March 24, 2004

Workers have started to use a giant mobile crane to raise the more permanent construction crane at the site of the Royal Ontario Museum’s Renaissance ROM expansion which has recently received a gift of $20 million Cdn from the Weston Family. You can see a webcam picture of the construction from the roof of a hotel across the street. The other mobile crane in the Bloor and Queen’s Park area was replacing the giant Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King movie poster on the Famous Players building with one for Kill Bill: Part 2. The sign for Jersey Girl on the eastern side of the building indicates an opening date of March 19th, the movie opening was in fact delayed a week. Maybe to give more time to edit J-Lo out of the film. 9:47:05 PM

USA Today profiles several members of the NASA's Mars Exploration team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The picture of Wayne Lee, Chief engineer for landing answers the question: Who’s the guy in the American Flag design shirt that we see at mission control during the landings? 9:45:47 PM

Glenn Reynolds is picking news reports apart in an attempt to deflect blame from President Bush on what could be a lack of action against al-Qaida before September 11th. He posts: BUSH CAN'T GET A BREAK: Now he's being blamed for not invading Afghanistan in 1998! Here's the relevant passage from MSNBC: The report revealed that in a previously undisclosed secret diplomatic mission, Saudi Arabia won a commitment from the Taliban to expel bin Laden in 1998. But a clash between the Taliban’s leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, and Saudi officials scuttled the arrangement, and Bush did not follow up. Damn him -- governing Texas while Rome burned! Why didn't he send the Texas Rangers to finish off Bin Laden? ("One mullah, one Ranger!") Sheesh. Can you say "Freudian slip?" Actually if you read the entire article the context makes it clear that it was the Bush Administration’s lack of action that was being discussed and that the follow-up was something that the Bush Administration could have tried but did not once it got into office.  A few paragraphs later the article includes: In conclusion, the report said "from the spring of 1997 to September 2001, the U.S. government tried to persuade the Taliban to expel bin Laden to a country where he could face justice," the report said. "The efforts employed inducements, warnings and sanctions. All these efforts failed." The Bush administration then failed to "develop any diplomatic initiatives on al-Qaida with the Saudi government before the 9/11 attack," it said As the earlier part of the article states: Bush did not follow up. 9:45:23 PM