Live from the Nuke Free Zone

katster muses on her long absence from blogging anything really substantial here on the NFZ.

katster announces the shiny new wordpress version of NFZ.

Tang, in a wonderfully well-written article yesterday, briefly mentioned a Rush Limbaugh show that included a mention of the abiogenic oil theory. I hadn’t heard much of this previously, and was curious enough to do some digging on it. What I found fascinated me.
The abiogenic oil hypothesis is a splendid example of science […]

Daily Kos user FleetAdmiralJ has been running a monthlong, multi-part tournament-style poll of possible Democratic candidates for President in 2008. A few days ago I ran some numbers on an early result of the poll to deduce relative power rankings of the different candidates. The theory is, if A beats B by one ratio and […]

In my area of the country, a young paladin of politics once recounted
for the local newspaper how he had become set in his ways. A moment of
truth came for him in high school when a public school teacher told him
that Christopher Colombus had enslaved native Caribbeans to search for
gold and had killed several of them. […]

You may hear the sounds of hammering and smell the sawdust scattered
around. We’re in the middle of a transition here at the NFZ, and so
far, it’s going good. If all goes really well, we may cut over to the
shiny new blog software and leave MT behind forever sometime this
weekend. You’ll know when […]

Not seeming to have made much noise in the blogosphere is the LA Times’
recent mention that Puerto Rico will soon be voting on statehood,
possibly as early as May 1 of this year. Personally, I’m favor of
statehood and would welcome the 51st state with open arms.
Last time this happened, “none of the above” was an […]

(before and after image from BBC, from AP and Reuters
sources)
Terrible news from Iraq as Sammara’s al-
Askari mosque was bombed, destroying its landmark golden dome. This
might set off a full-fledged holy war that previous sectarian violence
has been unable to produce. In lieu of digging up information, because
it’s late, I’ll direct the reader to Juan
Cole for facts […]

Over on Daily Kos, user FleetAdmiralJ has been plugging a tournament-style poll of potential Democratic Presidential nominees for 2008. While the number of votes is small (as I said before, NFZ’s readership could skew the poll), I believe it could fairly represent the general opinion of the Democratic base or at least the activist and […]

The information I am about to provide is classified, according to the U.S. government. You have been warned.
On October 12, 1950, the CIA transmitted — from the context of the report, I believe to the State Department — its considered assessment that Chinese intervention in the Korean War was, quote, “not probable in 1950.”
It […]