Here is an glowing write-up of how Chattanooga has cleaned up, focusing on its incorporation of the human element in its cleanup and revitalization:
While most cities, nationally and globally, make an effort to reduce negative affects on the environment; few (if any) have attained the level of success enjoyed by Chattanooga. Here, industry is not the enemy, but instead has offered viable and effective solutions. Here, the citizen and the government official aren’t at odds. Rather, they work together to creatively address the environmental challenges the city has faced.
I can't decide if this is really stupid or really cool. PocketMod is a Flash app that allows you to modularly construct a notepad/organizer which prints on a single sheet of paper. Once printed, the page is folded in such a way as to make a compact little booklet.
It looks nifty but... it seems to me to be of limited utility.
Colonies of anemones are formed from genetic clones of one another, but they differentiate into castes and specialize during warfare at border zones with other colonies.
The study shows that very complex, sophisticated, and coordinated behaviors can emerge at the level of the group, even when the group members are very simple organisms with nothing resembling a brain, Grosberg said. The research was published in the June issue of the journal Animal Behaviour.
Duh, but nice to see yet another example from nature of the emergence of complex behavior.
Here and here are lists of common food additives, their uses, and their side effects.
Wired has an article about a new realization in road design: The common thread in the new approach to traffic engineering is a recognition that the way you build a road affects far more than the movement of vehicles. It determines how drivers behave on it, whether pedestrians feel safe to walk alongside it, what kinds of businesses and housing spring up along it. "A wide road with a lot of signs is telling a story," Monderman says. "It's saying, go ahead, don't worry, go as fast as you want, there's no need to pay attention to your surroundings. And that's a very dangerous message."
"Transhuman Resources": Some really neat ideas and concepts, organized as a dictionary.
Holy cow! According to this page, "one old gas powered lawn mower running for an hour emits as much pollution as driving 650 miles in a 1992 model automobile." I'm glad I'm using my manual mower! Apparently the primary reason they pollute so much is because they don't have catalytic converters, which really help reduce automobile emissions.
In March 2000, the EPA ordered major cuts in emissions from lawnmowers, chainsaws, leaf blowers and other small engine powered equipment. By 2007, when the new standards will be fully in place, the ground level ozone pollution caused by these engines will be cut by 70 percent or 350,000 tons each year.
The new emission reduction standards will affect small hand held engines at or below 19 kilowatts, or 25 horsepower, such as those used in lawn and garden equipment. The 20,000,000 small engines sold in the U.S. each year contribute about one tenth of the total U.S. mobile source hydrocarbon emissions, and are the largest single contributor to these non-road emissions.
Edgy news with a definite mix of conspiracy theorizing: From The Wilderness
A very informative essay: Python for Lisp Programmers. (It apparently also works in reverse, in case you are a Python programmer wanting to learn Lisp.)
Despite the off-putting name, ColorWhore has a really nice palette of colors. The Greens are a bit bright, but the Browns, Blues, and Muted are very nice.
I found a great and informative page about how to fight a speeding ticket in court.
No, I didn't just get a ticket, but if you did, then read the above!
This is beyond mind-shattering... Weasley Is Our King is a page with an incredible theory about Harry Potter: Ron Weasley = Albus Dumbledore. It's long but very well worth the read. This absolutely blew my mind... they make a very convincing argument, and it sends chills up my spine just thinking about it. If the rest of the Harry Potter story does pan out this way, then J. K. Rowling will have vindicated herself to all the HP naysayers out there who dismiss it as a childrens' series.
An MSNBC article talks about neuroeconomics and how fMRI machines are revealing the low-level brain mechanics behind game theoretic decisions:
Male monkeys have a distinct dominance hierarchy, and Platt has found they will give up a considerable quantity of fruit juice for the chance just to look at a picture of a higher-ranking individual. This is consistent with field observations, Platt says, which have found that social primates spend a lot of time just keeping track of the highest-ranking troop member. It isn't known exactly why monkeys do this, but the finding might help explain the behavior of human beings who pay $1,000 just to sit in a hotel ballroom with the president. You can draw whatever conclusion you choose from Platt's finding that there is no quantity of juice sufficient to get a male monkey to look away from the hindquarters of a female in estrus.
