2007: An Earth Odyssey

And now it's time for something completely different!

Researchers in Senegal have recently discovered a troop of chimpanzees that create hunting weapons. This is a strange development - chimps have used tools, such as blades of grass, to gather food before, but not to hunt.

Even more interesting, all ye scientists and generals of the hunt, is that fully 2/3 of the chimps developing and using the new hunting "technology" are female.

I can just see us gathering around the obelisk as I write this.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/22/AR2007022201007.html

Another Dispatch from Pakistan

This should scare everyone:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article1414137.ece

Habeas Corpus

take a look at this:

http://restore-habeas.org/index.php

I'm not going to tell you to sign on (although I think you should, regardless of who you are), but I am going to tell you that I think it's extraordinarily dangerous for our country to circumvent the Constitution to stop those who'd most like to, well, see our constitutional republic fail. The more we change the rules, the less they have to do.

I'm moving to Sweden.

Or Norway. Having spent an hour yesterday looking at proposals within the International Affairs budget, and the rather, er, ingenious ways the administration has "increased funding" (really, allocating lots of money to HIV/AIDS prevention that focuses on abstinence education...which I could complain about for hours, and but won't subject you to here), I was intrigued to read Mr. Dionne's assessment of the 2008 Budget Request. Even more interesting is the link in this article to the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution analysis of Bush's proposed tax cut plan. This is worth a read:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/08/AR2007020801677.html

with friends like these...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/04/AR2007020400653.html