Wednesday, November 09, 2011

Monday, September 10, 2007

A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Madeline L'Engle died last week, and this piece is just a lovely, eulogistic book review. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/09/AR2007090901947.html

And in other planetary news (not as exciting as a tesseract, mind you), the reports are in! Highlights include:

1. The arrest and deportation of former Pakistani leader Sharif on his attempted return to Islamabad. If anything shows the weakness of Musharraf's hand, this is it. You don't tip the table when you're winning the game of chess. Now he's managed to lose quite a bit of credibility and fire up resistance. D'oh.

2. The reports are in! More than I'd like to admit, I really appreciate Ryan Crocker's analysis of the scenario in Iraq. He's the first person who's stood up and presented the complex, long-term sort of thinking that can keep Iraq from turning into even more of a quagmire. I look forward to hearing the rest of what he has to say, and I only hope Congress and the White House can keep their mouths shut long enough to listen.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Humpty Dumpty

My goodness, it's been a while.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051501945.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

I saw this today, and I have to admit, my glee at the seeming unraveling of the Bush Administration knows no bounds. This one's particularly good, because the whole episode reads like something from a John Grisham novel. Excellent.

Also, sorry for the long hiatus. I'm back now!

Friday, February 23, 2007

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

Thursday, February 15, 2007

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.