A great list of Donald Rumsfeld's rules for service. Written by the man himself, for the Wall Street Journal in January of 2001. It's very good; this is my favorite:
Don't divide the world into "them" and "us." Avoid infatuation with or resentment of the press, the Congress, rivals, or opponents. Accept them as facts. They have their jobs and you have yours.
Here's an unforeseen danger of outsourcing IT to low-wage areas: the Mafia might bribe them to hand over customer info, including credit card numbers.
Sharks apparently have angiogenin inhibitors in their blood which prevents tumors from forming new bloods vessels around themselves (and thereby spreading throughout the body). This makes them almost invulnerable to cancer. Furthermore, they have a generalized immune system (much like a human infant) which allows them to withstand exposure to new and highly toxic substances. Read more here.
For additional animal fun facts, check out this list.
DId you know that the famous picture of the flag being planted on Iwo Jima was actually the *second* flag, and was a staged event? Here is the first flag raised over Iwo Jima, and here is a picture of the changing of the flags. You can see a whole slideshow of the flag raising at iwojima.com.
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Looks interesting - its approach is centered around resolving the conflicting mental tendencies (especially of highly analytical people) that hinder effective and creative drawing.
More than you ever wanted to know about income taxes and wealth distribution in the United States.
CNN has a brief story about a study which finds that teens don't go out and have rampant sex just because they have easy access to morning-after pills. This isn't really surprising, since one's desire to have intercourse is a function of more than just potential consequences - yes, even teens know this. Opponents of making contraceptives available for sexually active teens "on moral grounds" have yet another more piece of data they must refute. Those same opponents also have yet to show that banging the drum of "abstinence only" produces any results at all (with the possible exception of a large number of Catholic technical virgins).
According to the Guardian UK,
A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.
...
The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
No, it's no a tabloid article - read the whole thing here.
CNN has a front-page article talking about the 40% increase in highway bottlenecks over the past five years. They also have an interactive map showing statistics on some of the worst traffic bottlenecks.
According to the statistics, the Ventura Freeway at I-405 Interchange in LA cost drivers 27,144,000 hours, the I-405 at I-10 interchange cost drivers 22,792,000 hours, the I-10/I-5 and I-405/I-605 interchanges each wasted 18,606,000 hours, and the I-5 at SR-22 interchange wasted 16,304,000 hours. Added up, the total time wasted anually at these, the five worst traffic bottlenecks in LA, was 103,452,000 hours. The average human lifetime spans only 24x365.24x80 = 701,261 hours. Thus, every year, five intersections on the LA freeway cost 147.5 human lifespans.
And these are not pleasant lifespans, either. I'm sure the annual time spent worldwide on masturbation spans the equivalent of several thousand lifespans, but those are relatively happy lifespans, even if filled with guilt and self-loathing . But these LA traffic jams are lifetimes spent in purgatory, waiting, listening to talk radio, inching forward, then waiting again, sipping on cold coffee, then waiting some more...
Grew Ewing created Pyrex, a language with python-like syntax for writing C modules that easily port into Python:
Pyrex deals with the basic types just as easily as SWIG, but it also lets you write code to convert between arbitrary Python data structures and arbitrary C data structures, in a simple and natural way, without knowing anything about the Python/C API. That's right -- nothing at all! Nor do you have to worry about reference counting or error checking -- it's all taken care of automatically, behind the scenes, just as it is in interpreted Python code. And what's more, Pyrex lets you define new built-in Python types just as easily as you can define new classes in Python.
Most notably, you can declare types on your function variables, if you wish.
The Washington Post has a very touching story about one widower's struggle to cope with the loss of his wife more than two years after September 11. He established a fund in her honor with the compensation money; with it he holds intergenerational tea parties as well as writing contests and the like - all interests of his late wife.
"I didn't want [Osama] bin Laden to have the last word on her life," Marshall, 39, said. "She died far too young, and I wanted her to be able to touch people."
