Steven D. Levitt, who writes an opinion column for The New York Times called “Freakonomics” has written a column asking if you were a terrorist how would you attack.

My general view of the world is that simpler is better. My guess is that this thinking applies to terrorism as well. In that spirit, the best terrorist plan I have heard is one that my father thought up after the D.C. snipers created havoc in 2002. The basic idea is to arm 20 terrorists with rifles and cars, and arrange to have them begin shooting randomly at pre-set times all across the country. Big cities, little cities, suburbs, etc. Have them move around a lot. No one will know when and where the next attack will be. The chaos would be unbelievable, especially considering how few resources it would require of the terrorists. It would also be extremely hard to catch these guys. The damage wouldn’t be as extreme as detonating a nuclear bomb in New York City, of course; but it sure would be a lot easier to obtain a handful of guns than a nuclear weapon.
I’m sure many readers have far better ideas. I would love to hear them. Consider that posting them could be a form of public service: I presume that a lot more folks who oppose and fight terror read this blog than actual terrorists. So by getting these ideas out in the open, it gives terror fighters a chance to consider and plan for these scenarios before they occur.

Yeah, we all know the terrorists don’t read the NYT as it only discloses security leaks every chance it gets.

What an idiot!

Speaks for itself.

The defence has rested its case in the trial of US citizen Jose Padilla and two other men accused of supporting terrorism and conspiring to kill.
Mr Padilla’s lawyers did not call a single witness during the 53-day trial.

Evidence from the prosecution focused on recorded telephone conversations involving his co-defendants Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi.

All three men face life sentences if convicted of providing support for Islamic extremists overseas.

It is alleged they conspired to murder, kidnap and maim people in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia and other countries from 1993 to 2001.

The case is expected to go to the jury next week.

The telephone conversations presented as evidence were mostly in Arabic and prosecution witnesses said they contained coded references to terrorist activity.

Mr Padilla was heard on only seven of the tapes and he did not use any coded language, the FBI’s lead investigator testified.

Al-Qaeda training camp

The chief evidence against him is an application form to attend an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan which prosecutors say prove he was connected to Islamic extremists.

Mr Padilla, a former Chicago gang member of Puerto Rican descent, is a convert to Islam.

He was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport in May 2002 after returning from Pakistan.

After his arrest Mr Padilla was accused of planning to detonate a radioactive bomb and held in a military jail without charge for three years.

But when he was transferred to the civilian courts in 2005 the indictment made no mention of the so-called dirty bomb plot.

Story

The other day Guss wrote this post with the comment:

You have got to be kidding me. When most of the terrorists are from Saudi Arabia, you don’t sell them arms.
These people are not our friends.

I can’t say I disagree with his statement. The following is from The Omega Letter, a subscription only Christian end-times publication. It discusses the ramifications of this military hardware sale from a Christian perspective.

Arming the Jihad

For reasons that few understand and even fewer can articulate, the United States government is considering a $20 billion arms sale to the wellspring and root of Islamic jihadist theology, Saudi Arabia.

According to a senior US defense department official quoted in the Jerusalem Post, “We’ve been working very hard on a Saudi arms package, which we believe is critical to the overarching architecture… to deal with the changing strategic threat from Iran and other forces.”

Speaking before the UN in September, President Bush told the world, “Extremists in your midst spread propaganda claiming that the West is engaged in a war against Islam. This propaganda is false, and its purpose is to confuse you and justify acts of terror.”

But it is the House of Saud itself that is “perverting Islam” and threatening, as the White House correctly puts it, a world in which “our children will face a region dominated by terrorist states and radical dictators armed with nuclear weapons.”

Weapons the Bush administration is evidently planning to sell them. Arming the Saudis to deal with Iran is an unthinkably dangerous gamble on more levels than one is comfortable contemplating.

First, the House of Saud is a regime whose future should be calculated in months or years, rather than decades. King Abdullah is 83 years old. Over the course of his lifetime, he’s had thirty wives and has produced at least fifteen sons and twenty daughters. Overall, the Saudi royal family has some 6000 princes at last count. (more…)

A little over ten years ago I was in Tampa visiting our son, his wife and our grandson.

We knew there was supposed to be a shuttle launch so we climbed into the car and drove to Cape Canaveral. No traffic was allowed to go into the complex without a pass, so we found a nice beach and decided to wait out the launch there. It was to be a night launch.

After talking to a lady about it being the first launch I would see, a man came up to me and said he heard I wanted to get closer to see the launch. I told him yes, and he handed me a pass that got us to the viewing area on the beach at Cape Canaveral. He was an employee and had seen many launches, and besides, he said it might not go off that night due to windy weather.

With the sticker in the window we entered the Cape and went to where the crowds were waiting while having fun doing it.

