Tell me it ain't so

I so hope that the video here is satire... because if this is serious, then we are headed down the wrong path in this country.

You have to stay all the way to (and through) the bracelets, otherwise you've missed the meat of the piece.

Updated Tuesday evening: See Want some torture with your peanuts? which is the story that pointed me to the video.

How long until this is on the silver screen?

Ingrid is Free!
Originally uploaded by Tam O'Shanter*.

I didn't pay much attention to the release of the FARC hostages... and then I read this story from CNN: Old-fashioned fake-out results in freedom for hostages. It reads like an action movie.

Government agents posing as rebels tricked a gang of armed desperados into handing over 15 hostages during a rendezvous deep in Colombia's unforgiving jungle.

The Colombian government's bloodless rescue of the hostages Wednesday was the product of a perfectly executed ruse that depended on old-school spy games rather than high-tech gadgetry.

Agents spent months worming their way into the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, an insurgent force that has waged war on the Colombian state for 40 years, Gen. Freddy Padilla de Leon told CNN.

The agents gained the rebels' trust and rose to the top of FARC's leadership council as well as a team assigned to guard the hostages.

When the time was ripe, the moles used the authority they'd gained within the group to order the 15 hostages moved from three separate locations to one central area, and the game was on.

Indeed.

Now to see the movie...

I've heard of being left out in the cold, but...

stallserver
Originally uploaded by Tidewater Muse.

This story, The Stalled Server, is well worth the read. Indeed, I'm thinking WTF.

I think I need a new picture...

;-)

My thanks to Thomas Jackson.

How true it is...

H/t to the Velvet Howler.

Too many teenagers have been watching Juno

Juno
Originally uploaded by etchasketchist.

Reports: Mass. teen girls made pregnancy pact:

Some of the girls reacted to the news they were pregnant with high fives and plans for baby showers.

What's in your bag?

Or what's in your wallet?

Today we're going to play, "What's in your browser?"

And in my case, that's Firefox.

• iGoogle


• Bloglines beta.


• Blogger post page


• New York Times, Why This Court Keeps Rebuking This President:

  “The most important thing we do is not doing,” Justice Louis D. Brandeis once said of the Supreme Court’s abiding humility, its overwhelming preference to allow the people, through their elected representatives, to govern themselves.



• Pilot-on-Line, Lucas's new hotel proposal deserves old reaction:

  The latest version of state Sen. Louise Lucas' proposed hotel and conference center in Portsmouth is better than the original. But city officials should remain leery of the project and, in particular, the prospect of getting involved in its financing.



• The New York Times (again...), Gay Couples Find Marriage Is a Mixed Bag:

  Four years after Massachusetts became the first state to allow gay couples to marry, there have been blissful unions, painful divorces and everything in between.



• The Sun, Charity rowers ocean rescue:

  FOUR British rowers have been rescued after their boat capsized on a charity attempt to cross the Atlantic Ocean. . . . were two weeks into their journey from New York to their native Isles of Scilly when their craft tipped over in heavy seas 420 miles east of Cape Cod.



• The Herald-Mail, Saint James School graduates 42:

  For their last night on campus, Saint James School’s class of 2008 spent time at a teacher’s house Saturday before going to Waffle House at midnight. Maura McCormack, of Hagerstown, said she and her classmates went to the restaurant to talk about moments some of them have shared together for five years.



• The New York Times (again, mind you...), Tiny Town: Washington After a Fall:

  There are certain days when you can feel the air sucking out of Washington’s giant hot-air balloon, and Friday was one of them.



• Dallas Morning News, Wal-Mart and Penney roll out casual furniture

  Wal-Mart's new Canopy and J.C. Penney's new Linden Street home furnishings brands don't have the name recognition of an Ikea or a Pottery Barn, but they're going after the same customers.



• Navy Times, Rule may endanger attorney-client privilege

  Legal experts are alarmed over a recently approved Pentagon directive they say infringes upon the right of protected communications between military defense attorneys and their clients in uniform.
  
  “The bar is very serious about keeping peoples’ secrets, and communications to and from clients,” said Eugene Fidell, a Washington attorney and president of the National Institute of Military Justice. “And in this day and age, a lot of that is done by e-mail — particularly in the military environment. And if you don’t have the kind of assurance that nobody’s peeking, that’s very disturbing.”