A video clip showing Sony's QRio robots doing their fan dance: sony_robots.wmv
A video clip showing (what I presume is) a helicopter mowing down some people (which I presume to be "bad guys", maybe drug dealers or terrorists or Dr. Evil's henchmen): helicopter_kills.mpg
Want to know what everyone was looking for on the Internet in 2003? (Besides porn, of course.) Check out The Google Zeitgeist, circa 2003.
Although, now that I think about it, a Google for pr0n might not be a bad idea... The name is key, though... "pr00gle?" "pr0ngle"? "bOOgle?" Or just the simple "xxx.google.com"?
California neurologist Fred Baughman is starting a crusade to dispel the "myth" of ADHD.
Baughman concluded his six-page letter to Satcher by saying that "your role in this deception and victimization is clear. Whether you are a physician so unscientific that you cannot read their [the American Psychiatric Association's] contrived, 'neurobiologic' literature and see the fraud, or whether you see it and choose to be an accomplice — you should resign."
It is this direct, no-nonsense style that has made Baughman a pariah among the psychiatric and mental-health communities and a hero to families of children across America who believe they have been "victimized" by the attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) label. The "disease," Baughman tells Insight, "is a total 100 percent fraud," and he has made it his personal "crusade" to bring an end to the ADHD diagnosis.
Everyone has heard of the koan "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Not everyone knows "the answer". So here it is.
MyJewishLearning.com has an article tracing the ways modern philosophers have dealt with the free will "problem" vis-a-vis the inescapable "mechanistic" causality of physics. Most troubling (to me) is this excerpt:
Perhaps more importantly, modern quantum physics has revealed that what is actually happening at the sub-atomic level is not mechanistic in any traditional sense. Without the presumption of simple causation, a major obstacle to our self-conception as free decision-making individuals is removed.
This is just hogwash. Semiconductors, PN-junctions, lasers, and particle colliders are all quite mechanistic. Oh, sure, you have to use matrices and wavefunctions instead of classical variables, but that does not undermine causality.
Kant may have had a point, at least, in speaking on the fundamental limitations of perception and human understanding of the world. I think Kant would have loved to know even a fraction of what is taught in a modern undergraduate course on Perception or Cognitive Science. Fundamentally, the issue of free will can only be resolved by those who have set aside their egos and their presumptions and ethical imperatives, and who approach the issue with a beginner's questioning mind.
There is a very informative comment on my a while back about Tranquility Bay, the private detention camp where kids are punished and disciplined by a bunch of religious fanatics. (Scroll to the bottom to read the last comment.)
A report from the front lines about what our soldiers are going through in Iraq.
"These guys shot at some of our guys, so we lit 'em up. Put two .50-cal rounds in their vehicle. One went through this dude's hip and into the other guy's head," explains Brunelle. The third man in the car lived. "His buddy was crying like a baby. Just sitting there bawling with his friend's brains and skull fragments all over his face. One of our guys came up to him and is like: 'Hey! No crying in baseball!'"
"I know that probably sounds sick," says Sellers, "but humor is the only way you can deal with this shit."
And just below the humor is volcanic rage. These guys are proud to be soldiers and don't want to come across as whiners, but they are furious about what they've been through. They hate having their lives disrupted and put at risk. They hate the military for its stupidity, its feckless lieutenants and blowhard brass living comfortably in Saddam's palaces. They hate Iraqis--or, as they say, "hajis"--for trying to kill them. They hate the country for its dust, heat and sewage-clogged streets. They hate having killed people. Some even hate the politics of the war. And because most of them are, ultimately, just regular well-intentioned guys, one senses the distinct fear that someday a few may hate themselves for what they have been forced to do here.
Added to such injury is insult: The military treats these soldiers like unwanted stepchildren. This unit's rifles are retooled hand-me-downs from Vietnam. They have inadequate radio gear, so they buy their own unencrypted Motorola walkie-talkies. The same goes for flashlights, knives and some components for night-vision sights. The low-performance Iraqi air-conditioners and fans, as well as the one satellite phone and payment cards shared by the whole company for calling home, were also purchased out of pocket from civilian suppliers.
The San Francisco-based Mercury News has a nice slam against talk radio on the heels of the recent Rush Limbaugh fiasco. (No, not his drug abuse, the racial comment stuff.) I hadn't really thought about it, but I guess he *has* called Hillary a murderer and refers to Tom Daschle as the devil. Wow.
