I get at least one email per day from MEMRI--The Middle East Media Research Institute. Some of them are encouraging, with word of rational people behaving rationally. But too often, it is very discouraging.

If the extremists were a small and insignificant group relegated to the sidelines, able to only put their materials out only on cable access at three in the morning, or on obscure websites and mimeographed sheets passed out seriptitiously, they'd be disturbing crackpots and worrisome, but not quite so terrifying as when one discovers that a leader of a ruling party in Turkey spouts the sort of nonsense one expects to read about only in Nazi literature of the 1930s or in the ravings of crackpots on neo-Nazi websites:

VISIT THE MEMRI TURKISH MEDIA BLOG: http://www.thememriblog.org/turkey/

Special Dispatch-Turkish Media Project/Antisemitism Documentation Project August 29, 2007 No. 1699

Antisemitism and the Turkish Islamist "Milli Gorus" Movement: Zionists/Jews "Bacteria," "Disease"

To view this Special Dispatch in HTML, visit:
http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD169907.


A Turkish Flash TV interview (http://www.milligorusarsiv.com/videolar/file.php?f=5) with former Turkish prime minister Prof. Necmettin Erbakan, who is the founder and leader of the Islamist movement Milli Gorus, was aired July 1, 2007 as part of a pre-election program.

Erbakan is the leader and mentor of the ruling AKP leadership, including both Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and presidential candidate Abdullah Gul – both of whom have in the past been active members of Erbakan's political parties, filling mayoral, ministerial, and parliamentary posts. All of Erbakan's parties have been banned by Turkish court orders.

In his campaign to promote his Islamist Happiness Party (SP) prior to the July 22, 2007 general elections, Erbakan reiterated antisemitic statements in this interview, as well as in interviews with other TV channels. In his public speeches, he expanded on these views, frequently referring to "Zionists" (meaning, in fact, the Jews) as "bacteria" and "disease," to crowds of tens of thousands, at every stop on his campaign trail, including Ankara and Istanbul, and especially in Anatolian cities such as Konya, Elazig and Trabzon.

The following are excerpts from the Flash TV interview:


All Infidel Nations Are One Zionist Entity; Jews Want To Rule From Morocco to Indonesia

Interviewer: "Dear Mr. Erbakan, we are going to elections at the end of a five-year-long rule by your students [in AKP]. You say that these elections are of vital importance, that they are about 'to be or not to be' for Turkey. Why do you think this way, especially when the country is being ruled by your own disciples?"

Erbakan: [following greetings and prayers] "These elections are about whether we will be, or we will cease to be. I'll tell you where this is coming from, and for this we have to first demonstrate the infrastructure. [...] The right path to the happiness of all humanity is our path, the Milli Gorus way.

"Our Prophet was sent with love and compassion, and our goal is the happiness of all six billion people in the world. We are Muslims, and our civilization has brought happiness to the entire world. This is the good, but there also is evil. Our religion says that the infidels are one nation [Millah]. That means evil is run by one control center.

"When we look at the map of the world, we see about 200 countries painted in colors, and we think that there are many races, religions, and nations. The fact is that for 300 years, all these [200 nations] have been controlled from one center only. This center is the racist, imperialist Zionism. Unless you make this correct diagnosis for the illness, you cannot find the cure to it. You will ask, 'What is this belief, this racist imperialism that destroys happiness in this world?'

"This belief began 5,765 years ago, when the children of Israel were living in Egypt, with a book of magic that was written by someone called Kabbala. The author or authors of this book later claimed that they belonged to the tribe of Moses, but this is not true. They distorted the Tevrat [bible] of Moses and put in it the Kabbala. If you want to see proof of this, you can look at their Tevrat and then look at the Kabbala.

"What do these people believe in? Their belief has four principles [while ours has six] that say: [...] 1) You are the real people of God; all others are created to be your slaves; you were created as men and others [were created] as monkeys that later turned into men. This is what they believe and what they teach. They believe that they are the superior class. 2) This superiority will be not only in thought, but will be materialized, actually realized. They will be the masters and the others will be their slaves. 3) For all this to come true, they must perform three duties: The first duty will be to gather all the exiled sons of Israel into Quds [Jerusalem]; the second duty is to build the 'Greater Israel' between the Nile and the Euphrates, within these determined borders, and to provide for the safety of this Greater Israel.

