Site Sections
Posts
819
Comments
458
Trackbacks
51
July 2002 Entries
Saudi Arabia isn't a free society. All the internet access goes through proxy servers that blocks out sites they don't want their citizens viewing. Like Women In American History. And Amnesty International's report on Saudi Arabia. And a whole bunch of others. You can see a partial list here. And more details here.
posted @ Wednesday, July 31, 2002 11:21 AM | Feedback (0)
It's a day full of articles that sound like they came from the Onion. Check out Heaven-or-hell argument ends with shotgun slaying at ... CNN.
The talk became heated when the subject turned to who would go to heaven and who would go to hell.
posted @ Wednesday, July 31, 2002 9:47 AM | Feedback (0)
Area man freed after being wrongly imprisoned for 18 years. Sounds kind of like an Onion article doesn't it? Unfortunately it's not. KMBC9 has the story. You've just got to love DNA. It's such handy stuff.
posted @ Wednesday, July 31, 2002 8:43 AM | Feedback (0)
There's a great article up about Anne Bayefsky, noted scholar of international and human rights law, who tried to write an editorial for the New York Times and all the changes they forced on her to change the slant of her editorial.
Deleted, for example, was reference to Human Rights Watch having rushed within weeks to publish a caustic report on Israel's military action against Palestinians in Jenin, while the organization's long-awaited report on suicide bombings of Israelis was "still coming" after 20 months of slaughter.
posted @ Tuesday, July 30, 2002 10:36 AM | Feedback (0)
Hi Linda!
posted @ Tuesday, July 30, 2002 10:33 AM | Feedback (0)

posted @ Monday, July 29, 2002 11:53 AM | Feedback (0)
"There was no message that said 'Press one if you have been declared deceased and your assets frozen',' she said.

That might very well be one of my favorite quotes ever! From Death Note Lands Woman in Hospital

posted @ Thursday, July 25, 2002 11:43 PM | Feedback (0)
Hey! The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) want the right to attack your computer if they have a "reasonable basis" to believe piracy is happening. I'm certain they'll never make a mistake.
Other critics have pointed out that because the proposal applies to any copyright holder, news organizations, photographers, and even the Church of Scientology would be granted new hacking authority.

I guess I'm old fashioned but I always thought that law enforcement officals were supposed to investigate crimes. I seem to remember something about that in the Constitution. Who are these people accountable too? Police are accountable to elected officals. I think I'd like to enforce some laws too. Wouldn't you like that? If I got to enforce laws? I think I'd like enforcing laws.

The MPAA and RIAA already get to write the laws (see DMCA) and now they want to enforce them too? Not fair.

posted @ Thursday, July 25, 2002 3:16 PM | Feedback (0)
Liberal Magic Eight Ball.
posted @ Tuesday, July 23, 2002 10:55 PM | Feedback (0)
Israel finally managed to kill the operational leader of Hamas this morning. Salah Shehade was at the top of their most wanted list. He was responsible for dozens of dead Israelis - many of them women and children. The problem is that Israel also killed 14 other people - many of them women and children. I think Israel screwed up in a big way here. The articles I've read say they were told by their military there was a small chance of civilian casualties. It turns out they were wrong.

Unfortunately this is what happens when terrorists hide themselves among the civilian population. They do so knowing that Israel won't risk civilian casualties to kill terrorists. America has had similar problems in Afghanistan. I'm not sure if Israel made a mistake or decided it was worth it.

I've got more to say on this but I don't know exactly what it is yet. I really hope this was an accident. I really hope they didn't know there were civilians in that house. I'll write more later when more information comes out.

