Unqualified Offerings

Looking Sideways at Your World Since October 2001

Archive for September, 2002

Sunday, September 29th, 2002

Smoking…Cap Gun

That Turkish Uranium bust turns out to be not kilograms worth but, well, here’s Ha’aretz:

The refined uranium caught by Turkish police Saturday weighed far less than originally thought, an official source in southwestern Turkey said Sunday.
It was originally believed that the Turkish paramilitary police had seized over 15 kg of weapons-grade uranium in the [...]

Sunday, September 29th, 2002

Weapons of Mass Deconstruction

Lengthy dissents from the “weapons of some destruction” meme have been issued by Gary Farber of Amygdala and Thomas Nephew of Newsrack. Gary concentrates entirely on Gregg Easterbrook’s article and omits all discussion of Unqualified Offerings’ own earlier piece on the same subject, presumably out of politeness to UO, since Gary’s piece is composed in [...]

Saturday, September 28th, 2002

A Fanboy’s Notes: the Morality of Power

So UO’s roleplaying group has been talking about possibly doing a superhero game. We were discussing one of the problems of superhero games, which is that superheroes are structurally reactive – they spend their time thwarting the designs of bad guys. So we asked ourselves, what if you had superheroes that instead had activist agendas [...]

Saturday, September 28th, 2002

Ahoy There!

Unqualified Offerings has been keeping Seablogger to itself, which is not very generous of it. Only partially-accurately billing itself as “A Nautical Journal,” Seablogger is the personal site of Alan Sullivan, poet, critic and old friend of Unqualified Offerings. Alan’s literary archive, Cruising with Catullus, is itself a treasure trove, just not as frequently updated. [...]

Saturday, September 28th, 2002

I’ll Take My Stand…Where?

Reuters reports that Turkish police arrested smugglers with 23 pounds – that’s critical mass – of weapons-grade Uranium. Glenn Reynolds reads more into the article than is actually there – he’s already convicted Iraq of being the “demand side” of the transaction. It may well be; the article doesn’t say. It could be Iraq trying [...]

Friday, September 27th, 2002

Sequel to Where’s Osama? Announced

File this one under Hunh!

An Iraqi doctor who fled to Iran says the Iraqi leader has not appeared in public since 1998, and uses at least three men who act as his doubles. The exiled doctor says the doubles take President Saddam’s place at all appearances, including top government meetings.
Appearing on German television Thursday, [...]

Thursday, September 26th, 2002

On the Other Hand…

Christopher Hitchens, who has a lot more credibility with Unqualified offerings than anyone in the Bush Administration, offers some interesting anti-Iraq arguments in his final Nation column. Based on his own reporting, he places a high probability of an Atta-Al-Ani meeting in Praque, and he writes ruefully of friends of his among Iraqi officialdom who [...]

Thursday, September 26th, 2002

Football: an Intellectual Journey

Asked how to become a writer, Ray Bradbury famously said, First, write a million words. Asked how to become a great pro football coach, Steve Spurrier said, First, work through your Danny Wuerffel obsession.

Thursday, September 26th, 2002

You Want I Should Answer Trick Questions?

Unlike lots and lots and lots of people, Unqualified Offerings can’t get worked up about Dick Armey’s response to a reporter’s question in Florida about the differences between liberal and conservative Jews. It seems like one of those questions whose very structure makes it impossible to answer without pissing someone off. (UO is working from [...]

Thursday, September 26th, 2002

I Suppose Neo-Phalangist is Right Out!

Eve Tushnet has an interesting item about trying political labels on for size:

…, what are my options? I can’t make up a word like “jfaoheihah” and use that to denote my political beliefs; I’m stuck with words that already exist, words that people understand.

She also doubts that the EU is a fascist superstate in the [...]