Exploding Aardvark

Archives

SOMALIA

I am from Mogadishu and life has literally been sweet for Somalis in Southern Somalia for the past six months and now we have to face the worst thing that could happen to a Somali person… the return of warlords with Islamphobic Abyssinian Christian forces in front of our doorsteps, telling us how pray and […]

HOW MANY MORE TROOPS, MR. PRESIDENT?

How many more are you planning to “support” into Iraq? Twenty thousand? Thirty thousand? Seriously?

Barely one in three service members approve of the way the president is handling the war, according to the new poll for the four papers (Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times and Marine Times). In another startling finding, only 41% […]

TODAY’S BLOGQUOTE

“Our respect for human rights requires us to execute him”. Nouri al-Maliki, I doff my hat to you — you’ve just invented an oxymoron to stand beside “we had to destroy the village in order to liberate it” as an exemplar of moral corruption and folly.

What goes around, comes around (Charlie Stross)

WE CAN MAKE THIS HAPPEN

Geostationary Banana Over Texas (dot com)
(Thanks, Ignatz! I desperately needed a laugh.)

THE DAY AFTER MLK DIED

The Politics of Soul
With James Brown
April 5, 1968
(Quicktime, WGBH, via Magpie)

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK

Thank goodness this Flash animation has been provided for the many twelve-year-olds who are providing health care to our nation’s veterans.

The Epic of Gilgamesh: Clinical Practice Guidelines for Post-Deployment Health Evaluation and Management (US Dept. of Veterans Affairs)
(Thanks, Conrad.)

MIGHT AS WELL HAVE BUTTONS AND BOWS

From this White House photo essay (via this Best of Both Worlds post: “That John Kerry photo”)
What’s up with my headline? Viewing the photos made this song play in my head:
Kate Bush, “Army Dreamers” (YouTube)

THE WILD PARROTS OF BROOKLYN

Alex Joseph, a West Indian-born parks worker, rakes the lawn at the grandly gothic Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn when he and his fellow laborers hear what sounds like a flock of sea gulls dive-bombing at their heads. The workers instinctively duck and whip round and look up and see — those crazy green parrots, expertly […]

SINGING GIBBONS

To test the primates response to danger, the team conducted a series of experiments in which they put models of predators — snow leopards, pythons and crested serpent eagles — near a group of gibbons and then made audio recordings of their response.
What they found, Clarke said, is that the gibbons approached the potential predator […]

THE FOUR-STAR SOUP KITCHEN

“He’s good, but sometimes I think the experimentation gets in the way of good taste,” said Jose Terrero, 54. Last year, Mr. Terrero made a series of what he called inappropriate financial decisions, including not paying his rent. He now sleeps at a shelter. He has eaten at several New York City soup kitchens, and […]