The security was unbelievable as helicopters with spotlights patrolled the area we were in.

Soon came the payoff, and what a sight to behold!

It looked just like this:

And then this:

We all stood there cheering and applauding and watching until the shuttle was just a dot in the nighttime sky.

What an unbelievable experience. It looked like daylight at 10 o’clock at night, and the roar was as loud as anything I have ever heard.

Happy journey, Endeavour!

The photos shown are from yesterday’s launch.

Speaks for itself.

A senior British commander in southern Afghanistan said in recent weeks that he had asked that American Special Forces leave his area of operations because the high level of civilian casualties they had caused was making it difficult to win over local people.
Other British officers here in Helmand Province, speaking on condition of anonymity, criticized American Special Forces for causing most of the civilian deaths and injuries in their area. They also expressed concerns that the Americans’ extensive use of air power was turning the people against the foreign presence as British forces were trying to solidify recent gains against the Taliban.

An American military spokesman denied that the request for American forces to leave was ever made, either formally or otherwise, or that they had caused most of the casualties. But the episode underlines differences of opinion among NATO and American military forces in Afghanistan on tactics for fighting Taliban insurgents, and concerns among soldiers about the consequences of the high level of civilians being killed in fighting.

A precise tally of civilian deaths is difficult to pin down, but one reliable count puts the number killed in Helmand this year at close to 300 civilians, the vast majority of them caused by foreign and Afghan forces, rather than the Taliban.

Story

I guess words do matter.

Political turmoil in Pakistan deepened Thursday when the government raised the possibility that embattled President Gen. Pervez Musharraf might impose a state of emergency, drawing condemnation that doing so would be a desperate bid to hold onto power.

Tariq Azim, the minister for state information, said a state of emergency could not be ruled out because of “external and internal threats” and deteriorating security in Pakistan’s volatile northwest near the Afghan border.

Azim also said talk from the United States about the possibility of U.S. military action against al-Qaida in Pakistan “has started alarm bells ringing and has upset the Pakistani public.” He mentioned Democratic presidential hopeful Barak Obama by name as an example of someone who made such comments, saying his recent remarks were one reason the government was debating a state of emergency.

Story

When I went to bed last night at 10:30 I checked the indoor/outdoor thermometer on my dresser. It was 91 degrees outside then.

Right now it’s 79 degrees and it’s just after 6 in the morning. The forecast is for 103 degrees today with a heat index of 109.

If you’re in the heat zone (and who isn’t?) stay inside someplace. The house, the mall, the air conditioned car, whatever, but don’t spend a lot of time outside where you can get heatstroke.

Right now our house is at a very comfortable 72 degrees with no air conditioner running right now.

If you have an air conditioner you are no longer using consider calling the Salvation Army. We did that a couple of years ago and they referred us to an agency that knew of elderly and sick people who needed help in the stifling heat.

If you can afford a little under a hundred bucks buy an air conditioner for someone whose life could be saved by it.

Speaks for itself.

In a further sign of the United States’ growing diversity, nonwhites now make up a majority in almost one-third of the most-populous counties in the country and in nearly one in 10 of all 3,100 counties, according to an analysis of census results to be released today.

The shift reflects the growing dispersal of immigrants and the suburbanization of blacks and Hispanics pursuing jobs generated by whites moving to the fringes of metropolitan areas.

From July 1, 2005, to July 1, 2006, metropolitan Chicago edged out Honolulu in Asian population, and Washington inched ahead of El Paso in the number of Hispanic residents. In black population, Houston overtook Los Angeles.

“The new wave of immigration, along with its continued dispersal to the suburbs and Sun Belt, is transforming the places which are now being classified as multiethnic and majority minority,” said William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution.

“The new melting pots are not large international gateways,” Professor Frey said, adding, “Rather, many are fast-growing suburbs themselves.”

In 36 counties with more than 500,000 residents each, non-Hispanic whites are now a minority, up from 29 counties of that size in 2000.

From 2005 to 2006 alone, eight other mostly less-populous counties shifted to a majority of minorities, the Census Bureau said. They were Denver, Colo.; East Baton Rouge Parish, La.; Winkler, Waller and Wharton in Texas; Blaine, Mont.; Colfax, N.M.; and Manassas Park, Va., an independent city that is considered the equivalent of a county.

In a new study for the Population Reference Bureau, Mark Mather and Kelvin Pollard found that Hispanic people were increasingly attracted to job opportunities and lower costs outside major metropolitan areas.

“Between 2000 and 2006, the total population in small towns and rural areas increased by 3 percent, but the Hispanic population in these counties grew from 2.6 million to 3.2 million, a 22 percent increase,” the authors of the study wrote.

