Actually, it’s from Feb 5, via SayUncle, but I’m a week behind:
I’m too fucking stupid to know the difference between weather and climate, or to know that a meteorologist and a climatologist aren’t the same thing.
Ok, maybe that’s not exactly what he said, but that sums it up pretty well.
(And sorry, Unc, but approvingly linking someone who casts doubts on evolution while he’s at it doesn’t say the best things about you…)
February 12th, 2007
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Bloggin, Environment, Science |
5 comments
tgirsch, I and our wives went to see the Predators play the Maple Leafs (tgirsch’s team) last Thursday. We had a great time. As I said before, the fans are generally knowledgeable and the organization puts on a good show (though, Preds: there are no cheerleaders in hockey.) Our seats were fantastic and the stadium itself is a good place to see a game. And watching Kariya play is just about worth the price of admission by itself.
The game itself was much better than the one we attended last year; the Preds won but the game was in doubt to the very end and it was a fast flowing game, filled with solid hits and end to end action. Watching the game, you can understand why the Preds are arguably the best team in hockey. They can all skate, no one made a single dumb play, and they do all of the little things as close to perfect as you can. their passes are crisp and accurate, their defenders know when to pinch and when to backpedal, their fore check is excellent, and they almost never leave their goaltender in a bad position. Toronto, on the other hand, has a lot fo talent, but they don’t do everything well. The difference in the game was one horrible Leaf turnover and one terribly stupid penalty on Matts Sundin, the Leaf’s capitain that lead to a two minute 5-3 for the Predators.
Though, please, Nashville fans, take a bit of advice: I realize that Vokoun is a fantastic goalie, and I realize that you are just trying to cheer him on, but that cheer you do after he makes a great play has to stop. There is something terribly wrong about a group made up almost entirely of southern white people yelling “coooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon” at the tops of their lungs, even today.
The city itself was fun, too. The area around the stadium is pretty touristy, and much too country, but there were a couple of interesting places (including one with the world’s worst folk singer) and we did find a good place down by Vanderbilt before the night was over.
February 12th, 2007
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Sports, I do too have a life, NHL |
12 comments
War with Iran is being pushed:
Some senior administration officials still relish the notion of a direct confrontation. One ambassador in Washington said he was taken aback when John Hannah, Vice President Cheney’s national security adviser, said during a recent meeting that the administration considers 2007 “the year of Iran” and indicated that a U.S. attack was a real possibility. Hannah declined to be interviewed for this article.
Needless to say, the information is not exactly credible:
The allegations against Iran are similar in tone and credibility to those made four years ago by the US government about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the invasion of 2003.
Senior US defence officials in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they believed the bombs were manufactured in Iran and smuggled across the border to Shia militants in Iraq. The weapons, identified as “explosively formed penetrators” (EFPs) are said to be capable of destroying an Abrams tank.
… The allegations by senior but unnamed US officials in Baghdad and Washington are bizarre. The US has been fighting a Sunni insurgency in Iraq since 2003 that is deeply hostile to Iran.
The insurgent groups have repeatedly denounced the democratically elected Iraqi government as pawns of Iran. It is unlikely that the Sunni guerrillas have received significant quantities of military equipment from Tehran. Some 1,190 US soldiers have been killed by so-called improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But most of them consist of heavy artillery shells (often 120mm or 155mm) taken from the arsenals of the former regime and detonated by blasting caps wired to a small battery. The current is switched on either by a command wire or a simple device such as the remote control used for children’s toys or to open garage doors.
… The statements from Washington give the impression that the US has been at war with Shia militias for the past three-and-a-half years while almost all the fighting has been with the Sunni insurgents. These are often led by highly trained former officers and men from Saddam Hussein’s elite military and intelligence units. During the Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988, the Iraqi leader, backed by the US and the Soviet Union, was able to obtain training in advanced weapons for his forces.
The US stance on the military capabilities of Iraqis today is the exact opposite of its position in four years ago. Then President Bush and Tony Blair claimed that Iraqis were technically advanced enough to produce long-range missiles and to be close to producing a nuclear device. Washington is now saying that Iraqis are too backward to produce an effective roadside bomb and must seek Iranian help.
They will go to war with Iran. The Navy and the Air Force have largely been untouched by the war in Iraq and are perfectly capable of doing damage to Iranian targets. To a group that fell in love with Rumsfeld’s vision of a high tech, low manpower fighting force, the exaggerated claims of air power proponents most sound like music. This is what they want. The neo-cons are old fashioned imperialists, people who believe that it is good and just and proper for the United States to use its might to dictate to the world what it can and cannot do. They disdain anything other than military power and still think in terms of state sponsored terrorism as the real terrorist threat, blinded to the new nature of non-state actors by their own limited intellectual abilities. They have wanted a war with Iran, really, with the entire Middle East, for some time. They probably realize that this will be their last chance in the foreseeable future.
Bush himself is a child, a small man unfit for the job intellectually, emotionally, or in terms of maturity. He thinks in idiotically simple terms about the world and either does not understand the damage he has done or refuses to admit it. He is obsessed with proving his critics wrong and has decided that history will be his ultimate savior. He seems to think of himself, against all evidence to the contrary, as a visionary leader. Leaders lead and deciders decide and Bush has decided that Iran is evil and must be dealt with, with dealt with defined as attacked.
Cheney, of course, thinks that things have gone swimmingly Iraq. And Cheney always wants to go to war:
The vice president, silent through most of the meeting as was his wont, muttered something about “preserving all our options.”
There will be a war with Iran. The Administration is lead by a collection of delusional imperialists who haven’t the intellectual capacity to understand how much the world has changed in the last twenty years. Their nominal leader is a life-long failure, a child masquerading as a President who thinks in terms that even the writers of 24 would find naive and overly simplistic and who is convinced that history will regard him a new Churchill or a new Lincoln. Unless the Democrats do something now, and perhaps even if they do, Cheney will find a way to attack Iran.
February 12th, 2007
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Iran |
4 comments
