E-zine Jaguaro brings us Belgian Bombers: An Essay in Photos. “There’s a public park without a name in downtown Antwerp. There’s no street sign, public square name or indicator of any kind. It sits hidden between a local elementary school and a posh antique-shop district. At the opening to the park, there are two ramshackled, spraypainted houses abandoned by all but a few pigeons, situated awkwardly in the midst of a lovely middle-class Belgian neighborhood. And that’s just the entrance.” Smashing stuff.
Popularity: 9% [?]
From the White House, Office of the Press Secretary:
Nothin’ Fancy Cafe
Roswell, New Mexico
11:25 A.M. MST
THE PRESIDENT: I need some ribs.
Q Mr. President, how are you?
THE PRESIDENT: I’m hungry and I’m going to order some ribs.
Q What would you like?
THE PRESIDENT: Whatever you think I’d like.
Q Sir, on homeland security, critics would say you simply haven’t spent enough to keep the country secure.
[..]
THE PRESIDENT: See, his job is to ask questions, he thinks my job is to answer every question he asks. I’m here to help this restaurant by buying some food. Terry, would you like something?
You just can’t make up stuff like this.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Some telling statistics courtesy of the Independent (much more available):
232: Number of American combat deaths in Iraq between May 2003 and January 2004
501: Number of American servicemen to die in Iraq from the beginning of the war – so far
0: Number of American combat deaths in Germany after the Nazi surrender to the Allies in May 1945
0: Number of coffins of dead soldiers returning home from Iraq that the Bush administration has allowed to be photographed
100: Number of fund-raisers attended by Bush or Vice-President Dick Cheney in 2003
0: Number of funerals or memorials that President Bush has attended for soldiers killed in Iraq
53%: Percentage of American citizens who approved of the way Bush was handling his job as president when asked on 16 January, 2004
Popularity: 6% [?]
The SimilarMinds.com “Enneagram Personality Test” determines which movie best fits your personality, based on a shortish questionnaire. My personality type fits Apocalypse Now—presumably that isn’t a good thing.
similarminds.com
Popularity: 7% [?]
The Washington Post: “A scathing new report published by the Army War College broadly criticizes the Bush administration’s handling of the war on terrorism, accusing it of taking a detour into an ‘unnecessary’ war in Iraq and pursuing an ‘unrealistic’ quest against terrorism that may lead to U.S. wars with states that pose no serious threat.”
BBC News: “A top official sacked from the US Government has accused President Bush of planning for an invasion of Iraq within days of coming to office. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill said Mr Bush was looking for an excuse to oust Saddam Hussein. As a member of the president’s National Security team he said he never saw any evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.”
Popularity: 6% [?]
John Brockman asked his pundits on Edge.org to write down the personal laws they would like to see made contemporary. Some samples:
Brian Eno
Culture is everything we don’t have to do. We have to eat, but we didn’t have to invent Baked Alaskas and Beef Wellington. We have to clothe ourselves, but we didn’t have to invent platform shoes and polka-dot bikinis. We have to communicate, but we didn’t have to invent sonnets and sonatas. Everything we do — beyond simply keeping ourselves alive — we do because we like making and experiencing art and culture.
J. Craig Venter
Discoveries made in a field by some one [sic] from another discipline will always be upsetting to the majority of those inside.
Richard Dawkins
When two incompatible beliefs are advocated with equal intensity, the truth does not lie half way between them.
John Barrow
Any Universe simple enough to be understood is too simple to produce a mind able to understand it.
www.edge.org
Popularity: 7% [?]
In an article—Quarantining dissent: How the Secret Service protects Bush from free speech—the San Francisco Chronicle reports on the free speech barrier the Secret Service constructs around the US President. Waving a banner or placard critical of the White House where the President can see it will get you arrested. For your own protection only, Secret Service agent Brian Marr assures us. Or, as Mike van Winkle, spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center calls it, “You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that’s being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest. You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act.”
Popularity: 7% [?]