• Thomas Jackson's Coast Guard Report, NEWS FLASH: Information Flow Is Coming:

  I was notified to today that "C" will begin the release of information and documents related to his case. C was notified that the gentleman who had filed the unsubstantiated claim that started Coast Guard Civil Rights making to the headlines, has passed away. Our sympathy goes out to this man's family, but his passing no longer necessitates protecting information that could jeopardize the governments case.



• The Washington Post, The Bubble (How homeowners, speculators and Wall Street dealmakers rode a wave of easy money with crippling consequences.):

  In its hiring frenzy, the mortgage company turned a busboy into a loan officer whose income zoomed to six figures in a matter of months.



• Nothing is Just One Thing, Friday, June 12, 2009:

  The initial decision to can me came…hell I don’ know. I got into my shared cubicle last week and found that the system wouldn’t let me log in. The IT folks just said that ‘it’s not our fault’ and to talk to my manager.



• Nothing is Just One Thing, Sunday, June 14, 2009:

  Strategically, I think the government has lost control of this city. The vets are still out there, they just aren’t staying in large groups (these guys learned urban guerrilla tactics the hard way in Baghdad and Fallujah). Meanwhile, they’ve earned the help and respect of other groups who were harassing the Feds.



• AN UNOFFICIAL COAST GUARD BLOG


• Stinson's Summaries


• Tidewater Musings, I'd say they're morons, but that wouldn't be PC now, would it?

  I'd also say, Mr. Jarvis, that your call to reproduce an AP story is manure.



• Canopy

I'd say they're morons, but that wouldn't be PC now, would it?

Jeff Jarvis
From Mike Burgess.

Over at Slashdot, I stumbled across a post by Soulskill: AP Targets Blog Excerpts With DMCA Notices. I'm thinking, "Not good."

Then I went to Jordan Golson's article, AP targets bloggers over story excerpts:

The Associated Press, the not-for-profit news cooperative, has filed DMCA notices against social news/blog The Drudge Retort for posting short excerpts of AP stories. In a letter to Rogers Cadenhead, the owner of The Retort, the AP believes "the Drudge Retort users' use of AP content does not fall within the parameters of fair use."

The "AP considers taking the headline and lede of a story without a proper license to be an infringement of its copyrights, and additionally constitutes 'hot news' misappropriation."

Ah, hell, that's what I just did to Golson. I'm in trouble now.

Rogers Cadenhead posted AP Files 7 DMCA Takedowns Against Drudge Retort wherein he writes,

I'm currently engaged in a legal disagreement with the Associated Press, which claims that Drudge Retort users linking to its stories are violating its copyright and committing "'hot news' misappropriation under New York state law." An AP attorney filed six Digital Millenium Copyright Act takedown requests this week demanding the removal of blog entries and another for a user comment.

The Retort is a community site comparable in function to Digg, Reddit and Mixx. The 8,500 users of the site contribute blog entries of their own authorship and links to interesting news articles on the web, which appear immediately on the site. None of the six entries challenged by AP, which include two that I posted myself, contains the full text of an AP story or anything close to it. They reproduce short excerpts of the articles -- ranging in length from 33 to 79 words -- and five of the six have a user-created headline.

Ah, damn. Did it again.

Jeff Jarvis at his Buzz Machine told the AP to f**** off:

In its complaint against Cadenhead, the AP is flouting fair use and fair comment. It is ignoring the essential structure of the link architecture of the web. It is declaring war on blogs and commenters.

So let’s fire back. I urge bloggers everywhere to go to the AP and reproduce a story at length in solidarity with Cadenhead and Drudge Retort.

Er, Mr. Jarvis, you don't get it. If The Drudge Report Retort, and you, I might add, would do more than link to the article, but make it clear that they are linking to content they didn't write, and along the way, provide attribution to the writer, we probably wouldn't be having this battle in the blogosphere. I suggest that The Drudge Report Retort is bad blogging without regard to the spirit of fair use. Give credit where credit is due.

I'd also say, Mr. Jarvis, that your call to reproduce an AP story is manure. You posted the AP story Cedar Rapids struggles to endure historic flood; you didn't give credit, as the AP has done, to the writer, Amy Lorentzen. You think you talk a good game, Mr. Jarvis, but you have degraded the work not of the AP, but of Ms. Lorentzen. Give credit where credit is due. How would you like it if I copied your words without an attribution of more than a link? How would you like it if I presented the material as if I had written it, and provided no additional commentary?

Mr. Jarvis, Mr. Cadenhead, you gentlemen don't get it. Play by the spirit of the law, if not the letter of the law, and you wouldn't be facing court action.

