Unqualified Offerings

Istanblog “cheerfully” notes that when it comes to suppressing the Kurds, our allies the Turks have the experience and the interest both:

Ideally they would make sure that the Kurds feel that being a part of the new Iraq would be better for them than being independent. This would mean convincing the Kurds that the new [...]

On Samizdata, Perry de Havilland dismantles a much-praised piece by the much-praised Victor Davis Hanson:

Ah yes, I frequently hear ‘European’ taxi cab drivers, nurses, office workers and house painters bemoan those tasteless Americans whilst listening to Beethoven on the radio and discoursing on Sartre with each other… oh pleeeease. I don’t know who Victor Davis [...]

Unqualified Offerings missed the news that President Bush appointed Iran-Contra alum John Poindexter to an important scare-quote homeland scare-quote security position at the end of February. (The press conference exchange on the appointment is priceless.)
With Poindexter on the inside and Michael Ledeen on the outside cheering things along, Unqualified Offerings feels secure indeed. There was [...]

Tres Producer-third Eric Olsen came up with an intriguing idea – get bloggers to sign up to review music, therefore becoming eligible for (oh yes!) free CDs! Michael Croft of Ones and Zeroes, a producer himself, explains why his conscience says no.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden has finally returned to Electrolite. Yay! Patrick Nielsen Hayden praises a Hendrick Hertzberg review of a book on the Constitution by Robert Dahl. Eh. Glenn Reynolds weighs in, arguing that both Hertzberg and Dahl are criticizing the Constitution for not being democratic enough, but that the framers weren’t trying to produce a [...]

From the Associated Press:

An Egyptian American academic was convicted a second time today of tarnishing Egypt’s image and other charges and was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment in a case international human rights groups have condemned as politically motivated.

Egypt gets two billion dollars a year in US aid. You say you don’t like Arab tyranny? [...]

Diane E. of Letter from Gotham has a long, important piece today that is the best summation of a first-principles, pro-Israel perspective on the assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Shehadeh that Unqualified Offerings has seen. UO doesn’t agree with all of it. (Diana makes much of the fact that most Palestinians and Arabs celebrate their [...]

Interesting, skeptical consideration of the likelihood of cryonic resurrection actually working, by former unofficial substitute Unqualified Offerings Chad Orzcel of Uncertain Principles. Just an excerpt:

By opting to be frozen, you’re betting your life on the propositions that:
1. Future medical technology will be able to cure what’s killing you,
2. Future medical technology will be [...]

According to John Diamond of The USA Today,

An intensive effort by U.S. intelligence to establish a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq is being driven, in part, by a conclusion reached in recent weeks by White House and Pentagon legal and legislative advisers. They believe that connecting Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks would allow the [...]

As many people know K/S or “slash” is an underground genre of fan fiction that allows Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock of Star Trek to – fulfill the prime directive as it were.
Now it turns out there is a whole new K/S genre, according to this AP story:

A Russian writer under investigation for disseminating pornography [...]