inscrutable protest

I saw a group marching up Market Street today behind a banner reading

THE WAR STOPS HERE
and so do you

I was tempted to stand in their path (surely I have as much right to obstruct them as they have to disrupt traffic) and demand an explanation of the last phrase. But I had been on my feet long enough already, had more errands to do, and lacked the energy for a confrontation.

Later: It occurs to me that I’d have been wrong to bring them to a stop; they were moving steadily, in the appropriate lane, and stopping them would only cause a worse obstruction.

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for the clever title to this entry, leave two Capn Crunch boxtops in a Pan Am flightbag behind the Vaillancourt Fountain

General strike in Zimbabwe. Kewl!

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if any

My spies tell me that an Alternate Pledge has become fashionable in some circles:

I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America and to the republic which it established, one nation from many peoples, promising liberty and justice for all.

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inoculation

John Cowan writes:

All transliteration systems for Arabic are shite in one way or another. When T.E. Lawrence was writing Seven Pillars of Wisdom, he made a point of being as inconsistent as possible throughout.

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diplomacy red in tooth and claw

On my favorite list, someone observed:

It’s embarrassing when Iraq continually makes our professional, Fletcher/Kennedy schooled career diplomats look like bloody fools.

Kevin Maguire responded:

How surprising is this, really? To attain their positions, the Iraqi diplomats have had to be good at getting results in a political system where poor diplomacy gets you killed.
Our diplomats have honed their skills in an environment where lack of skills gets an extra 3% tariff on California wine entering Spain.

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bioethics III

Randall Parker goes after the bioLuddethicists at some length.

If there’s ever a charity dedicated to rejuvenating the poor, might I suggest that priority be given to those whose native language is dying out?

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externalities of farming

Two brief articles from New Scientist about external costs of agriculture. Subsidies in the form of cash and irrigation are obvious, but I never thought of the cost of cleaning pesticides etc out of tap water.

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