terrorism
mikethemadbiologist | August 31, 2006A Republican political operative about to give the First Amendment a rectal exam
(photo from here)
...well, not exactly. From the BBC comes this heartwarming story of fear of everything Arab (italics mine):
Raed Jarrar said security officials warned him his clothing was offensive after he checked in for a JetBlue flight to California on 12 August.
Mr Jarrar said he was shocked such an action could be taken in the US.
US transport officials are conducting an inquiry after a complaint from the US Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
JetBlue said it was also investigating the incident but a…
revere | August 31, 2006No young man likes to be embarrassed in front of his mother, especially in the delicate matter of sex.
But this story is beyond belief:
Madin Azad Amin was stopped by officials on Aug. 16 after guards found an object in his baggage that resembled a grenade, prosecutors said.
When officers asked him to identify it, Amin said it was a bomb, said Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Lorraine Scaduto.
He later told officials he'd lied about the item because his mother was nearby and he didn't want her to hear that it was part of a penis pump, Scaduto said.
He's been charged with felony…
mikethemadbiologist | August 22, 2006
(Michael Barone guarding his glass house from the Elitofacist hordes; photo from here)
...because you never know where they'll show up.
Conservative pundit Michael Barone writes about those who oppose the failed Bush Iraq policies (italics mine):
We have always had our covert enemies, but their numbers were few until the 1960s. But then the elite young men who declined to serve in the military during the Vietnam War set out to write a narrative in which they, rather than those who obeyed the call to duty, were the heroes. They have propagated their ideas through the universities, the…
mikethemadbiologist | August 21, 2006This is a remarkable post, although it's not too surprising. Who needs Hizbollah when you have these assholes:
My parents raised my sisters and me in a small town in rural Wisconsin. Never mind exactly which one -- I have to maintain my anonymity here in order to keep my jobs for grad school. Suffice it to say it's a good distance away from Madison, and in terms of worldview, it might as well be on a different planet. You might recall the story of the Indian River School District in Delaware, which ran a Jewish family out of town with death threats and other harassment after the family…
mikethemadbiologist | August 19, 2006If there is one post about the recent Lebanon fiasco worth reading, it's Doron Rosenblum's "Not Sparta--and Just As Well" Rosenblum writes:
But to both those who send us into battle in order to derive joy from our performance, and those among us who are thoroughly depressed by the results of the war, it must be said: Comfort, comfort, my people. With all the acute importance of military might, Israel cannot be solely a derivative of victories or tactical defeats on the battlefield. Its existence is far richer and far more meaningful and varied than that.
If the Israeli mentality is "inferior…
mikethemadbiologist | August 18, 2006One of the more frustrating thing about a lot of mainstream media coverage of science topics like evolution or global warming is that there is a pathological need to report both sides as equal, even though the data and evidence overwhelmingly support one side. It would appear that commentary on the legal profession is not immune from this either. Glenn Greenwald writes:
This [Washington Post]Editorial, with all of its condescension and self-important open-mindedness to administration law-breaking, illustrates a common character flaw among our political and journalistic elites. In their…
mikethemadbiologist | August 17, 2006I've never thought of myself as a particularly brave or courageous person. Plenty of things make me a little bit nervous at the very least. But the overt fear many claim to have felt since Sept. 11, 2001 really hasn't been part of my thinking. Let me make it clear: I was angry and sad after the 9/11 massacres. But I didn't feel afraid or fearful; my attitude was always along the lines of "We have to find the people responsible, prevent them from doing this again, and let justice take its course." And I never wanted to gratutiously hurt someone. Related to this, Josh Marshall, whom I…
mikethemadbiologist | August 14, 2006Here's some interesting articles I pulled off the internets for you:
Publius argues "The fact that Iraq was so incompetently executed is actually the least of its problems. The bigger problem is that the idea of it represented a staggering failure of vision and judgment in terms of anti-terrorism policy. It's simply not possible to devise an anti-terrorism policy more at odds with the nature of the threat facing us."
An interesting NY Times magazine article by Michael Young on how Hizbollah relates to the Lebanese political scene (as opposed to the War on Terra).
Neil the Ethical Werewolf…
revere | August 14, 2006I'll give the UK and US governments the benefit of the doubt for the sake of argument (even though they are both world class liars) and assume the alleged hair-gel terror plot is real. The response to it is still monumentally stupid. So what do I know about hair gel? Nothing. I don't use it.
But I vaguely recall a Kurt Vonnegut novel whose plot went something like this (I might be making some of this up; I have no access to library materials where I am at the moment). A childless man, living in a suburb where everyone had families felt left out so he decided to have some of his own. But he…
mikethemadbiologist | August 13, 2006So quipped John Aravosis. He posted the following email:
The horror the horror.
Just got the following email from my friend Cate:
"Yesterday, the TSA was confiscating MAKE UP at America's airports. Yes, MAKE UP. What kind of make up, you ask? LIP GLOSS. Yesterday, a friend of mine informed me that a girlfriend of hers waited in line for FIVE HOURS yesterday at National Airport.. and if you got out of line, to um, I don't know, TAKE A PISS, you had to go to the back of the line. Then the TSA made her hand over her Chanel lip gloss. Apparently Chanel Lip Gloss is a massive threat to national…
purepedantry | August 10, 2006Watching the news coverage today, I found myself wondering what type of explosive the terrorists were trying to use on the UK planes. I did a web search, and many news services are speculating that the chemical in question could be one called Triacetone Triperoxide.
Shown above triacetone triperoxide (also called acetone peroxide, peroxyacetone, TATP, or TCAP) is an unstable white powder that is formed from the reaction of hydrogen peroxide and acetone with a strong acid catalyst. From Wikipedia:
Also known as "peroxyacetone", acetone peroxide most commonly refers to the cyclic trimer…