Still On A Blogging Hiatus

I know I said I'm back, but finding time for blogging has still been tough. Luckily we're getting DSL in our apartment so I hope to be able to start blogging again on regular basis by next week. Until then a few points:

1) I've yet to comment on the situation in Israel and at this point there is little to add. Richard Posner has a good post on the usefulness of collective punishment (which he only assumes Israel is doing for the sake of argument). I find his argument convincing and in fact it applies to the situation at hand. I do not support intentionally targeting civilians, but I do support retaliating against terrorists who use civilians as human shields. It's sad, but the moral culpability lies with the terrorists, not the IDF.

2) I get this quasi-cable in my apartment and was watching Loose Change this morning until the station cut it off when the United 93 section started. It was playing on one of these weird "we'll show anything" stations, so don't assume a government conspiracy to cover up the fact that United 93 really landed in Cleveland. Screw Loose Change has a subtitled version of video and Salon (unsurprisingly) ripped it to pieces.

The truth is this "documentary" is really good on first glance, but the best part is the music in the background. I'm not kidding. The music really draws you in. Watch it and you'll see.

I turned in late and only got to see the World Trade Center section, which the makers of Loose Change allege were destroyed by bombs detonated by remote control in order to steal 160 billions of dollars in the basement. If you ask me there has to be an easier way of doing that than blowing up the buildings, but hey who asked me anyway?

The most obvious problem in my mind was that the buildings were really strong -- the movie makes a big deal about how powerful the buildings really were in order to show that a fire couldn't have brought them down -- and would have required tons of explosives to bring down. Where could the perpetrators have hidden the bombs? We're not talking about three sticks of dynamite here. That's a lot of explosive material. Where was it all hidden?

Like all conspiracy theories Loose Change presents a false picture, hanging its wildly tenuous theory on small pieces of evidence or minute, almost insignificant, questions that haven't been answered. I don't think we should take it too seriously just because it has a cool soundtrack.

3) The American League killed the National League in interleague play. Was it a result of the alleged AL advantage? I don't think so.

4) Can someone explain the point of drying dishes at night and putting them away instead of waiting until they dry in the morning and then putting them away? Seems like a waste of time to me.