Nick Lewis: The Blog

That's right. The topic this morning is the logistical considerations for public sanitation on the Imperial Death Star. Joshua Tyree of McSweeny's writes perhaps the most insightful piece -- ever -- on the fascinating subject:

I maintain that the trash compactor onboard the Death Star in "Star Wars" is implausible, unworkable, and moreover, inefficient.

The Trash Compactor Debate turns on whether the Death Star ejects its trash into space. I, for one, believe it does. Though we never see the Death Star ejecting its trash, we do see another Empire ship, the so-called Star Destroyer, ejecting its trash into space. I therefore see no reason to suspect that Empire protocol dictating that trash be ejected into space would not apply equally to all Empire spacecraft, including the Death Star.

The Death Star clearly has a garbage-disposal problem. Given its size and massive personnel, the amount of waste it generates — discarded food, broken equipment, excrement, and the like — boggles the imagination. That said, I just cannot fathom how an organization as ruthless and efficiently-run as the Empire would have signed off on such a dangerous, unsanitary, and shoddy garbage-disposal system as the one depicted in the movie. [read more...]

The speed at which Wikipedia put together information on today's bombings in London is mindblowing.

Wikipedia: July 7th Bombing in London

David Corn, the editor of The Nation answers that question with a list of follow up questions:

• Who claimed there were stockpiles of WMDs in Iraq?
• Who said there was a revived nuclear weapons program in Iraq?
• Who said the intelligence left "no doubt" that Iraq posed a direct WMD threat to the United States?
• Who said Iraq had mobile biological weapons labs?
• Who said "we found the weapons of mass destruction"?
• Who said "we know" where the WMDs are in Iraq?
• Who said Saddam Hussein was "dealing with" al Qaeda?
• Who said the United States would be greeted as liberators?
• Who said the reconstruction of Iraq would not burden US taxpayers and that it could be self-financed via Iraqi oil revenues?
• Who said that it would not require hundreds of thousands of US troops to secure Iraq after an invasion?
• Who said--after the invasion--that there was no insurgency in Iraq?
• Who said the post-invasion looting was no big deal?
• Who said that 140,000 Iraqi security forces were trained--when the more accurate number was probably less than one-tenth of that?
• Who said the insurgency was in its "last throes" when military commanders said it could take years to quash the insurgency?

Who was that again?

If you missed Bush's speech, here's a one sentence abstract written by Tom Tomorrow:

We really screwed the pooch, and now you have no choice but to let us try to clean up the mess.

The World Tribunal on Iraq issued a high profile condemnation of the war on Iraq:

The Bush and Blair administrations blatantly ignored the massive opposition to the war expressed by millions of people around the world. They embarked upon one of the most unjust, immoral, and cowardly wars in history. The Anglo-American occupation of Iraq of the last 27 months has led to the destruction and devastation of the Iraqi state and society. Law and order have broken down completely, resulting in a pervasive lack of human security; the physical infrastructure is in shambles; the health care delivery system is a mess; the education system has ceased to function; there is massive environmental and ecological devastation; and, the cultural and archeological heritage of the Iraqi people has been desecrated.

The press release claims that this decision was reached by a "jury". The word "jury" is dishonest; this so called jury had reached its conclusion long the WTI conference convened.

In this flash animation, the fatalities from Operation Iraqi Freedom are mapped out by time and space. The animation runs 10 frames a second. Each frame represents 1 day. Each black dot and tick represents a single fatality.

Link: Iraqi War Fatalities

In "Private Warriors," FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith travels throughout Kuwait and Iraq to give viewers an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at companies like Kellogg, Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, and its civilian army. KBR has 50,000 employees in Iraq and Kuwait that run U.S. military supply lines and operate U.S. military bases. KBR is also the largest contractor in Iraq, providing the Army with $11.84 billion dollars in services since 2002.

Link: Watch Private Warriors Online

"You have to keep telling yourself, “That’s billions with a B,” and even then the concept blurs. But the Cost of War site (costofwar.com) run by the Massachusetts-based nonprofit and officially nonpartisan (but liberal) National Priorities Project crunches the numbers for you simply and effectively. As I write, the NPP calculates that we’ve spent almost $179 billion in Iraq. That could have paid for some 23.7 million American preschoolers to attend a year of Head Start. It might have funded global AIDS programs for 17 years. Not that it would have, of course. Security is security. But compare the budget for the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Safeguards division: $100 million a year to try to track down and monitor people trying to build nuclear weapons on the sneak. We spend $100 million on the Iraq war every couple of days. Are we safer for that?"

-Christopher Dickey, Newsweek, The Empire’s New Clothes

TIME has somehow gotten its hands on a “secret” interrogation log from Guantanamo Bay. As it so happens, the log chronicles the interrogation of Mohammed Al-Qahtani, the so-called 20^th hijacker. One “source” from the oh-so-trust-worthy Pentagon said the document was “never meant to leave Gitmo.” (wink wink, nudge nudge)

Time bills the story as “a rare glimpse into the darker reaches of intelligence gathering, in which teams that specialize in extracting information by almost any means match wits and wills with men who are trained to keep quiet at almost any cost.” According to TIME, the document recorded the interrogations from Dec-Jan 2002-03; “a critical period at Gitmo, during which 16 additional interrogation techniques were approved by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for use on a select few detainees, including al-Qahtani…”

Sorry about that mess to left, folks. At the moment, I'm building an experiemental del.icio.us extension that will turn the left sidebar into a commondreams or Register(UK) like link portal. In addition, I'm designing a new theme that is less beefy and more stylish.

On a final note, I enjoy pretending that people actually read these ramblings, or care about what backend experiements I'm doing... Thanks for playing along.