Arianna Huffington pushes Hope 2.0

Arianna Huffington had people in me in mind when she wrote this post acknowledging that many progressives are sorely disappointed with Barack Obama. She suggests that the problem stems from his pragmatist temperament:

I get that the progressives, and the activists, and the young people who voted for the first time, and the disillusioned voters who returned to the polls in '08, feel slighted by the president. You thought you had a special connection with him, but it turns out he'd rather hang out with Larry Summers, flirt with Olympia Snowe, or play war games late into the night with David Petraeus. Face it: he just isn't that into you. But, in the end, it doesn't matter where the president's heart is -- it matters what he does. LBJ wasn't that into the National Voting Rights Act until Martin Luther King and the Selma march pushed him into it. If Obama is going to do the right thing for America's middle class by sticking to his promise to start winding down (for real) the war in Afghanistan in July 2011, and by prioritizing jobs over the long-term deficit, the passion is going to have to come from outside the White House.

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…Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others…

I got into a stupid flame was the other day on Facebook with a friend (and her commenters) She [A] posted the following to her wall:

If you think that putting up a mosque 600 ft. from ground zero and have the opening of the mosque on the anniversary of 9/11/11, is immoral, inhuman and a complete lack of respect for the memories of all that perished on that day and their survivors & that politicians are doing a grave injustice to the fallen heroes, their families and the people of New York City, THEN PLEASE COPY AND PASTE THIS TO YOUR WALL
The first commenter followed with
[B] its digusting its even a thought in someones head.....
I saw this and saw yet another vile, right-wing sponsored attack on civil liberties. I am not religious, and abhor religion. I think it perpetuates an evil upon the world that does incalculable damage to current and future generations. However, I do support the rule of law, and the Cordoba House people have the right to build there.

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Real life mind meld

Michael Balter reports that scientists are honing in on the real-life mechanism that allows two minds to meld during conversation:

Scientists have traditionally considered talking and listening to be two independent processes. The idea is that speech is produced in some parts of the brain, including a region known as Broca's area, and understood in others, including a region known as Wernicke's area. But recent studies suggest that there's actually much more overlap. For example, partners in a conversation will unconsciously begin imitating each other, adopting similar grammatical structures, speaking rates, and even bodily postures. This overlap helps people establish a "common ground" during conversation and may even help them predict what the other is going to say next . . . Some researchers think that so-called mirror neurons, which fire when one individual observes the actions of another, might be involved in these interactions.
The scientists conducting the study argue that the experiments they've conducted demonstrate that listeners are active participants to successful conversations.

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The other use of the imagination

Imagination is often used for play, but Timothy Williamson reminds us that imagination is critical for serious thinking:

[I]magination is not only about fiction: it is integral to our painful progress in separating fiction from fact. Although fiction is a playful use of imagination, not all uses of imagination are playful. Like a cat’s play with a mouse, fiction may both emerge as a by-product of un-playful uses and hone one’s skills for them.

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