"Do you know what the safety of Israel means? It means that they will rule the 28 countries from Morocco to Indonesia. Since all the Crusades were organized by the Zionists, and since it was our forefathers the Seljuks who stopped them, according to the Kabbala there should be no sovereign state in Anatolia. This is these people's [i.e. the Jews'] religion, their faith. You can't argue or negotiate with them. This is their religion, and it comes from the Kabbala.

"Why did this man, Kabbala, write this book? Because he wanted to encourage those who were oppressed by the pharaohs, by saying that they were superior and were God's true people. Kabbala says that this people defeated even God – may Allah forgive. The same line is found in the Tevrat as well."


The Zionists Worked 5,767 Years to Build a World Order In Which All Money and Manpower Depend On Jews

Interviewer: "I understand, my hoca [teacher], but what does all this have to do with the July 22 elections? Can we come to that?"

Erbakan: "I'll finish their four principles. 3) They will destroy – Allah forbid – Al-Aqsa mosque and in its place build Solomon's temple. 4) Only then will their messiah come and establish them as the rulers of the world.

"This is what they believe in. To realize these goals and meet their obligations, they [i.e. the Jews] have been working for 5,767 years!

"Their history begins with this Kabbala. They say that they want to be the rulers of the world. This is a racist religion. If your mother is not a Jew, you cannot be a Jew. That's why they cannot multiply and grow. Among six billion people they are only 30 million. [...] So how will they rule the world? They say, 'Wait a minute, we have conquered the power of money within the capitalist order. As one can see in the symbol of the 13 levels of a pyramid that is depicted on the American dollar, all peoples will serve us at the top. With the power of the dollar, we have established a world order where money and manpower are dependent on us. This is how we rule the world.'

"Now, let’s come to us [the Muslims]. Thanks to our beloved Prophet, light and happiness came to the six billion people of the world. We became the masters. We [the Muslims] ruled for 11 centuries. But unfortunately, in the last three centuries the children of Israel have grabbed this material power. Now they control the world that we live in.

"What kind of a world did they build? Without understanding this, nothing can be comprehended. Ballots, elections [that you ask about] are all details. The essence is this: Let's assume you, as a Muslim, want to go to [Mecca for] the haj, and you want to fly on a Turkish plane. For an airline to get a permit to fly and land in other airports, it must be a member of the IATA. The IATA is an organization of the children of Israel, of Rockefeller. To become a member, airlines must give them [the Jews] 9% of the ticket proceeds."


The U.S. Dollar is Zionist Money; The Jewish Bacteria Must be Diagnosed for a Cure to be Found

Interviewer: "This means that when we go on the haj, we pay 9% of our fare to Israel."

Erbakan: "You know what this means. It means saying to Israel, 'Take this money, buy guns, and kill me tomorrow, [so that you can] occupy Turkey.' This is the order that they have built and have implemented for three centuries.

"Let's say that you, as a Muslim, want to send money to another Muslim country. Say you want to send money to Pakistan. You cannot send it, because you don't have the infrastructure to do that. You are living in their [i.e. the Zionists'] world. To send the money, you need to take it to a Turkish bank. Then the Turkish bank will give it to the American bank. The American bank will give an order to its branch [in Pakistan], that branch will give the money to the Pakistani bank that will pay out the money that you sent.

"But in all this, you will pay 1%. From wherever [and] to wherever the money goes, 1% is paid to the Jew. They have taken the world into their hands. That green dollar that you recognize is Zionist money.

"The owner is not the American central bank. The American central bank only rents this money, paying $500 billion a year for rent. They [the Zionists] print this green money, the paper, and they bring it to our sheikhs in Saudi Arabia and they say, 'Here, take this green paper and give us your oil.' And they take the oil with these pieces of paper. There are five trillion [of these] dollars outside of America.

"And look at what else they do. I am telling you all this so we can all recognize this bacteria. What do they [i.e. the Zionists] do? They go back to the oil sheikh and tell him to return the green papers, and give him a yellow paper instead. What is this yellow paper? It is an American bond. There are bonds outside the U.S. valued at $5 trillion as well. That means they took back their green papers to use them again. Those bonds go to the central banks. And what does the American central bank do? It gathers all the central banks, to give them a white paper.

"So where are all the reserves of the countries? Our reserves are not in the safes of our central bank. They are in the safes of Rockefeller. He is using all this money. What do we have? The head of our central bank has a white paper in front of him. On this paper it is written that such and such a number of billions of dollars are in the banks [in the U.S.] What we have is only a piece of white paper.

