Just piping up to wish everyone a happy Summer Solstice!
It also happens to be my 9th (!) wedding anniversary today.
I am eternally grateful for having spent 9 years married to the woman I love and even more happy that she still feels the same way about me. She’s given me more than I could ever put into words. (Some writer, I am.)
I never even considered myself the marrying type until I met her. I distinctly remember telling a close friend I could imagine marrying her. He threw a tantrum because I had only known her for about a week: “How can you possibly know that already?”
Guess I was right, as I still love her as much today, if not more, as I used to way back then.
PS: Sorry to those who came to this site expecting a grumpy comment on some political fiasco of late. Sitting at home with a broken foot makes me appreciate what is really important in life even more than I usually do. Awwww… Now clean up the Gulf! 
Close enough to home for ya?
NEW ORLEANS – Researchers tracking the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico say computer models show the black ooze may have already entered a major current flowing toward the Florida Keys, and are sending out a research vessel to learn more.
William Hogarth, dean of the University of South Florida's College of Marine Science, told The Associated Press Sunday that one model shows that the oil has already the loop current, which is the largest in the Gulf. The model is based on weather, ocean current and spill data from the U.S. Navy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, among other sources.
Hogarth said a second model shows the oil is 3 miles from the current — still dangerously close.
The current flows in a looping pattern in the Gulf, through the area where the blown-out well is, east to the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
via AP
ORLANDO, Fla., May 9 UPI — Florida gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink probably wont be invited back as commencement speaker after getting the University of Central Floridas name wrong.
Graduates interrupted her address with boos and groans Saturday afternoon after Sink, a Democrat, called the University of Central Florida — “USF” — at least twice during her remarks. USF are initials of the University of South Florida, which is in Tampa, while Sink was speaking at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
“I think I better just get off the stage right now,” Sink, Floridas chief financial officer, joked after the faux pas.
However, she finished her speech to the 1,300 graduates inside the UCF Arena by referring to the school by its full name.
via UPI.com
Just tuned into the CSPAN livestream to see this:
Healthcare just passed with 219 votes.
Just thought you should know, because apparently they don’t want you to know:
Buried in paragraph 108 of the Israeli foreign ministrys report to the UN on Gaza is the key fact of the document.
Two senior officers - one the commander of the Gaza ground operation, no less - were reprimanded for failing to follow their own rules of engagement.
The document was slipped out late on Friday night in an attempt, presumably, to minimise its impact.
But it is no surprise that this morning one Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, is leading on the story and others give it prominence.
This is an explosive admission, especially after Israel had said earlier - after an investigation by a senior general - that white phosphorus was not misused during the Gaza conflict.
via BBC
“If the US leader chooses to meet with the Dalai Lama at this time, it will certainly threaten trust and co-operation between China and the United States,” said Mr Zhu, executive deputy minister of the Chinese Communist Party's United Front Work Department.
He said that if a meeting did take place, China would “take corresponding action to make relevant countries see their mistakes”.
“We oppose any attempt by foreign forces to interfere in China's internal affairs using the Dalai Lama as an excuse,” he said.
“If they [the US] don't recognise that Tibet is part of China, it will seriously undermine the political foundation of Sino-US relations.“
via BBC
No one, not even the Dalai Lama himself, is questioning whether Tibet is part of China or not. The only thing Tibetans want is religious freedom.
So it’s not really the West that is using the Dalai Lama as an excuse to further its foreign policy, is it?
Last year China overtook Germany to become the world’s biggest exporter. Maybe China should consider just how exactly it intends “to make relevant countries see their mistakes” if its economy is more dependent on these countries than they are on China.
Nicholas Kristof raises an excellent point in today’s NY Times:
Sometimes I wish eastern Congo could suffer an earthquake or a tsunami, so that it might finally get the attention it needs. The barbaric civil war being waged here is the most lethal conflict since World War II and has claimed at least 30 times as many lives as the Haiti earthquake.
Yet no humanitarian crisis generates so little attention per million corpses, or such a pathetic international response.
(…) A peer-reviewed study found that 5.4 million people had already died in this war as of April 2007, and hundreds of thousands more have died as the situation has deteriorated since then. A catastrophically planned military offensive last year, backed by the governments of Congo and Rwanda as well as the United Nations force here, made some headway against Hutu militias but also led to increased predation on civilians from all sides. (…)
via NY Times
I’d even go further than that: The situation in Haiti was dire even before the quake. What the quake did, however, make the situation both interesting (journalism rule No. 1: if it bleeds, it leads) and sound-byte compliant.
The true tragedy is that if a situation is complicated journalists have a much harder job with explaining the situation before the public tunes out. If a quake/tsunami/hurricane hits the situation becomes much simpler in terms of what the situation is like, let alone what is actually causing the situation.
Over the last two weeks I have been pretty annoyed by the way Haiti has been covered. You’d think that island just popped out of nowhere a few minutes before the quake hit. But no, people on this half of the island have been dying for a long time while the other half ( Dominican Republic) is a tourist destination for those countries who now act most shocked.
