The past nine days have been chaotic morass of packing, painting, cleaning and unpleasant lugging of heavy objects, made possible only by copious amounts of assistance from wonderful friends.   However, the new house looks good and the vast droves of boxes that had taken up residence in various rooms are gradually being beaten back into closets, ( Read more... )

I spent a lot of the last day reviewing the Initial Benchmark Assessment Report, the new Whitehouse report on Iraq, and much of the subsequent commentary.  Much of the analysis centers on reading the tea leaves of reports on casualties to confirm one predetermined position on the war or another.  An eagle flying at dawn shows that the surge will ( Read more... )

 I live surrounded by boxes.  Two days to new house.

Come Sunday, while I am up to crazy shenanigans in Vegas, a new fiscal year will begin.  A time when corporations swear to abstain from greedy vice and make promises about being lean and fit.  While I have never taken note of this date in the past, it holds special relevance this year.  Come Sunday, Illinois will enter into the fiscal year without ( Read more... )

CNN/Opinion Research Cooperation just released two polls on views on homosexuals and homosexual rights.  Most of the results are what you would expect; the gradual creep of greater tolerance and acceptance of that fact that sexual orientation is determined at birth and can not be changed.

What I found shocking was the views on “Don’t ask, don’t ( Read more... )

I just got a copy of the Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, Historiens Orientaux, Vol 3, from the library. The text is a collection of Arabic sources for the crusades put together 1884.  However, what is most noticeable about the tome is its enormous size.  The beastly text is 15”x10”, three inches deep, and would make a solid anchor.  However, ( Read more... )

From ABC news


"Just this month, the government confirmed that an Ohio Air Force laboratory had asked for $7.5 million to build a nonlethal "gay bomb," a weapon that would encourage enemies to make love, not war. The weapon would use strong aphrodisiacs to make enemy troops so sexually attracted to each other that they'd lose interest in fighting.

( Read more... )

I feel a great sense of relief that, come 2008, I will not have to watch a blue Keanu Reeves as Dr. Manhattan in the movie adaptation of Alan Moore’s, Watchmen.  Apparently, he was offered the role, but turned it down.  Why do movie executives keep thinking that he is the right actor to play messianic figures?  Wasn’t seeing him as Buddha painful ( Read more... )

While in the Bay Area, I had a conversation with one of my friends who asserted (half-jokingly) that the United States could never achieve global domination because the contemporary American population lacked the attention span to focus on myths of national dominance and predestination for more than a couple of years.  Though I lacked his ( Read more... )

When I first began giving lectures as a graduate student, I was firmly convinced that I made a better instructor than most, if not all, of my professors.  They may have a better grasp of the scope of the material, but I felt my skill as a presenter surpassed theirs.  In my arrogance, I managed to miss, almost completely, the challenging part of ( Read more... )