"They are crooks three times over. They suck [money] from everybody – five trillion with green papers, another five trillion with yellow papers, and they keep trillions with the white paper they give you. Every child born should be told, 'Welcome to this house, my dear, but this house has an owner, and there is rent to be paid. The owner of this house – that is, this world – is the Zionist, and you must pay him $1,200 every month.' Every one of us has to pay this $1,200, because of those trillions of exploitation dollars.

"There's more: Say you go to a supermarket, wherever you are in the world. You [select] some products, and you pay for them. Say the cashier tells you the total is 300 lira. You pay 300, and you walk out with your sack. No matter where you are and where you buy, 100 lira of the 300 is interest.

"You buy bread. The tractor was purchased with interest. The flour mills, the factories were built with interest. We are made to pay for these interest [charges]. If you read the book we wrote on this, you would see clearly that one-third of the money we pay for a loaf of bread is paid out in interest."


Zionists Organized the Crusades; The Jews are Using the Christians

Interviewer: "But, my hoca [teacher], it is now your students, your disciples [in the AKP], who are ruling Turkey..."

Erbakan: "My students must have thought, 'Since there is so much money going around, why shouldn't we have a share of it too?' But that money is exploitation money. It is not good money. Our students apparently have not understood what we have been teaching them for 30 years [in Milli Gorus].

"Let's go back to the [Zionist] bacteria. About $22 trillion out of all the money we spend every year is paid to these racist imperialist Zionists. We, as a country, are paying $200 billion every year to the Zionists so that they can prepare their bombs, so that they can one day come and take our country. This is the world that the Zionists have built. [...]

"This racist imperialist Zionism organized 19 Crusades just to reach its goals. To organize the Crusades, it used the Christians. Why is it that the Christians are helping the Jews? A rabbi goes out on the balcony and tells them, 'Oh Christians, isn't it the Messiah that you are waiting for? We too are waiting for the same Messiah.' What the rabbi is doing is taqiya,(1) of course. Then he goes into his synagogue and tells a five-year-old, 'What you heard me say outside is not true. Our Messiah is different. That Jesus is someone whom we killed. He will not come or go anywhere. I told them that to deceive them.'

"These people tell the Christians, 'You are waiting but you have no guidelines as to how to make him come. Our Tevrat tells us what to do. Let's do them together and let's bring the Messiah.' And what were those guidelines? To bring the Jews to Jerusalem, to build and secure the Greater Israel, and so on."


Jews Founded Protestantism, the Capitalist Order; Clinton, Bush are Members

"It was Zionism that established the sect of Protestantism. The capitalist order of today is the religious order of Protestantism. It's because the pope rejects the concept of interest, so as not to allow the exploitation of his children. That's why the Jews decided to change the [Christian] religion, and founded Protestantism. This way they can charge interest and make everybody work for them.

"That's also why they built the Evangelical sect in America, which now numbers 90 million members. Most people you see there [in the U.S.] belong to this sect. Take Clinton: He said that he did not serve in the military for America, 'but for Israel' he said, 'I would take up arms, go into a bunker, and fight.' You ask him, "Hey, Clinton, are you a Jew? Why is Israel your business?' He says, 'Nooo. It is not because I am a Jew that I say this. It is because I am a good Christian that I think that way. It's because I want Jesus to come that I am saying this.'

"All this is because the Evangelical sect was built by the Jews for them to think that way. Bush belongs to that sect. Clinton belongs to that sect. Anyone you know... Now look, when we look at someone we see his skin only; but behind it are all the muscles, bones, nerves. I am now giving you the anatomy of the world to show you what is behind the skin, behind the surface.

"Without knowing all this, you cannot comprehend what is going on in the world. When we learn all this, we will know that there are no 200 countries in the world. There are only two. One is the world of Islam, and the other is all the others. Who uses these others? Racist imperialism [meaning Zionism].

"The Zionists are holding the Christians in the palms of their hands, and using them. China's and India's industrial development is being carried out with Jewish capital. Japan's too. They control them too. Now, only Islam remains against them. The Jews say you will be our slaves. Islam says la i lahe il l'Allah. We won't bow to anyone but Allah. Nobody will be slaves to anybody. So this is the clash between the two – the clash between good and evil."


Bush Attacked Iraq to Build Greater Israel, So Jesus Can Return

Interviewer: "So how do we tie all this to the elections? Why is it that these elections are about 'to be or not to be?' It is your students who are going strong. They were taught and trained by you. So what is the problem...?"