Fifty-eight is not that old

Airport AED
From Nemo's great uncle.

News today that

Tim Russert, 58, host of NBC's "Meet the Press" and the network's Washington bureau chief, collapsed and died at his office today.

While the cause of death has not yet been established (or announced), there's wild speculation that Mr. Russert suffered from a heart attack.

From Peggy Peck, Executive Editor of MedPage Today:

A statement from Russert's physician, internist Michael Newman, M.D., indicated that resuscitation was begun on the scene and was continued unsuccessfully by paramedics and at Sibley Memorial Hospital. The cause of death is unknown, he said, and an autopsy will be performed.

Douglas Zipes, M.D., of the Krannert Institute of Cardiology at Indiana University, said he could not comment specifically on the Russert case, but he speculated that the most likely cause was ventricular fibrillation, which is a shockable rhythm.

If that were the case, an automated external defibrillator (AED) could have been a life-saver.

Dr. Zipes, who is a spokesperson for the American College of Cardiology, said that Russert had a classic profile for ventricular fibrillation: "male, age 58, slightly, but not terribly overweight."

Stress is also considered a risk factor, but Dr. Zipes said it would be difficult for an outsider to gauge Russert's stress level. "One man's stress is another man's dessert," he said.

The take-home message, said Dr. Zipes, is that "AEDs should be as common as fire extinguishers."

Perhaps this will be a call that energizes people to demand AEDs in the workplace.

This story speaks for itself...

Cavalcade of Condoms
From chi_cowboy.

Only, I'm not sure what it's saying.

From Kazunori Takada (with editing by Miral Fahmy, at Reuters, Antarctica base gets 16,500 condoms before darkness.

One of the last shipments to a U.S. research base in Antarctica before the onset of winter darkness was a year's supply of condoms, a New Zealand newspaper reported on Monday.

Bill Henriksen, the manager of the McMurdo base station, said nearly 16,500 condoms were delivered last month and would be made available, free of charge, to staff throughout the year to avoid the potential embarrassment of having to buy them.

The base only has a skeleton staff through the long winter.

"Since everybody knows everyone, it becomes a little bit uncomfortable," Henriksen told the Southland Times newspaper.

About 125 scientists and staff are stationed at McMurdo base, the largest community in Antarctica, during the winter months when there is constant darkness.

The first sunrise will occur on August 20 and McMurdo's population will start to increase again in September when supply flights resume, peaking at more than 1,000 during the summer period.

That's 132 condoms per person which comes out to about one a day per person.

Guess there's not much to do once the sun goes down.

"Are we bringing in an element of people that we don't need in Olde Towne Portsmouth?"

Pictures-090706 269
Originally uploaded by Tidewater Muse.

In the Virginian Pilot, Jen McCaffery wrote today Portsmouth to revisit plan for nightclub in Old Towne. Here's the lede:

The city's planning commission split this week over whether to allow a venue with late-night entertainment to open in Olde Towne.

Restaurateurs and club owners Terry Webb and Kelli Davis said they envision young professionals sampling tapas and sipping martinis on lounging platforms while listening to poetry or live music. Opening of Rest at 509 High St. would provide a nightlife option that's missing in Olde Towne, they said.

Sounds great. I'd love a jazz and poetry hangout. And, it a venue like this would help continue the life of High Street further up the street toward the intersection with Effingham, and beyond.

And then there was this:

Several business owners from the same block, however, said they worry that the venue could bring the same problems to Olde Towne that a nightclub called David's II did during the 1990s.

"Are we bringing in an element of people that we don't need in Olde Towne Portsmouth?" asked James Rizer, who owns an ice cream parlor next door to where Webb would like to open Rest.

Like the streets of Olde Towne aren't open to everyone?

I live in Olde Towne; I frequent the Bakery which is just two doors down from the proposed venue. I enjoy Baron's across the street. I welcome a venue as proposed.

It is this attitude of anti-diversity that will kill Portsmouth. Plain and simple.

I support the application. How about you?

How 50 years will change the ways of the world

1957 Ford Thunderbird
Originally uploaded by peterbox.

Funny stuff over at Jessica's Universe:

Scenario: Jack goes quail hunting before school, pulls into school parking lot with shotgun in gun rack.

1957 - Vice Principal comes over, looks at Jack’s shotgun, goes to his car and gets his shotgun to show Jack.

