Point that finger at yourself

Andrew Sullivan:

We now have direct evidence that Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller ordered the use of illegal interrogation tactics at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, was given permission by Donald Rumsfeld to break military law, and also lied about it.

We need investigations into the actions not just of Miller but also of Rumsfeld, and indeed all those who sanctioned the breaking of U.S. and military law that led to the debacle of Abu Ghraib. The JAG memos show a deliberate conspiracy to break the laws of the land under the specious argument that the president is above the law in times of war. The response of the government was to scapegoat a handful of grunts who were just doing what they were authorized to do - from the very top.

Yup.

What's up with this paper?

This is like the millionth time I have linked to an article in The Salt Lake Tribune this week, but this little editorial caught my eye after reading about it on Baha'i Blog.

Upon hearing a talk on the Bahai Faith, my wife immediately recognized spiritual truths she had always believed. This was perhaps more a discovery of a religion that was in complete agreement with her inner feelings, rather than a change in basic beliefs. I found that I also agreed.

I believe that I now have a more complete and coherent view of life on this planet. The vision of Baha'u'llah, manifesting the unifying guidance from God for this day, is a vision I readily accept, including the structure of a future world society meeting material and spiritual needs with justice.

I'm not quite sure what led the Tribune to print this, assuming they know that their audience is largely Mormon. But in that case, I'm glad it did.

"Get your pens"

"...[and] start rewriting the textbooks today," said Brown, a professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology who has hunted for such an object for more than five years.

Did you hear? We've discovered a new planet that is beyond the orbit of Pluto. It's "the first planet discovered in our solar system since astronomer Clyde Tombaugh found Pluto in 1930." Very cool. All it needs now is a more melodious name than 2003UB313. What's even more interesting though is that there are apparently a lot more celestial bodies that are being found in the Kuiper Belt.

Last year Brown's group found Sedna, an object about three-fourths the size of Pluto and whose irregular orbit extends far beyond that of 2003UB313.

On Thursday, astronomers in Spain announced the discovery of another large Kuiper Belt object, which Brown's group had tracked as well. Brown said Friday that his team's observations indicate that world is about the same size as Sedna.

This should give you an idea of how much we have left to discover just in the area around our solar system (not to mention Alpha Centauri and other stars "close" to our sun). Rock on.

Whoa there

Trey Jackson on Iranian President-Elect Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, courtesy of Glenn.

"The message of the (Islamic) Revolution is global, and is not restricted to a specific place or time. It is a human message, and it will move forward.

Have no doubt... Allah willing, Islam will conquer what? It will conquer all the mountain tops of the world."

And we're suppose to just let him have a nuclear bomb? The same man who the US just concluded was a leader of the movement behind the 1979 hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran is preaching the virtues of martyrdom.

This is Radical Islam. This is what we are fighting. This is evil.

Agreed. More here on his connection to the hostage situation in 1979.

Oh, and Ronald Reagan is the man for saying that quote.

Mormon politics

I can't believe that I am giving this religion so much attention on my blog at the moment, but I'm actually finding some interesting stuff that is being published in the Salt Lake Tribune these days. This article in particular discusses the rise of a small, yet vocal group of Mormon Democrats that have emerged from out of the shadow of their overwhelmingly conservative co-religionists.

Eric Samuelsen, a playwright from Brigham Young University, said he feels "an increasing amount of cognitive dissonance" from some of his more conservative neighbors in Provo, primarily over their misgivings on the reasons the United States went to war in Iraq. But he says they still are unwilling to consider supporting a Democrat for one clear reason: "They don't see Democrats as a viable option because of moral issues."

"Mormons are not as interested in politics as they are in morals," Samuelsen said. And he believes the Republicans control the moral debate right now, focusing on key wedge issues such as gay marriage, abortion and gun rights.
His solution is to argue that Mormons have "a moral imperative" to protect the environment, help the poor and needy and oppose proactive wars - issues that favor the Democrats.

This is why Baha'is don't get involved in partisan politics: like any other morally conservative, socially liberal religion, we can have our cake and eat it too.

Rob's plan to bankrupt the LDS

I laughed when I read this:

I was watching tv, and an ad sponsored by the Church of Latter Day Saints was on, and they were offering free copies of the Book of Mormon. Most people would just let it slip by their mind. By why pass up free shit? If everyone asks for a free copy, I forsee a strong blow to their multi-billion dollar business (according to time it's the wealthiest religion in the US). That's unless people start reading the book and buying into that shit. The garden of Eden is located in Missouri. If Indians accept Mormonism, their skin will turn white. God was a man. You get the picture.

Wealthiest religion in the US? Hehe, not when we're through with it. Start ordering those books!

Enviga

Rob is pumped about Coke's calorie-burning Enviga, but I've always been a believer in the saying, "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is." And this is no exception.

Checks and balances

Glenn Reynolds on Richard Posner of The New York Times:

The charge by mainstream journalists that blogging lacks checks and balances is obtuse. The blogosphere has more checks and balances than the conventional media; only they are different.

This is very true. The blogosphere can almost be considered a self-policing system. Sure, people can write whatever they want, but those that try to skew facts are quickly forgotten about. The boys on top know that they have a serious audience, many of them fellow bloggers with serious credentials (I've mentioned before that folks like Josh Marshall and Garrett Graff have degrees from Harvard, Princeton, Brown, etc.). I'm more likely to take their word on something than some correspondent with a communications degree from Emerson. And that's the truth.

Sugar-free candy

What an oxymoron. My question is: then why are people still fat? Probably because of this.

Moreover,

...sugar floods us with pleasure by stimulating the release of the neurotransmitter serotonin, and probably other mood-elevating substances. Scientists report that eating chocolate initiates a brain response similar to falling in love.

You can't avoid it. Some of this research suggests that it is naturally built into our systems to crave sugar. I mean, who doesn't want to feel like they're falling in love? My point is, though, people can try all they want to cut down on calories, but they're not going to get anywhere without staying fit. Pure and simple.

A word on Niger

I just think it's shameful that we've been getting so much forewarning from aid groups about the upcoming deaths that we will see in Niger and only now have we begun to act.

At least 150,000 children are already on the brink of death as countries like Britain and the United States scramble to send food aid to alleviate the humanitarian disaster that seems to have crept up on the Western world.

All of Africa has been a humanitarian disaster for years... how exactly has it crept up on us? That sounds like a poor excuse to me. In any case, I'll try to remain optimistic and hope that we'll be able save as many people as possible before it's too late.

Reflections on the Middle East

Good writing over at Iraq the Model today. Mohammed is trying to explain what is driving other Arab countries to destabilize America's presence in Iraq. These paragraphs are absolutely key:

But I do believe that dictatorships are the main reason [behind this conflict over Iraq]; the Arab regimes didn't accept Israel as a neighbor, of course not because they care about the Palestinians and their interests as everyone knows how Palestinians are treated in Arab countries and how many thousands on them were killed in Jordan and Lebanon and perhaps Arabs killed more Palestinians than the Israelis did.
Obviously, Arab regimes and leaders didn't like Israel because it's a democratic state and its presence in the region can threaten their thrones.

