Rondam Ramblings

Just found (via Fred Kaplan over at Slate ) a really great blog about Iraq by Juan Cole, a Professor of History at the University of Michig...

I was browsing through the Bible today looking up some passages that were cited in a discussion of Mel Gibson's "The Passion" ...

Once again my favorite movie, Terry Gilliam's Brazil , has prophesized an actual event : "Canada's police chiefs propose a s...

I think Bill Timmons, president of the Aladdin casino in Las Vegas, was right to fire Linda Ronstadt for praising Michael Moore's film ...

The reports that the Bush Administration had plans to postpone the election in the event of a terrorist attack seem to have been a false ala...

The United States may join the ranks of countries where elections are "postponed" because of security concerns. I hope we are...

One thing that the Bush administration doesn't seem to get is that freedom to do only those things of which the government approves is...

Clarence Thomas actually went against right-wing doctrine and did the right thing . Astonishing.

.. that needs to be said : Mr. President, you've completely fucked up the situation in North Korea .

Something else that in my humble opinion needs to be said : with all due respect Mr. Vice President, you're a fucking asshole.

Much as I hate to admit it, the right-wing wackos who hang out on Rand Simberg's blog were apparently right about Michael Moore . Sigh....

It's a happy day if you're an HMO. The Supreme Court has ruled that HMOs cannot be sued in state court for damages arising from wi...

Once again the Supreme Court refuses to toss a line to a country continuing to slide down the slippery slope towards Nazism and the day whe...

Because life is too short to use Windows .

I am a second class citizen again. As an atheist, I cannot in good conscience declare my allegiance to "the flag of the United States ...

The LA Times (and every other newspaper in the world) reports : One day after the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist a...

Another wonderful example of science at work, the great Mars bunny hunt . This example really show's Occam's razor at work. Even t...

Here is a beautiful example of how science really works .

The California Senate has passed this bit of legislative idiocy . Let's hope that there are more operative neurons in the Assembly. So...

Rebecca Hagelin has it all figured out: the abuse of prisoners at Abu Graib is the result of too much porn (and not enough attendance at c...

A Federal Appeals Court has ruled that John Ashcroft overstepped his authority when he ordered that Oregon ignore a democratically approved...

Despite the fact that I have an Israeli heritage and a certain amount of sympathy for the suffering of Israeli civilians at the hands of Pal...

Jacob Weisberg has got George Bush nailed .

There is more evidence that global warming is real and worse than previously thought. The Earth's temperature is rising nearly 1 degre...

So much for freedom of the press .

I have to admit that I found George Bush's speech yesterday inspiring. Too bad it bore little resemblence to reality .

California State Senator Liz Figueroa is seeking to block Google's new Gmail service on the grounds that it invades people's privac...

It seems to me that the press is giving President Bush a free pass on the August 6 memo . For example, the LA Times, whose reputation would...

Wherever it is I think they have the right attitude .

Maybe the international space station is haunted .

Whose fault is it when someone fools you five times ?

There's an interesting perspective on the abortion debate over at Slate.

Martin (whose URL doesn't seem to be working at the moment) pointed me to this editorial by Donald Sensing in the Wall Street Journal....

I just realized that people are actually posting comments on my blog and I hadn't realized it. I thought I had it set up to notify me b...

I am truly astonished at the number of otherwise apparently rational people who are advancing (and otherwise rational editors who are choosi...

An interesting juxtaposition of headlines as the two top stories on Google News this morning: Bombers in Iraq , Pakistan Kill 184 People ...

In my wildest dreams I never imagined that I'd find myself in violent agreement with a Bush judicial nominee. And yet, it is so. The...

I'm in the midst of an interesting discussion over in Rand Simberg's comments section that began as an argument about whether the d...

Question: How many multinational corporations could engage in systematic and ongoing sexual abuse of children, cover up that abuse for decad...

The Telegraph reports that smoking 'kills up to 5,000 fetuses a year' . I wonder when conservatives will start to push to make sm...

This is so wrong. The French national assembly has voted overwhelmingly to ban head scarves and skullcaps in public schools. The justific...

I am shocked (but not at all surprised) that someone is suing Janet Jackson: : Knoxville native Terri Carlin filed a proposed class act...

Josh Marshall has figured it out : Besides tax cuts and parceling out pork to favored constituencies, there's very little this Whit...

It took almost twenty years for the real world to become like Terry Gilliam's Brazil , but only two years for Minority Report to morph ...

I would like to note for the record that this post was written before the Super Bowl. :-)

Rummy says WOMDs may still be found in Iraq . You gotta give him this: the man's an optimist. Then there's this: Sen. Edw...

Someone close to the Bush administration has finally figured it out : "'If you cannot rely on good, accurate intelligence that is c...

It's a little stale now, but I just wanted to go on the record saying that Jacques Chirac's proposal to ban head scarves and other o...

Although Siegfried Hecker is not officially speaking for the U.S. government it is hard to believe that a former head of the Los Alamos Nati...

Pity poor George Bush. Now on top of everything else he has to deal with, the Shiites in Iraq are demanding (can you imagine?) elections ! ...