Damn damn damn

Ariel Sharon just had a major stroke. Power transferred to Vice Premier Olmert; what this means for the coming elections, I have no idea.

This scares me. Sharon had become the person with enough moral weight to push forward a real plan for the future. And he seemed to have one. I don’t believe that any of the other people in this party could hold it together enough to really make things work – to win a strong plurality and push forward an actual something that could lead to peace. I feel like it’s 1995 again, when Rabin was assassinated and we all suddenly realized that our hopes were in the hands of a single all-too-mortal person. I just never thought I would be thinking that about Sharon.

God help him, and help us all.

Published in: on January 4, 2006 at 14:45  Comments (10)  
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Science list: Things that don’t make sense

New Scientist has an interesting little article about “13 things that do not make sense” — basically, odd experimental results from the past couple of years that nobody really feels comfortable explaining yet.

Now, the crackpots will be out in force saying “See! Science is at an end! There are things it can’t explain! There therefore must be an intelligent designer intentionally confounding the attempts of humans to tinker with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know…” et cetera. I’ll just leave them out in the pottery shed; these thirteen things are really interesting, and while most of them probably won’t pan out, if any of them do then there’s some damned interesting advances going on. These are all under fairly active research (for the theoretical ones and the more well-understood experimental ones [like cosmic rays] people are working hard on them, and for the stranger experimental ones [like tetraneutrons, or one they forgot, the magnetic monopole] people are still waiting for experimental confirmation).

Published in: on January 2, 2006 at 18:32  Comments (8)  
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List of titles

I was just at the donations page for Médecins Sans Frontières, and was amused to see the list of titles you can fill in on the form…
Which would you like to be?

Published in: on December 22, 2005 at 22:58  Comments (6)  
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FISA judges to be briefed

The FISA court is arranging a formal briefing where the administration will (in theory) explain its warrantless spying program.

  • Will there be any analogue of opposing counsel there? Will someone be asking hard questions of the administration, or will it simply be the administration people giving a presentation to the judges and then the judges having to decide to quit or not? Why is this not a matter for a hearing of the ordinary sort?
  • Note that this WP article quietly confirms Ars Technica’s analysis of what the illegal spying program actually entailed…
Published in: on December 22, 2005 at 10:39  Comments (2)  
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One more news story

In the Padilla case, Judge J. Michael Luttig of the 4th circuit court of appeals blasted the administration’s handling of the case and rejected their move to do a jurisdictional shuffle to keep this case from ever reaching the Supreme Court.

For those of you who haven’t been following: Padilla was arrested on a charge of a “dirty bomb” plot about 3.5 years ago and was held incommunicado in a military prison until heavy outside pressure forced them to allow him counsel (about a year and a half later). The case now pending before the court is whether the administration has the right to hold a US citizen as an enemy combatant outside of the legal system. The case is approaching the Supreme Court, so a few weeks ago the government tried a jurisdiction move: they formally charged Padilla with some unrelated matters and ordered him moved to a civilian prison, in an attempt to moot the issue, and asked the court of appeals to withdraw an earlier decision it made in their favor so that the Supreme Court wouldn’t have a chance to review it. Luttig is a very prominent (and very conservative) jurist, so the forcefulness of his statement today is a big deal.

Published in: on December 21, 2005 at 16:52  Comments Off on One more news story  
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News entries

If you haven’t been reading the news in the past few days, here are some important things:

(1) More details on the violence in China

(2) More on domestic spying by the NSA: FISA judge resigns in protest; interesting analysis from Slate; even more interesting analysis from Ars Technica.

(3) The latest version of the Scopes Monkey Trial ended. Analysis article; the judge’s decision is very worth reading if you have the time and want a very clear and systematic explanation of the problems with creationism.

Published in: on December 21, 2005 at 11:51  Comments (4)  
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Odd sentence:

(From a WP article about rioting in China)

“he was also director general of the Dongzhou Buddha Council, which the statement described as ‘a superstitious organization in charge of divine activities in Dongzhou.'”

I believe that some game that I run in the future will have to contain a Dongzhou Buddha Council, which will be in charge of divine activities in the area. Although I can’t imagine who would sit on it.

Published in: on December 21, 2005 at 11:49  Comments (4)  
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Nausea

I just got back from watching Syriana, and at this point I honestly feel like throwing up.
Might be spoilers

Published in: on December 13, 2005 at 23:19  Comments (15)  
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Just when you thought the Middle East was getting normal…

Let me present Susblood Labs, which is manufacturing a combination pen and capsule of preserved pig’s blood, designed to reconstitute in the heat of a suicide bomb and defile the body of the bomber. Apparently this is meant to act as a deterrent to bombers, by keeping them out of heaven.

(I could talk about the basic physics and theology problems with this, but why bother? There’s something delightfully mad about the whole thing.)

EDIT: But wait! There’s more! From the Middle East Media Research Institute, a translation of a fascinating contest showing up on some Islamist websites. Help design a website for a terror group, and get to fire missiles at American troops!

(You know, I really wish I were kidding. It could be that both of these things are bogus… but somehow, I doubt it. The first one, in particular, just seems so appropriate to the mindset that if it’s satire, it’s the most brilliant bloody satire I’ve seen in a while. The latter… well, all sorts of strange things show up on the public fora of terror groups. Most of them are nonsense. But such splendid nonsense! For that one, I think the best commentary came from Dry Bones.)

Published in: on December 13, 2005 at 18:33  Comments (14)  
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Year in Review

A simple little idea: Go to your Calendar and find the first real entry for each month of 2005 (not including memes of course). Post the first line of it in your journal, and that’s your year in review. Mine seems to be a pretty good summary of what I use this blog for…

January: In the past two years, I’ve heard several soldiers say that they dislike civilians questioning the course of the war, since if the soldiers aren’t allowed to do so, why should someone who isn’t even involved?
February: The political philosophy of the Bandar-Log
March: Can anyone point me at a reliable source of information about the activities of frienditto, and if at all possible to their terms of service?
April: My only excuse for this is that I was reading the Heimskringla while really, really sleep-deprived, and woke up with this in my head.
May: Hmm… I haven’t posted anything in here in a while.
June: The desert and Petra were amazing.
July: Looks like Newsweek just came out with their article about the source in the Valerie Plame case, based on what Time magazine decided to hand over to prosecutors.
August: I just got back from a talk given by a friend of mine who’s been out of the country for some time, being a peace activist in the West Bank.
September: Of course! It’s so clear now! The people still in New Orleans are there because they want to be there.
October: President Bush has nominated White House Counsel Harriet Miers to succeed Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court.
November: Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, and supposedly an Evangelical Christian, responded to calls for “Creation Care” (i.e., stewardship of the world) from the National Association of Evangelicals, in an interesting fashion.
December: (I actually haven’t posted at all in December)

Published in: on December 9, 2005 at 18:16  Comments (7)  
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