The objectives of our mission cannot be accomplished without changing the Syrian and Iranian regimes in any possible way because the battle in Iraq will not stop until guns are heard in Syria and Iran.
These two regimes are looking for half-solutions that prolong their stay for several more years and of course they've learned from Saddam who managed to stay in power for 12 years after 1991 by making full use of half-solutions.

Read the whole thing.

A few words: Liberals like to squawk at "neo-conservatives" for even beginning to suggest that we expand the military conflict in the Gulf region. But what about an Iraqi that is suggesting it? How can you possibly accuse him of having vested political interest in Bush's "oil-driven" agenda? You can't.

Mars anyone?

Glenn says manned flights may be possible because of this, as long as you don't break The Outer Space Treaty of 1967, a Cold War relic designed to prevent a "new form of colonial competition." A summary:

First, it contains an undertaking not to place in orbit around the Earth, install on the moon or any other celestial body, or otherwise station in outer space, nuclear or any other weapons of mass destruction.

Second, it limits the use of the moon and other celestial bodies exclusively to peaceful purposes and expressly prohibits their use for establishing military bases, installation, or fortifications; testing weapons of any kind; or conducting military maneuvers.

We'll see about that.

It's here

I've been having some sort of an unexplained car fetish of late. In any case, gaze upon the new Subaru B9 Tribeca.

Got 'em

Anti-terrorism at its best. Though after seeing the suspects on CNN, I can't really say they look East African. It's likely that they are in fact Arabs that were born there. Hopefully more information will surface as time goes on.

Day of raids

The British police are getting serious today, reports CNN. What I am most surprised to learn is that these suspects are not Arabs.

Police are still searching for three of the four would-be bombers after arresting Yasin Hassan Omar, 24, a Somali with British residency, in Birmingham on Thursday.

One of the other suspects has been identified as Muktar Said Ibrahim, 27. He emigrated to Britain from Eritrea in the 1990s as political refugees with their families, the British Home Office said.

Both Somalia and Eriteria are on the East African coast, which has been the site of increasing Al-Qaeda activity. Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to conduct a few raids down there as well.

Follow-up on Benedict's statement

The Vatican is treading on very thin ice here.

"It's not always possible to immediately follow every attack against Israel with a public statement of condemnation," a statement from the Vatican press office said Thursday night, "and (that is) for various reasons, among them the fact that the attacks against Israel sometimes were followed by immediate Israeli reactions not always compatible with the rules of international law."

Andrew Sullivan:

Just so I understand, the reactions of Egypt, Britain, Iraq and Turkey to terror attacks have always been compatible with the rules of international law ?! Therefore, terror attacks against innocents living in those countries are wrong. Terror attacks targeting citizens living in countries with imperfect records are not. I am wordless.

As am I.

Hybrid Synergy Drive

Of course, Toyota's little Prius Hybrid cars have been on the road for a while now, but just today I was made aware of one of its features on a commercial: the regenerative braking system, as explained in this guide.

Instead of wasting energy as heat dissipated from the braking system, the regenerative braking system uses the motor as a generator to convert braking energy into electricity that is stored in the battery. This system is particularly effective in stop-start city driving.

Very clever, if I may say so. We all know that stop-start driving (especially among SUV's and the like) is probably one of the biggest culprits behind gas consumption in America. So by simply paying attention to The First Law of Thermodynamics, this car is doing a lot to cut down on energy wastage. Way to think long-term.

Fancy schmancy

Some sample screenshots of Microsoft's new OS, courtesy of Rob Taylor.

Cowabunga

Confused? See Rob... you're not gonna believe it.

Microsoft Windows Vista

Thank God it's finally out, if not in beta version only.

New features are designed to improve security in corporate, mobile and roaming environments, as well as reducing the total cost of ownership of PCs through simplified management, increased automation of tasks and improved diagnostics.

Windows Vista beta 1 has a built-in beta 1 version of the browser Internet Explorer 7, which includes features designed to help protect against malicious websites or malware and against phishing and spoofing attacks.

I like, I like.

Shuttle flights halted "indefinitely"

It seems that piece of insulation that broke off the Discovery is bothering a lot of NASA engineers, who after two and a half years of grounding the shuttle program, still did not succeed in fixing the problem.

This time the foam did not appear to have struck the Discovery, so the shuttle's 12½-day mission to the International Space Station will continue, officials said. But because NASA failed to correct the problem, despite hundreds of millions of dollars and two and a half years of trying, further flights will be postponed indefinitely, they announced Wednesday.

"Until we fix this, we're not ready to go fly again," William Parsons, the manager of the shuttle program, said at a news briefing at the Johnson Space Center.

I'm sure aliens with warp drive are laughing at us right now. Speaking of which, it looks like NASA is working on that right now. Will this become its new focus?

Repliee Q1

Gotta hand it to the Japanese. According to the BBC, they've just created the world's first android (thanks Rob). As long as they follow Issac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics," I think I'll be able to sleep at night.

America's fading virtues

Leave it to Friedman to say it like it is: We're in big trouble if we don't start learning from Lance.

Talk to U.S. business executives and they'll often comment on how many of China's leaders are engineers, people who can talk to you about numbers, long-term problem-solving and the national interest - not a bunch of lawyers looking for a sound bite to get through the evening news. America's most serious deficit today is a deficit of such leaders in politics and business.

Long-term problem-solving... like who ever does that anymore?

Tasteless

Rob says this is the best video game ad ever. The problem is, I don't see any connection to a video game.

Iranian Arabs in protest

Apparently there was a rumor going around that the government in Tehran was planning to relocate Khuzestan's Arab minority. Look what happens when you start rumors like that.

Tour de Fr-Lance

Rob Corddry: "Americans will never have to care about cycling again."

This is probably true.

Debris

Like I said before, enough with the shuttle already. Article courtesy of Rob.

Israel on edge with Benedict

Was it a slip of the tongue or a calculated "snub"?

Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday deplored attacks in "countries including Egypt, Turkey, Iraq and Britain".

Israel said he had failed to mention a 12 July suicide bombing in Netanya that killed five Israelis.

The foreign ministry said it would be interpreted as "granting legitimacy to... terrorist attacks against Jews".

Oh, snap.

Discovery launch successful

Well, the Discovery is off the ground and the reactions have been overwhelming. Good luck to the crew, but really, after the Columbia disaster I can't help but think enough with the shuttle already.

Iraqi constitution needs a makeover

Iraq the Model has details (thanks Glenn).

Dude, where's my weed?

This guy is an idiot.

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) - A Texas man was arrested on Monday after calling police to complain about the theft of his marijuana, authorities said.

Hehe.

The answer is no

The question: Are we ready for a Mormon president? I just figured while we were on the subject today...

''It's a fascinating question," says Alan Wolfe, director of Boston College's Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life. ''Catholics like to talk about anti-Catholicism and Jews like to complain about anti-Semitism. But a hundred years ago, Mormonism was the most hated religion in America. Since then the religion has changed dramatically. It's almost like a new business taking off -- it's a quintessential American success story."

Romney, just do us a favor and lose the six wives.

Fareed Zakaria on radical Islam

Fareed Zakaria has recently become one of my favorite columnists.

