Tuesday, April 1, 2003

April Fool's Day ... in the sixteen century New Year's Day was March 25 and the celebration lasted until April 1. In 1562 the Gergorian calendar was adopted and New Year's Day moved to January one ... the story goes than anyone celebrating on April 1 as an April Fool. For Fernando - is it true that the Portuguese equivalent involves the throwing of flour? Of course the first of the month is a fine time to invoke rabbit rabbit or (a very strange custom from the UK that may have started during the War of the Roses) But back to the matter at hand. In the US practical jokes are expected and some are impressive. 5:49:32 AM     I have a long-standing interest in geocoding information. Here is a linkage of blogs and stations on the London Tube. 5:49:10 AM     One person who frequents this site builds computer numeric control (CNC) tools as a hobby. His work is very sophisticated and the machines rival those that cost as much as a Mercedes. At the low end many amateurs have designs - mostly moving Dremel tools around. John Kleinbauer is typical, but he also has an interest in homemade crank organs. 5:48:45 AM     The already famous note by Seymour Hersh. The Administration spent a huge amount of effort denying this one before it was published, but Hersh's story seems to be corroborated in the ranks of the military and Rumsfeld's excuse that he was moving slowly to help Bush's diplomatic efforts is just silly. I've been wondering about why Rumsfeld needed to show this is a quick and cheap war. My guess is there are serial wars planned as part of the Wolfowitz scheme to make the Mideast safe for democracy through unilateral US domination. If Iraq is expensive, it would be difficult to move on with that plan. On the other than the Wolfowitz plan is so naïve as to be laughable - so one continues to wonder (and worry about little things like the Arab Street)... Winning the war in Iraq is a given and is probably trivial when compared with winning the peace. What we are seeing is probably infighting over the strategic direction of the military. There must be a large amount of tension to see it boil over so quickly. __ Ultimately the Administration may have to deal with the American Street It may be difficult to rebuild overseas as the economy continues to tank for a sizable portion of the home population. 5:48:26 AM

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