A fascinating article on Blue Brain, a computer which is successfully modeling a tiny bit of brain – the neocortical column in the somatosensory cortex of a two-week-old rat.
5 March, 2008
Speaking Truth to Power
Michelle Obama says Americans are “downright mean“.
Well. Buttle’s World fearlessly meets the rhetorical challenge:
Michelle Obama has cooties.
So there.
Why Chavez fears Bolivian Victory
Austin Bay analyzes why Chavez supports the narco-marxist FARC.
Perhaps tellingly, captured FARC laptops reveal who they want as U.S. President. (Link includes a photo of FARC leader Raul Reyes at room temperature. He looks pretty messed up. A summary, for those who want to avoid the photo, is on LGF.)
When Bad Religion Loses
Everybody wins.
“I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us,” said Sara, a high school student in Basra. “Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don’t deserve to be rulers.”
And just look at the word that slipped into a New York Times article:
For that reason, the American liberation tasted sweetest to the Shiites, who for the first time were able to worship freely. They soon became a potent political force, as religious political leaders appealed to their shared and painful past and their respect for the Shiite religious hierarchy.
That may be as big a sea change as Iraqi youth making jokes about Islamic clerics. Hard to beat this, though:
“I used to love Osama bin Laden,” proclaimed a 24-year-old Iraqi college student. She was referring to how she felt before the war took hold in her native Baghdad. The Sept. 11, 2001, strike at American supremacy was satisfying, and the deaths abstract.
Now, the student recites the familiar complaints: Her college has segregated the security checks; guards told her to stop wearing a revealing skirt; she covers her head for safety.
“Now I hate Islam,” she said, sitting in her family’s unadorned living room in central Baghdad. “Al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army are spreading hatred. People are being killed for nothing.”
Sgt. Murphy, meet Sgt. Allen
Men like Sgt. Allen are why we win battles.
He reminds me of a cop I met once. One glance at him and I thought, “If I ever call for help, I hope he’s the one who shows up.”