Erbakan: "A little more patience. Look. These Jews started 19 Crusades. The 19th was World War [I]. Why? Only to build Israel. They used the Christians to build Israel. The Canakkale [Gallipoli] victory was only one of our battles. We fought on 30 fronts during the war. Then they had us sign the Treaty of Sèvres. They told us they would eliminate us and build Greater Israel and make us their slaves. No other nation could fight against them on 30 battlefronts like our nation did.

"After they made us sign the Treaty of Sèvres, the French came to Kahramanmaras [on the Syrian border], not to keep it but to give it to make it part of Greater Israel. The English went to Palestine, not to keep it for themselves, but to build Israel. They are doing all this just so that Jesus will return.

"If we do not see these realities, we cannot understand world affairs. What does Bush say? He says that Jesus ordered him to invade Iraq. He says that the most important factor in making his decision on Iraq was his being Christian. [He thought,] 'I will take Iraq. I will build Greater Israel, so that Jesus can return.' These people work with that kind of belief. If you don't know about these peoples' beliefs, you cannot understand why they do what they do. Our youth must learn all this." [...]
[Break for commercials.]


Endnote:
1 Taqiya is an Islamic term that means concealing one’s true beliefs to avoid repression.


*********************
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an independent, non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle East. Copies of articles and documents cited, as well as background information, are available on request.

MEMRI holds copyrights on all translations. Materials may only be used with proper attribution.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)
P.O. Box 27837, Washington, DC 20038-7837
Phone: (202) 955-9070
Fax: (202) 955-9077
E-Mail: memri@memri.org
Search previous MEMRI publications at www.memri.org

Some wonder "why do they hate us?" as if it's a mystery. Well, given that the material spouted by this crackpot is taught in the schools, preached from the mosques, printed in the newspapers and magazines, and broadcast regularly on TV and radio, why do you think?

Adolph Hitler is alive and well and widely distributed throughout the Moslem world, where his book sells very well, together with all the other old Nazi lies.

If you have Google Earth (and if you don't have it, you really need to get it) be sure to download the latest update. Google has teamed with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, the science operations center for the Hubble Space Telescope to add Google Sky to the program. In addition to all the Hubble images, it includes images taken by two powerful visible-light surveys, the Digitized Sky Survey and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The Digitized Sky Survey contains photographic surveys of nearly the entire sky, with about a million objects. The Sloan survey comprises images of hundreds of millions of much fainter objects and covers more than a quarter of the sky. As with Google Earth, you can travel anywhere you want, magnifying images and virtually traversing light years in a matter of seconds.

If, in your wanderings, you see an icon of the HubbleSite logo, just click on it. Information on the object will appear. Sky in Google Earth also will provide links to the Hubble news database and other Hubble information, including the Hubble Heritage project.

In an otherwise intriguing analysis of the writings of the science fiction author Philip K. Dick Blows Against the Empire
The return of Philip K. Dick, Adam Gopnik writing in the New Yorker comments:

In “Clans of the Alphane Moon,” he had already glimpsed the possibility that normal governing might be the work of paranoids. This Nixon-era vision becomes, in the VALIS books, a metaphysical truth. “The Empire is the institution, the codification, of derangement; it is insane and imposes its insanity on us by violence, since its nature is a violent one,”

This description of the "Clans of the Alpine Moon" as a "Nixon-era" vision annoyed me since, as Gopnik had already pointed out earlier in his article, this story appeared in 1964. As I recall, in 1964 Lyndon Johnson was President. Nixon didn't become President until January, 1969. So how, exactly, is this a "Nixon-era" story?

Aside from that rather puzzling bit, I thought the article was an interesting overview and analysis of a very important and influential science fiction writer. Non science fiction fans are more likely to remember the movies based on his stories. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" became the movie Blade Runner, while "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" became Total Recall.

Interesting thought from Glenn Reynolds at TCS Daily:

The 25th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death has passed, and news reports have stressed his continuing influence on music, culture, and race relations. But those reports have missed Elvis's greatest achievement: as a cultural immune response to totalitarianism....

Hitler was aided by a new technological innovation: the radio. Nazism's totalitarian sibling, communism, spread largely by print and took decades to gain a foothold. But radio allowed Hitler to manipulate emotions wholesale, in a way that had never been possible before. And the masses - starved for entertainment and desperate for catharsis, and a sense of purpose - ate it up.