2007 - School goes into lock down, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.

My favorite:

Scenario: Mark gets a headache and takes some aspirin to school.

1957 - Mark shares aspirin with Principal out on the smoking dock.

2007 - Police called, Mark expelled from school for drug violations. Car searched for drugs and weapons.

Too close to home on that one as my son Richard, a middle school student, was suspended this year for giving classmates dextrose tablets. Yes, he was suspended for peddling sugar...

Read the full list here at Jessica's.

Quality of Life = Effective and reasonable public transportation

Light Rail Transit
Originally uploaded by Gee!Bee.

I'm going to weigh in on the current discussion of public transportation in southside Hampton Roads.

Here's my assertion: Without effective and reasonable public transportation, Hampton Roads will find itself beyond gridlock with a quality of life approximating living on top of a sewage treatment plant.

While over at Avenging Archangel, Reid Greenmun notes,

A whole lot of folks have no trouble getting around Virginia Beach after 7 PM or on Sundays.

Of course, they don't depend soley on riding HRT buses or Paratransit vans for their transportation.

The attitude which underlies this comment is clear: we don't need public transportation; we are a community for cars; we don't want the likes of public transportation here.

Sad, really.

We not only need buses, but we need a comprehensive public transportation plan which embraces ferries, rail, and buses. Sure, more roads, highways, and tunnels may look nice, but in the long run, they will only bring more traffic, more cars, more trucks.

We must create a livable city, one that encourages our residents to garage their cars in order to use effective public transportation.

It is Mr. Greenmun's attitude which will bring gridlock to southside Hampton Roads and create a community in which none of us find joy.

I offer Mr. Greenmum this challenge: find another community with a similar population at Hampton Roads which has as poor a public transportation system, and ask yourself this: "Is this the type of place in which I want to live and work and call home?"

I can predict the answer.

We cannot bury our heads in the sand, as Mr. Greenmum would like us to do, any longer. We must be thinking of, and preparing for, the future. The status quo will no longer work.

As Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.

H/t to Michael Ragsdale at Ideas for Hampton Roads Transit.

Not my America

prisoners at gitmo
Originally uploaded by JTDGarlic.

Disturbing article by Stacy Sullivan at Salon: The forgotten kid of Guantánamo -- A teenager captured in Afghanistan and shipped to the U.S. prison remained unknown to the world for five years. Now he's being tried as an adult.

I also find it troubling that so many military officers who have been involved in the judicial process at Gitmo have taken issue with the process and systems. We don't see attorneys slamming the courts here at home, but the Gitmo courts have developed a strong cadre of officers who have spoken out, and continue to speak out, about the alleged illegality of what is going on.

Education and Creativity

Inspiring talk from TED:



h/t to Sam Smith at Undernews.

Posing for a picture

@ the Air Force Academy
From originalunoriginal.

From the cutline:

U.S. President George W. Bush poses with a graduate during the Air Force Academy graduation ceremony in Colorado Springs, Colorado May 28, 2008.

McClellan's rationale?

Scott McClellan
From Llyn Hunter, Bobcat Publishing

Okay, so maybe the image doesn't quite fit... but...

From Dan Balz's McClellan's Dish and Tell: Required Reading for Campaign Aides.

But at heart, McClellan's book is the story of a modest and perhaps naïve political operative caught between personal loyalty and ambition on the one hand and a crisis of conscience that did not fully flower until after he put distance between himself and his White House days. Critics will easily see this as a combination of cowardice and cashing in, but McClellan offers an explanation that, if not fully plausible, goes some way in accounting for what he has written.

As he writes at one point, his views, particularly on Iraq, reflect those of many, many Americans, who may have had some initial doubts about how anxious the administration seemed about going to war but who trusted the wisdom and judgment of the president and an experienced team of advisers. Over time, his -- and the country's -- trust and confidence in Bush and his team was shattered by what has happened in Iraq.

Indeed. Reads like understatement to me...

Ooops... Blogging on company time can be a big boo-boo

Earth by NASA
From pingnews.com.

From FCW.com and Wade-Hahn Chan: NASA blogger suspended for Hatch Act violation.

Okay, so it wasn't just blogging at work. A little more to it:

A NASA employee has been suspended for soliciting donations and writing politically partisan blog posts and sending e-mail messages while at work, violations of the Hatch Act.

Office of the Special Counsel officials said a Johnson Space Center employee promoted local and state political candidates in 2006 and 2007 through his Internet writings.