In my efforts to understand fully the Muse behind the Hyperion Cantos, I found this page with excerpts of John Keats' poetry and even a picture of the very room near the Fontagne di Spagne where died. I had no idea that Hyperion and Endymion were real poems (which just goes to show how little I know about poetry)... but now as I read them I am even more awed at Dan Simmons' masterful literary achievement. (Here is the poem "Endymion".)
Of course, at this point I can no longer read the opening lines without a sad sigh and an unshed tear for Aenea...
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
CNN has a story about sleep positions and what they reveal about a person's personality. The names of the positions are pretty amusing, too - log, starfish, etc.
This page offers a very simple and stark contrast between what Bush has said and what he has done. Included are choice gems like this quote from the President of the Virginia firefighter's association: "The president has merely been using firefighters and their families for one big photo opportunity." (For more wonderful instances of Bush lying, check out this top 10 list of Bush's lies.)
8. "My plan unlocks the door to the middle class of millions of hard-working Americans." All the available slots of this top-ten list could be filled by statements Bush made to sell his tax cuts at various points—on the campaign trail, in 2001 (for the first major tax-cuts battle), and in 2003 (for the second major tax-cuts battle).
...
In fact, about 12 million low- and moderate-income families received no tax relief from Bush’s 2001 tax cuts (and millions of families were left out of his 2003 package). His plan unlocked few doors. Instead, about 45 percent of the 2001 package was slated to go to the top 1 percent of income earners. In 2003, Citizens for Tax Justice calculated that individuals earning between $16,000 and $29,000 would net about $99 from Bush’s proposed tax cuts. Again, not an amount that would cover the entrance fee for a middle-class life.
Time.com has a long special report about changes underway in Saudi Arabia. It's a very worthwhile read because it illustrates the extent to which Saudi Arabia used to be complicit with the terrorist activities of al Qaeda, and furthermore touches on previous US policies of turning a blind eye. Excerps:
Saudis are wondering how long the imams will stay in line. "When they speak about tolerance, the words don't come out easily," says a senior provincial official. "What we are hearing is only a facade. You can smell the disgust they feel in mouthing their new rhetoric." Sometimes it expresses itself plainly. Says Jordan: "We have noticed lately in influential mosques the imam has condemned terrorism and preached in favor of tolerance, then closed the sermon with 'O God, please destroy the Jews, the infidels and all who support them.'"
Like the mosques, Saudi schools have been the subject of scrutiny. Saudi textbooks have been laced with passages that not only extol the supremacy of Islam but also denigrate nonbelievers. An eighth-grade book states that Allah cursed Jews and Christians and turned some of them into apes and pigs. Ninth-graders learn that Judgment Day will not come "until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them." A chapter for a 10th-grade class warns Muslims against befriending non-Muslims, saying, "It is compulsory for the Muslims to be loyal to each other and to consider the infidels their enemy."
Double header from Commondreams.org: this article analyzes the US motives for invading Iraq and also sheds some incredibly disturbing light on our "war on terror". Quote from the article:
No serious attempt has ever been made to catch Bin Laden. In late September and early October 2001, leaders of Pakistan's two Islamist parties negotiated Bin Laden's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for 9/11. However, a US official said, significantly, that "casting our objectives too narrowly" risked "a premature collapse of the international effort if by some lucky chance Mr Bin Laden was captured". The US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Myers, went so far as to say that "the goal has never been to get Bin Laden" (AP, April 5 2002). The whistleblowing FBI agent Robert Wright told ABC News (December 19 2002) that FBI headquarters wanted no arrests. And in November 2001 the US air force complained it had had al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in its sights as many as 10 times over the previous six weeks, but had been unable to attack because they did not receive permission quickly enough (Time Magazine, May 13 2002). None of this assembled evidence, all of which comes from sources already in the public domain, is compatible with the idea of a real, determined war on terrorism.
