The New York Times reports this morning:

THE trail of clues in the mysterious death of Alexander V. Litvinenko may lead to Moscow, as the former spy claimed on his deathbed. But solving the nuclear whodunit may prove harder than Scotland Yard and many scientists at first anticipated.

The complicating factor is the relative ubiquity of polonium 210, the highly radioactive substance found in Mr. Litvinenko’s body and now in high levels in the body of an Italian associate, who has been hospitalized in London. Experts initially called it quite rare, with some claiming that only the Kremlin had the wherewithal to administer a lethal dose. But public and private inquiries have shown that it proliferated quite widely during the nuclear era, of late as an industrial commodity.

“You can get it all over the place,” said William Happer, a physicist at Princeton who has advised the United States government on nuclear forensics. “And it’s a terrible way to go.”

Fool me once... Won't get fooled again.

I would also have included an episode covering the secular Pan-Arabism that flourished in the Middle East during the post-war period; and whose subsequent demise, largely at Western hands, gave rise to the desperate fanaticism of radical Islam. The same episode should also have scrutinized the CIA's acute incubation, during its off-the-books war against the Evil Empire, of the Mujahideen of Afghanistan, forerunners of al-Qaeda.

Lost just wouldn't be Lost if it weren't (lost).

Lost is MystTV, all the way. I look forward with great relish to being delightfully baffled at the end of finale.

Sgt. Pepper was a cultural watershed in the Summer of 1967. Marchese and Arnold clearly have no knowledge of the period or its music. I'm giving their sixth grade project on the topic an F.

BTW, Brian Wilson had a nervous breakdown following the release of Sgt. Pepper because he recognized that he could never equal it.

New York Times article on Ogaden:

In Ethiopian Desert, Fear and Cries of Army Brutality

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/18/world/africa/18ethiopia.html

Excerpt:

". . . Three New York Times journalists who visited the Ogaden to cover this story were imprisoned [by Ethiopian authorities] for five days and had all their equipment confiscated before being released without charges."

Wow, what stones! I think this is called journalism.

Work, or family? There's no right or wrong answer to this question. Many people go through life without ever having to address this. But, in your case, you're going to have to decide/discover your answer. Know this about yourself, and you'll know what to do.

If my brain were just slightly different, then I would not be able to have the thought that there is no god; therefore, god must have made me an atheist.

"But more and more physicists point to various laws of nature that have to be calibrated just right for stars and planets to form and for life to appear."

Should have read, "A vanishingly small number of physicists. . ."

This idea has been thoroughly discredited. Salon ought to hire a real science reporter to cover science.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19588942/

As a paying Salon reader, I feel that Paglia adds nothing of worth to the publication.

I am quite sure that everything I experience is just my brain running. My brain drinks in sensory input, and chomps away at it, and I experience things.

One of the things that I sometimes experience is a sense of connectedness to all things, a sense of the miraculousness of life and the cosmos, akin to a spiritual experience. I know that I'm not really connected to all things, and that life and the cosmos are reducible to physics. I'm engaging in suspension of disbelief. But I have this experience pretty often. I find it very satisfying. It exercises some bit of my brain that produces lovely molecules, and I feel deeply fulfilled. I get a similar sort of high from helping people who are suffering.

I suspect, and neuroscientists suspect, that this bit of my brain is a built-in. It probably helped us survive in the past because people who had this thing going on in their brains tended to form highly ordered societies that kicked ass. So we find it very pleasant. Like sex.

I think that if I didn't have these experiences, I would start to feel pretty low. Maybe that's what's going on with you. You might try indulging in a bit of this sort of suspension of disbelief, and see if it helps.

Better to trick your brain than to allow your brain to trick you. If you start letting your brain trick you, you could wind up doing something very foolish without realizing it (examples abound).

It reminds me of a walrus, which is very endearing. They should consider adding a couple of tusks ;)

I am a second generation atheist. Religion has never been a part of my life. The uncertainties that attend atheism are second nature to me. I thrive on uncertainty. I find the prospect of a certain universe terrifying rather than comforting. I would not like to live out my days on a game board, rolling the dice to see how many places to move according to a set of rules set down in a book. I would rather be free to explore and discover a mostly unknown universe.

Nietsche, Camus and Sartre had very different starting points. Much like the young women raised by feminists, the current generation of atheists start out taking for granted much of what our forebears had to struggle to achieve. This is progress.