Every time I think the Washington Post may be capable of rational thought, there comes along something like this.

Of course, I may be being unfair; it's by the man who made bipartisanism into a synonym for "do what my party wants" while continuing to get tjhe respect he deserved when he used to do actual reporting. Even the infernal Ruth Marcus has had a glimmer of common sense; it may be that the rest of the page is shaping up.

And it is of course possible that this is an example of the new business model of the Post, I did log on to respond to it; others have done the same - the Post's advertisers are doubtless duly impressed, even though I didn't look at any ads, and would regard sponsorship of this column as a direcommendation.

To content:

After having outlined a substantive disagreement between the Ambassador to Afghanistan and the field commander, His Wisdom quotes Clark Clifford " a wrong decision was better than no decision at all." There are times when that is true; but if pausing about Afganistan for a month is one of them, we we've already made the worst decision 90 times or so; one more won't hurt.

But this is more than "get off the pot"; the decision the Fighting Keyboarder opposes would be worse than none: in short, Obama should refuse (on a political question) to back up the Ambassador he picked, and abdicate civilian control of the military; all this on the gamble that Afghanistan is governable - by the armies of a foreign power.


Let's have a thousand words:



This is Dr. William Brydon, all that returned of the first European army that tried to govern Afghanistan. The Soviets did too, as even the press corps should recall. I do not think that that makes Obama's decision obvious; but tjhe Village Idiots think there is nothing to consider.

The Meta Meta Matrix




Link thanks to andrewducker.

A silent movie Matrix, with a much more interesting Neo




Link thanks to rozk.

The video has an explanation for why a water drop doesn't fall into a puddle smoothly. Instead, the air under the drop gets compressed, and is enough to support the drop briefly. Enough air gets forced out that some of the drop falls into the puddle. And then the surface tension goes sproing! and bounces what's left of the drop into the air. This repeats a few times until the drop is used up.

I can only hope that someone is inspired to figure out how to get the maximum number of bounces.

Link thanks to Geek Press.

do you assume it was taken by the poster unless there's other evidence, or that it wasn't taken by the poster?

This brought up what a very bad idea it is to reshelve sf books in the fiction sections of bookstores into the science fiction section.

However, it's still true that it's easy to miss science fiction[1] (like The Ayre Affair that's shelved with all the rest of the fiction.

Are there any lists for such fiction?

[1] I'm using "science fiction" in the colloquial sense-- that book has little or no science, but still feels like science fiction.

( два вопроса для особо любопытных.. )

Поразительно, но это один и тот же круг. Обратите внимание, насколько белый кажется больше!

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Американский художник Самюэл Финли Бриз Морзе, автор картины «Умирающий Геркулес», удостоенной в 1813 году Золотой медали Лондонской королевской академии художеств, в 1837 году изобрел электромеханический телеграфный аппарат. А годом позже разработал простую систему связи, получившую название Азбука Морзе.

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© Pierre Сhoiniere

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