January 25, 2003

Israel will take part in building and equipping the next-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter via a bilateral security cooperation agreement with the United States. One part of the deal is that all of the planes’ pilots will use an Israel helmet that enables pilots to use eye motion to direct missile fire. Next up, firing missiles via your thoughts. 10:55:04 PM

Daniel Pipes talk at York University back on York University officials showed some backbone when they agreed to find a venue for a talk by Daniel Pipes to talk this Tuesday after the student-run centre at the university barred him from speaking at its facility. 10:36:27 PM

The National Post examines the statements from Prime Minister Jean Chrétien on whether Canada would go to war against Iraq without a UN mandate. His statements on Thursday made it hard to tell what his position actually was, leading to contradictory newspaper headlines. The article notes that the Globe and Mail headline read: "PM to Bush: Hold off on war," while The Toronto Star front page insisted: "Chrétien supports U.S. push for war." The conclusion: If the weapons inspectors found a smoking gun, Canada would go to war on the basis of the current UN resolutions, without additional votes. 10:33:16 PM

In interesting juxtaposition of stories on CNN’s website today, a link to a story about Bill Gates pledging to continue improvements to security in MS's products above a link to a story about the effects of a worm that is attacking vulnerable MS SQL Server 2000 servers. In fairness a patch for the SQL Server 2000 problem was released last year.     10:10:20 PM