Ok, I finally moved over to Wordpress. The blogroll and other stuff will be updated soon -

From the Guardian:

A former head of MI5 today describes the response to the September 11 2001 attacks on the US as a "huge overreaction" and says the invasion of Iraq influenced young men in Britain who turned to terrorism.

In an interview with the Guardian, Stella Rimington calls al-Qaida's attack on the US "another terrorist incident" but not qualitatively different from any others.

"That's not how it struck me. I suppose I'd lived with terrorist events for a good part of my working life and this was as far as I was concerned another one," she says.

This kind of statement is nothing new. The Brits (and the Guardian) have been saying this kind of thing for years.

Although some blame Britain's decline on multiculturalism and the Left, the Conservatives and Labour both support the British government's efforts to cash in on the Islamic banking bubble. Catering to the demands of Saudi and Emirate princes is part of that deal.

The British government has also been making an effort to kiss up to the Russians (and, by default, to Russia's allies in Iran). Vlad "polonium 210" Putin has been bullying the British government for years, and the British government has been reacting the way they usually do - with craven appeasement.

The Russians effectively won this little war over British Petroleum.

Most of the anti-Americanism in Europe can be traced to Euro-British efforts to appease oil producers and wealthy Gulf-state troglodytes. The French, the Russians and the Germans can also never forgive us for attacking their best friend in the Middle East, Saddam Hussein.

One British commenter noted this about the American election:

The UK politicians Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat are praying that Obama wins because then the US will pull out of Iraq and Afganistan and also have an appeasment policy towards Jihadists within the US and be strongly pro-Palestine. The US will become less internationalist.

The British are also as we say 'sweating cobbs' (a form of round and processed coal or a very hard bread roll) that if McCain gets in then the UK will have a choice either have the embarrassment of publically splitting with the US in relation to the US's War on Terror, rumblings are that this is because some high value British business contracts in the Middle East hang on the ability of the UK to pull out of Iraq.

Well, both parties have an appeasement policy towards Jihadists. John Kerry wasn't the one hugging and kissing Saudi King Abdullah in Crawford. But the idea is that if Obama is elected, the Brits can continue to pretend to be allied with us. If McCain is elected, they'll have to be more upfront about their true alliances.

Either way, the British people are still stuck with their Hobson's choice. If they don't start standing up to their government, if they don't use what still remains of their democracy and their freedom of speech to tell Brown et. all that they're mad as hell and not going to take it any more, then they can say goodbye to their way of life. And their pubs.

..well, not always. Al-Qaida denies Web attack, but its sites struggle

Want to know how to overlay sectional aeronautical charts in Google Earth, change the oil and filter on a 2001 Beetle TDI using an oil extractor, go from being an introvert to being an extrovert, make a beaded lizard, write a PHP script and be a great wife?

Go to Wiki How

..up on Flickr

Amity Shlaes, economist and author of The Forgotten Man, A New History of the Great Depression tells us how to avoid a sequel

Public displays of affection are illegal in "Western friendly" Dubai, but (until the French government intervened) the gang-rape of a teenage boy was not.

..many apologies. I'm on the road and can't fix it now but I'll try to repair (or move) the blog soon

Here in the French Quarter, the city looks to be in good shape. There are some damaged buildings, but the restaurants and shops I remember from 2004 are still here and still doing well.

Wedding Beignets

Saturday afternoon downtown

Bourbon Street is still Bourbon Street...

Yesterday, with Habitat for Humanity and about 250 of Bruce's co-workers, I helped fix up a local elementary school.

The school, and the surrounding neighborhood, were damaged by the floods. They're coming back, slowly.

With Symantec employees and a bunch of students, I helped paint a playground mural of the USA, with all 50 states and Puerto Rico. Our mural may not have been the most artistic piece in the playground, but it was the most commented-on. People wondered why we didn't paint it according to red state-blue state voting records, people wondered why the lakes and borders in their state were misshapen, they wondered why we included Puerto Rico but forgot Guam.

We were just following the teacher's drawing, but we did choose the colors. As for the color scheme, the lack of political affiliations and the misshapen lakes, it's to ponder.It is an artist's job to make people think. Hopefully, this work will inspire thought for generations.

If I can find a cheap enough rental car, I'll be driving out to visit friends in Kenner. Hope to post some pictures showing how the city is recovering.

If you have any travel or picture suggestions, comment or FB!

Gas2 "digs into the viscous world of biofuels and the fast-paced transit arena, exploring the technologies and substances that will power our transportation future."