...[B]orn in India, has a B.A. from Yale (in history) and a Ph.D. from Harvard (in international relations). In 1992, at the age of 28, Zakaria became managing editor of Foreign Affairs, the leading journal of international politics and economics—a position he held through 2000.

Not bad.

His views on the Islamic world and international affairs are always very in-depth and insightful. His latest column in Newsweek is worth taking a look at. In it he examines the rise of "barbaric ideologies" and how the West can help battle their spread.

Suicide bombing cannot be explained by poverty and disadvantage. The London bombers were not the wretched of the earth. They came from working-class but comfortable backgrounds, living in one of the world's most prosperous countries. For all the talk of their being marginalized, none were living in hellish ghettos. Britain today does a decent job of assimilating its immigrants, certainly better than any other European country. If anyone had cause for rage, it was not the bombers but their parents.

But their parents did not choose to blow up train stations. So what's going on here? Zakaria continues:

Nor can foreign policy really explain such rage... There is something deeper at work here. Last week Egypt, which sent no troops to Iraq and condemned the invasion, was targeted. Turkey and Indonesia—which are both opponents of the war—have also been attacked. (Besides, the demands keep changing. Osama bin Laden's primary one was that American troops leave Saudi Arabia, which they have done. Bin Laden seems not to have noticed.)

No, he hasn't. I think it's safe to say that he's just winging it at this point.

What Zakaria is getting at, though, is the idea of fanatacism, something that has always been there since the beginning of political movements. Impressionable young men have been sucked into it for centuries. There is no rational behind it; there is only chaos. And both the Muslim world and the West have a duty to battle it not only with bullets, but with counter-ideas.

We...have to discredit, delegitimize and dismantle barbaric ideas. After the London bombings, Arab commentators pointed out that for years Britain has granted asylum to noxious preachers and scholars who praise suicide bombings, argue for the overthrow of Western regimes and celebrate Al Qaeda's victories.

After 7/7, there will be no more of that, I hope.

Spammers beware

See Rob for details.

Mormon stats inflated

Ever since I visited my uncle out in Salt Lake City a few years ago, I can't seem to stop running into Mormons. Not only have their missionaries visited my house, but I've seen those guys walking around in almost every major city I've been to: Chicago, New York, Seattle, the list goes on. Just the other day I saw a pair walking around in Harvard Square, no doubt trying to shake those Ivy Leaguers of their skepticism. Spreading their message through a dedicated missionary corps is clearly one of their top objectives. They figure, how can you say no to two extremely polite, well-dressed, (and very white-bred, may I add) young men that are passionate about God? They are also very proud to proclaim that they are, in fact, the fastest-growing religion on the planet, nearly "doubling" their membership over the last quarter century (from 6 million to 12 million). But the truth is, according to this article from The Salt Lake Tribune, is their statistics might not be as intimidating as you think.

...[T]he number of Latter-day Saints who are considered active churchgoers is only about a third of the total, or 4 million in the pews every Sunday, researchers say.

Graphing activity: When the Graduate Center of the City University of New York conducted an American Religious Identification Survey in 2001, it discovered that about the same number of people said they had joined the LDS Church as said they had left it.

Take Brazil. In its 2000 Census, 199,645 residents identified themselves as LDS, while the church listed 743,182 on its rolls.

Mormons like to brag about growth rates in South America and the South Pacific, because they feel that their message is tailor-made for the indigenous inhabitants of those areas. But there's a problem with this, and this article points it out.

The LDS message has found a ready audience in Latin America and the South Pacific, where Mormon missionaries can tell people God did not neglect them. The Book of Mormon is the story of a Hebrew family that migrated from Jerusalem to the New World and tells of a visit to their descendants by Jesus Christ after his resurrection.
Still, the church may not fare as well as other Christian religions in Africa and China, since it has no such reassurance for them...

American faith: Mormonism is "so thoroughly American," said [Gerald] McDermott, [a religious studies professor at Virginia's Roanoke College] in a recent phone interview. "God visited [Mormon founder] Joseph Smith in upstate New York. Eden began in Missouri and the millennium will end there. The new exodus took place in North America."

This is the inherent flaw that I see with this religion. The scope of its vision does not extend beyond the Western Hemisphere. This is why I think they are having such a hard time opening up places like India, China, Africa, and the Middle East. What would a Hindu, a Buddhist, an animist or even a Muslim see in this religion that is appealing to them? Any ideas? Didn't think so.

Friedman on The Daily Show

Yes, I know this is a bit old, but in case you missed it, you can watch Thomas Friedman discuss his new book, "The World Is Flat" on The Daily Show here. It's a beautiful thing.

Bloggers don't have lives

Maddox isn't the only one who enjoys poking fun at bloggers. Take a look at this.

Nepotism on trial

Iraq the Model reports that, slowly but surely, Saddam's senior aides are being brought to trial on accounts of political and ethnic murder in the South and Kurdistan during the 1980's and early 90's. Just to reinforce the fact that Saddam ran a mafia-like regime based on privilage, it is interesting to note that almost all of his senior aides are related to him in some way. Some examples of the men being interrogated currently:

Ali Hasan Al-Majeed (Chemical Ali) who confessed this time that he led operations against political targets in the south when he was in charge of the Ba'ath organizations in that region.

By the way, Ali was a sergeant before Saddam promoted him to general and appointed him minister of defense!

Watban Ibrahim Al-Hasan (Saddam's brother; a cop who became a minister of interior!)

Barazan Ibrahim Al-Hasan (Saddam's brother and chief of the Mukhabarat)

One big happy jailbird family.

Retirement plans

After seven consecutive Tour de France victories, what's next for Lance Armstrong?

It remains to be seen who will become the Tour's next dominant force - or what Armstrong will do now.

Spending time with his children and working for the Lance Armstrong Foundation are the two key aspects, but some, including best friend and team-mate George Hincapie, have hinted at a possible future in the White House.

President Armstrong? John Kerry seems to think so.

"I think he'd be awesome, he'd be a force. I just hope it's for the right party," said Kerry, an avid cyclist and longtime fan of the Tour de France.

Armstrong...has not ruled out a career in politics after he quits.

I don't understand how a connection can be made between a career in sports and a career in government. But this is America after all.

1st Lt. David Lucas

My apologies for the light blogging of late. Work plus friends and family can sometimes inhibit computer time.

Glenn found a great oped piece by a First Lieutenant David Lucas that just says it all about liberal American attitudes about the war in Iraq (the link on Glenn's site is faulty, but he quotes enough to get the point across). Some highlights:

"Let's support our troops. Bring them home." Please don't ever say those words again. Nothing is so disheartening to our troops who are in harm's way than to hear our own citizens say things like that.

...[Y]ou are entitled to your beliefs, and you should believe in whatever you want, but don't pretend to know what you are talking about just because you have watched 30 minutes of CNN the night before. Go and talk to the people who have been there — not the people who make assumptions from a TV studio...

This is so true.

The Brandeis of Europe?

This caught my eye today, and understandably so, considering that I am going to attend the real Brandeis this fall.

It's called the Lauder Business School, and its purpose is to create a Jewish-friendly university environment in the heart of Europe: Vienna, an oasis of culture and fine art since the 19th century. Good deal.

From The Jerusalem Post:

[The] framework is a four-year, post-high school program, taught in English, which culminates in a European Union-recognized master's degree in international marketing and management.

