Chris

Today's Roundup

Monday, 10. April 2006, 07:19:10

The friggin' German boyfriend of my sister-in-law is gone, along with the sister-in-law. Thank God that my liver can rest and the squabbling is at an end. Woohoo!

Jeff says his blog traffic is down, and the comments say it is a wide-spread phenomenon. Me? My traffic is way up, I am pretty sure there are 4 guys reading my posts now (actually, I got something like 300 hits yesterday but it is probably because of the server problems). Go see Jeff, he is a heck of a lot more funny than I am.
Someone emailed to ask why I haven't mentioned the Ukranians giving 250 nuclear warheads to Iran. I don't believe it, that's why. No one is that crazy. With that many warheads, at least one is guaranteed to be used against your own country.
Anti-Al Qaeda protests in Iraq, via the Jawas. Also Rumsfeld on the 3rd anniversary of the war:
Some have described the situation in Iraq as a tightening noose, noting that "time is not on our side" and that "morale is down." Others have described a "very dangerous" turn of events and are "extremely concerned."

Who are they that have expressed these concerns? In fact, these are the exact words of terrorists discussing Iraq -- Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his associates -- who are describing their own situation and must be watching with fear the progress that Iraq has made over the past three years.

The terrorists seem to recognize that they are losing in Iraq. I believe that history will show that to be the case.

Donald H. Rumsfeld
Do-it-yourself biowarfare is possible now:
Malefactors would have more trouble stealing or buying the classical agents of biological warfare than synthesizing new ones. In 2002, after all, a group of researchers built a functioning polio virus, using a genetic sequence off the Internet and mail-order oligonucleotides (machine-synthesized DNA molecules no longer than about 140 bases each) from commercial synthesis companies. At the time, the group leader, Eckard Wimmer of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, warned that the technology to synthesize the much larger genome of variola major -- that is, the deadly smallpox virus -- would come within 15 years. In fact, it arrived sooner: December 2004, with the announcement of a high-throughput DNA synthesizer that could reproduce smallpox's 186,000-odd bases in 13 runs.
Joe Lieberman may run as Independent or Republican in the next election: " I want to do it as a Democrat. If I didn't want to do it as a Democrat, I would choose to run in some other party, trust me."
Interested in the newly released Gospel of Judas? Volokh Conspiracy rakes it over the coals impressively. The basic issue: the Gospel contains references to Gnosticism which did not exist for 1-2 centuries after Judas died. Lots more from a Gnotic.