But now it's all different, and Elvis deserves a lot of the credit. Oh, there were big stars before Elvis: Bing Crosby's appeal is now nearly forgotten, but it was once huge, and Frank Sinatra was, in a way, a sort of proto-rock star. But after Elvis, the world was different.

Hitler used the tools provided by new technology. But Elvis owned them: radio, television, movies, it didn't matter: he conquered them all. And the changes that he brought about helped to topple totalitarian regimes, and make new ones less likely, for he left behind a changed culture that short-circuited the mechanisms that Hitler had used to secure power - and the mechanisms that other regimes used to maintain it.

Read the whole thing: The King of Anti-Fascism

My editor told me that my book, The Bible's Most Fascinating People, due to be released January 10, 2008 by Reader's Digest (and currently available for pre-order on Amazon.com) was being sent to a "repro house" on August 16 or 17. I asked her what that was and she explained that "repro" is short for reprographic. The repro house essentially turns the desktop-publishing documents and images my publisher sends them into high-quality graphics that can be used by the printer. Books are printed using CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) printing inks. If you look at a picture in a book through a magnifier, you'll see that it's made up of lots of tiny dots of each of these colors. The repro house separates the colors for each page of the book so that the printer can create a printing plate for each one. So, my book is that much closer to being available.

I've registered my last name as a domain name. I suppose one could consider it as my official author's website. Just visit www.nettelhorst.com.

Since the ISBN has been assigned to my book, and the title has been changed to The Bible's Most Fascinating People: An Illustrated Collection: Stories from the Old and New Testament, I’ve been checking Amazon every so often. I found it there tonight, though without a cover image yet; it is available for pre-order. It is listed under my full name, oddly enough: Robin Paul Nettelhorst. I've seen the galleys and on the actual book my name is my normal byline: R.P. Nettelhorst. The publication date is listed as January 10, 2008. A bit later than I expected.

See it and preorder it here:

http://www.amazon.com/Bibles-Most-Fascinating-People-Testaments/dp/0762108886/ref=sr_1_1/002-4930214-6251256?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1185425940&sr=1-1

I'm sure it will make a great gift. Buy extra copies.

Animusic 2 - 04 - Cathedral Pictures

My daughter ran across something called animusic on YouTube. I really enjoyed it. The DVDs are available on Amazon.com and I'm going to order them. Here's a version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition that is doubtless different than any version you've ever seen or heard


Amazon has this to say about Animusic:

Watching Animusic is like being mesmerized by the world's most elaborate Rube Goldberg devices: You're so astonished by their ingenuity that you can't look away. This "computer animation video album" is the brainchild of Wayne Lytle, a progressive-rock keyboardist and 1988 graduate of Cornell University's Program of Computer Graphics. Modifying techniques originally applied to the visualization of scientific data, Lytle partnered with graphic artist and 3D modeler Dave Crognale to create elaborate virtual stage sets and imaginary musical instruments that are driven via MIDI interface to virtually "play" the music that Lytle has composed for them. "The music drives the instruments," explains Lytle in his engaging DVD commentary, "and not the other way around." Using proprietary software called MIDImotion™, Lytle and Crognale have invented self-playing musical instruments that exist in a magical realm of musical and mathematical precision, perfectly synchronized to the kind of fully-synthesized prog-rock that Lytle obviously enjoys (and if you're a fan of Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman, you will, too). It's the kind of audiovisual bombast that appeals to some more than others (and there's something oddly impersonal about removing humans from the performance of music), but Animusic is so intricately clever that anyone can be captivated by the meticulous novelty of these beautifully engineered musical marvels.

Take, for example, the most popular track, "Pipe Dream," in which thousands of animated balls take on a life of their own, popping out of an intricate system of pipes and barrels and bouncing, with percussive precision, onto all varieties of strings, drums, xylophones, timbales, cowbells... it's just hypnotically amazing. The same holds true for all of these videos, and while the colorful 3D rendering of Animusic (first released in 2001) is no longer state-of-the-art, the underlying mechanics remain timelessly appealing. For this special edition DVD released in 2004, Lytle opens his toy-box to reveal the creative process of Animusic from conceptual drawings to final 3D rendering. There's also a "solo-cam" function allowing viewers to switch angular focus from one instrument to another, along with animated set-construction demonstrations to show how everything fits together in the realm of Animusic. The 5.1-channel surround mix makes Animusic a perfect demonstration disc for high-end video systems (this is nothing if not a geek's delight), and Lytle's first animation (from 1996) is included along with a sneak-peek at Animusic 2, the follow-up DVD released in 2005. --Jeff Shannon

This week I recieved some galleys for my forthcoming book, 100 Characters From the Bible. They look really beautiful, I think. My job was to add some text here and there, among other things.

