Freezing rain, and yet more war

This morning, we're finally getting winter in Toronto. (Brief pause to allow anybody from Winnipeg who is reading this to snort dismissively.) Today's forecast calls for ice pellets and snow lasting most of the day. I'm actually relieved that the weather today is really crappy. For one thing, it means that global warming hasn't totally screwed up the seasons. And I've always believed that we have to endure a predefined amount of really bad winter weather every year: if we don't have it now, we have to go through it in April, and I'd prefer to go through it now.


According to the Globe, President Bush has decided to continue to pursue his Iraq policy, regardless of what the U.S. Congress proposes. The article quotes Bush as telling 60 Minutes, "I fully understand they could try to stop me from doing it. But I've made my decision. And we're going forward."

Vice President Dick Cheney added: "[Bush is] the guy who's got to decide how to use the force and where to deploy the force. And Congress obviously has to support the effort through the power of the purse. So they've got a role to play, and we certainly recognize that. But you also cannot run a war by committee." Cheney later said, "This is an existential conflict. It is the kind of conflict that's going to drive our policy and our government for the next 20 or 30 or 40 years. We have to prevail and we have to have the stomach for the fight long term."

And, to top it all off, the U.S. is making threatening noises in Iran.

The Bush article has a comments section, and the first comment was:

'... no matter what Congress wants', no matter what two thirds or three quarters of Americans want, no matter what the community of nations wants, no matter what the vast majority of the world population wants, no matter what Heaven and Hell want, no matter what God wants, no matter... no matter.

Can the world survive another two years with these guys running America?


Some interesting links: Metafilter posted a link to the Online Pig Disease Problem Solver and a history of computing at Columbia University (with pictures of oldtime computers and the people who were running them).