My prayers and condolences to those seven astronauts that perished today. While we mourn their loss, we have to remember that few if any human advances came without risk (just think of the number of lives lost in the early days of the railways). The best way to honour them is to ensure that manned spaceflight continues and expands, and does not die with them.
An aside, it’s probably a sign of the times that I first heard of this tragedy on from a blog, in my case Scott’s.
Jeanne D’Arc at Body and Soul compares the the claims for sainthood of Mother Teresa with that of Archbishop Oscar Romero, murdered by right-wing terrorists while he celebrated mass, and wonders what political message the Catholic Church is sending by fast-tracking the former.
Remember that story about a woman sueing McDonalds over a hot cup of coffee? A Skeptical Blog reminds us of the whole story, and suggests that this was a lawsuit McDonalds deserved to lose.
Roy Jenkins has died at the age of 82. He was the great liberal (with a small ‘l’) home secretary of the 60s, hated by the manichean Daily Mail which blames him for every social evil of the past 35 years.
In the 80s he lead the breakaway SDP from a Labour party dominated by the hard left and rendered unelectable, which leads to the few sour notes in the political tributes.
Labour statesman Tony Benn told BBC News Lord Jenkins could be considered the “grandfather of New Labour”
“The Prime Minister has much more in common with Roy Jenkins than with the Labour Party,” he said.
I thought Roy Jenkins was a social liberal? Maybe this just shows how much a dinosaur Wedgie Benn has become?
But Labour peer Lord Healey said he thought Lord Jenkins’ political impact was “really very unfortunate”.
“The fact that 27 good Labour MPs left the party to join the SDP made it possible for Thatcher to win the election,” he said.
“So without Roy, Thatcher would never really have happened.”
Denis Healey needs a history lesson – Margaret Thatcher was already in power when the SDP broke away from Labour. And who might tell what could have happened in 1983 or 1984 if the Falklands war hadn’t revived Thatcher’s fortunes?
Ultimately the SDP was to founder on the rocks of David Owen’s ego, and the remnants absorbed into the Liberal party.
Our tinfoil-hatted friends at Samizdata.net compare the Tories with the Bond franchise:
I’m off to see the new Bond movie, in a cinema, with a fellow samizdatista. I expect it to be the cinematic equivalent of the Conservative Party: absurdly implausible, formulaic, full of sex and violence but in a ludicrously dated way, and demeaning to women and to ethnic and linguistic minorities. If not, I shall be wanting my money back.
This makes my mind boggle a bit. Ann Widdecombe as a Bond girl? Well, perhaps not; maybe the Rosa Klebb role instead?
I can imagine Tony Blair as a Bond Villain, with John Prescott as his henchman.
But I can’t imagine Iain Duncan-Smith as Bond. Perhaps Michael Heseltine in his Tarzan days?
Because they’re at the bottom of the sea. But don’t be too sure; the ship may well be salvaged, and I bet there’s a chance some of the cargo might end up on the Arthur Daley market. “No careful owners – it was only under seawater for a few weeks…”.
On the other hand, the locomotive involved in the Tay Bridge disaster in 1879 was fished out of the sea after 5 months underwater, was repaired, and was in traffic for another 40 years!
Uncertain Principles takes on the Warbloggers’ use of post-war Japan and an example.
… which reminds me of one of the nagging problems I have with the standard “warblogger” line on terrorism and militant Islam. A common sentiment among the hawks of the “blogosphere” is that we need to go to war with any and every Arab country out there (if not every Muslim country) to “teach them a lesson.” Then, having destroyed their “poisonous culture” we need to “rebuild them like we did Germany and Japan.”
There are a large number of problems with this, beginning the manifest stupidity of the idea that humiliating the Arab world will somehow make them see the light (as noted elsewhere, this is too stupid for words, where “We might define ‘too stupid for words’ as the certainty that one’s opponents will see the same virtues in your actions that you do.”), and ending with the creepily racist overtones of the whole thing. Somewhere in the middle is the fact that this grossly overstates our ability to re-shape other cultures.
Read the whole article here.
I’ve read rather too many nasty anti-Islam rants on the blogosphere recently, such as this one by Bigwig. There’s an idea that all Muslims are somehow collectively responsible for every terrorist atrocity, and that no Muslims ever condemn any of the bad things their religion is blamed for.
Did you know that the most senior Muslim clerics in Nigeria have actually condemned the so-called fatwa on the Nigerian journalist who’s article sparked off the riots there? How many Islamic blogs or news sources do you ever read? Do you get all your information in Islam from sites like Little Green Footballs? I suggest you read a few blogs such as Al-Muhajabah or Unmedia, it must just give you a different perspective on things.
The “War on Terror” isn’t a clash of civilisations between Islam and the west. That’s what Osama Bin Laden (if he’s still alive) wants you to think. The only people that think that way Al Queda and their supporters, the bigoted, and the fundamentally ignorant. (The three groups are of course not mutually exclusive). If Michele, despite being voted “Most Bloodthirsty Warblogger” can get it, so can you.
The idea that all Muslims and Arabs are collectively guilty of each and every atrocity perpetrated by those that share their religion or nationality is surely as offensive as the Noam Chomsky-like blaming of the victims.
The only people responsible for terrorist atrocities are the terrorists themselves, and those that support and fund them. They, and only they, are our enemies.
Anyone that still thinks ‘Muslim’ is a synonym for ‘Terrorist’ and screech that Muslims never condemn acts of terror should stop reading those odious screeds at Little Green Footballs and read blogs like Al-Muhajabah and Unmedia instead.
Michele is disgusted with her neighbours. I don’t think there’s anything more I need to add.