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Saturday, November 22, 2003

The new paint job:

posted by jeev | 10:17 PM |

Thursday, November 20, 2003

Gay marriage a threat to the yadda, yadda, yadda? Nah:

Do you want to know what's destroying the sanctity of marriage? Phone messages like the ones we'd get at my old divorce firm in Reno, Nev., left on Saturday mornings and picked up on Monday: "Beeep. Hi? My name is Misty and I think I maybe got married last night. Could someone call me back and tell me if I could get an annulment? I'm at Circus Circus? Room�honey what room is this�oh yeah. Room 407. Thank you. Beeep."

And other things.

posted by jeev | 8:05 PM |

A new approach to document preservation:

Nicosia, Cyprus: An ancient play is to be staged for the first time in more than 2050 years after fragments of the text were found stuffed in an Egyptian mummy.

Cyprus's national theatre company, Thoc, plans a modern-day world premiere of Aeschylus's Trojan War story Achilles in Cyprus next summer. The play will then be performed in Cyprus and Greece.

Scholars had believed the trilogy to be lost forever when the Library of Alexandria burnt to ashes in 48 BC.

"But in the last decades archaeologists found mummies in Egypt which were stuffed with papyrus, containing excerpts of the original plays of Aeschylus," Thoc director Andy Bargilly told Reuters.

Via dangerousmeta!

posted by jeev | 1:02 PM |

Wednesday, November 19, 2003

And in further Hooters' news, a report on the new energy bill:

Some $180 million will pay for a development in Shreveport, La. That project will use federal tax money to subsidize that city's first-ever Hooters restaurant. What a new Hooters has to do with America's energy situation may be best known to U.S. Rep. Bill Tauzin, a Louisiana congressman and key player in the secret conference committee talks.

posted by jeev | 3:17 PM |

Protestors out, Hooters girls in:

TALLAHASSEE -- A group of 30 military veterans critical of the war in Iraq hoped to use Tuesday's Veterans Day parade to call attention to the increasingly deadly conflict but instead found themselves fighting for something much more fundamental.

Members of Veterans For Peace and Vietnam Veterans Against the War were yanked off a downtown Tallahassee street, directly in front of the Old Capitol, while marching in the holiday parade they had legitimately registered in.

As organizers allowed the parade to roll on -- including veterans from various wars, several high school marching bands and even a group of young women from the local Hooters restaurant -- the anti-war veterans were ordered onto sidewalks where they passed out leaflets and displayed a banner reading, "Honor the Warrior, Not the War."

Thankfully we've got our priorities straight.
Via Melinda

posted by jeev | 3:04 PM |

And now for something completely different.

posted by jeev | 10:20 AM |

Tuesday, November 18, 2003

Renee Landers, president of the Boston Bar Association, interviewed by the Washington Post today about the recent Massachusetts court ruling on gay marriage:

Renee Landers: I am sure that a great many people saw the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in 1967 in Loving v. Virginia, stating that prohibitions on inter-racial marriages were unconstitution, in the same way given the societal prejudices of the time. Those societal prejudices and disapprovals of inter-racial marriages continue to exist today. The role of the courts is to allow individuals to exercise their rights despite the operation of irrational majoritarian prejudices. There have always been questions about how much the courts should force changes in behavior, if not actual attitudes. Another example is in the area of abortion rights. Some say the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade prompted a backlash against the abortion rights movement. Because the decision is unpopular is not a reason for courts to allow discrimination to continue. The point of our political system is for the courts to serve as a buffer against discrimination.

posted by jeev | 2:54 PM |

Sunday, November 16, 2003

A man with no plan. Sunday New York Times editorial:

The American involvement with Iraq appears to have turned a corner. The Bush administration's old game plan � drafting a constitution, followed by elections, followed by American withdrawal � has been replaced by a new timetable. It's a bit cynical to say that the plan is to toss the whole hot potato to whatever Iraqis are willing to grab it. But the White House thinking is veering close.

President Bush gambled vast amounts of American money, influence and American and Iraqi lives on the theory that toppling Saddam Hussein would make the world safer and make the Mideast a more stable and democratic region. Obviously, the Iraqi people are better off without a vicious tyrant in power. But if the American forces leave prematurely, the country will wind up vulnerable to another dictator and possibly more of a threat to the world than it was before. Yet the administration is giving the impression of having one foot out the door, while doggedly refusing to take the only realistic next step � asking the United Nations to take over the nation-building.

Via dangerousmeta.

posted by jeev | 10:15 PM |

Yeah, this makes sense. From Josh Marshall:

A few days ago we reported that plans to keep ex-Iraqi weapons scientists employed and monitored were not only woefully underfunded but held up by bureaucratic infighting between various arms of the government. This, of course, while we employ vast sums of money and personnel on an almost certainly futile search for actual stashes of Iraqi WMD.

Now comes word that Saddam's top scientist on top-range missiles design and production has gone to Iran.

posted by jeev | 3:16 PM |