As people start getting bored with the Republican primary, inevitably the political conversation has turned to whom Mitt Romney will pick as his running mate. These discussions involve calculations about who can best ‘balance’ the ticket to appeal to specific constituencies and assuage doubts about the nominee’s qualities. [Read more…]
My post yesterday about Afghan cricket generated some comments about people’s bewilderment about the rules of the game. This is understandable since the rules are not obvious to anyone who happens to just watch it. For those who would like to understand it and are looking for a quick primer, I recommend my 2006 post on it, followed by this video.
One of the key sources of false information that was fed to the US government about Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction program was from an Iraqi defector codenamed ‘Curveball’. He now proudly admits that he made it all up.
Of course, the reason he was believed uncritically was because he told the Bush-Cheney administration and its neoconservative warmongers exactly what they wanted to hear, and the government embellished his stories even further to sell that war to the public.
The Pakistani journalist tries to explain to Jon Stewart the convoluted relationship between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the US, complicated by the differences between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistan Taliban. Short version: The situation in Afghanistan became a mess as soon as the US shifted its attention to Iraq without first building decent infrastructure in Afghanistan, and it is now time to leave. [Read more…]
The news from Afghanistan tends to be uniformly depressing and so I perked up when I read that Afghanistan has taken up the sport of cricket and currently has a national team playing against the Netherlands in Sharjah. It is true that neither team is an international powerhouse in the sport, but it is surely a welcome sign of a possible return to normalcy for a country to indulge in such a leisurely activity like cricket. [Read more…]
The pressure to be the first with a new discovery is resulting in an increasing number of authors rushing to print with results that later turn out to be not true. In most cases, this is due to cutting corners, sloppiness, or not exercising sufficient skepticism about one’s own work. In a few cases, it is because of outright fraud. [Read more…]
Andy Borowitz reveals the solution to a puzzle that has baffled everyone.
Today is April Fools day. I am not a fan of practical jokes on any day including this one. I especially do not understand why news organizations that depend upon their credibility for their very existence, would carry them out. But having said that, I will give a pass to the following prank pulled by the BBC in 2008, because it is so beautifully done and leaves you smiling even after you realize that you have had your leg pulled. [Read more…]