The strongest links

Today I’m very tired – still slightly reeling from Friday night excess somehow – and so I’m not really up to blogging properly. So while I wrestle with my bad karma, here are some other things you might fancy clicking on:

Anticant ponders the links between individual self-images, demonisation of ‘enemy’ groups and the shifting of blame.

Paulie can’t decide whether it’d be good or bad for the “rabid” tendency in the Tories to quit the party en bloc. Do help him out.

Ashok Karra muses that friendship is “perpetual risk”, and so people ready to abandon their friends are being over-cautious rather than reckless and flighty.

What do you get if you mix a bunch of lefty bloggers together, add seasoning, heat gently, and then get rid of the crappy cooking metaphor? You get a Liberal Conspiracy. Could be interesting.

Jason Burke reports on the political intricacies of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.

Ebonmuse considers mortality, ignorance and humility, and argues that pasting a fairytale on to the mysteries of existence is not just a poor answer, but worse than no answer at all.

Henry Farrell refers us to an academic paper on the internal problems faced by terrorist organisations. At least they don’t have to deal with their members going on strike to demand an above-inflation rise in the number of heavenly virgins they get.

Matt brings us the joys of metric time. Now, if only there were some sort of unelected bureaucracy, preferably based in a foreign city named after a sprout, to impose it on us.

Hillary Clinton has a foreign policy. And, according to her, it’s very good indeed. (Ditto John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, John Edwards, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.)

Meanwhile, it seems that Dick Cheney is turning into his boss.