whine and sneeze I do have some half-finished meandering drafts of essays on facial recognition, confessions of a reformed dog-hater, single-sex schooling, yadda yadda. But I've got some blah-inducing bug, and my effing arm is still not out of its sling, so I better hold back on the blogging 'til the snarliness passes. So just a few random snarly comments: If you know how to set up permalinks in Dreamweaver, go help out Joanne Jacobs. Richard Bennett has a bunch of interesting stuff from the last few days, including comments on double standards in fighting terrorism (see: India as well as Israel), and some highly useful information on how to measure the speed of light with marshmallows and a microwave oven. Then move along to a Warren column on why we must continue to shore up Afghanistan, which ends with this pithy observation:

Until the scourge of Islamism is removed, we can adopt merely expedient measures, various forms of damage limitation. In the rather shocking words of a British Afghan expert, a man I believe to be deeply humane: "Real progress requires that we address root causes, which means putting bullets through the right foreheads."

One more thing: In case you missed it, Bjørn Staerk has a truly fascinating translation and commentary on a certain Scandinavian minister's demonstration of the art of closing one's eyes, putting one's fingers in one's ears, and loudly repeating "I'm not listening! I'm not listening!".
Posted by Moira Breen at May 20, 2002 03:28 PM