Tony Blairs statements in front of the “Iraq inquiry” are so full of logical fallacies they will make anyones head spin. Here the distilled version of what he said in my words:
Yes, we know 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq, but because it did, we had to invade.
We know that containment worked very well on Iraq, but because 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq, we also had to change our opinion about containment.
No, we did not find WMDs, but because we knew they didn’t have any and couldn’t launch them in less than 45 minutes, we had to invade. We probably should have made that clearer.
No, we did not agree with Bush that war was necessary, unless necessary, although we agreed with Bush to go to war if he so chose, which we knew he would. Because we knew that, we wrote so in a memo. But that was never the plan.
And there is more after Blair has had some lunch.
Oh, how nice. Now that we have Wordle there is no need to spend hours writing columns or news analyses on the president’s speech. Here is the “word cloud” for last night’s speech. The more often a word was used, the larger it is:
Fun facts: Freedom was mentioned only once.
Funny how we still understood it though, even though the point wasn’t clobbered home.
“Lost” watchers, all is right with the world again: President Obama will not interrupt the long-awaited episode by giving a national address the same night.
(…)White House press secretary Robert Gibbs assured viewers Friday he “doesn’t foresee a scenario in which millions of people that hope to finally get some conclusion in ‘Lost’ are preempted by the president.”
The “Lost” news came in response to a question from ABC correspondent Ann Compton at the afternoon press briefing.
via CNN
Or is it paranoia vs. paranoia?
The rapid introduction of full body scanners at British airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children, the Guardian has learned.
Privacy campaigners claim the images created by the machines are so graphic they amount to “virtual strip-searching” and have called for safeguards to protect the privacy of passengers involved.
Ministers now face having to exempt under 18s from the scans or face the delays of introducing new legislation to ensure airport security staff do not commit offences under child pornography laws.
via The Guardian
As a former Opinion Editor, I find this hilarious: link
In this bit from a british documentary british troops, along with Afghan Army soldiers, are surrounded by Taliban fighters and running critically low on ammunition. Naturally the Afghans use the break in fighting to get stoned on hash and opium, then start firing at nothing in particular.
Every now and then a story comes along that follows almost every rule in international economic relations, yet is hilarious. This NPR piece on The Garlic Bubble in China is one of them. If you have 4 and a half Minutes, go listen to it here: link
It’s been 20 years since this happened.
In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.
via The Independent
Former French President Jacques Chirac has announced that he has given away his beloved dog after it attacked him for a third time.
Sumo, a Maltese terrier, is reported to have bitten him in the stomach in their apartment in the capital, Paris.
Mr Chiracs wife, Bernadette, said the dog had been treated for depression after finding it difficult to come to terms with leaving the Elysee Palace.
The dog is now said to be enjoying life on a farm in the French countryside.
Drew blood
Since stepping down from office in May 2007, Jacques Chirac has admitted he has found retirement hard going but apparently it is his dog, Sumo, who has suffered most acutely.
via BBC
“If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best-quality healthcare — if they tell us that they're offering a good deal — then why is it that the government, which they say can't run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business?” Obama asked. “That's not logical.”
via LA Times
I do know with certainty that we can defeat al Qaeda. Because the terrorists can only succeed if they swell their ranks and alienate America from our allies, and they will never be able to do that if we stay true to who we are, if we forge tough and durable approaches to fighting terrorism that are anchored in our timeless ideals. This must be our common purpose.
Because the whole thing about torture isn’t insane enough:
The Dalai Lama has launched a fierce attack on Chinese rule in his Tibetan homeland, describing its people's lives as “hell on Earth”.
Five decades of Chinese rule had caused “untold suffering”, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader said, accusing Beijing of creating a climate of fear.
He also repeated his demand for Tibet's “legitimate and meaningful autonomy”.
His words came on the 50th anniversary of a failed uprising against Chinese troops which led to his exile. Via BBC
President Obama sent a secret letter to Russia’s president last month suggesting that he would back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Moscow would help stop Iran from developing long-range weapons, American officials said Monday.
The letter to President Dmitri A. Medvedev was hand-delivered in Moscow by top administration officials three weeks ago. It said the United States would not need to proceed with the interceptor system, which has been vehemently opposed by Russia since it was proposed by the Bush administration, if Iran halted any efforts to build nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles.
(…) Moscow has not responded, but a Russian official said Monday that Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov would have something to say on missile defense to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton when they meet Friday in Geneva. Via NY Times
While it has been known for some time that the CIA had destroyed tapes of interrogations with terrorism suspects, Monday's news that 92 videotapes had been destroyed by the agency was still shocking. Via Raw Story
Oasis debut concerts in China have been cancelled after the authorities revoked the bands licences to play, deeming them “unsuitable”.
Shows in Beijing and Shanghai due to take place next month have been pulled, and fans are to be reimbursed.
Concert promoters said the Chinese culture ministry recently found out that Noel Gallagher played at a Free Tibet benefit in the US in 1997. Via BBC