Commondreams.org has an excellent piece summarizing the report from the Congress joint intelligence panel detailing the intelligence failures that lead to 9/11. Even though it's a summary, it's very detailed and since you probably won't ever read the actual report itself, it's worth a read. *Everyone should know the contents of at least this summary.* Some quotes:
"All the answers, everything needed to dismantle Osama bin Laden's organization can be found in Saudi Arabia," John O'Neill, the FBI's former top bin Laden investigator, said shortly before his death in the World Trade Center. O'Neill explicitly referred to interference from US policymakers concerned about U.S.-Saudi relations. He "complained that the F.B.I. was not free to act in international terror investigations because the State Department kept interfering," according to a New York Times account of O'Neill's interview with French journalist Jean-Charles Brisard shortly before his death. O'Neill "explains the failure in one word: oil."
...
The BBC's Greg Palast said that a "high-placed member of a U.S. intelligence agency" told him that "while there's always been constraints on investigating Saudis, under George Bush it's gotten much worse. After the elections, the agencies were told to "back off" investigating the Bin Ladens and Saudi royals, and that angered agents." The official added that "since September 11th the policy has been reversed."
On orders of the Bush administration, a 28-page section dealing with suspected Saudi ties to the 9/11 plot was blacked out of the declassified version of the congressional report. Bush claimed that declassifying the information "would reveal sources and methods" and "help the enemy." But Sen. Bob Graham, ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, decried the redactions. "In my judgment there is compelling evidence that a foreign government provided direct support through officials and agents of that government to some of the September 11 hijackers," Graham said. Sen. Chuck Schumer went further: "There seems to be a systematic strategy of coddling and cover-up when it comes to the Saudis."
John Carmack is always interesting to read. Here is a nice little interview with him. Great quote: "Aerospace is plumbing with the volume turned up."
Wow. Considering how quickly my photo album picture of Fuertes bubbled to the top of Google's search results for "Fuertes", I'm not surprised that this sort of thing can happen so quickly.
This article provides a very depressing perspecive on the state of our occupation of Iraq. Hopefully our fearless leader will find some new distraction so we can forget about it like we've forgetten about Afghanistan.
The resistance missions are opportunity-driven. Local fighters are assigned to keep up low-level attacks in their areas, maybe three or four a week. Then new cells are dispatched to areas for ambushes at a rate of three and four a day.
Ahmed claims his cells are responsible for the death of at least a dozen Americans, but there is no way to confirm this.
He declares: "The Americans say they are still looking for weapons of mass destruction. But they have found them. We are their WMD!"
CNN has a through-provoking op-ed in which the writer examines the drift towards more fundamentalist, mystical interpretations of Christianity and warns of its polarizing effects:
The result is a gulf not only between America and the rest of the industrialized world, but a growing split at home as well. One of the most poisonous divides is the one between intellectual and religious America.
Some liberals wear T-shirts declaring, "So Many Right-Wing Christians . . . So Few Lions." On the other side, there are attitudes like those on a Web site, dutyisours.com/gwbush.htm, explaining the 2000 election this way:
"God defeated armies of Philistines and others with confusion. Dimpled and hanging chads may also be because of God's intervention on those who were voting incorrectly. Why is GW Bush our president? It was God's choice."
I wonder if Bush had any thought about these guys when he proclaimed "Bring it on!" with his cocky, trademark chimpanzee smile.
We frequently forget about the wounded in combat, our attention tuned only to the "body count". It's sombering to reflect on the lifelong suffering these wounded soldiers will have to endure.
An infant with four legs, three hands and three kidneys: yahoo story
Sing-a-long!
"Every sperm is sacred,
every sperm is great,
except for all the bad sperms
that cause us to mutate..."
Greg Egan writes some hard sci-fi. The one story I'm reading right now, Border Guards, involves a game called "quantum soccer". So far it reads more like an attempt to fictionalize an introductory quantum mechanics text, but maybe it will morph into something more literary as the story progresses. (The somewhat pretentious hypercube applet on his main page doesn't bode well, but I can hope.)
Three words: Holy. Effing. Shit. How out-of-control would my kid have to be before I sent him to Tranquility Bay?
Tranquility is basically a private detention camp. But it differs in one important respect. When courts jail a juvenile, he has a fixed sentence and may think what he likes while serving it, whereas no child arrives at Tranquility with a release date. Students are judged ready to leave only when they have demonstrated a sincere belief that they deserved to be sent here, and that the programme has, in fact, saved their life. They must renounce their old self, espouse the programme's belief system, display gratitude for their salvation, and police fellow students who resist.