posted @ Tuesday, July 23, 2002 9:00 AM | Feedback (0)
The comedian Chris Rock has noted that things are really changing in America when the best rapper is white and the best golfer is black.
I really, really like Andrew Sullivan. He makes me think. The quote is at the end of his latest article, Talkin' 'Bout Miscenenation.
posted @ Monday, July 22, 2002 11:18 PM | Feedback (0)
This is great. A guy in Korea sent letters to hundreds of random corporate executives threatening to expose their adultery unless they paid up. And a bunch paid up. What a hoot!
posted @ Monday, July 22, 2002 11:09 AM | Feedback (0)
GM's Billion-Dollar Bet talks about all the investment GM is making in fuel cells vehicles.
GM took a radically different approach. Realizing that a fuel cell system could allow for an utterly new shape, the designers tossed out the design requirements of a conventional engine and devised a car from scratch. Once GM walked through that door, a universe of possibilities opened up; except for the familiar four wheels, the AUTOnomy bears almost no resemblance to a traditional auto. The implications go way beyond design and deep into the economics of manufacturing. By replacing most of the hardware in today's cars with wires and circuits that will be standard across multiple models, the AUTOnomy will allow GM to streamline its production system and drastically cut costs. That's the trick that might make the fuel cell car a reality in eight years instead of 30. Moreover, GM sees this as a way to extend car ownership to the 88 percent of the world's population that can't afford one today, opening the door to exponential increases in profits. It turns out that concentrating on the car, instead of just on the fuel cell, makes all the difference. And nobody is more surprised than General Motors.
GM is doing some pretty cool stuff.
posted @ Thursday, July 18, 2002 8:21 AM | Feedback (0)
Ars Technica has a great review of the 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid. I wonder if I could lease one of these?
posted @ Tuesday, July 16, 2002 6:56 PM | Feedback (0)
George Will weighs in on the Internation Criminal Court. And it isn't pretty.
Because the ICC is a facet of the European elites' agenda of disparaging and diluting the sovereignty of nations, it is especially ill-suited to this moment, when the primacy of the nation-state needs to be reaffirmed. Terrorism is the leakage of violence out from the control of nations. And it cannot be controlled without enforcing the principle that a nation is accountable for terrorism that emanates from its territory.

In asserting these principles, and in other defenses of U.S. interests, the Bush administration is accused of "unilateralism." That term has become more than a mere antonym for "multilateralism." And more than (although it is this) a carrier of European resentment about U.S. refusal to pretend that Europe is a coherent and formidable political entity comparable to the United States.

posted @ Saturday, July 13, 2002 3:25 PM | Feedback (0)
Cooool! Now you can get a bright red Swingline stapler. "I used to be over by the window and I could see the squirrels and they were married."
posted @ Thursday, July 11, 2002 7:34 AM | Feedback (0)
And here's a neat article on world-wide energy trends: Where is energy going? It's a PDF.
posted @ Tuesday, July 09, 2002 7:45 AM | Feedback (0)
Speaking of scare bombs, it seems the Iranian revolution didn't come across as Michael Leeden thought it might. After looking through his collection of articles he's been predicting this since March. I guess this is one of those where you only have to be right once. Anyway, I'll try to do a little better research before I link to something like that again.
posted @ Tuesday, July 09, 2002 7:34 AM | Feedback (0)
There's been an article kicking around lately that says we'll run out of natural resources in 2050 or some such drivel. Scare bombs like this aren't new.
Such worries about overpopulation and resource scarcity have a long history. The Roman writer Tertullian warned in 200 A.D. that "we men have actually become a burden to the earth" and that "the fruits of nature hardly suffice to support us." In 1798 the Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus published An Essay on the Principle of Population, in which he claimed that population growth would always outstrip food supplies, inevitably resulting in famine, pestilence, and war. Biologist Paul Ehrlich notoriously updated Malthus' gloomy predictions in his 1968 book The Population Bomb, which predicted that hundreds of millions of people would die of famine in the 1970s.
The full article is in Reason Online. They make a very convincing arguement.
posted @ Tuesday, July 09, 2002 7:29 AM | Feedback (0)
Graphical proof of the Arafat - Baby Wipes conspiracy.
posted @ Monday, July 08, 2002 7:45 PM | Feedback (0)
The IDF says Arafat will be "displaced" in six months. A UPI report out of Jordan says it could happen in the next few weeks. Neither articles mentions an election.
posted @ Monday, July 08, 2002 1:39 PM | Feedback (0)
Is the Iranian government going to come down tomorrow? Some are saying it might not be far off. Michael Leeden writes
Dozens of anti-government organizations are calling for peaceful demonstrations on July 9, Tuesday, the third anniversary of the monster student rally against the regime at the university, and an army officer, thus far anonymous and perhaps even apocryphal, is widely quoted as having said "if a million people demonstrate July 9th we shall arrest the leaders of the Islamic Republic and turn them over to the people."

