Shocker!! You know, is like one of those guys you meet and think "hmmm, he's really in touch with his feminine side", about two shades above metrosexual... May we live in interesting times...
DEBKAfile - DEBKAfile: Olmert breaks Israel’s nuclear silence in response to US defense secretary’s nuclear stance and Iran’s Holocaust denial conference
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Olmert decided on this step in response to US defense secretary Robert Gates’ listing of Israel as among the nuclear states surrounding Iran to explain Tehran’s search for a nuclear deterrent of its own. He was the first American official to confirm Israel had a nuclear weapon and did so without consulting Jerusalem.Olmert chose his journey to Germany, which coincided with the opening in Tehran of a conference negating the Holocaust, for his shock disclosure. This conference is taken in Israel as a vehicle for attacking Zionist legitimacy and so justifying Iran’s ambition to destroy the Jewish state. Olmert used the opportunity to remind Iran’s rulers that Israel possesses a large stock of nuclear weapons capable of not only smashing Iran’s nuclear facilities but also disabling its infrastructure.
A twister in the middle of London?
Not a mini-tornado, but a genuine twister - Britain - Times Online:
Today's tornado in North West London was a medium-sized twister by British standards. Initial reports of the level of damage to trees, roofs and cars indicate wind speeds of around 100mph (160kph), a T3-T4 strength tornado, on a scale ranging from T0 to T10 developed by the Tornado and Storm Research Organisation (Torro).
In fact, Torro had issued a forecast alert of thunder, hail, lightning and tornado as conditions in the southern half of Britain turned convective. This meant that air was rising through the atmosphere - a surge of warm, moist tropical air rose up and hit colder drier air higher up, exploding into thunderclouds. This produced a squall line, a violent band of thunderclouds, which tore across Southern England during the morning.
This "commodore" is pissed because, among other things, the deposed Prime Minister wanted give amnesty to the generals that orchestrated another coup in 2000? Hmm, I wonder if he would be pissed when another PM down the road wants to grant him amnesty for this coup...
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Fiji military coup is denounced
Commodore Bainimarama has dismissed PM Laisenia Qarase, who said the army had brought "shame to the country".Cmdr Bainimarama accused the prime minister of corruption and leading Fiji on a path of doom.
The two have long been in dispute, largely over the commodore's opposition to a proposed amnesty for those responsible for a 2000 coup he helped put down.
Well, yes, it doesn't make any sense. Mr. Putin has nothing to win by having this guy out of the way and much to lose if something like this is somehow connected to his administration. Mr. Putin has pissed off a lot of people on the way up, most of them people with as much money as a Saudi prince. Unfortunately, money is fuel and grease in the present we live in... Mind you, I'm not a fan of his policies, heavy handedness and the control of the press he exerts. He can appear to be a precursor of a new wave of Tzars, sans the nobility claims (that I know of...) On the other hand, I believe a country with the history that Russia has, needs a strong hand such as his. Russia can do much worse than Putin.
Anti-Russian conspirators killed KGB spy : HindustanTimes.com:
"The potential list of those who stood to benefit from Litvinenko's death is a long one," said a typical analysis in the daily Komsomolskaya Pravda last week. "One thing is certain, however. A scandal such as this one was not in the interests of the Russian authorities."
Technorati Tags: poison, russia, wheaton
I'm starting to believe in Atlantis again...
Ancient astronomical�device thrills�scholars - CNN.com
The Antikythera Mechanism is the earliest known device to contain an intricate set of gear wheels. It was retrieved from a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901 but until now what it was used for has been a mystery.Although the remains are fragmented in 82 brass pieces, scientists from Britain, Greece and the United States have reconstructed a model of it using high-resolution X-ray tomography. They believe their findings could force a rethink of the technological potential of the ancient Greeks.
Now, this is something I believe couldonly happen in China. Mr. Fang Shi-Min, aka Fang Zhouzi, a scientific debunker from China, has been sued by the family of late Liu Zihua (he's mentioned in the linked article) for libel. The family won...
I learned about it in Science Magazine online and paid $10.00 for the article, which is copyrighted and all that jazz. I cannot reproduce it here in its entirety, but, I can quote the relevant portion of it concerning the Yijing.
Fang's recent setbacks came on consecutive days. On 21 November, a Beijing intermediate court ruled that an article Fang wrote in 2005 defamed the late Liu Zihua, a Sichuan provincial government employee. In a dissertation written in France in the 1930s, Liu presented calculations based on the eight trigrams of an ancient divination text, I Ching (Book of Changes), predicting the existence of a 10th major planet in the solar system. Liu's prognostication was resurrected after last year's announced discovery of 2003UB313 (now officially a dwarf planet named Eris). A Sichuan newspaper ran a story extolling Liu's prophecy.
In an essay, Fang labeled Liu's prediction "pseudoscience" and noted that a Chinese astronomer discredited it in the 1940s. Liu's widow and son sued Fang and several newspapers and Internet content providers for libel. The court judged Fang's words "insulting" to Liu and ordered him to apologize publicly and pay Liu's family $2500 plus legal fees. The family did not respond to an interview request.
Now, this is interesting. I wonder how much of the judgment has to do with actual libel and how much it has to do with defending tradition. In the last few years, there has been a strong and proudrevival, in China proper,of ancient traditional teachings. I believe the line between what's considered superstition and science has become increasingly blurred. We are indeed, living in interesting times.