Last week I was very flattered that my post, Antiphony, came in second among non-council links. In a group of some of the blogosphere’s most talented writers being nominated is a signal honor but second place just takes my breath away.
Australian News Interactive reports that traces of the explosive hexogen have been found in the wreckage of Tupolev 154 which crashed in Russia on Tuesday:
AT least one of the two Russian plane crashes that killed some 90 people this week was the result of a terrorist attack, the top Russian security service spokesman said.
“According to our initial investigation, at least one of the air crashes, the one in the Rostov region, came as a result of a terror attack,” spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko told ITAR-TASS news agency.
Adolph Mishuyev director of the Explosives Constructions Study center, informed Gazeta.ru that the explosion of the aircraft required about 400 grams of material. As conjectured by the bomb experts, the components of the explosive device may have been carried on board nearly in plain view. And if the detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs didn’t detect it, the detonator may have been carried on by hand or in carry-on luggage. Once in flight the bomb could have been assembled in a restroom.
I’ve only been able to find this in the Russian language version.
Either they’ve been reading the Jacobsen accounts or this is an eerie reminder of them.
A new Carnival of the Recipes has been posted. Tex-Mex, cheesecake, Hawaiian potato salad, Georgian cheese bread, a comical fruit cake recipe and much, much more from across the blogosphere to your kitchen.
I even contributed my Ultimate Guide to Meatloaf which has been newly updated.
More than ten years ago I turned to my wife and said “Every once in a while you should do something really stupid just because you want to do it. Let’s get a dog.” It’s been one of the best and most life-transforming decisions we’ve ever made.
My wife grew up with Samoyeds. Her family had them since before she was born. Her earliest memories are of burying her face in the long, warm, white, sweet-smelling fur of a Samoyed. Through her love of the breed I’ve come to love the breed as well. We searched for nearly two years before we found breeders whose dogs were just what we were looking for. [continue reading…]
I’m having difficulty in working up a lot of interest in posting these days and it looks like I’m not the only one. Steven Den Beste is taking a blogging hiatus. So is Connie du Toit. A promising new blogger writes:
I will blog no more about John Kerry forever.
Even that most energetic and prolific of bloggers, Glenn Reynolds, writes:
Well, I’d rather be blogging about something else. Of course, I’ve felt that way since September 11, 2001 . . . .
And I am pretty tired of blogging about Kerry, and the election (like Steven Den Beste, I was tired of this election in November of 2003), and if Kerry had more, um, definition I’d probably write about him a lot less.
As I wrote before I’m not interested in re-hashing the Viet Nam war. I didn’t want to talk much about it in 1967. Why should I start now?
I am interested in the plane crashes in Russia on Tuesday but until we get more information there’s not a great deal more to say.
The situations in Najaf and Fallujah are both bleak and possibly getting bleaker. And they’ve been bleak for nearly a year. Or ten years. Or twenty years.
I think I’ll put some posts about dogs and cooking together. Different posts I mean.
Try as I might I just can’t get the images that Dana Stevens’s Slate article on John Kerry’s appearance last night on The Daily Show conjured up out of my head:
From the moment the senator appeared and sat down on the gray sofa where, just last week, Bill Clinton basked in the audience’s applause like a cat lapping up cream, Kerry’s charisma was less than zero: It was negative. He was a charm vacuum, forced to actually borrow mojo from audience members. He was a dessicated husk, a tin man who really didn’t have a heart. His lack of vibrancy, his utter dearth of sex appeal made Al Gore look like Charo.
As in the movie The Ring there’s only one thing to do: pass them on.
I have absolutely no intention of commenting on the Swift Boat Vets vs. John Kerry. I won’t dance. Don’t ask me. Why can’t we talk about serious issues?
WINNIPEG — In the eyes of Alice Cooper, all the rock stars campaigning for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry are guilty of one thing: treason. The shock-rock legend, a staunch Republican who attends NBA games in Phoenix with Arizona Senator John McCain, was disgusted when he learned of plans by Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, R.E.M. and other bands to hold a series of concerts aimed at unseating U.S. President George W. Bush.
“To me, that’s treason. I call it treason against rock ‘n’ roll because rock is the antithesis of politics. Rock should never be in bed with politics,” says the 56-year-old Cooper, who begins a 15-city Canadian tour on Aug. 20 in Thunder Bay, Ont.
By the way have you seen Cooper’s “School’s out for summer” Staples Back-to-School ad on TV? Funny.
What does a challenger need to do in the month following his party’s convention? Not what the Kerry campaign has been doing writes Chris Lynch (hat tip: Glenn Reynolds). Chris gives a day-by-day summary of the post-convention campaign so far.
Mr. Kerry, you can do better than this. Mr. Bush was a weak candidate in 2000; he’s a weak candidate now. Stop concentrating on him; stop concentrating on you. The election is about the Republic and its future. Tell us how a future under President Kerry would be better for us.
If you preach to the choir, the only converts you’ll get will be from the choir. Is that enough?