He further notes ...

The paranoia goes hand in hand with the widespread conviction that the regime could fall at any moment. Part of the Mehrabad Airport in Tehran has been blocked to public access, at least one landing strip has been closed to commercial traffic, and a number of airplanes have been stationed on the tarmac. It could well be that some of the regime's nastier rats are planning to abandon the sinking ship if they are unable to contain the people's rage. Indeed, in recent days private passengers have been removed from commercial flights to make room for the families of the country's most powerful men, suggesting that the exodus may have already begun.
posted @ Monday, July 08, 2002 1:37 PM | Feedback (0)
Wow! A million people lined the roads of Germany today to watch the Tour de France come through. A million people. Today. That's just amazing. And there are 18 (19?) more days of racing.
posted @ Monday, July 08, 2002 12:43 PM | Feedback (0)
The Tour de France starts tomorrow. Hopefully the Middle East will have a two week lull so I can focus on bike racing. You can see two hours of coverage on Outdoor Life Network tomorrow morning starting at 10:30 AM. Go Postal!
posted @ Friday, July 05, 2002 5:06 PM | Feedback (0)
An interesting series of maps from various Palestinian Autority web sites and schools show Palestine ... but not Israel. What could this possibly mean? Do they see a Palestine without Israel in the future?
posted @ Thursday, July 04, 2002 8:06 AM | Feedback (0)
I always wondered if our inability to spell Arabic names consistently would hamper our efforts to fight terrorism. It turns out it does.
posted @ Monday, July 01, 2002 6:50 PM | Feedback (0)
Victor Davis Hanson has an interesting article titled Our Enemies, the Saudis. It's a summary of our relationship with Saudi Arabia. And the Saudi's don't come out looking that good.
Marshall Wyllie, a former charge at the embassy in Saudi Arabia, once summed up the American policy best: "We need their oil, and they need our protection." Armed to the teeth with American weaponry that for the most part they are unable to maintain or operate competently, bolstered by a frontline tripwire of uniformed American soldiers, and static in their resistance to change, the Saudis preened that they were the reliable deliverymen of inexpensive and plentiful oil in a way that the lunocracies in Iraq, Iran, or Libya were not. And admittedly there was something to that claim, at least enough to enable us to think that our policy toward them was neither illogical nor even inherently amoral.
What a great word: lunocracies. I'm going to have to remember that one! The article paints a bleak picture of the Kingdom.
The sheiks, however, are being led by events that are rapidly careering out of their control. If Saudi Arabia pumps less oil, there will be shocks and disruptions, but eager new producing countries will soon fill the void; if the Saudis export more, then the price may well collapse altogether. And because new, nonpetroleum-based technologies are on the horizon, both to produce electricity and to power transportation, not to mention the increased efficiency promised in the near future by hybrid engines, most exporting countries now worry about getting what oil they have out of the ground rather than watch it sit untapped and decline in value in the latter half of the century.

In sum, a Saudi Arabia with a sizable debt and no real nonpetroleum economy needs consumers as much as, or more than, buyers need Middle Eastern producers. Saudi Arabia is ever so slowly losing its vaunted place as the world's price-fixer, and its past history and present machinations reveal it to be no more or less a friend of the United States than any other Islamic exporting country. If the Saudis declared another embargo, it might fare about as well as Saddam Hussein's recent ban of exports to the United States - and cause a surge in pumping and exploration from Russia and South America.

More and more I'm convinced we have to wean ourselves from oil. We need higher federally-mandated fuel economies and we need to drill in the artic wilderness. I'm not sure we can afford the luxury of supporting a terrorist-sponsoring country though oil purchases.
posted @ Monday, July 01, 2002 6:41 PM | Feedback (0)
Archives
Post Categories