Blog posts

In the same sense that they endorsed John Kerry, are Al Qaeda now endorsing the NRA?

We all know of the debate over whether a war on Iraq supports ‘The War On Terror’ or is in fact a dangerous distraction from it. One thing I hadn’t yet realised was that the fight against the International Criminal Court is also being used as a distraction from that same struggle against global terrorism. That all changed with this press release from Citizens for Global Solutions: The omnibus appropriations bill scheduled for final House approval today contains a controversial amendment that will impose further sanctions on countries that have ratified the International Criminal Court (ICC) treaty. The amendment, originally included in the House version of the foreign aid spending bill in July, would prohibit assistance from the Economic Support Fund (ESF) for countries that have refused to sign a “bilateral immunity agreement” to shield U.S. citizens and certain foreign nationals from transfer to the ICC for investigation or prosecution for atrocities or genocide. The funds affected include support for anti-terrorism activities, peace building, democratization and counter-drug initiatives. ...

On my other hard drive (thanks to the collecting spirit of Tom Wills) I have a film made in the late 40s by the US government to promote the Marshall Plan. It spells out the need for America to support the redevelopment of Europe for fear that otherwise new generations will grow up fueled by resentment, becoming terrorists. I thought it a sadly ironic statement when I first watched it in 2002 and with each viewing that sense has increased. ...

We’ve been working on a complete overhaul of Sarah’s website, the first fruits of which are beginning to show. Apache’s mod_rewrite is used to clean up some URLs, the site no longer uses browser sniffing, and the look of the site has been spruced up.

This one’s probably for serious New Testament studies and postmodernism geeks only, but I couldn’t let NT Wright’s " Taking the Text with Her Pleasure" slip by without mention (okay, so it was originally published in 1996, but I’ve only just found it online). While reserving judgement on its critique of John Dominic Crossan’s “The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant”, I couldn’t help but fall for passages like: ...

I suspect that if I’d spent time tallying the responses to the news I was moving to Michigan, questions about the weather would top the list. The three days of snow I experienced here last winter was the greatest accumulation I had yet experienced, but it didn’t leave me in a position to adequately say how I expected to respond to the infamous Michigan winters. I was rather bemused a few days ago to learn that the first snowfall in England had preceded that in Michigan. But then today came. Six months and a day since I officially moved to Michigan, the snow has begun to fall. Somehow I don’t think I’ll escape with a mere three days this time around. ...

I spent some time yesterday reading Dan Bricklin’s essay How Will The Artists Get Paid? (via Joel on Software). The essay is well written, and a number of this blog’s readers will enjoy the biblical references to the role of art that pepper its introduction. It makes an interesting riposte to the comments by DJ Danger Mouse at Web 2.0 and reported at veen.com that: ...

Last Friday night, Starflyer59 and Pedro The Lion played at Calvin. It was a very good show. I definitely prefer Starflyer on record, where the melodies come through more clearly and the wall of sound carries better, but Pedro were on top form. The most amusing part of the evening was when initially just one, but eventually just over a dozen Starflyer fans began raising cigarette lighters above their heads during a quieter moment. It’d been a while since I’d seen such a phenomenon since these days the mobile phone has usually stolen that spot, but somehow it seemed like those holding these lighters had forgotten what they were supposed to do. ...

The live dates on Julie Lee’s Site are now generated from an RDF data store.

UNCharter.org, a cross-referenced, searchable version of the UN Charter, is now live.