So far this decade, they added, “there are also new areas of growth, including exurban counties in the Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C., metropolitan areas, plus parts of Texas, central Florida, and a few other states.”

Story

As we’ve all been hearing lately, we must do something to conserve our energy. We must find alternate methods of powering our houses and our toys.

If we fly somewhere we should buy carbon offsets so someone can plant a tree for us.

But, at what point is the sacrifice too great?

Take a look:

How can we do that to these good bluebloods?

It seems the American people are all on vacation doing fun things or simply uninterested in all the so-called “debates” that are popping up every other week on TV.

AFL-CIO Forum Ratings: Lowest Yet
The AFL-CIO Democratic forum last night on MSNBC, was the lowest rated-yet of the eight primary debates/forums held this election season. Based on live +same day data, Nielsen found the debate had 960,000 total viewers and 340,000 viewers in the 25-54 demo.

Or maybe it was just because Keith Olberman hosted it. (That one’s for Guss)

Congressman Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii is whining because Speaker Pelosi won’t release the funds to remodel the House gym.

It’s not quite up to his standards and the wives have a terrible hardship of having to walk across a parking lot to get there, and besides, the aides to the Congressmen have a better gym with flat screen TVs mounted on their ellipticals. Anyway, it’s only a measly 8 million bucks.

Speaker Pelosi is having none of it, but not for the right reasons. She’s concerned about how it will look to the electorate and how it will affect her majority. Nothing said about it being a waste of taxpayer money and these facilities are available anywhere if you pay the membership fee.

Abercrombie is touting his efforts to secure funding in the legislative branch spending bill to begin an estimated $8 million renovation of the House gym. The project is personally important to Abercrombie, who sets a yearly goal to bench-press 200 pounds more than his age, now 69.
Pelosi and other Democratic leaders are not eager for a multimillion-dollar renovation of the congressional members-only gym to be one of the first accomplishments of the Democratic majority. They worry that freshman Democrats could be attacked on the campaign trail next year for approving a fancy new gym for themselves after winning office.

Democratic leaders held a special meeting with Abercrombie earlier this year to tell him that now is not the time for a new House gym and also instructed him not to mention the issue to reporters, according to Democratic sources

But Abercrombie hasn’t stopped talking about it. He insists that the gym needs renovating and is pushing for federal money to finance a redesign.

(more…)

All my life I’ve heard about the Neanderthal Man, Homo erectus and Homo habilis being the ancestors of man.

The story went like this: First we had Homo habilis which eventually evolved into Homo erectus, which eventually evolved into Neanderthal Man, which eventually evolved into Homo sapiens or humans.

I could never quite understand why these species died out and we survived as Homo sapiens. It seemed logical to me that even though there was an evolution period some of the creatures from which we evolved would have still been around.

Like, why do we still have gorillas which look a lot to me like Neanderthal Man?

Well, bless my soul! Now comes a study that says remains of Homo habilis and Homo erectus lived within walking distance of each other at the same time!

Surprising fossils dug up in Africa are creating messy kinks in the iconic straight line of human evolution with its knuckle-dragging ape and briefcase-carrying man.

The new research by famed paleontologist Meave Leakey in Kenya shows our family tree is more like a wayward bush with stubby branches, calling into question the evolution of our ancestors.

The old theory was that the first and oldest species in our family tree, Homo habilis, evolved into Homo erectus, which then became us, Homo sapiens.

But those two earlier species lived side-by-side about 1.5 million years ago in parts of Kenya for at least half a million years, Leakey and colleagues report in a paper published in Thursday’s journal Nature.

In 2000 Leakey found an old H. erectus complete skull within walking distance of an upper jaw of the H. habilis, and both dated from the same general time period.

That makes it unlikely that H. erectus evolved from H. habilis, researchers said.

It’s the equivalent of finding that your grandmother and great-grandmother were sisters rather than mother-daughter, said study co-author Fred Spoor, a professor of evolutionary anatomy at the University College in London.

The two species lived near each other, but probably didn’t interact with each other, each having their own “ecological niche,” Spoor said.

Homo habilis was likely more vegetarian and Homo erectus ate some meat, he said.

Like chimps and gorillas, “they’d just avoid each other, they don’t feel comfortable in each other’s company,” he said.

Well, glory be! I didn’t come from a monkey after all!

I have a better idea:

25And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

26And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

God didn’t say, “Let’s tool around with this and see what we come out with in the end as far as man is concerned.” He said “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…”

Now, if you believe God looks like any of these other creatures then I guess this evolution garbage could be correct, but there’s a problem with that. Jesus is God Incarnate and when He came to earth He looked exactly like us! Imagine that!

Of course you have to believe in God to believe that, but that can’t be much harder than believing you came from a knuckle-dragging being that simply vanished.