I'm not even sure how to describe Joe Bob Briggs. Writer, reviewer, humorist, breast-counter, satirist, pop culture philosopher, B-movie addict, lightning rod for controversy -- But he's never boring! If you have a taste for his style, you'll probably be pleased to see that he's got his own website now. If not, well feel free to write letters of protest. They're half the fun!

The Joe Bob Report

] A Note on the "Euro" Explanation of the War by George Caffentzis
]
] The relationship between the euro, the dollar and in
] distant third, the yen) is an important issue for
] understanding the dynamics of world capitalism, but it
] clearly cannot be used in a one-step explanation of the
] US/Iraq war.

Interesting discussion of some of the economics-based conspiracy theories about the reasons behind the Iraq war.

Another related article on the subject is here:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ED08Ak01.html

Infoshop News - Euros, Dollars & Iraq

Y'know, there might actually be something to this. Last fall, I got a taste for green tea and have been drinking multiple cups per day ever since. And all winter, I actually stayed healthy. Which is weird, because I also went to a bunch of conventions where there was a flu virus going around, and afterwards most of the attendees got *really* sick. Usually I'm like the canary in a coal mine for a flu bug, and I'm one of the first to drop -- but this year, though nearly every single one of my friends became sick as a dog, I sailed through with not so much as a sniffle from any of the conventions.

Maybe it's the tea, maybe it's the flu shot, I dunno. It's interesting though to see confirmation of something that I'd already been wondering about.

Discovery Health : Tea Said to Boost Immune System

] The way people were grabbing at the man walking along
] Paradise Square here, he may as well have been giving
] away bottled water or satellite telephones or chunks of
] gold, people were so aggressive. But he was not. He was
] giving away information.
]
] Newspapers have hit the streets here for the first time
] since the government stopped publishing April 8. Never
] mind that "yesterday's" editions were nearly a week old.
] Or that they did not really contain any news that people
] here did not know.
]
] In a city craving information, the newspapers were
] devoured as if they contained the secret formula for
] surviving the aftermath of a war that has cut off
] electricity, deprived many people of clean water and
] indefinitely suspended government paychecks.
]
] The paper, called Tarieq Al-Shaab, or The Way of the
] People, had no answers. But its mere existence in Baghdad
] - people have been executed for smuggling it from
] northern Iraq since it was banned in 1979 by Saddam
] Hussein - made its pages worth reading.

I can identify with this feeling so strongly. Even with all my own access to thousands of information sources around the world, I frequently felt "out of the loop" on what was going on in Iraq, and I felt like I couldn't find enough information to satisfy my hunger. To have been in the middle of it though, with no access to internet, phones, television, or even newspapers, would have been a deep circle of hell for me. So I'm delighted that the Iraqi people are getting their newspapers going again, and I wish them all the best in accessing as many different sources of news as they can get their hands on.

Let the information flow!

Iraqis Hunger for Information

This is circulating among some of the Kansas basketball fans, regarding the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship (http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/ncaatourney03/columnist?id=1535397&name=katz_andy) that took place earlier this month. Though the American news media reported that Syracuse won, 81-78, there's a different version being attributed to Iraqi Information Minister Al-Sahaf, aka "Baghdad Bob":

] "Last night Kansas hit 100% of their free throws and
] destroyed the infidel criminals from Syracuse. It was not
] even close. KU is in full control of the national title
] at this time. There is no reason for Kansas fans to be
] concerned as the reports that KU was defeated are
] absolutely not true."

ROFL

(Check "April 11th" at this link:)

Iraqi Information Minister and Basketball

This is an excellent collection of slides from the trenches in Iraq, set to music. The photography is top-notch, and it gives a good cross-section of the different jobs of various military members there. It's an interesting "Support Our Troops" Flash show.

Shoulder to Shoulder... (Iraq Slideshow)

SARS information in the U.S., listed by state. It would be nice to get some more detailed information (like by city), but that doesn't seem to be being reported anywhere.

CDC Media Relations - SARS US Case Report

It's unclear how accurate the data is, but this site attempts to list a table of civilian casualties. Sources are cited, and the table indicates both minimum and maximum reported numbers.

What's still unclear is how to define civilian vs. military casualties. I'm also interested in this dataset for the number of Iraqi soldiers who were killed, but have not seen any such collection (and the Iraqi government never released those numbers either).

In any case, verifiable or not, at least this site does attempt to collect *some* of the data . . .

Iraq Body Count Database

A picture of one of my associates, back in his "Cold War Warrior" days.

Lunch as a Spy near Allstedt, East Germany - 1981

Good resource for St. Louis jobhunters.

At this location, you'll talk to a counselor, and if you can justify it, they'll pay for a complete new look for you: New clothes, new haircut/style/perm, assistance in writing a resume and mailing it for you, setting up job interviews, and giving you free training on various software packages (Excel/Word,PowerPoint etc.)

St Louis Agency on Training and Employment