High amplitude waves in shear thickening liquids have very cool effects. Watch the video.
What Would Ross Perot Think?
Just when you thought that the Reform Party couldn’t get any more incoherent and lacking in principles of any variety, it endorses Ralph Nader. Recall that their last presidential candidate was Patrick J. Buchanan.
What a joke.
It’s good news for Bush, though–it will put Nader on the ballot in a lot of states he wouldn’t otherwise get.
Finally
We see some condemnation from the Arab world. Hizbollah says that the decapitation was “un-Islamic“:
“Hizbollah condemns this horrible act that has done very great harm to Islam and Muslims by this group that claims affiliation to the religion of mercy, compassion and humane principles,” the Shi’ite Muslim group said in a statement.
Yes, you’re not supposed to cut their heads off. You’re supposed to blow yourself up next to them, propelling rat-poisoned-dunked metal fasteners though them, ensuring that if they live, it will be a lifetime of pain. Now that’s Islam!
Here’s the real reason they’re upset. It’s mostly the timing:
Hizbollah said Berg’s killing had diverted the world’s gaze from an escalating furor over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by occupation soldiers.
“The timing of this act that overshadowed the scandal over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in occupation forces prisons is suspect timing that aims to serve the American administration and occupation forces in Iraq and present excuses and pretexts for their inhumane practices against Iraqi detainees,” it said.
It’s a lament I’m sure they share with some people here. Couldn’t they have waited until after the election?
Was It Even Worse Than We Thought?
Someone at Free Republic thinks that the terrorists edited out about a minute and a half of the butchery. If what he describes is accurate, it sounds credible.
More Than Half Full
Arnold Kling has a list of all the bad things that haven’t happened in Iraq.
The Great White North Is Now Greater
After Chretien, it’s nice to see Canada finally have a PM with a grip on reality.
“I believe that terrorism will be, for our generation, what the Cold War was to generations that preceded us,” he said. “I don’t think we’re out of it yet.”
Martin disagreed with former prime minister Jean Chretien, who publicly blamed poverty for terrorism and the Sept. 11 attacks. “The cause of terrorism is not poverty, it is hatred.”
Contrarians
I know that good news about Iraq doesn’t seem to be very popular right now, particularly in the major media, but Glenn has a couple letters that are encouraging, about Najaf and Al-Sadr, and Fallujah.
On the other hand, what do they know?
They’re only the people who are actually there on the ground, interacting with the Iraqis in ways both violent and kind, as appropriate, every day. They don’t have the benefit of journalism degrees and elite cocktail parties from which to get their news and reinforce their anti-Bush opinions.
Commercial Space History
Spacearium is running a series of posts on the history of the American Rocket Company. Here’s the first one.
A Step Forward
Or it would be, if it had a chance of being enacted. I knew that Zell Miller had been talking about it, but I hadn’t realized that he has introduced a repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment.
We Have Only The Power To Destroy It…
James Lileks says what I meant to say here, but more at length and, as always, more eloquently.
…half the battle will occur in places we cannot reach or observe. A minimal-casualty defeat of the Islamists will require the help of Islam. I’d like to think that will happen on its own, without some exterior catastrophe to force the issue. For that matter I’d like to think I’ll win the Powerball. Every time the jackpot goes over 200 million, I buy a ticket. Every time I lose. I’m always disappointed, of course. But never surprised.
Let’s hope we can hit the jackpot.