Try that one on for size.

Maddox on San Andreas

Rob noticed this update today on The Best Page in the Universe. I think it's kind of funny how I actually found myself agreeing with him in many cases. If you're the type to buy this game (which I am not), you most likely will not be bothered by a pixelated nipple. His sarcasm speaks for itself:

Thank God. I'll be the first person to download and patch my PC version of "Grand Theft Auto." I want to shoot people in the face, bang prostitutes, traffic drugs, steal cars, and terrorize police officers without this filthy smut in my game. Frankly, I'm appalled that Rockstar would allow such wholesale corruption of our youth.

Yeah, really.

The trial

I can't believe the media fell all over Operation Iraqi Freedom and neglected to follow up with the biggest reason why we went into Iraq: to put a despot on trial. Iraq The Model has the latest. Some highlights:

...[T]his time he [Saddam] was officially charged with forcing the "Faily" Kurds (the Shea't Kurds) out of the country and confiscating all their belongings.

The families were abandoned near the Iranian borders and they had to walk through minefields and that was the way many of them lost their lives or got injured.
Moreover, thousands were thrown in Saddam's jails and till now, the fate of many of them is still unknown.

This next anecdote is one of the main reasons I read this blog now: these guys can truthfully say they have been affected by Saddam firsthand, whether directly or indirectly through acquaintances. How many journalists can claim that? This is the beauty of the blogosphere.

I recall that when I was a kid, I had a friend named Amjad and we used to play soccer together in the street in our old neighborhood but one day Amjad stopped showing up and I missed my friend who was the only son for his parents.
I asked about him but I didn't understand the answer when I was told that Amjad and his parents were "moved".
"Where to?" was my question, "to Iran" my father answered.

I don't know what happened to Amjad and his family after that but today, I'm sure they feel happy.

As they should.

More follow-ups as the trial unfolds.

London bombings round 2

Andrew Sullivan found some good stuff about the people that may have pulled this off. He quotes Professor Paul Rogers of Bradford University from The London Times.

"The level of forensic evidence will be extremely high, much higher than last time. They will have the devices and much can be done to them in terms of fingerprinting, DNA, the origin of the detonators and where the bags were bought. If this was a series of dummies deliberately timed to cause mass panic then it puts the people responsible at considerable risk of being found."

Amateurs.

San Andreas gets pulled

Somebody in the higher echelons of government has convinced Rockstar to stop production of GTA: San Andreas. Rob has details.

So much for Islamocracy

Iraq The Model is an Iraqi blog written by two brothers that live in Baghdad. I'm assuming that it was started post-liberation. Very good read for anyone interested.

Yesterday's post brought up an interesting point about so-called "Islamic" government.

Iraqi blogger Samir Hassan (Arabic) raised a very important point that apparently most Muslims had forgotten; it's the important fact that in [the] 1st constitution written for a dominantly Muslim society (and by no less than the [P]rophet himself) there was no mention of Islam as the official religion of the state!

"Muslims somehow dropped this document from their history even though it was named the "Paper" - which suggests it was written to be declared and published, not ignored and forgotten.

This state established by the prophet at Yethrib was named "Al-Madina" (which means "The City") and was based on a kind of civil governance free from coercion or oppression.

The constitution protected this right for groups and individuals. There is no reference anywhere in the "Paper" to the state's religion or that of its ruler."

Intriguing.

The Final Frontier

While we're on the subject of man's quest to journey into space, which was aided greatly by Scotty's contribution on the USS Enterprise, I noticed a couple of things on Glenn's site today that are worth pointing out.

First, Rand Simberg on the Apollo XI anniversary.


And while it did achieve Kennedy's (narrow) goal, in terms of opening up space Apollo was in fact a failure, and replicating its approach with modern hardware is likely to be as well, because throwing away launch vehicles is an intrinsically bad way to perform large-scale space activities, and to become a spacefaring nation, and no number of design concepts will get around that fact. Until we learn the true lessons of history, our government space program will continue to disappoint those of us who desire great things from it, and who want to go ourselves.

I'm all for colonizing space, but I think this guy is getting a little ahead of himself. We still have way too many problems to solve here on Earth before we can start thinking about challenging the Romulans. One thing at a time.

And on a more humorous note: Alan K. Henderson on Kathryn Jean Lopez's urgent question.

"I'd like to know if Star Trek had an influence on John Roberts and, if so, what that influence was."

Here are some responses I don't want to hear:

• "It is a good day to die."
• "Strength is irrelevant. Resistance is futile. We wish to improve ourselves. We will add your distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service ours."
• "My position on Roe? How much latinum is it worth to you?"
• "Please state the nature of the legal emergency."
• "From hell's heart, I stab at thee. For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee."
• "Setting dissent on stun."
• "Don't push your luck, pinkskin!"
• "Engaging cloaking device." [dodging a question]
• "Red alert! Raise shields!" [more dodging]
• "Beam me out of here!" [yet more dodging]
• "Really, Mr. Senator, you emotions will become your undoing."

Okay, maybe I do want to hear that last one.

Hehe.

RIP Scotty

James Doohan, you will be missed.

Isn't this interesting though?

James Montgomery Doohan was born on March 3, 1920, in Vancouver, British Columbia. He became a captain of artillery in the Royal Canadian Army during World War II.

Doohan lost the middle finger of his right hand on June 6, 1944, or D-Day, when the Allied forces invaded France. The injury is visible in only two ``Star Trek'' episodes, ``The Trouble With Tribbles'' and ``Cats Paw,'' according to Internet Movie Database.

TPMCafe update

Josh Marshall has set up a really neat blogging forum on his site titled TPMCafe: Politics, Ideas, and lots of Caffeine. He breaks it down into different discussion topics that relate to his recent posts. The latest addition to this forum is the Supreme Court Watch, which right now is focusing on the recent appointment of Judge Roberts. Of course, most of the discussion is left-leaning, but it is interesting nonetheless (Robert W. Gordon is the main contributor at the moment and his credentials look very good). I only wish I had a large enough readership to pursue a similar endeavor.

Judge Roberts

I cannot claim to know jack about this guy, but Hugh gives him kudos.

Judge John Roberts may be the smartest lawyer I have known, and he combines that intellect with a graciousness and good humor that will make it hard for any except the most extreme ideolouges to oppose him. Here's his bio, but it cannot fully convey the great intellectual force which Justice Roberts will bring to the SCOTUS.

I'll take his word for it.

Inside opinion

This is really interesting: if you head on over to Talking Points Memo, you can read an email that was sent to Josh by a "retired US Ambassador" who gives his insight into what may have happened with that State Department memo that is being linked to Rove. Some highlights:

When you're on Air Force One, you are in a confined space. If someone -- anyone -- read that memo, they could have walked 10 feet and shared it with anyone else. All the bureaucratic boundaries of Washington break down when you're in one of those situations. You're all together. Bloomberg said that Ari Fleischer was seen reading it. Plus according to other accounts, he started telling reporters on board that they should ask about how it was that Wilson got to go on the trip. Plus we know that Ari made phone calls from the plane -- they could have been to Rove, Libby, Novak, or whoever, to alert them to what he had just read. When Rove says "I never read anything/saw any memo," he could very well be right. But someone should have asked him, "did you hear about the memo? Did someone describe its contents to you?"

