Live from the Nuke Free Zone

This, via CNN, leaves me absolutely speechless:
SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) — Macedonian police gunned down seven innocent immigrants, then claimed they were terrorists, in a killing staged to show they were participating in the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism, authorities said Friday.
Police spokeswoman Mirjana Konteska told reporters that six people, including three former police commanders, two special […]

Now this is pretty seriously damn cool:

Scientists have developed what they say could become the world’s smallest medical kit: a computer, made of DNA, that can diagnose disease and automatically dispense medicine to treat it.
The computer, so small that one trillion would fit into a drop of water, now works only in a test tube, […]

Courtesy of William, we have this image of various opinion polls from the New York Times and CBS. His commentary on it, “It’s so purty. Like a whole bunch of Christmas trees on their side with the pointy end towards November,” says it about as well as I could have.
Posts of substance hopefully to […]

The Canadian Senate voted today to add gays and lesbians to the list of groups protected from speech inciting violence or genocide against them. This is probably something of a parting shot for NDP MP Svend Robinson, one of the major national figures of the Canadian left who got himself in a bit of trouble […]

The University of Maryland Program on International Policy Attitudes recently released a report showing a significant chunk of respondents to be deeply misinformed about Iraq (warning: PDF). It’s not as bad as when an absurdly large percentage believed Iraq had nuked US troops in the field, but it’s still pretty bad.
The pollsters also asked who […]

Thanks to Larry over at Silence is Consent, I came across an article from the Cato Institute which discusses whether the United States is an empire or not at the moment, with the added question of empire is necessarily good or bad.
But while the president may shy away from the term empire, the conduct of […]

Iraq has a new flag.
The new flag is white, with two parallel blue strips across the bottom representing the rivers and a yellow stripe between them representing Iraq’s Kurdish minority. Above the stripes is a blue crescent representing Islam.
It’s good to see them dump the Hejaz colours, which were often used to symbolize Arab supremacy […]

So. Folks are reporting that a largescale chemical weapons attack has been thwarted in the Jordanian capital. Considering the attack was intended to kill tens of thousands (whether it would have is a different question, as Aum Shinrikyo showed us a few years ago), it is understandable that it should be all over the […]

John Doyle over at the Globe and Mail found himself in Bill O’Reilly’s crosshairs over the past week, when the FOX News creature decided to declare the G&M a “far left” publication. After doing so, Doyle was exposed at some length to the views of FOX’s viewers. It says something about the mindset of […]

Via the Beeb, the article I mentioned the other day:
Caution urged over bio research

Scientists must ensure research details do not fall into terrorists’ hands, say experts.
The Royal Society says scientists have a clear responsibility not to work on the illegal development of weapons.
But they will tell a UN conference researchers must be careful about publicising […]