Word: logic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...never know by looking, but there is a logic behind the presidential nominating process. The tiny Iowa caucuses give little-known long shots a chance to build a name through sweat equity. Compact New Hampshire tests the retail skills of the candidates. Elections in South Carolina and Nevada take the show south of the gnat line and west of the Rockies. And then Super Tuesday--the big time...
...recent book about life inside Hizb ut-Tahrir, British Muslim Ed Husain contrasts the aggressive, intolerant Islam he found in Hizb ut-Tahrir to the "Islam of the heart," the tolerant, humanistic Sufism of his migrant parents. In modern Islamic radicalism, custom and humanism are jettisoned in favor of logic and politics. Hizb ut-Tahrir, which targets youth on college campuses, promotes itself as the thinking Muslim's alternative to blindly following parents, mullahs or tradition...
...rooted in the cold war mantra that even if a regime was a "son of a bitch," it should be supported as long as it was "our son of a bitch." It doesn't work. Washington supported both Osama bin Laden and Saddam in the 1980s on precisely this logic, but after 9/11, Bush himself acknowledged that coddling the enemies of our enemies had not made them friends; instead it had helped sow more extremism. And today Arab governments can no longer be bought by a single bidder. Avoiding too close an association with Washington, they toy with Russia, China...
...this, there may be a paradoxical logic to romantic love. Imagine a world without it, a world of rational shoppers looking for the best available mate. Unsentimental social scientists and veterans of the singles scene know that this world is not entirely unlike our own. People shop for the most desirable person who will accept them, and that is why most marriages pair a bride and a groom of roughly equal desirability. The 10s marry the 10s, the 9s marry the 9s and so on. That is exactly what should happen in a marketplace where you want the best price...
This perverse logic of promises and threats lies behind the observation on romance offered by George Bernard Shaw: "When we want to read of the deeds that are done for love, whither do we turn? To the murder column...