There is another way that Rove could have heard about Valerie Plame, and that is via Scooter Libby. I haven't seen anyone suggest this route, but we all know that Scooter and Cheney were deep into the intelligence. They went out to the Agency to meet with the analysts (and allegedly harrassed them). I am sure that Scooter participated in meetings in the White House/EOB where CIA analysts on WMD and Iraq were present. As we know, Valerie was one such analyst. Is it not possible that Scooter had met her on one or more occasions before Joe Wilson started going public? Since she's a looker, he certainly would have remembered her face and name. And then, once Joe writes his op-ed, Scooter realizes the connection between Valerie and Joe, or he asks around and quickly finds out. He then informs Rove. This is all speculation on my part. Joe would know whether Valerie had met Scooter before.

The third possibility is Bolton or his staff. (Remember that his chief of staff was from the CIA.) Again, Bolton was deeply into the intelligence on Iraq and WMD. When INR sent the memo to Grossman in June, Bolton's office no doubt got a copy of it, given the way the Department works. Given the neo-con circle in the Administration, it would not have taken long for Bolton to tip off Libby to the Wilson-Plame-CIA connection.

Read the whole thing.

The Gore Channel

Remember Al Gore? The mastermind of the Internet? Well, his cable TV network is set to launch next month. Garrett Graff of Fishbowl DC has the scoop.

He [Gore] explained, "We want to be the 'television home page' for the Internet generation." The LAT explains that programs will be divided into "pods," which will be two to seven minutes in length. One sample pod, sure to appeal to the hippest of the hip, will be called "Google Current," described as "a cheeky summary of top searches on the Google website."

Who could pass that up?

Yeah, really.

Keep Firefox afloat

How about some economics for a change?

...[T]he browser wars likely will get even more interesting in the coming months, with Microsoft due to release the beta of the next IE, version 7, within the next few weeks.

If Microsoft has added better security and more features, it could affect market share for other browsers, analysts have said.

Although it is likely that Firefox will continue to find strong adoption with consumers and those in the education sector, the browser still has many hurdles to overcome in gaining corporate adoption, a market critical to mainstream success for the browser.

I absolutely deplore how bad the current IE is with security. Corporations can do whatever they want, but right now I pledge allegiance to the fox and the fox alone.

This is so mean

Advancements in pharmaceutical science come at a price... especially at Covance Inc. Rob found a really disturbing video of experimentation on monkeys at a Covance lab. Of course, like he notes on his blog, we cannot forget that the same level of cruelty happens at slaughterhouses everyday. But there is just something about primates (most likely their physical resemblance to us) that makes this so much more uncomfortable to watch.

Update on Akbar Ganji

Andrew Sullivan found a report today on Akbar Ganji's worsening condition. Apparently Iranian prisons and hunger strikes are not a good match.

In a telephone interview from Tehran, a former political prisoner who was released temporarily from Evin prison at the end of June, Amir Abbas Fakhravar, told The New York Sun that Mr. Ganji's kidneys had failed and that he was seen yesterday by two fellow inmates in Evin's hospital wing laying unconscious on a floor as two guards tried to prop him up.

This is the plight of freedom itself and nothing less. I really hope this guy pulls through.

Fantastic Four review

I'm gonna make this quick: it's a rental.

Whoops

Confirmation: Mike Tidmus was in fact making fun of Time's current cover. I haven't seen the issue yet for whatever reason. My bad.

Reichminister Rove

Mike Tidmus has funny art work posted today. I wonder if it in any way resembles what the editors at Time are cooking up right now for the next issue.

Irshad Manji part 2

I blogged about this woman back when her book, The Trouble with Islam Today, was just becoming popular. Now she's being profiled by The London Times (thanks Glenn). Some highlights:

Doesn’t the violent Muslim minority show Islam is flawed? “I ask myself the same question,” she grimaces. Far from regarding Muslims as oppressed they have a “supremacy complex — and that’s dangerous”. This, she contends, is true even among moderates. “Literalists” who consider the Koran the “perfect manifesto of God” have taken over the mainstream; and far from misreading Islam, as Tony Blair and the Muslim Council of Britain insist, terrorists can find encouragement for murder in the Koran.

The perfect manifesto of God, yes. The perfect manifesto for killing innocents, no... these two things do not coincide. The literalism aspect is key here. I've witnessed it firsthand, and it's ugly.

Muslims, adds Manji, must find positive role models rather than jihadists: “Martyrs are the rock stars of the Muslim world, shown on the internet against a background of funky music. They feed on the self-esteem crisis of young Muslims.” That could be addressed by history lessons paying greater tribute to the Muslim contribution to the Renaissance.

Muslims feel beaten down by the West when they don't realize how much they have contributed to its development. I am utterly convinced, from a historical perspective, that the Renaissance would not have come about without the spread of Muhammad's Revelation. All of Manji's points in this regard hold a lot of water.

Well done

I hadn't gotten around to reading this Washington Post article the other day when I posted on Josh Marshall. It's good stuff though.

Straight to the point

Glenn on Jerry Pournelle on the CIA thing:

"[M]ost of the Democrats who want to beat up the administration over the war voted to authorize it, so an honest analysis of the war decision factors won't work. So, we have this imbecile investigation taking up time." Indeed.

It's just that simple, eh? I think I get it now.

Truces mean nothing

In the Middle East anyway... see for yourself. This is key though:

The attack came after the Israeli military killed at least eight Hamas militants since Friday, in the first targeted killings in seven months.

What we don't know is whether those eight militants were planning to break the truce anyway. Something to consider?

In case you're lost...

I just noticed that Josh Marshall's latest post has some good links to articles that, hopefully, will be able to clear up all this riff-raff with Karl Rove and his exposure of that CIA operative. I'm glad Josh took the time to find these because I've been trying to understand this thing but the media hasn't been doing a very good job piecing it all together for me. Marshall's own words brought me almost instant relief:

Just when everyone seemed about to get bogged down in the rain forest of minutiae, batting down lies like flies, here come two articles with an aerial view of the case, putting all into perspective.

Well put, Josh. Thank God for perspective.

Wedding Crashers review

Being couped up in the house after surgery is not really my cup of tea. So last night I convinced my dad to go see Wedding Crashers with me. I think Wesley Morris' review in The Boston Globe sums it up well:

''Wedding Crashers," a salty and riotous new comedy, is the antidote to Hollywood's recent string of refried plots and allegorical disasters. Boldly, it embraces what too few big movies have this summer: fun. Some of you might recall how that feels: You enter the megaplex in anticipation, you leave in delight.

These are truly the kind of movies that I live for. I was once asked by someone: if I had to choose to see one genre of movie for the rest of my life, what would it be? And I would have to say it would be this brand of situational comedy that I couldn't live without. I've been a fan of Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson for quite some time, and they definitely delivered in this movie. Their chemistry together as two bulls**ters that like to crash weddings was a riot. The montages that appear within the first 20 minutes give you a glimpse of the kind of hilarious, immature, "desperate bachelor" antics we were going to be exposed to for the rest of the movie. Clearly these guys are pros at what they do: they know how to fake background stories as to how they are related to the bride or groom, take part in various cultural traditions associated with weddings (mainly Jewish, Italian, and Indian dancing), and most of all, how to reel in the attractive bridesmaids. I was enjoying myself from almost the second the movie started.

