Total Eclipse

Forty years ago today, the lunar module Eagle landed on the moon, fueling the imagination of of an entire species for decades to come. Two men stepped outside the lunar module and roamed about the magnificent desolation that is the Sea of Tranquility. After two hours and thirteen minutes, they returned to the Eagle, the [...]

Regarding the costs of war, just to put things in perspective [translated from a piece by Brigadier General (res.) Shuki Shichrur, a former chief of staff of the Israeli Northern Command]:
Fallujah lies 70km west-north-west to Baghdad. In 2004, it had between 200 and 300 thousand residents. From early 2004, it was under control of Jihadist [...]

So it seems while all eyes on are Gaza, The Israel Central Elections Committee decided to disqualify the two major Arab parties from running in the elections.
There’s nothing new to the claims that the Arab parties (the only one left, Hadash, is an Arab-Jewish communist coalition) do not accept Israel as a Jewish state. It’s [...]

Again I find myself blogging life during wartime.
Tel-Aviv is fucked up like that; An hours drive away, a quarter of a million Israelis are under rocket fire, and here life goes on as usual.
Just a quick recap. In the summer of 2005, Israel left the Gaza strip. In the summer of 2007, Hamas, an Islamic [...]

The Diameter of the Bomb
by Yehuda Amichai. trans. Chana Bloch & Stephen Mitchell
The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried [...]

In response to a post on Coilhouse concerning the passing of Proposition 8 in California to end gay marriages in the state, I wrote this response, which I thought was too long for anyone to read as a comment, but still worth sharing with the world, somewhere.
There truly is a sour taste coming from the [...]

Listen to the Mad Prophet of the Airwaves, Howard Beale.

In the past I’ve already ranted here about how pissy I get when legislation fails to do the minimum gesture towards a reason-based society. It’s as if we’ve accepted the scientific method as a matter of course for every aspect of our lives except the most important one: How our society should run.
Laws are passed [...]

Syrian President Bashar Assad has been signaling through western media that he is interested in resuming peace negotiations with Israel unconditionally.
He urged Israeli Prime Minister Ulmert to try him out, “call his bluff”.
This well-played rhetoric places Israel in a difficult position. Israel can ill-afford to be perceived as war-mongers in the world (as if it’s [...]

I’ve recently noticed a worrying trend. Legislators are, more often than not, idiots.
It’s quite possible this was always the case and I just wasn’t fully aware of it, but it’s become increasingly apparent to me that the act of legislation, laying grounds to the principles by which our society functions, is done based on the [...]