September 2005

"But there's always someone ready to rain on the parade -- 'The giant squid is poisonous, so you can't eat it'"

"I'm rooting for gas prices to go higher. How high? When I see the guy down the block crying at the pump as he fills up his Hummer, then I'll know they've gone high enough."

in prosperous democracies, "higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion"

"election-year politics and their attendant indecisiveness will continue for at least the next several months"

"we’ve had three civilian leaders out there, all ineffective, one bordering on criminal... The one that got the Medal of Freedom."

I think Cole is overly optimistic about air power - how could that stop insurgent troops inside Baghdad without mass killing of civilians? - but I agree with him that military control has to be devolved

"Originally created as a site for men to share images of their sexual partners... it has become a stomach-churning showcase for the pornography of war"

"on those rare occasions a humanitarian crisis gets global attention, aid agencies have to take advantage of the situation to raise money"

already "the 3rd strongest Atlantic hurricane of all time. Tonight, Rita will be passing over the Loop Current, a warm eddy of water in the Gulf"

"rulings by the European Court allowing any company to operate in any other European country could make SE status seem redundant and expensive"

"the Washington Consensus is alive and well, albeit hidden in a sea of 'democratic, civil participation' rhetoric"

"It's like drug regulation. Drugs are banned sometimes because a minority of users will have negative side effects, or because taking them correctly is complicated"

"Indonesia, the only member of OPEC that imports more oil than it sells, has capped fuel prices for the past three decades."

"al Duleimi deemed the war a disaster that ushered in Islamic extremism, foreign occupation and the fragmentation of Iraqis along sectarian and ethnic lines."

"Actually I think CGI has the potential to equal or even surpass what the human hand can do. But it is far too late for me to try it."

"I was a bit worried about the safety of my students when I saw how hard the ball was. It was very different from the ping-pong balls I am used to."

"Can a 168-year old paper, whose initial cover price was a 6 1/4 cent Spanish coin, long survive after being reduced to what amounts to the country's most tragic metro section?"

"beneficiaries must have their children vaccinated, and their health monitored, and keep them in school"

"Scott Parkin came here on a legal visa, carried out activities that are completely legal for citizens and visitors, has been spied on, summarily arrested, detained and punished without trial, without evidence, without even an intelligible charge, and will be fined around $20,000"

"over the past 25 years universities have evolved from public trusts into something closer to venture capital firm"

"The Conservative movement recently issued a policy statement which suggests wholesale change in Rabbinical recognition of the transgendered is afoot"

"An agent told customers it had also exported to the US and European countries, and was trying to develop fillers using tissue from aborted foetuses."

"the problem with this novel is not that it is written badly. The problem is that it is so utterly through-and-through top-to-bottom brainless"

"though the estimates of death in Congo astonished even experienced observers, the media reported the figures with essentially zero mention of any concerns about the validity of either numbers or methodology"

"social bonds will strengthen, volunteerism will explode, violence will be rare, looting will appear only under exceptional circumstances, and the vast majority of rescues will be accomplished by the real first responders - the victims themselves"

"an African-American baby in Washington has less chance of surviving its first year than one born in urban parts of Kerala in India"

according to Sistani "it is 'absolutely forbidden', coming in worse than anal sex on the sin chart and at the same level as abortion"

"standing orders in some [areas] to open fire on people regardless of whether they were armed or not, or posed any physical threat"

"IT systems integrators and solution providers would have to support the OpenDoc format in order to do business with the state"

"Mamie and James Matthews are still in their apartment. There telephone will work but they are very weak. They are dying. Please help they are almost 100 and Mamie is blind."

"the Thai province of Pattani [is seeing] a decades-old insurgency turn away from ethno-nationalist separatist roots toward the rhetoric of JI and al-Qaeda"