Like Han Solo in Carbonite

O Blog prepara sua retirada from the Beautiful South, e por isso estara em animacao suspensa durante a Quaresma.

Intelligent Design

Hoje completa quarenta e dois anos uma grande razao porque nao tenho tanta certeza quanto o Richard Dawkins.

Rir para nao chorar...

*From http://nearingzero.net/

Rockin' the Casbah

Volta e meia chateava amigos que frequentavam second hand bookstores to keep an eye out for "A Savage War of Peace", an account of the Algerian war, que acaba de ser reeditado, after years out of print. Certamente ocorreu o mesmo que com o classico filme de Gillo Pontecorvo, people noticed some disturbing similarities to current events- it appears that The Battle of Algiers* is being screened regularly to officers at the Pentagon. No prefacio da nova edicao o autor relata que o staff do Rumsfeld lhe pediu uma copia for The Don, which he duly sent, together with a note "underscoring the evils of torture"- a comment which was not well received. O gajo, Alistair Horne, is one of my favorite historians, descobri quando comprei por acaso uma excelente historia de Paris ("Seven Ages of Paris").

O novo prefacio tambem traz esta perola:

"Though the parallels may be only partially exact, dark comparisons also offer themselves between the two former French colonies both "liberated" in the 1950s and 1960s: Vietnam, infinitely more devastated than Algeria in over twenty years of war, and lacking its natural wealth of oil and gas, but now rapidly emerging as the new Taiwan of Southeast Asia; Algeria wracked by internecine fundamentalism, and economically impoverished. Students of contemporary Islam and its incompetence in the world of material progress might wish to draw their own conclusions."

O livro vale a pena, if there's anybody out there, please let's help to keep it in print.

* a quem interessar possa: its now available on DVD with fantastic sound and image transfer on the Criterion label.

Usama to Get the Big Pussy Treatment

Muita gente anda sacaneando a escolha do Almirante William Fallon as the new commander of the Iraq and Afghan campaigns- afinal por um marinheiro in charge of two land wars quase eclipsa a escolha de um vendedor de cavalos como chefe da FEMA (but they, look how well that turned out).

Not so the NY Times, which found the really relevant qualifications:

"The admiral can be grizzly and tough, as befits a product of New Jersey."