Be happy, since once you’re upset it goes on forever– as stars move into conjunction in the sky, it will go on. The brick they will one day mold from your clay will be lodged in the portico of someone else’s palace. Translated by Juan Cole from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, [pdf] Whinfield 162
Archives for January 2013
How Lance Armstrong’s Lies & Doping are Just like Climate Change Denial & CO2
Understanding how performance-enhancing drugs raise the odds of success in sports helps us understand how dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere raises the chances of heat waves: It is the same form of reasoning in both cases. This analogy also helps us understand how the lies of Big Oil-backed outfits like the Heartland Institute about […]
Algeria’s Botched Rescue Leaves Dozens of Hostages Dead, Angers West
Reuters reports that the Algerian government’s intervention against the hostage crisis at a BP natural gas plant in southern Algeria has left 30 of the hostages dead. British Prime Minister David Cameron seemed visibly upset with the hamfisted Algerian operation, and British foreign ministry officials complained about not having been warned the operation was coming. […]
Ansar Dine and How Climate Change Contributed to the Algeria-Mali Crisis
The destabilization of Mali and southern Algeria is a complex political and social process that does not have only one cause. But a changing ecology forced by climate change is a major contributor to the region’s problems. This region is part of a Saharan and sub-Saharan band across Africa called the Sahel. I have traveled […]
Congress: The Broken Engine of our Stalled Economy (Jamiol cartoon)
By Paul Jamiol, courtesy Jamiol’s World.
Gun Murders vs. Terrorism by the Numbers
Number of Americans killed in domestic terrorist attacks, 2002-2011: 30 Number of Americans murdered by firearms, 2000-2011: 115,997 Cost of the War on Terror since 9/11: $5 trillion Cost of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms since 9/11: $12.32 billion In the combined [pdf] US and European Union statistics for 2010, percentage of terrorist […]
Omar Khayyam (259) “Have some wine, since no one is given a long life”
The revolving sky, which has never revealed any mysteries, has brutally crushed a thousand innocents. Have some wine, since no one is given a long life and once people have left this world they aren’t coming back. Translated by Juan Cole from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, [pdf] Whinfield 259
237 Dead in Syria day of Horrors, 87 killed at Aleppo U
An enormous explosion hit Aleppo University on Tuesday, killing some 87 students and wounding over 150. The motive for the bombing is obscure. The regime holds the university and the area around it, so there is no reason for it to bomb the campus (though government bombing can go astray). But there is also nothing […]
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