Month: October 2003

The little plaster angel in the flowerbed outside my window is always the first thing I see in the morning, when I study Arabic. هل هذا كلب؟ لا, ليس كلب. هل هذه قطة؟ نعم, انها قطة صغيرة جميلة (Mozilla doesn’t render the punctuation quite right on this).

Yesterday morning the row of cedars outside my window were covered with glistening spiderwebs. They’re still there this morning, but it’s not as foggy, so they don’t stand out so much.

A cute nursing student mistook me for a better dancer Friday night. I quickly disabused her of that notion. I really must re-learn the Lindy… There’s a new Shim-Sham song.

I visited my friends Asheya and Eric — a combination housewarming and birthday — and played four-on-a-couch with about twenty people.

Mom graduated with a Master of Education from SFU the other day. The highlight was the pipe band, as always.

Heh.

Update: New York Times: “No WMD Found in Iraq”. Hmm. So what are the

• Clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.
• Prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW
  agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections
  were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.
• Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a
  scientist’s home, one of which can be used to produce biological
  weapons.

• New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean
  Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and
  aflatoxin [that] were not declared to the UN.
• Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists’ homes, that would
  have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and
  electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).
• Line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production
  facility and an admission that they had tested one of their
  declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the
  permissible limit.
• Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant
  useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that
  was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating
  Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN.
• Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with
  ranges up to at least 1000 km – well beyond the 150 km range limit
  imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed
  Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including
  Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.
• Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from
  North Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles
  –probably the No Dong — 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles,
  and other prohibited military equipment.

(all from Andrew Sullivan)

chopped liver?