Richard Thompson (of Beeswing fame) has a CD entitled "1000 Years of Popular Music". Looks interesting!
Humberto Maturana, one of the co-inventors of the term autopoiesis, has a paper entitled Metadesign. Long but interesting.
The Washington Post has an article about Rand Beers, a former White House counterintelligence aide who quit. He is now volunteering as national security advisor for John Kerry. In his words:
"The administration wasn't matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism. They're making us less secure, not more secure," said Beers, who until now has remained largely silent about leaving his National Security Council job as special assistant to the president for combating terrorism. "As an insider, I saw the things that weren't being done. And the longer I sat and watched, the more concerned I became, until I got up and walked out."
Business 2.0 has a great little article about the rise of Vivid Entertainment and how porn is becoming mainstream. It's a fun read and there's a picture of Sunrise Adams on the first page! (Yes, she's fully clothed.)
"In our consumer-driven culture, Pop may have become a god, but its bible is still being written." Read the essay
Here is an idea for all my unemployed but highly-skilled friends. You get to travel to a foreign country, work with a small- to medium-sized business, helping them develop technology skills for 1 to 4 months, and you get to explore the country and have a good time in the off hours. Thailand, Romania (woo! gymnasts!), Mongolia, Armenia - all these fun places!
What will be the geopolitical fallout of a US victory in Iraq? Ian Williams finds the answer in Washington's very different responses to Iraq and North Korea, which is frighteningly close to gaining the ability to rain nuclear destruction on Seoul, Beijing, and Tokyo if it has a bad day. Henceforth, the bomb, he argues, will be the only way for small states to ensure respect from Washington.
No conventional force can stand up against the world's lone superpower. The great levelers of the yawning technological divide between the U.S. and the rest of the world are terrorism – which is impervious to the huge boosts in Pentagon spending on hi-tech killing machines – and weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear missiles.
The foreseeable result: unbridled nuclear proliferation in the Third World, with all the scariness that entails.
Also known as "pfffffft". There is a good slashdot thread about the tradeoff between privacy and terrorism. Many good, insightful comments (no, I'm being serious!).
The gist of the article is that people should stop whining about privacy and just let the government do what it wants to combat terrorism, since the terrorists use all this high technology yet have no regard for privacy. (What about the similar argument that we should stop whining about human rights and let the government slaughter who it wants to in the name of combating terrorism, since terrorists show an equal disregard for human rights?)
In any event, excellent counterpoints to her thesis being made on slashdot include:
- This woman lives in a fantasy world where the Government is a fatherly, good, kind, powerful figure. In reality, government is a collection of thousands of people with independent personal agendas that happen to get things do every now and then. And when they leave the Government, they frequently retain access to the highly confidential information.
- "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety. Nor, are they likely to end up with either." -- Benjamin Franklin
- Giving up privacy provides a false sense of security. Even worse, giving up privacy leaves the door open to a type of government that is even scarier.
- "The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." -- Thomas Jefferson
- Privacy advocates are not luddites - in fact they are extremely informed about technology and are hence worried about the multitude of ways it can be misused.
- Still think you should trust the government? Check out the top 10 police database abuses. (And this is just the police - not the combination of the CIA/NSA/FBI/IRS.)
It's funny how the smallest things can make your day. I was reading through Tim Bray's latest piece, "XML doesn't suck", when I found a gem nestled at the end. He talks about how various groups and various languages gave him feedback with regards to his last essay ("Why XML Sucks"), and mentions:
The Python people also piped to say “everything's just fine here” but then they always do, I really must learn that language.
All together now... "ahhhhh".
Apparently Bush Sr. opposes unilateral action against Iraq. His rather unsurprising reasoning is that long-term victory can be achieved much more easily by having allies and not being a silly vindictive chimpanzee.
This is a nice brief introduction to declarative languages and gives a tutorial on how to create one on top of the Python interpreter.
Wanna see the mother of all bombs in action? Check it out. (Right-click and "save..." if your browser gets funky.)