The bulk of the film deals with one of the bigger DC-area weddings at the end of the "season": the marriage of the Secretary of Treasury (played by Christopher Walken)'s oldest daughter to a wealthy attorney. Of course, the wedding crashers have to be there for the usual reasons: mooching off the various assortment of finger foods ("Don't touch the crab cakes, they're mine," exclaims Vaughn at one point) and trying to score with the ladies. To make a long story short, the two partners in crime end up biting off WAY more than they can chew and get invited to stay at the Secretary's home for the weekend after-party. Oh crap. This is against the wedding crasher code: never stay longer than you need to because your bulls**t stories are bound to run out at some point. But Owen's character insists to Vaughn that he wants to stay to pursue a particularly attractive younger daughter of the Secretary (Claire, played by Rachel McAdams from Mean Girls). Meanwhile, Vaughn can't shake off the clingy "virgin" daughter that he met at the wedding, who continually insists that she has fallen for him. Yikes.

To make a long story short, the two guys find themselves in a hell of a jam that they eventually, like all good situational comedies, find a way to get out of. The moral of the story catches up with them by the end of the movie as well, which was clear from the beginning: the bachelor lifestyle will never fully make you happy... at some point you will find your true love and decide that you're better off settling down. Regardless of the mushy ending that you knew was coming, this movie was hilarious and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good time.

World's first bendable electronic paper

Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine found a sweet new Japanese invention: bendable electronic paper. Too bad Fujitsu didn't come out with this a bit earlier, because I'm sure J.K. Rowling would have jumped all over it and they would have made an instant fortune. Nevertheless, this is pretty huge. Hopefully I'll be able to understand it better when I'm more awake...

Optimus keyboard

Rob showed me this a couple days ago, but it is now the most clicked on link on www.blogsnow.com

...Gotta love the future.

Forget START

Anywhere I see the words "Soviet arms" published, something about it immediately catches my attention. This article in The New York Times is no exception to the rule.

Huge depots of conventional weapons and ammunition remain in much of the former Soviet borderlands, many of them vulnerable to the elements, inadequately secured or watched over by security agencies with histories of corruption and suspicious arms sales. Largely unaddressed while Western nations and post-Soviet states have worked to secure and dispose of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, the conventional stockpiles pose problems as yet unsolved.

The article goes on to outline these problems, which fall mainly into two categories: threats to security and the environment.

Such stockpiles endanger global security not only because they may arm rebel groups, but also because military munitions can readily be disassembled and their explosives used to make powerful bombs. This risk is among the prospective worries in Ukraine.

"Based on the record of the Ukrainian military over the last several years, in diverse settings, there is a certain probability that it might sell explosives to terrorists," said Andreas Heinemann-Gruder, a senior researcher at the Bonn International Center for Conversion, a private organization working on demilitarization and military conversion that has studied the Ukrainian stockpiles. "Sectors of the Ukrainian military have cooperated with whoever offered them money, and there have been no moral considerations."

"No moral considerations." That's what we need to put an end to. The introduction of free markets into post-Soviet Eastern Europe has fused two very dangerous things: the moral decadence of communism with capitalism's love of profit.

The dangers are not limited to the munitions' travels and use. Ukrainian officials and military analysts have warned that as Soviet-era munitions have aged, environmental and safety risks have mounted. This was made clear last year when a depot exploded near Melitopol, in the south, scattering tons of ammunition in the surrounding countryside. The blasts killed five people and forced the evacuation of at least 5,000 more.

Clean up on aisle 7. That's been the West's policy towards Eastern Europe for pretty much the last 15 years.

Fighting words

When looking at a totalitarian system, sometimes it's hard to distinguish between the opinion of one individual and the official policy of an entire state. Nevertheless, this is a bit frightening.

"If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition onto the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons," Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu said in yesterday's editions of the Financial Times and the Asian Wall Street Journal.

I've never been one of those China worrywarts like some other right-of-center guys I know, but the use of nuclear weapons is nothing to be joked about. It's understandable that China would, like any other nuclear state, uphold a policy of retaliation in the event of a first strike against them. However, this does not seem to be the case judging from the following:

The statements contradict China's publicly stated policy that it will not be the first nation to use nuclear weapons in a conflict. Gen. Zhu was quoted as saying he believed the no-first-use policy applied only to nonnuclear states and could be changed.

He said Beijing is under internal pressure to change the no-first-use policy and to announce that it will use the most powerful weapons at its disposal to defend its claim on Taiwan. He stated that "war logic" requires weaker powers to use all means to defeat a stronger rival.

Yes, of course, "war logic" would clearly suggest that China's best option at this point would be to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the United States, thereby eliminating all threat to a negligible island in the South China Sea.

Yikes.

This is pathetic

Glenn found a BBC reporter that is liveblogging his first read through the latest Harry Potter book. Crazy Brits.

Just a little longer...

No, I am not a Harry Potter fan, but I do recognize that everyone else in the world is. Too bad kids in Israel are going to have to wait another day though.

It's not that Ben-Gurion Airport's architects forgot to include Terminal 9 3/4 in their new hi-tech designs, but 12:01 [tomorrow] morning poses a serious challenge to Israeli fans hoping to seize an immediate copy of the book. Not only is this the eerie witching hour, but it also happens to be Shabbat. So while fans around the globe will be storming bookshops to grab their long-reserved copies of J.K. Rowling's sixth bestseller, many Israelis are being forced to grin and bear the suspense for a whole extra day.

"The next thing you know they will only let Harry Potter come out in Israel if he puts on a kippa," secular opposition leader Yosef Lapid snorted, unsurprisingly, to The Jerusalem Post.

Oy vey!

Clinton leads charge against GTA

Senator Hillary Clinton has taken a special interest in seeing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas go under a government microscope.

Saying the problem of explicit video games was "spiraling out of control," Clinton also said she was introducing legislation that would crack down on the sale of violent and sex-laden games to minors.

Hey, if she could beat hookers in real life, why not on-screen as well?

Anesthesia is sweet

I just wanted to say that I really gotta hand it to modern medicine. My oral surgeon gave me the choice of novocaine (or some other kind of local numbing agent) for the procedure, but most people choose to go under just to experience the beauty of being completely oblivious of the operation. And man, does that stuff ever work. When the nurse stuck the IV in, I started to get worried after about 30 seconds of not feeling anything, thinking that maybe I should suggest they hit me with some more (how stupid am I, telling professionals how to do their job) but sure enough, I was out for the count before I could even gather my thoughts. And not only that, when I woke up I was happy as a freaking clam! It was the weirdest feeling: almost everything people were saying caused me to burst out into uncontrollable laughter. I can only imagine how funny it must have been for other people to witness this. But as cool as the experience was, alas, the effects of this drug have since worn off and I am now miserably coping with all the pain, blood, and gauze that comes with four extracted teeth. Gross.

Wisdom teeth

I'm getting four out tomorrow morning. I hope the Pundit will have sufficient strength to carry out his blogging duties. Prayers are welcome.

