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Wednesday, February 26, 2003 |
Bush sets out Iraq vision. Iraq without Saddam Hussein could serve as an example of freedom to the rest of the region, says US President George W Bush. [BBC News | World | UK Edition]
You've sure got to hope he's right. The picture he painted was one where getting rid of Saddam would lead to peace between Israel and the Palestinians, though of course the speech was short on details. And without those details, it's hard to have much faith that this will happen. It's hard to believe that the Palestinian Infitada is due to Saddam's incitement. It seems just as likely that the war will incite even more unrest. Will US occupying forces in Iraq rule with a heavy or light hand?
10:53:53 PM Permalink
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Shuttle Engineers Debated Chances of Grave Damage. A series of e-mail messages reveals intense debate over how much damage the shuttle suffered when debris flew from the external fuel tank. By Matthew L. Wald with William J. Broad. [New York Times: Science]
Riveting reading. It's really fascinating to read this stuff coming out about what was going on while Columbia was in orbit. The piece says that the engineers were doing a lot of "what if" scenario-building, working out worst case contingencies. The accuracy of at least one of those scenarios is chilling. A question is, in how any previous flights did they run the same scenarios? Was this flight that unusual while Columbia was on orbit?
10:48:46 PM Permalink
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You can always count on the people
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of
the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to
drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship,
or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the
people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is
easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and
denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country
to greater danger."
-- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
Quote authenticated at:
10:15:26 PM Permalink
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An Introduction to Streaming Transformations for XML. An introduction to Streaming Transformations for XML (STX), a template-based XML transformation language that operates on streams of SAX events. STX bears a strong resemblance to XSLT 1.0, the tree-driven transformation language for XML, but offers unique features and advantages for some applications. [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]
Jeez, just about the time I get XSLT figured out, along comes this thing. I wonder if it's something I need now? But no, I pretty much have my immediate problem solved, and don't need to try something else now. Maybe next time I'll be able to tell if this plugs a hole.
5:13:00 PM Permalink
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Porn is bad. Violence good.. It's official! Watching porn can make you a bad person. [MetaFilter]
Let's see. Osama Bin Laden is on the loose. So is the Anthrax murderer. But the FBI is going after users of porn and makers of bongs. This is one of the funniest, saddest lines I've ever seen:
“I have been on the force for five and half years, and every time I have gone to serve a search warrant for dope, I have found porn,” Gittine said.
Hmm. I bet as many of those houses had, as someone on the MetaFilter site points out, pizzas, crucifixes, bibles, televisions, aspirin, Pepsi, etc. And note that this the news story comes from Brigham Young University.
We've got serious problems in this country. 9 million children living in poverty. Millions of young and old with no health insurance. Retired people who find they have no retirement accounts any more. Poisons in our food and air and water for profit. Bongs and pornography are chump change.
1:21:31 PM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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