation for Islamic terrorism? My friend’s answer is that it’s primarily religious; in other words, that something intrinsic to Islam spurs on suicide bombers and the like. I disagree for a number of reasons: […]

Plato on Today’s Social Sciences, Perhaps

“Suppose a man was in charge of a large and powerful animal, and made a study of its moods and wants; he would learn when to approach and handle it, when and why it was especially savage or gentle, what the different noises it made meant, and what tone of voice to use to soothe […]

The Jill Carroll Story

The Christian Science Monitor today wrapped up its first-person account of journalist Jill Carroll’s abduction in Iraq earlier this year. I was particularly interested in the psychology of her abductors. The men who kidnapped Carroll murdered her translator, and they were apparently closely associated with al-Zarqawi. Yet they repeatedly expressed concern that she be comfortable, […]

Some Reasons Not to Start Withdrawing from Iraq

With some discussion even among conservative friends that the U.S. should start pulling troops out of Iraq, Mortimer B. Zuckerman gives some good reasons in a recent editorial why we shouldn’t. When he writes, “For those who think it was a big mistake to go in, it would be a bigger mistake to quit now,” […]

BJU Joins Murtha and Sheehan?

Blawger Eric Muller thinks that this is evidence that “support for the war is slipping a tad bit” : the editor of Bob Jones University’s student newspaper, the Collegian, is calling for a troop pullout from Iraq. The United States should start to gradually remove its troops from Iraq. We’ve been there long enough and […]