Let's All Pull Together

I'm working on a care package to some citizens of Iraq. Thus far I have included beer, hot-dogs, and puppies, these being some of the greatest comforts Western culture has to offer. Who's with me?

Strings

It's depressing trying to do relatively simple research on Iraqi universities and having to filter out horrific news articles by adding "-death" "-bomb" and "-killed" to the search. Can't use "-war" because that's more likely to be in what I'm looking for and is the measure of an era.

Here's a link to a list of Iraqi academics killed or otherwise mishandled in some way.

How About That

Who'd have thought that the big fish reeled in in the Oil-for-Food brouhaha would be a Texas oilman?

Confusing Headlines Dept.

Stay?

I Am Not Part of Your Us

What does that mean? This: 9/11 has made us stupid. I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But our reaction to 9/11 — mine included — has knocked America completely out of balance, and it is time to get things right again.

"We" should be fired.

9/11 Nuts

This thread is really a bring-down.

I have ideas about what it is that makes people want to believe nonsense, but I guess what bugs me most is the laziness of the whole thing. Have questions? There are answers all over the place from people who actually know what they're talking about. Don't like the answers? Make a fucking phone call. Can you verify your kooky theory? If you can, by all means present it. But to spend X years going "something doesn't add up" or "there are unanswered questions" means you don't know what you're talking about and you're uninterested in answers that don't suit you.

At this point "I dunno what hit the Pentagon" or "the towers were wired to explode" are flat-earth equivalents. I remain open to the possibility of being proven wrong, just as I am about space aliens pooping in your cornflakes or Aleister Crowley having bona-fide magickal powers that years later chopped off the ends of Jimmy Page's fingers broke Jimmy Page's finger in an accident completely unlike Tony Iommi's.

In the Fever Swamp of the Radical Wingnuts

Here's an article from Gavin at Sadly, No! which argues that the top of the conservative punditry is smooth enough to deliver the message without sounding nuts, but that the message in unvarnished form is more easily gleaned from the idiots on the bottom.

I don't think I buy this, as a lot of the bottom-feeders have interests that the top guys plainly couldn't give a shit about as long as the votes are delivered, but Gavin writes nice sentences and deserves to win a lottery or something.

Good Thing

Space Plague!

The future may yet turn out to be cool.

Gregg Easterbrook: Moron

Go to The Poor Man and read.

Sports are pretty much for idiots - duh, hi mirror - but perhaps there could be some filter that strains out certain sillinesses.

And if you’re tempted to say, “Gregg, at worst this is just cheating in some dumb football games,” here’s why the affair matters: If a big American institution such as the NFL is not being honest with the public about a subject as minor, in the scheme of things, as the Super Bowl, how can we expect American government and business to be honest with the public about what really matters?

It's not often that I laugh out loud at something that doesn't involve anvils or shovels to the face, so I salute you Mr. Easterbrook.

Now With 100% More Eleanor

Odd outage at Nitpicker:

Write Your Senator

I think it'd be reasonable to follow up the Move-On debacle with a resolution condemning bribery, toilet sex, and the wearing of diapers for prurient reasons.

Medical Education Under the Taliban

This is a pretty old article, but it's worth having a look at:

Sunday, May 14, 2006
Afghanistan: Women Return To Medicine After Taliban Ban
By Mustafa Sarwar

PRAGUE, May 14, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- During the days of the Taliban, women were not allowed to study medicine at Kabul Medical University, not even under the cover of the all-encompassing burqas.

More than four years after the fall of the Taliban, however, the radiant faces of 90 women could be seen in the university's auditorium, speaking happily about their graduation. Some of them are now mothers, having had to interrupt their medical studies during the five years the Taliban held power in the capital.

[...]

Tabesh says the Taliban would measure the length of the beards of the medical students, "and if they found out that they had been trimmed, they would punish us harshly."

[...]

"We lacked the very essential things in that time," Tabesh said. "The first semester, we had anatomy classes. It is a very difficult subject, and you need to have materials like bones and skeletons to study with. But the Taliban did not allow us to work on the human body, so we needed to buy bones from other boys who were in the higher grades at the university. We could not even afford to buy an anatomy atlas textbook. And since we had to use human bones [dug from graves], sometimes [the chemicals used to clean the bones] produced allergies. It was unbelievable."

Tabesh recalls the dean of the university during the Taliban days chasing students with a long stick.

"I remember him boasting that no man could ever be as cruel as he was," Tabesh says. "It was pretty dreadful."

Trolling and Utility

Is Poo Poo Funny?

I say yes and thank you Ron Paul for the bumper-sticker. And J---- for the pic of poor Dave.



Yes, I'm a dick.

Do They Come in Brown?

Attention Alan Greenspan: This Means You're Horrible, Not Honest

Corruption

Here we have an article about corruption in India, mostly regarding fake degrees. There is at least one episode in it that is actually horrifying. What impressed me however was this single sentence:

The unethical practices and the decline in moral values have corrupted a greed-based society.

The Art of Subtitles

My lovely daughter is on the Aspergery side of life, which has its ups and downs. One of the positive ups is that she has a freakish ability to read, demonstrated since before she could walk (which she was late to, but she totters sweetly nonetheless).

A very small part of what this means is that when she and I watch TV she'll pay closer attention when the captions are on. I have learned, to my chagrin, that Spanish or French audio does not match the Spanish or French subtitles in many cases, making most DVDs kind of crappy aids to my charming Braniac 5's attempts to learn all languages on Earth.

I have also learned that television captioning is sometimes outsourced to some place where English is not spoken, or used as makework for drunken hobos, or most likely generated automatically using the Very Latest Technology.

Enjoy what I have gleaned from my venerable televisual reception device.

Are Men as Dumb as the Media Say We Are?

In my opinion men need to stop sneering and do something about that haircut.