The officials also found the employee solicited small campaign donations two times in 2006 through blogs.

The employee has been suspended for 180 days without pay. The suspension started March 30.

Special Counsel Scott Bloch said the suspension is part of an effort to crack down on Internet- and technology-based Hatch violations.

“Today, modern office technology multiplies the opportunities for employees to abuse their positions and — as in this serious case — to be penalized, even removed from their job, with just a few clicks of a mouse,” Bloch said.

What is a politically partisan blog post?

Guess I can't post anything about how I'd like the Veep to run for the top job... At least not from my government desk...

Sushi in Orlando

Flickr Loves Sushi. Mmm.
Originally uploaded by drp.

If you're looking for sushi in Orlando, Florida, let me recommend a little hole-in-the-wall with awesome, fresh, fantastic, super sushi: Sushi En. I had four rolls, all excellent. My favorite? The Super Spicy Tuna Roll.

It's a Big Big World...

It's a Big Big World...
Originally uploaded by Ya Ya.

Received today from my dear bride:

A newlywed couple had only been married for two weeks. The husband, although very much in love, couldn't wait to go out on the town and party with his old buddies .

So, he said to his new wife, 'Honey, I'll be right back.'

'Where are you going, coochy cooh?' asked the wife.

'I'm going to the bar, pretty face. I' m going to have a beer.'

The wife said, 'You want a beer, my love?'

She opened the door to the refrigerator and showed him 25 different kinds of beer brands from 12 different countries:
Germany , Holland , Japan , India ,etc.

The husband didn't know what to do, and the only thing that he could think of saying was, 'Yes, lolly pop...but at the bar....
you know...they have frozen glasses...'

He didn't get to finish the sentence, because the wife interrupted him by saying, 'You want a frozen glass, puppy face?'
She took a huge beer mug out of the freezer, so frozen that she was getting chills just holding it.

The husband, looking a bit pale, said, 'Yes, tootsie roll, but at the Bar they have those hors d'oeuvres that are really delicious...I won't be long, I'll be right back. I promise. OK?'

'You want hors d'oeuvres, poochi pooh?' She opened the oven and took out 5 dishes of different hors d'oeuvres: chicken wings, pigs in blankets, mushroom caps, pork strips, etc.

'But my sweet honey... At the bar... You know...there's swearing, dirty words and all that...'

'You want dirty words, Dickhead? Drink your f***ing beer in your Goddamn frozen mug and eat your motherf***ing snacks, because you are Married now, and you aren't f***ing going anywhere! Got it, Asshole?'

........and, they lived happily ever after.

Now, isn't that a sweet story?

Er, is she trying to tell me something?

Why does truth only become clear after-the-fact?

Scott McClellan
Originally uploaded by lordrupert.

Too little. Too late.

Michael D. Shear of the Washington Post tells us Ex-Press Aide Writes That Bush Misled U.S. on Iraq.

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" led by President Bush and aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" and "downplaying the major reason for going to war."

McClellan includes the charges in a 341-page book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," that delivers a harsh look at the White House and the man he served for close to a decade. He describes Bush as demonstrating a "lack of inquisitiveness," says the White House operated in "permanent campaign" mode, and admits to having been deceived by some in the president's inner circle about the leak of a CIA operative's name.

Hindsight is 20/20, I guess.

P-Town Memorial Day Parade

The longest running Memorial Day parade in the U.S.A.

The Marine Corps Junior ROTC platoon from Churchland High School... with Andrew in the first column:


Picture from this Picasa Web album. H/t to Paul.

Mr. Cheney goes to New London

Vice President Dick Cheney was at the Coast Guard Academy yesterday for the commencement ceremonies. The Coast Guard Academy, located along the shores of the Thames River in southern Connecticut, last hosted the Vice President for commencement ceremonies four years ago. New London was a bright, crisp, New England spring day yesterday.

But what's with the ten gallon hat?

If this doesn't make your blood boil, I don't know what will

Gitmo Cell 2
Originally uploaded by umarbashir.

Check out this article by Eric Lichtblau and Scott Shane in the Washington Post: Report Details Dissent on Guantánamo Tactics.

In 2002, as evidence of prisoner mistreatment at Guantánamo Bay began to mount, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents at the base created a “war crimes file” to document accusations against American military personnel, but were eventually ordered to close down the file, a Justice Department report revealed Tuesday.

This isn't the America I want to represent. Plain and simple.

