C.T. on the Lancet study part 2

Riverbend on living in Hell.
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And from The Guardian:

A Nobel Prize winner from Iran, praised by President Bush for her commitment to democracy, is suing the U.S. government over restrictions that could block the publication of her memoirs in America.

In her lawsuit, Shirin Ebadi argued that Treasury Department regulations restricting the publication in the United States of works by authors in countries subject to U.S. trade sanctions is unconstitutional.

...Ebadi, 57, a Muslim lawyer and human rights activist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003, said she wants to write a book about her life and career and publish it in America, rather than Iran, where it would be subject to state approval.

link.
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Discovered at Crooked Timber: an academic blog on philosophy and art. I might learn something. And I might also have the opportunity to be very cruel.
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It strikes me more and more that what B. Leiter and others can not accept is the fact that any understanding as such is or will be partial. They may argue the case but there's always an attempt to wiggle out of a commitment. A tennis player, a chess player, or a lawyer all require opponents, literally, to function. A philosopher does not, and there's a diference between arguing for an idea and actually living by it. This goes back to my old description of consciousness as the moment in the mind of an organism when empirically based reason conflicts with conditioned response. Consciousness is a result of the need to make a choice, and it is marked, defined, by the fear that that choice is mistaken. Justice is also the result, the moment, that results from such a such a conflict. But in both cases, neither side of the conflict can be defined as representing the just or true.

The displacement of an ideal of skill by the ideal of truth, by the notion that one side may of an argument must be the truth, brought about the displacement of ideas by ideology.
It made it possible to cut corners.
There can be no science of ideas.