Michael Totten describes a "frozen conflict":

Immediately following Russia's invasion of Georgia and its de-facto annexation of the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the phrase “frozen conflicts” was bandied about so often among the world’s foreign policy commentariat that it briefly became a cliché. Yet there is another frozen conflict in the South Caucasus that few have even heard of, fewer know much about, and even fewer have thought to include in any analysis. This war, the forgotten war of Nagorno (or “Mountainous”) Karabakh, has so far racked up a much higher body count – tens of thousands – than any in Georgia lately. Many more people – more than a million – were displaced. An uneasy ceasefire holds most of the time, but the conflict itself is not even close to being resolved. It’s a Mideast- and Balkan-style ethnic bomb that could easily blow up the region again and tempt Russia with another imperialist adventure in its “near abroad.”

Because he says things like this:

I will pull the lever for McCain/Palin in November. I will do so without the slightest hesitation or regret.

But if that evening, or the next morning, we learn that Barack Obama has won the Presidency, I will not lose not a wink of sleep. I will feel quite secure in the knowledge that the American people and the American system of government–which have always been flawed and imperfect and always will be–will continue to survive and thrive in the long run, even if we have tough times ahead. Because we always have tough times ahead, but this is the greatest country the world has ever known, and despite its many flaws our system of government works the way it’s supposed to, and in general works very well indeed.

Welcome to democracy, and the American way of life. Ain’t it grand?

..and this:

I’m not sure whether to have jitters about the market anyway. If I had any savings left (they’re already depleted) I’d do my best to be steely-eyed and refuse to pull any of my money out of the stock market, or to panic and try to shift everything to “safe” stocks or mutual funds. If you want to ride the stock train, even just mutual funds, you have to be prepared for a bumpy ride, even very scary bumps.

Well said, Dean!

There are Giant Mutant Flesh-Eating Killer Fish on the loose!

It's called a Goonch

Fortunately, Goonch attacks have nothing to do with poisonous 'Greater Weever' fish, which are suddenly appearing in British waters:

The greater weever fish, whose venomous spines can cause victims weeks of intense pain, was found in a stretch of the Thames estuary.

Despite the danger, delighted environmentalists say it is a clear sign that the river is recovered from the heavy pollution which once slashed fish numbers.

Nature. Gotta love it.

[link to the Giant Mutant Flesh-Eating Killer Fish story thanks to Omri]

In response to Ian Buruma's Europe's far-right revival isn't Nazism:

The test of whether a political group is worth supporting shouldn't rely on whether they're 'right' or 'left', pro-Islam or anti Islam.

If the political party or group:

1. Alarms local Jews

2. Alarms the Israeli government

3. Opposes sanctions against and seeks to ally with Islamist regimes like Iran.

4. Seeks to deport or restrict the rights of citizens based, not on the crimes they may have committed or on their alliances with terrorist regimes, but instead based on race, sex, religion or ideological purity...

..then they are probably not worth supporting. The Austrian FPO fits 1-3.

Richard Ivory's excellent blog, Hip Hop Republican: - Young, Black and Republican in New York, Blogging Against the Tide

Missing Americans held in Syria over visas:

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Two Americans reported missing by the U.S. embassy in Lebanon are being held in Syria for entering the neighboring country without visas, Arab media reported on Thursday.

Doha-based Al Jazeera television said Holli Chmela, 27, and Taylor Luck, 23, were in good health. Lebanese station LBC carried a similar report. Officials at the U.S. embassies in Damascus and Beirut said they could not immediately confirm the reports.

..without the karate and stuff. Tony vs. Paul:

Thanks to Photojojo, here's how to do stop-motion animation using iMovie.

Via CNN: Two U.S. journalists missing in Lebanon

The U.S. Embassy in Beirut is asking for assistance in locating two missing American journalists who were on vacation in Lebanon and have not been heard from since they left the Lebanese capital last week.

Holli Chmela, 27, and her male companion, Taylor Luck, 23, arrived in Lebanon on September 29 from Amman, Jordan, the embassy said.

They left Beirut on October 1, telling friends they were headed for the northern Lebanese cities of Byblos and Tripoli that day.

No one has reported any contact with them since then, the embassy said.

"They were then to cross by land to Syria before returning to Jordan," the embassy said. "Chmela and Luck were due to report to work in Jordan on October 4."

Luck is an editor with The Jordan Times in Amman, and Chmela had been working as a freelancer for the newspaper, said Sameer Barhoum, the paper's editor.

I thought this idea was cool when news about it came out last year.

Now the creators of green jellyfish protein have won a Nobel Prize. Congratulations Osamu Shimomura of the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, Martin Chalfie of Columbia University and Roger Tsien of the University of California, San Diego,

Why did dot com venture capitalists invest money in companies that had no clear plans to make a profit? Why did banks and homebuyers assume that real estate prices would continue to increase ad infinitum? Why do people believe that you can lose weight without eating less or exercising? Why do fools rush in where angels fear to tread?

Megan McArdle explains it all..