RateMyProfessors.com

Just got done registering for my fall classes today and was curious to know more about my professors. Of course, the Brandeis website does a good job propping its faculty up with impressive academic credentials, but what about the more human side of things? Ah, the beauty of the Internet. On this site, "the students do the grading." Let's just hope those professors who've had their tenure a bit too long (if you know what I mean) steer clear of it...

UN debates the Internet

The headline reads: UN panel fails to agree on how to govern the Internet. Not surprising, although the intentions of this committee are good.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has long pressed industry, government and private interest groups to try to narrow the "digital divide" and ensure that people in poor nations have greater access to the Internet.

All for it.

My bad

The article that was involved with that last post was courtesy of Rob Taylor. Must have slipped my mind. Sorry, Rob.

Unrelenting harassment

For those of you interested in criminal law, how's this for a case study?

Judge Graham Cottle told [Kathryn] Skinner [the defendant], at Exeter Crown Court yesterday: "The story of this case almost defies belief. I do not believe I have previously dealt with a case which matched this for wickedness.

"The principal victim was a poor, helpless child. Yours were the actions of a warped and twisted mind."

Skim the article... it'll leave you in shock.

Akbar Ganji

Besides having a name that sounds like "Ghandi," this man serves as a reminder that freedom is not free in Iran, where he is currently in prison for writing about the Iranian government's murder of political dissidents in 1998. From what we know, he is constantly in a state of torture and deprivation from medical assistance. His own words are heartwrenching:

"What the Islamic prosecutor doesn't know is that Ganji may die, but the love of freedom, and the thirst for political justice will never die. Ganji may die, but humanism and the love of one's fellow man, and the hope and expectations for a better future, will never die.

"I will spend my time in solitary, but my heart will continue to beat for freedom. And some of the time I will hear prisoners cry for the windows of their solitary cells to be opened, to let the sun in."

Read the rest of his accounts... they are guaranteed to give you plenty of food for thought. Also, if someone asks me what we are doing in the Middle East right now, I hope that this case (among many others) will be sufficient to represent the immense longing for freedom and justice that we are trying to promote over there.

Run, Donny, run!

My friend Donny is in Europe right now with a bunch of his friends, and they all had the brilliant idea of joining in on La Fiesta de San Fermin while they were in Pamplona. In case you didn't know, this festival involves the world famous running of the bulls, in which hordes of bulls are let loose into the streets to have free reign over hordes of people (who then become just as dangerous as the bulls). Judging from his diary, it seems that he had a good time. Yet I couldn't help but notice this article in the BBC today.

The annual nine-day festival of San Fermin, which concludes today, draws the curious, the naive and the foolhardy from around the world to run through the streets pursued by six fighting bulls.

Foolhardy is quite the appropriate word, considering most of these people are drunk and disoriented as it is.

The account continues...

Like a shotgun blast mixed with falling timber, I heard and felt something, or maybe someone, smash into the paling in front of me.

A flash of black, high in the air, and it was all over. I looked down and saw a body, prone on the ground some 10ft away, the eyes already glazing, a patch of blood spreading about it.

Like Hemingway, Matthew Peter Tassio was from Illinois. As he was running up San Domingo, he was felled by one of the oxen which run alongside the bulls. As he struggled to his feet, witnesses said, he was charged.

The fighting bull which gored him weighed half a tonne. It hit him in the abdomen, severed a main artery, sliced through his kidney and punctured his liver, before tossing him seven metres (23 feet) in the air.

Yes, the kid died. I'm glad it wasn't Donny.

Saddam and al Qaeda

Both Glenn and Hugh picked up on this editorial by Claudia Rosett of The Wall Street Journal. That must mean it's important. I will do my best to give you highlights, but I suggest that you read the whole thing if you know what's good for you.

Any conclusions or even inferences about contacts between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda are subjected these days to the kind of metaphysical test in which existence itself becomes a highly dubious philosophical problem, mired in the difficulty of ever really being certain about anything at all.

Certainty is then imposed in the form of assurances that there was no connection. This notion that there was no Saddam-al Qaeda connection is invoked as an argument against the decision to go to war in Iraq, and enjoined as part of the case that we were safer with Saddam in power, and that, even now, the U.S. and its allies should simply cut and run.

Actually, there were many connections, as Stephen Hayes, writing in the current issue of the Weekly Standard, spells out under the headline "The Mother of All Connections." Since the fall of Saddam, the U.S. has had extraordinary access to documents of the former Baathist regime, and is still sifting through millions of them. Mr. Hayes takes some of what is already available, combined with other reports, documentation and details, some from before the overthrow of Saddam, some after. For page after page, he lists connections--with names, dates and details such as the longstanding relationship between Osama bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Saddam's regime.

Mr. Hayes raises, with good reason, the question of why Saddam gave haven to Abdul Rahman Yasin, one of the men who in 1993 helped make the bomb that ripped through the parking garage of the World Trade Center. He details a contact between Iraqi intelligence and several of the Sept. 11 hijackers in Malaysia, the year before al Qaeda destroyed the twin towers. He recounts the intersection of Iraqi and al Qaeda business interests in Sudan, via, among other things, an Oil for Food contract negotiated by Saddam's regime with the al-Shifa facility that President Clinton targeted for a missile attack following the African embassy bombings because of its apparent connection to al Qaeda. And there is plenty more.

Yes, I'm sure there is plenty more. Plenty.

No more monkey see, monkey do

Rob has been hitting some really crazy science articles recently, most of them having to do with experimentation on animals. Check out the latest.

In cutting-edge experiments, scientists have injected human brain cells into monkey fetuses to study the effects.

These procedures, known as 'human-primate chimeras', involve the combination of human and monkey cells, tissue and DNA to observe any effect and examine the possibility that such combination could actually exist.

WWJD is the question. And by that I mean, What Would Jane [Goodall] Do?

Cast approval

The Da Vinci Code movie has a lead cast... and it looks mighty fine to me.

Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon? Sure, why not? He's only one of the best actors in the business. There's little doubt there as to whether he can carry a movie.
Audrey Tautou as Sophie Neveu? Never heard of her, but her looks guarantee she'll do the job.
(Sir?) Ian McKellen as Leigh Teabing? A fine actor, I must say, and he's definitely got enough British aristocracy in him to get the point across.
Alfred Molina as Bishop Aringarosa? I had to look this guy up on IMDB before I recognized him, but I think he'll do a good job with this role. Even though one of his last credits was playing Doctor Octopus in Spiderman 2, I think he could pass off as a conservative Spanish bishop anyday.
Jean Reno as Bezu Fache? YES! I have to say that I jumped for joy after seeing this credit. He's the perfect man for this role: a badass Frenchman who has redefined the meaning of "five o'clock shadow."
Paul Bettany as Silas? Well for one thing, he is definitely white enough for the role of an albino. But that aside, I think he can muster enough Opus Dei angst in him to play an effective antagonist.

Overall, I say props to the casting director. This should be a hell of a movie.

