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I’m tired of September 11th

I’m sorry if this pisses you off.

I’m tired of September 11th. I’m tired of hearing about it. I’m tired of seeing news stories about it, and I’m tired of reading weblogs about it (which sort of makes this the pot calling the kettle black). In short, I’m tired of the longest news story of my life. I’m tired of patriotism, I’m tired of hearing phrases like “war on terrorism” or “new war” and the word “evil” bandied about with no sense of perspective, and I’m tired of hearing about “how we’ve changed”. I’m tired of having had my grief hijacked for 365 days. I’m tired of being embarrassed that I’m a citizen of a rogue state. (I’m an American in case that wasn’t clear). I’m tired of dissenting views being called anti-American. I’m tired of losing respect for people who bought the party line hook and sinker. I could go on and on and on but yeah, you guessed it, I’m tired of ranting about September 11th as well.

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FBI cover up on anthrax case?

A fascinating story from the Scotsman detailing the accusations of some scientists that the FBI knows who was behind the Anthrax letters of last Fall, but is reluctant to pursue the case for fear what what the suspect — claimed to be someone who works for a CIA contractor — might reveal about the US government’s bioterror plans.

One quote was particularly unsettling:

Equally there is evidence that some of the suspect’s colleagues are not unhappy with the fallout from his terror attacks. [Dr Barbara Hatch] Rosenberg cites David Franz, a former commander of [US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases] who earlier this year said of the anthrax campaign: “I think a lot of good has come from it. From a biological or a medical standpoint, we’ve now five people who have died, but we’ve put about $6bn in our budget into defending against bioterrorism.”
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Phobias literal and figurative

This has to be one of the more stupid news items I’ve come across recently (via InstaPundit):

[P]sychologists from the University of Arkansas claim that homophobia is not an actual phobia because it’s caused by disgust, not fear or anxiety.

Duh! We needed a study to tell us that the “phobia” part of “homophobia” is and probably has always been used figuratively?!

However, despite the “yeah, we knew that” nature of the study’s findings, I am troubled by the assertion that “fear or anxiety” don’t cause homophobia, but rather disgust. So disgust and “fear and anxiety” are mutually exclusive?

A fascinating array of heretofore unknown to me indexes or scales were marshalled to come to the study’s conclusion, including:

[…] the Index of Attitudes Toward Homosexuals (IAH), which measures homophobia; the Sexual Attitude Scale, which explores what people think about human sexuality; the Disgust Emotion Scale, which measures a person’s response level in terms of disgust; and the Padua Inventory, which assesses contamination obsessions[….]