Homo Sum:
humani nil a me alienum puto

Following up our earlier post on the evolution textbook sticker battle.
I read with much amusement this post on BoingBoing about the controversy.
And since it amused me so, I made up a Word document containing labels with Gary’s text, preformatted for Avery 8161 labels. For those of you without Word, I used the FastPDF service to [...]

I shouldn’t need to comment on Fallujah in general, the prisoner shootings in particular, or the unlikeliness that capturing the city really accomplished anything. The pointlessness is self-evident in the one case, and the other is the obvious result of giving guns to young men, scaring the piss out of them, and demonizing an entire [...]

Well, I’m still trapped in a hotel, with no sign of power to return at home any time soon, so I might as well catch up on the news I’ve missed over the last couple of days.
Let’s start with the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to the post of Attorney General.
My initial reaction is still “Even [...]

I know part of the reason I moved to Nova Scotia was to enjoy the beauty of nature. I know this includes, and consciously included, some majestically crushing weather. However, this is the third time in 13 months that a major weather surprise has taken out the power at my house. Last time it was [...]

So, as we covered earlier, the US dollar is hitting record lows against both the Canadian dollar and the Euro. There are lots of predictions out there that these are the early signs of a continuing decline, driven by the crazy deficits of the current administration.
However, what if it’s not just deficits? Traditionally the [...]

Ashcroft Resigns

(AP) Attorney General John Ashcroft and Commerce Secretary Don Evans resigned Tuesday, the first members of President Bush’s Cabinet to leave as he headed from re-election into his second term.
Ashcroft, in a five-page, handwritten letter to Bush, said, “The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been [...]

Judge Halts War-Crime Trial at Guantanamo
So there are hopeful bits in there like this:

The judge also said that in asserting that the Guantánamo prisoners are unlawful combatants and outside the reach of the Geneva Conventions, “the government has asserted a position starkly different from the positions and behavior of the United States in previous conflicts, [...]

Higly trained assassin? Peanut butter smuggler? Bizarro version of Burke?
Look, I can’t really explain this story. Let me just quote three paragraphs for you, and then you decide whether or not you need to follow the link.

Interpol recruited Bannon at age 19 while he was serving time in a Korean prison for smuggling peanut butter [...]

Evolution textbooks row goes to court
OK, seriously, this debate was a joke to civilized people in the 1920s. What the hell is it in the year 2004?
And for a little extra scare think about this paragraph in light of the election results:

In 1987, the supreme court ruled that creationism was a religious belief that could [...]

Firefox has released 1.0. Go get it.
I’ve been playing with this since the first release of Mozilla, which seems like FOREVER ago, and occasionally have used the various releases along the way for a little while, but since the 1.0 Preview Release I have been using Firefox as my primary-and-almost-exclusive browser. In every important way [...]

Look, I think of myself as an amateur gourmet, but I was raised lower middle-class and consequently I don’t have to turn up my nose at some things that most amateur gourmets would disdain. (Don’t even get me started on the one legitimate use of Kraft “cheez” slices over real cheese). I can eat packaged [...]

Take a moment and enjoy what we normally take for granted.
I decide I want an image of P. Terentius Afer for the new header.
There was a time when this would have involved a library trip, and very likely a long wait for inter-library loan processing.
Today, I pop into Google images, and I have my image [...]

William S. Lind: Fallujah and the Moral Level of War
I wish everyone was forced to read this. Really the worst thing about war propoganda is the hypocrisy.

What is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the turkey. Obvious double standards put us on the moral low ground. The rest of the world can [...]

You know, if you go into the tunnels that come out behind the falls… you will get wet.