Maddox targets bloggers

The self-proclaimed Best Page in the Universe now has a new enemy: the blogosphere. Somehow I knew sooner or later this guy would get around to making fun of us... it was simply a matter of time. Anytime there is a trend that is being followed, expect Maddox to be on top of it with his twisted sense of humor. Let me just give you a sample of what he has cooked up recently:

Blog: The word "blog" is literally short-hand for "boring"... It's an abbreviation used by journalism drop outs to give legitimacy to their shallow opinions and amateur photography that seems to be permanently stuck in first draft hell.


Giving legitimacy to shallow opinions? He's one to talk.


Blogger: Term used to describe anyone with enough time or narcissism to document every tedious bit of minutia filling their uneventful lives. Possibly the most annoying thing about bloggers is the sense of self-importance they get after even the most modest of publicity. Sometimes it takes as little as a referral on a more popular blogger's website to set the lesser blogger's ego into orbit.


Hehe... he has some good points there, eh Rob?

States rights

The governor of Illinois is directly challenging a Pentagon plan to move a fighter wing from Springfield to Indiana.

In a letter sent to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the governor argued that under federal law if he does not consent to the realignment, the change can not legally be made.

Damn feds. Anyone up for Civil War II?

A covenant of security

One thing that the world is being continually reminded of as the War on Terror progresses is that no country is safe from the threat of terrorist attacks. Britain learned this the hard way last Thursday, and it goes to show how incredibly wrong many British experts were. There once existed a general consensus among security agencies in the British government that Britain was essentially immune from Islamist violence. The government maintained a peaceful relationship with its native Muslim population for years, which made this a cause for reassurance in regards to terrorism. Obviously, the recent bombings in London changes things. This article in the Jerusalem Post does an excellent job explaining the "covenant of security" that once existed between Britain and its Muslim community that has now been shattered.

In an August 2004 story in the New Statesman, "Why terrorists love Britain," Jamie Campbell cited Mohamed Sifaoui, author of Inside al Qaeda that it has long been recognized by the British Islamists, by the British government and by UK intelligence agencies, that as long as Britain guarantees a degree of freedom to the likes of Hassan Butt [an overtly pro-terrorist Islamist], the terrorist strikes will continue to be planned within the borders of the UK but will not occur there.

Campbell draws from this the perversely ironic conclusion that "the presence of vocal and active Islamist terrorist sympathizers in the UK actually makes British people safer, while the full brunt of British-based terrorist plotting is suffered by people in other countries."

Omar Bakri Mohammed, a Syrian immigrant to the UK who headed al-Muhajiroun, then confirmed the covenant of security, telling about companions of the Prophet Muhammad given protection by the king of Ethiopia. That experience, he told Campbell, led to the Koranic notion of covenant of security: Muslims may not attack the inhabitants of a country where they live in safety. This "makes it unlikely that British-based Muslims will carry out operations in the UK itself."

But in January 2005, Omar Bakri Mohammed determined that the covenant of security had ended for British Muslims because of post-9/11 anti-terrorist legislation that meant "the whole of Britain has become Dar ul-Harb [the Abode of War, the territory open for Muslim conquest]." Therefore, "the kuffar [unbelievers] has no sanctity for their own life or property."

Lovely.

Boys with toys

Rob sent me a link to an amazing video that features what is known only as Hydro Foam, described by creator Michael Connally as a "remote control electric airplane powered by a brushless motor and lithium-polymer batteries." Lithium-polymer? Whatever works, I guess. I sort of wished I had paid more attention in science class, but in any case, these things are sweet! And the good news is, according to Connally, they "should be available world wide in the near future." How affordable they will be is an entirely different story, and right now Connally isn't releasing any figures. We can only hope that our eyes can agree with our checkbook...

Another reason to hate GTA

The Boston Globe reports that a Dutch "modder" by the name of Patrick Wildenborg claims to have discovered an "Easter egg" hidden inside the latest release of the Grand Theft Auto series, San Andreas. In case you don't know what a modder is, they are basically computer savvy geeks that use "software tools to modify the look and feel of [their] favorite games." Many of these modders have succeeded in creating sexually explicit versions of such favorites as The Sims, which is perfectly legal (they actually help boost sales, according to computer game companies). However, this Wildenborg character claims that he has unlocked a hidden code buried inside San Andreas that, when activated, plays a pornographic cutscene. As if GTA wasn't infamous enough for the violence.

It's no big deal if a Dutchman creates a pornographic version of GTA. But Wildenborg said he and his buddies did no such thing. He said the porn movie was built into the game at the factory and his mod simply revealed it. He claims a million people have downloaded ''Hot Coffee" since it was posted on the Internet a month ago.

Wildenborg insists that every bit of sex revealed by his mod is built into the game, rather than added by his crew of modders. Take 2 Interactive, which makes the GTA game series, could clarify the matter in a minute, but it won't. A company spokesman said Take 2 never comments on the activities of the modder community. Of course, the question isn't about the modder community at all. The question is whether Take 2 built a mini porn movie into its game in the first place. And the company refuses to answer.

The article goes on to talk about what could possibly happen if the company admits that the movie is part of the game's programming. Most likely it would land the game an AO (Adults Only) rating and get it pulled from the shelves or shoved under the front desk at your local GameStop. In any case, I definitely think it's a bit suspicious how Take 2 Interactive didn't come right out and deny Wildenborg's claim... that is, if they really are innocent as charged.

Friedman on London bombings

Glenn picked up on a really great Friedman editorial... go check it out.

...it is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst. If it does not fight that death cult, that cancer, within its own body politic, it is going to infect Muslim-Western relations everywhere. Only the Muslim world can root out that death cult. It takes a village.

Indeed it does.

Martial Law

You don't hear that phrase used much anymore, but who would have thought that it could apply to a Mexican town on the border with Texas? Rob Taylor has the full scoop over at his blog, with links included.

War of the Worlds review

I just got around to seeing it today, and I have to say I thought it was fairly mediocre. Not quite the Spielberg brilliance I was expecting, but pretty decent overall. The idea of centering it around a broken family finding their solidarity through a traumatic experience was creative, but somewhat ineffective by limiting the scope of the story. I grew tired of watching the same people run from one place to the next only to find themselves in the exact same situation they just escaped from. Perhaps if there were a few other strong characters (diversity worked well in Independence Day for sure), it would have moved things along in a more engaging manner. But don't get me wrong, there were definitely some good performances by the leads, Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning among them. In terms of the story though, I couldn't help but walk away and feel that the whole thing ended too fast. All of a sudden, we go from hell back to normal as the characters arrive in Boston without as much as a couple of missiles being shot off. Okay, fine, so the aliens suddenly realize that they are not properly vaccinated against Earth's plethora of viruses and bacteria. But if they were so well invested in their plan as to take the time to bury machines deep under the ground, you'd think they would have also looked at our complex biosphere in the process. Not to mention, if they had been planning this for millions of years, why didn't they just take over Earth back when there were dinosaurs walking around with brains the size of peanuts? Why risk coming into contact with an evolved race of beings that might be able to exploit a potential weakness? Oh well, nobody's perfect.

However, at the risk of sounding completely uninformed here (I can't claim to have read the book), I welcome any comments that would assist in shedding light on the various "flaws" I have found with this movie. After all, I never claim to know everything, especially when they involve diabolical alien plans to enslave and/or annihilate the human race.