Skippy notes that Colin Powell:
…staunchly disagreed with a private think tank report that insists there are no wmd’s to be found in that country.
I’d like to remind you what Colin Powell said in February 2001 about UN Sanctions:
And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.
Iraq was a threat to who?
Professor Bainbridge quotes at length one Dean’s thoughts on blogging, scholarship and tenure:
Bottom line: While no replacement for writing articles and books, and no one is going to get tenured or promoted through blogging (at least not today); but what I’ve called a serious blogger would get a big plus on the positive side on the ledger from me when it gets to merit review time! Failing to reward it would be failing to recognize that blogging is not just another new communication medium; it is a new way to do scholarship.
The Dean also recognizes something many of you are experiencing. Blogging can absorb huge amount of time:
That being said, just reading blogs – let alone writing them – can be entirely too much fun, and could suck time away from the grind of in depth writing and research. In fact, I should be massaging my footnotes instead of writing this. I’m also advising my juniors not to get blog-happy.
Read the rest and for those interested in delving deeper there are links to a couple long discussions.
Or is it Barbie & Ken?
They are number 18 on Amazon’s list of hot new toys and are being out paced by a myriad of transformers and Leapster software items. Number 1 is this personal video player.
Via The Gamer’s Nook.
According to this there is potentially a really good reason for cold viruses to be around. Never mind the sniffles:
“Viruses are seen as unhealthy organisms, but we have identified a potential way they can be used by the body to fight and destroy disease.”
In the method, the virus is injected into a malignant melanoma, then replicates itself and starts killing the cancer.
Researchers expect the melanoma to shrink within weeks and eventually vanish. At the same time, it is expected the virus will circulate through the body, seeking and destroying other melanoma cells.
Note that an article in The Age says:
Australian researchers are “extremely excited” to have discovered that the bug that causes colds – the coxsackievirus – is an efficient killer of melanoma cells.
Now I don’t know what is different between Australians and the rest of us but in the US coxsackievirus most commonly shows up as Hand, Foot and Mouth disease and infrequently as colds which are most often caused by rhinoviruses.
Stephen Green notes:
The reason the court didn’t rule on the wisdom of the Republican plan, is because the plan didn’t have any.
While it had no wisdom the plan’s gerrymandering goals were clear. But these goals have been shared by Democratic majorities in the past and James Joyner reminds us that the process is not inconsistent with current practice:
So, while unusual, the 2003 re-redistricting was the first legislatively created one ratified by the courts.
Steven Taylor has it right on redistricting:
Having said all of that, I am increasingly of the opinion that an entirely different system of districting needs to be developed that would do away with conscious partisan districtcraft, and would lead to more competitive elections.
There is no doubt that across the country whichever party is in charge has drawn the lines to their advantage to the detriment of seriously competitive electoral contests in many, many districts. The only good news is that voters don’t always cooperate with the best laid plans of mice and legislature, and vote the way they want.
Stephen Bainbridge also wants to see an end to redistricting partisanship:
My own hope is that eventually we will say “enough is enough” and get rid of all this partisan gerrymandering in favor of a nation-wide system of nonpartisan redistricting designed to maximize the number of competitive seats. But I’m not holding my breath.
We would probably pay much less attention to this type of thing if our representatives (at all levels) did not dabble in this kind of stuff (link via Zombyboy).