Grab a flashlight

Now then where was I? Oh yeah at my office at NU. Anyway, here’s a random 10:
Just Won’t Burn Susan Tedeschi
Letterbomb Green Day
Big Time Sensuality [The Fluke Minimix] Björk
Nothing Clings Like Ivy Elvis Costello & The Imposters
Saving Grace Bob Dylan
Sideways Santana Feat. Citizen Cope
Waiting Cake
Who Makes You Feel Dido
Another Nail In My Heart Squeeze
Nice Guys(don’t get paid) Soul Asylum
I Can’t See New York Tori Amos
Against [...]

Pope: anti-Semitism not ok, but …

The Pope said the right things about the recent controversy over eliminating the ex-communication of Williamson:
In his weekly audience with the public on Wednesday, Benedict said he “renewed with love” his “full and indisputable solidarity” with Jews, whom he called “our brothers of the first covenant.”
He added that he had repeatedly visited Auschwitz, the location [...]

More good signs, but um …

First Nkunda was sort of arrested (maybe Rwanda just didn’t want him talking) and now parts of his rebel army have been integrated into the DR Congo’s army:

Last week, Rwanda detained Nkunda as part of a deal between the two nations that has allowed Rwanda to send thousands of troops into Congo, where they are [...]

Is Jeff Jacoby in a time warp?

Jeff Jacoby has a column about the stimulus package today and says:
According to the CBO, less than half of the $355 billion the bill allocates to infrastructure and other “discretionary” projects would actually be spent by the end of 2010; of that, a mere $26 billion would be spent in the current fiscal year. “The rest [...]

Tax Cuts or Spending

There seems to be a divide between Republicans and Democrats about how to create jobs. Let’s look at estimates for the number of jobs created with $1 billion if it’s spent on certain things (click on the image to see it better):

Here are a couple of the results: for tax cuts 10,779; for mass transit [...]

Jacoby worries about theory

Jeff Jacoby has an interesting little column today, a conservative standby, about abortion. Here’s the big paragraph:
Taken together, Roe and Doe meant that abortion could not be barred at any stage of a pregnancy. The “attending physician” could always say that in his medical judgment, the woman’s “emotional” or “familial” health made it necessary to [...]

Church: Anti-Semitism not bar to priesthood

It seems that Holocaust denial isn’t that big a deal to the Catholic Church allowing Richard Williamson back into the church despite this:
In comments to Swedish TV broadcast Wednesday, he said, “I believe there were no gas chambers” and that only up to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, instead of 6 million.
Williamson went [...]

Things looking up in DR Congo?

At first I thought the introduction of Rwandan troops into the Congo was part of another slide down (the article notes that the entry by Angolan troops led to large civilian death tolls after the Angolans went after the Lord’s Resistance Army). It turns out that this time things might be getting better as the Rwandan [...]

Ledbetter and other gender stuff

I thought there would be problems, but it seems the Lilly Ledbetter bill passed the Senate fairly easily (61-36). It now has to go back to the House (since it was passed in conjunction with another bill), but that’s just a formality and it’s now almost sure to become law. Yay.
President Obama gave out a [...]

Try not to think about it

Did you hear the one about the fight between a potato chip and an artichoke heart? Neither did I. Here’s a random 10:
Sissyneck Beck
Last Exit Pearl Jam
Lucky You The Lightning Seeds
Knock Knock The Hives
Pump Sugarcubes
Winter Song Harry Chapin
The Crystal Lake Grandaddy
Anorak City Another Sunny Day
Down On Me Janis Joplin
999,999 Nine Inch Nails
Do It Alone Jennifer Trynin
Dixie Flyer Randy Newman
and a poem:
Will you carry on
Will I look the [...]

War on science

President Obama is much, much, much better than Bush for science, but that doesn’t mean we can be complacent. It seems that Texas is on the edge of allowing arguments against evolution into biology classes. Here’s the chairman of the State Board of Education:
The chairman of the board, Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist, pushed in [...]

al-Marri, detentions, and torture

Via Glenn Greenwald, I see that President Obama is also reviewing the al-Marri case:
The President instructed the Attorney General, the Secretaries of Defense, State, and Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence to conduct a review of the status of the detainee Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri who is currently held at the Naval Brig [...]

Increased expectations

Ok, a day of President Obama has increased my expectations. I no longer expect atheists to be demonized and I’m not even surprised when we’re included:
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers.
And I shouldn’t be. [...]

Ex-President Bush

Ex-President Bush. That sounds very good, wonderful. And President Obama isn’t bad either. I’ll add the new Whitehouse blog to my list.

Israel, Gaza, DR Congo, Somalia, Zimbabwe

There is talk of an end to the conflict in Gaza. The question is if things will be any better or if anything has been decided. A couple things make me skeptical. This statement by Secretary Rice:

“There is much that can be done to bring Gaza out of the dark of Hamas’s reign and into the [...]

Watch the end with a smile

Well then, another day, another Friday, drops. What’s to be done and where can we grab a drink or eight?  Cry Ragnarok and wait by the seaside with your drink. It’s coming. The end.
I might as well listen to some music:
Hammering In My Head Garbage
It’s A Raggy Waltz Dave Brubeck
Consoler Of The Lonely The Raconteurs
They Are Night Zombies!! They Are [...]

Life on Mars?

The headline is a bit stronger:
When the 2003 methane emissions were reported in 2004 by three teams of scientists, the findings generated surprise and skepticism, because only a few explanations appear plausible.
One is geothermal chemical reactions involving water and heat in volcanoes or underground hot springs. But evidence for recent volcanism on Mars is scarce. [...]

Conservative reporting

These couple of things by Joe the Plumber are funny:
I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting. You know, war is hell. And if you’re gonna sit there and say, “Well look at this atrocity,” well you don’t know the whole story behind it half the time, so I think the media [...]

Torture at Guantanamo

I know this isn’t a surprise to anyone who’s followed the news at all, but Susan Crawford gave that the reason for not trying to prosecute a prisoner:
“We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani,” said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February [...]

Freight Trains

I read this article on freight trains:
In a study recently presented to the National Academy of Engineering, the Millennium Institute, a nonprofit known for its expertise in energy and environmental modeling, calculated the likely benefits of an expenditure of $250 billion to $500 billion on improved rail infrastructure. It found that such an investment would get [...]