We have become something our founding fathers would not recognize.

Air Force Wants to Take Control of Your Computer

Terror & the Internet
From Stop!.

If this doesn't give you some concern, then you're likely not paying attention. From Noah Shachtman at the Danger Room: Air Force Aims for 'Full Control' of 'Any and All' Computers.

Two from Sam Smith

flood addiction
Originally uploaded by jodi_tripp.

One of my regular reads is Sam Smith's Undernews, the online report of the Progressive Review, a journal and archive of alternative news. Mr. Smith is a Coastie (assuming once a Coastie, always a Coastie). Two bits from Undernews today were of note; one was about the power of the Internet to bring together diverse neighbors and the second was a link to an essay about the "age of insecurity."

Mr. Smith, who lives on Capitol Hill, recently noticed a thread on a local listserv in response to a few teenage muggings. At first there were calls for a march on the local public housing project; and then there were voices seeking something far different: learning about those neighbors, who were people, but of a different race, a different culture, a different economic class. Interesting reading about a positive power of the Internet.

Mr. Smith also points us to Tom Engelhardt's Tomdispatch.com, a site "for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of our post-9/11 world and a clear sense of how our imperial globe actually works. Wrote Mr. Englehardt earlier this week, Welcome to the Age of Homeland Insecurity where he suggests Kiss American Security Goodbye: 15 Numbers That Add Up to an Age of Insecurity. Interesting reading.

How many Peter Stinson's?

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 64 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

This is just odd...

Corn in a Storm
Originally uploaded by Stu Worrall.

And it has nothing to do with the picture here with the post: 9-year-old girl's twin is found inside her stomach.

Okay, show's over; move along, please.

They're never more than 15 feet apart

Michael Roach & Christie McNally
Originally uploaded by scottvacek.

I'm not even sure what to say here...

From Leslie Kaufman, writing in the New York Times, Making Their Own Limits in a Spiritual Partnership:

TEN years ago, Michael Roach and Christie McNally, Buddhist teachers with a growing following in the United States and abroad, took vows never to separate, night or day.

By “never part,” they did not mean only their hearts or spirits. They meant their bodies as well. And they gave themselves a range of about 15 feet.

Oh, and while they do sleep together, they don't sleep together. They're celibate.

Their partnership, they say, is celibate. It is, as they describe it, a high level of Buddhist practice that involves confronting their own imperfections and thereby learning to better serve the world.

“It forces you to deal with your own emotions so you can’t say, ‘I’ll take a break,’ ” said Mr. Roach, 55, who trained in the same Tibetan Buddhist tradition as the Dalai Lama. After becoming a monk in 1983, he trained on-and-off in a Buddhist monastery for 20 years, and is one of a handful of Westerners who has earned the title of geshe, the rough equivalent of a religious doctorate. “You are in each other’s faces 24 hours a day,” he said. “You must deal with your anger or your jealousy.”

Like I said, I'm not sure what to say... I'm... just... speechless...

Another Cold War?

Cold War
Originally uploaded by Krogen.

Thomas L. Friedman suggests in an op/ed piece in The New York Times that the United States is entering another cold war period.

The next American president will inherit many foreign policy challenges, but surely one of the biggest will be the cold war. Yes, the next president is going to be a cold-war president — but this cold war is with Iran.

That is the real umbrella story in the Middle East today — the struggle for influence across the region, with America and its Sunni Arab allies (and Israel) versus Iran, Syria and their non-state allies, Hamas and Hezbollah. As the May 11 editorial in the Iranian daily Kayhan put it, “In the power struggle in the Middle East, there are only two sides: Iran and the U.S.”

For now, Team America is losing on just about every front. How come? The short answer is that Iran is smart and ruthless, America is dumb and weak, and the Sunni Arab world is feckless and divided. Any other questions?

Too bad Mr. Friedman doesn't have any strong opinions.

Read the entire piece; there's some great food for thought, including this nugget: America is now "trapped in a region which it cannot fix and it cannot abandon."

Now that's an icon!

burj dubai
From yubicc.

Usually, I'm a fan of Ray Gindroz's work. Certainly, what he's done for Portsmouth has been nearly remarkable. And, I am a fan of new urbanism.

When I learned that The Tide would necessitate the destruction of the Kirn Memorial Library, I wasn't sure I was keen on the idea.

And then I read a post that prompted me to post... and the general upshot was to build a building over the rail stop. Incorporate the rail into a building of significance.