July 16th, 2009, 4 Comments »
Yesterday I posted a link to an NPR segment on MetaFilter. It’s some kind of quiz shtick called “Not My Job” and features, hilariously, Neko Case talking about Necco wafers. I read about it on Kennedy’s blog. I figured that Ms. Case was, as one commenter put it, “precisely calibrated for the MetaFilter demographics.”
I learned that this “Not My Job” segment, on a show called “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me”, is quite popular, and has featured all sorts of celebrities. Another MetaFilter commenter remarked on a previous piece with sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer, where she remarked that, in her youth, she’d been a sniper in the Israeli army. Could that be true? Apparently.
“When I was in my routine training for the Israeli army as a teenager, they discovered completely by chance that I was a lethal sniper. I could hit the target smack in the center further away than anyone could believe. Not just that, even though I was tiny and not even much of an athlete, I was incredibly accurate throwing hand grenades too. Even today I can load a Sten automatic rifle in a single minute, blindfolded.”
I’d like to see her load that rifle.
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November 20th, 2008, No Comments »
Yesterday I read a fascinating report about how archaeologists may have found the tomb of King Herod:
On the basis of a study of the architectural elements uncovered at the site, the researchers have been able to determine that the mausoleum, among the remains of which Herod’s sarcophagus was found, was a lavish two-story structure with a concave-conical roof, about 25 meters high — a structure fully appropriate to Herod’s status and taste. The excavations there have also yielded many fragments of two additional sarcophagi, which the researchers estimate to have been members of Herod’s family.
There are some photos of the dig on this slow-loading FTP site.
And today, scientists confirmed that they’d identified the remains of 16th-century astronomer Copernicus.
Researchers said Thursday they have identified the remains of Nicolaus Copernicus by comparing DNA from a skeleton and hair retrieved from one of the 16th-century astronomer’s books.
The findings could put an end to centuries of speculation about the exact resting spot of Copernicus, a priest and astronomer whose theories identified the Sun, not the Earth, as the center of the universe.
A hair from one of his books? That is seriously CSI. If you follow the link, they’ve got a ‘facial forensic reconstruction’ of the man. He looks a little cross-eyed.
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June 20th, 2007, 2 Comments »
To understand the last forty years in the Middle East, you need to understand the Six-Day War of 1967. That’s one of the messages of a fascinating, enlightening four-part BBC radio documentary about those formative days in June:
After the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, there was a sense of unfinished business in the region.
On the eve of war, Arab civilians believed propaganda broadcasts from Gamal Abdel-Nasser’s Egypt promising an easy victory over Israel; for Israeli citizens there was the feeling of anticipation of terrible defeat.
But the Israeli capability was underestimated - and Arab generals thought so too.
I’ve only listened to the first two parts, but it does a fantastic job of blending historical recordings with new interviews with those decision-makers and innocent bystanders who are still around. I’ve only ever had the vaguest grasp of Middle Eastern politics and history, and it’s a longterm project improve. This series has certainly helped in that regard.
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April 10th, 2007, 5 Comments »
While abroad, we’re planning on travelling to (among other places) Israel, Egypt and Morocco. What, if any, vaccinations do we need for those countries?
There seems to be a real walled garden around the answer to that question. There’s the Public Health Agency of Canada, which lists outbreaks and epidemics around the world. They only seem to provide timely information. There’s also the Consular Affairs office, but the entry on Egypt just refers me to a travel clinic like the local Travel Medicine & Vaccination Centre.
I called one such clinic, and they wouldn’t answer any specific questions over the phone. They required me to come in and talk to a doctor. That’s the fundamental flaw–they’re highly motivated to get me into their office and foist shots on me. After all, my universal (heh) healthcare doesn’t cover it, so they’re essentially a for-profit business.
Isn’t this information available online to the average Canadian? If so, I’ve been unable to find it thus far. I don’t necessarily think that the government should pay for my shots. I do think they should empower me to decide whether I need them on my own.
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September 14th, 2002, No Comments »
I don’t know much about Alan Dershowitz, except that he’s a famous and conservative attorney who is an avid supporter of Israel. He’s written a book called Why Terrorism Works. His basic premise is apparently ‘that the European community, the United Nations and the Vatican have rendered terrorism successful by rewarding terrorist leaders.’ Despite being something of a right-wing nutter, he does make a couple of compelling points in this recent article in Salon. Consider this anecdote:
I gave a speech the other night in front of 500 people. I asked the people how many of them favored a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel. I think every person in the audience raised their hand. Then I asked how many people favor a Kurdish state. People looked at me like I was crazy. Then I asked how many people favored an Armenian state inside of Turkey. Same thing. Then I asked how many people favor an independent Tibet? A few hands went up. How many people favor an independent Basque state? How many people favor a Chechen state? People didn’t know what I was talking about. Everybody knows of the plight of the Palestinian people. And yet when you put the Palestinian situation in comparison to, say, the Kurds, the Tibetans and the Armenians, those claims are certainly no greater. In fact, they’re probably considerably lower; the Tibetans have been under occupation for a far longer time period, there are many, many more of them, and they’ve never been offered a state. The Palestinians were offered a state in 1948 and they turned it down. They could have had a state between 1948 and 1967 and they turned it down. They were offered a state at Camp David and they turned it down.
So when you do any kind of a moral comparison, you ask yourself, why has the Palestinian cause leapfrogged over all other causes? Why has the pope met with Arafat seven times and never met with a Kurdish leader or an Armenian leader?
He makes a good point here. Terrorism is an absurd but effective kind of PR. Terrorists generally want to be recognized for what they’ve done. Whenever a bomb goes off in Northern Ireland or Spain, somebody’s always calling the police to claim responsibility. As the saying goes, any press is good press. Dershowitz proposes this antidote to terrorism:
You have to reward the ending of terrorism, rather than terrorism itself. That’s what’s going on in Northern Ireland. Gerry Adams has now said that they’ve ended terrorism. He’s being rewarded for that. That’s what happened in South Africa; Mandela ended terrorism. The Palestinian state has to be created as a reward for the end of terrorism. The United States, Israel and the European community should announce a Palestinian state in the year 2005 but [on the condition that] there has to be two consecutive years of no Palestinian Authority-sanctioned or sponsored terrorism.
In this article, I also learned the term ‘asynchronous warfare’, which Dershowitz describes as a euphemism for killing innocent civilians. It’s an interesting notion, though, that terrorism is a war fought when there aren’t any enemy soldiers around.
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