Thursday, September 09, 2010

Sam the sponge

My Silent Business Partner

Plan B

Claudia Rosett has much to say about Imam Feisal. No doubt she could have gone on for much longer, but only had so much space to work with.

The jaw-dropper was this: "How better to commemorate 9/11 than to urge our fellow Muslims, fellow Christians and fellow Jews to follow the fundamental common impulse of our great faith traditions?" How about renouncing terror, stating that it is inconsistent with Islam and thus terrorists are infidels, apologizing to the victims, and using his Ground Zero site as a Victims of Terrorism museum?

Imam: Moving Mosque Could Ignite Violence

Exactly what is it besides getting their way that *doesn't* enrage extremist Muslims?

Of course about now even the tamest observant Muslims must be a little cranky, after almost a month of starving all day for Ramadan. I haven't been around enough Muslims for long enough to know what percent really observe it. I doubt that they're any better at living by their book than other religions are at observing theirs.

But one custom that's really easy to observe is Eid al-Fitr, which is at the end of Ramadan. Yeah, you'd do something special too after spending a month of long summer days without eating during daylight, whether you really observed it or not. It lasts 3 days, and this year those three days happen to include 9/11.

Ramadan and thus Eid al-Fitr are based on a lunar calendar, and thus effectively were scheduled for this year long before 9/11. So there's nothing deliberately provocative about the timing of Eid this year.

Even so, I'm hoping nobody does anything to enrage extremist Americans.

Tuesday, September 07, 2010

Carnival of Nuclear Energy 17

Back when I started blogging years ago I used to write fairly often about nuclear power. Much has happened in blogging since, and I'm glad to see stuff like Carnival of Nuclear Energy 17.

Link via Glenn Reynolds, whose hit counter surely must start smoking every time I link to him. Especially after I haven't blogged anything for over 8 months - what have you poor people been doing?

If you think health care costs an arm and a leg...

...consider that this woman didn't take advantage of it, and it cost her an arm and two legs.