All posts by Chris

time delay Tom Delay

Government, Iraq, You have got to be kidding

The Doonesbury site has a often-funny “Say What?” snippet off in a corner.  I had to share today’s:

“For the majority leader of the United States Senate, in the time of war, with soldiers dying on the ground, announcing that we have lost the war, is very close to treasonous. I looked it up while we were driving over here, what the definition of ‘treason’ is. It’s the betrayal of trust.”
– Tom DeLay, 2007

“I cannot support a failed foreign policy….President Clinton has never explained to the American people why he was involving the US military in a civil war in a sovereign nation, other than to say it is for humanitarian reasons, a new military-foreign policy precedent. Was it worth it to stay in Vietnam to save face? What good has been accomplished so far? Absolutely nothing.”
– then-House Majority Whip Tom Delay, 1999, a month into the US mission in Kosovo 

news roundup

Environment, Medicine, News, News Roundup

I read news from a bunch of different sources each day, including Google News, Reddit, and a whole host of blog feeds. Some items are worth commenting on here, but often I just want to say “hey, read this one” instead of finding something specific to comment on.

So, I’m going to try a new feature here on Global Spin: the News Roundup. Each post is a list of timely articles with excerpts but little or no commentary, perhaps updated over the course of the day. If you find them useful, let me know. If you find them annoying, mention that too.

Doctors refuse to take bitter no-gift medicine (Chicago Tribune)

Whether it be Subway sandwiches for the office staff or reimbursement for continuing education, gifts showered upon doctors by drug- and medical device-makers have become so pervasive that they are a standard part of virtually every U.S. physician’s practice.

Despite self-policing initiatives launched by organized medical groups and the drug and device makers to curb the cozy relationship between physicians and industry, 94 percent “or virtually all” physicians have at least one type of relationship with the drug industry, according to a study scheduled to be published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Stephen Hawking set to fly weightless (Houston Chronicle)

For a few seconds on Thursday, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking expects to feel the exhilaration of escaping his paralysis and floating free in zero gravity. The 65-year-old was set Thursday to become the first person with a disability to experience the Zero Gravity Corp. flight.

Canada Announces Greenhouse Gas Targets (Washington Post)

Canada’s Conservative government said Wednesday it will cut greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent by 2020 and ban inefficient incandescent lightbulbs by 2012 as part of a national environmental initiative.

The plan, dubbed “Turning the Corner,” includes various measures to stop the rise of greenhouse gases in three to five years. Once the gases stop rising, the government plans to reduce them by 150 million tons by 2020, or about 20 percent the level of current emissions.

the red sun of krypton

Oddly Enough, Science, Science fiction, Space

Two news items caught my attention today. Though they don’t actually have anything to do with each other, reading them one after the other evokes a certain comic-book planet:

An international team of astronomers from Switzerland, France and Portugal have discovered the most Earth-like planet outside our Solar System to date. The planet has a radius only 50 percent larger than Earth and is very likely to contain liquid water on its surface.

Unlike our Earth, this planet takes only 13 days to complete one orbit round its star. It is also 14 times closer to its star than the Earth is from the Sun. However, since its host star, the red dwarf Gliese 581, is smaller and colder than the Sun – and thus less luminous – the planet lies in the habitable zone, the region around a star where water could be liquid.

“We have estimated that the mean temperature of this super-Earth lies between 0 and 40 degrees Celsius, and water would thus be liquid,” said Stiphane Udry from the Geneva Observatory, Switzerland and lead-author of the paper in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

The planet is about 20 light years away, definitely visiting distance. It would definitely be a strange new world, but the presence of water (and all that implies) puts it at the top of the list of Places To Investigate.

In other news, a new mineral was discovered in a mine in Serbia:

“Towards the end of my research I searched the web using the mineral’s chemical formula – sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide – and was amazed to discover that same scientific name, written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen by Lex Luther from a museum in the film Superman Returns.

“The new mineral does not contain fluorine (which it does in the film) and is white rather than green but, in all other respects, the chemistry matches that for the rock containing kryptonite.”

Super-Earths, kryptonite… it just goes to show that truth is stranger than fiction. Now where’s that jet pack I ordered?

Mr. Bush, tear down this wall

Iraq, Security Theater, You have got to be kidding

Oh, you have got to be kidding me:

A U.S. military brigade is constructing a 3-mile-long concrete wall to cut off one of the capital’s most restive Sunni Arab districts from the Shiite Muslim neighborhoods that surround it, raising concern about the further Balkanization of Iraq’s most populous and violent city.

U.S. commanders in northern Baghdad said the 12-foot-high barrier would make it more difficult for suicide bombers to strike and for death squads and militia fighters from sectarian factions to attack one another and then slip back to their home turf.

Although Baghdad is replete with blast walls, checkpoints and other temporary barriers, including a massive wall around the Green Zone, the barrier being constructed in Adhamiya would be the first to be based in essence on sectarian considerations.

More details at the LA Times story.  So, how much of this has to happen before the Bush administration admits we’re in the middle of a civil war, and losing?

National High Five Day

Fun, Holiday! Celebrate!, Oddly Enough

In the spirit of peace, love, and general awesomeness, I high-five you!

National High Five Day falls on the third Thursday of April each year, which falls this year on April 19, 2007. The holiday originated at the University of Virginia in 2002, and has since spread across the nation, and around the globe.

Imagine that while on your way to class, you pass a dignified looking middle-aged man in a suit. Instead of noticing this respectable pillar of society fifteen seconds or so before your interaction is fated to occur, and lowering your head to avoid his disapproving scowl, you and the businessman simultaneously raise your hands and wordlessly high-five. You both walk on, and likely relate the story to whomever you eat dinner with that night.

Special thanks to Nate and Ted for bringing this to my attention.