I long ago gave up on most gawkermedia sites, and the original version of consumerist smeared a friend of mine and caused her a great deal of psychological and legal distress, but I gotta say the current consumerist site is great.

Lou Dobbs will be coming out with his own version any day now.

All Things Are Lights is one of the great books of the 20th century. I'm glad that it's online!

I identify myself as an atheist, but I don't subscribe to the sort of Dennettean reductionism that Cory so ably describes. Maybe I read too much RAW as a kid, but scientific materialism just seems like another source of zealotry to me.

I'd categorize myself as more of an existential atheist. I believe authentic religious revelation arises from a personal realization of the void.

As for religion having serious value to people, I was suitably chastened after reading Harry Brunius' "Better For All The World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity" when I realized that it was what we would now call evangelicals and the religious right who protested against eugenics programs in the early days of the 20th century. For the most part intelligent men of science and letters thought eugenics was just groovy.

Must. Have.

I am so sad to hear this! May she rest in peace.

His Holiness' performance in "Itty Bitty Titty Committee" is not to be missed.

Mr Doctorow, it seems to me that you're making an a priori condemnation of this based upon nothing more than a press release and what appears to be your own personal bias against any form of determinism. How scientific is that?

I'm a loaner on Kiva and I love it. It's a great site.

I'm sure the alien is thinking, "Holy crap, this is their leader?"

Wonderful, thank you so much for posting this!

And that's a good point, Spenser. There was use of these methods behind the Iron Curtain. The Stalinist show trials certainly got a lot of people wondering exactly what methods the Russians were using to get people to calmly confess to 'crimes' they didn't commit. (Not that difficult, as we know now).

However, it was more the perception that both Russia and China were pursuing such research, as well as the prevelent paranoia of the time that fueled much of the U.S' study in behavior manipulation. John Marks' The Search for the Manchurian Candidate is the standard book on the topic (which derives it's title from Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate).

Xeni you're right that my saying Mr. Righi just wants attention was glib and ill-considered and I apologize for that. But otherwise I have respectfully to disagree because I don't buy the whole "First they came for the shoppers at Circuit City and I did nothing because I don't shop at Circuit City" gist of the argument here. But even if I did, the other Michael (pesky common names) is making a purchase with a credit card in a CCTV monitored store. If you go spend some time in a prison eventually you'll start to feel like a prisoner.

Personally I believe he should have showed them the receipt by using it to return the merchandise he just purchased and vowing never to shop there again. My problem with Mr. Righi is that he decided to call the cops instead. I believe that you then have to continue playing by those rules when the police do arrive. Instead he was uncooperative with the police too. So now he's calling the ACLU to act as his arbiter. Is he going to give the ACLU identifying information when they ask for specifics or are they going to have to try to divine what the heck is going on, same as the arresting officer? He reminds me of RAW's dictum that paranoids eventually find someone to persecute them.

I don't know, I think it's stupid to call the police and then refuse to cooperate when the cop arrives. I can see this dude now, yelling "Attica! Attica!" and raising his Disney/Pixar video game in a defiant revolutionary gesture as he's lead away.

Give me a break--there are plenty of people the world who are actually being persecuted, tortured, and oppressed, this guy just wants attention.

Aw, I think she's sweet. All in all I believe she's handled her 15 minutes with aplomb.