Genesis II, Bigelow Aerospace's second test facility was successfully launched this afternoon on a Russian Dnepr rocket (prior to the end of the Cold War, such missles were ICBMs; now Russia makes money with them). More details are available at the Bigelow Aerospace website: http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/multiverse/news.php#update

The Genesis II is a subscale version (16 feet by 8 feet, inflated) module for what will be a future space station.

Got an email from someone in marketing at Reader's Digest Trade Books today. It's the first direct contact I've had with them. Up til now, all communication had been through my London publisher, Quarto. They needed author's photos for their Winter catalogue and sales kits.

Armadillo Aerospace (founded and run by the guy who made the Doom games) did a demo launch of his lunar lander; if he does what he did with this test at the XPrize Cup in New Mexico in October, he’ll win a million bucks. The video is here:



Armadillo Lunar Challenge



I thought it was pretty cool; the test vehicle is about as tall as a person. More info here:



Cosmic Log



Meanwhile, the owner and CEO of Amazon.com has his own space program, too:



Blue Origin



There’s video of his vertical take off and landing rocket there, too. Just scroll down and you’ll see where to click.



And, Bigelow Aerospace (owned by the CEO of Budget Suites of America) has a test space station in orbit and plans to launch another one later this month. For more info (pictures and video), go here:



Bigelow Aerospace



Things remain very busy in space. NASA is scheduled to launch the next Shuttle to the International Space Station on Friday, June 8.

Richard Chesnoff of the New York Daily News writes:

Forty years ago tomorrow, Israel wielded its terrible swift sword against the attack-poised armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan - and saved the Jewish state from destruction.

It was the Six-Day War, and the fledgling state's stunning victory over enemies determined to annihilate it galvanized the world and changed the Mideast map - perhaps forever.

I was one of the handful of foreign correspondents who reached the front during that monumentally brief battle. I was in Sinai on the first day, then returned north and managed to enter Gaza just as that benighted city was falling to Israel's largely civilian tank corps. Then it was on to Jerusalem.

Like anyone who believes in the justice of Israel's existence, I was deeply relieved by its victory on June 10. I had heard the bloodthirsty Arab threats of a new Holocaust. I had seen the "Kill the Jews" posters in Gaza schools. I had seen the bunkers and mass graves that Israel had been forced to dig in expectation of invasion, if not defeat.

Yet, as we mark its 40th anniversary, it's become fashionable in some circles to rewrite the history of the Six-Day War. Radicals, so-called "humanitarians" and others who love to hate Israel now claim that what was essentially a war for survival was in fact just an excuse for Zionist imperialism. Even serious journals like Britain's The Economist say that while the war may have been necessary, it has ultimately proven "a calamity for the Jewish state."

How ridiculous! Despite the seemingly insoluble problems that have arisen over the past four decades - not the least of them, Israel's continuing rule over occupied territories and a million-plus hostile Palestinians - the war was not only necessary, it was one of Israel's finest hours.

Read the rest of the article, A War That Never Ends.

Remember that Friday, May 25 is Towel Day, set aside as a remembrance of Douglas Adams (1952-2001), author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. This means that everywhere you go on Friday, you must carry a towel with you.

To quote from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

“A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

"More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”

See the site: www.towelday.kojv.net for more information.

I recieved the "queries" from Michelle, my editor today. They are the result of a consultant that Reader's Digest hired to go through my manuscript. Most the the questions have to do with minor issues, like a desire for a biblical reference, or to double check if I got something right, or to clarify how I wrote something (and there are, unsurprisingly, some questions regarding interpretation that are more substantive, especially with Mary Magdalene), but it's about 24 pages worth total (much of that space is taken up with quotations from my manuscript, so it's not so long as it seems). So, I started work this morning around 8:30 and worked without a break until about 4:30. I forgot to eat lunch. I finished the OT queries and now have only the NT ones to go through. I think I'll have everything done by some time on Monday, most likely.

SpaceRef.com has reprinted a press release from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics that I think is very exciting:

For the first time, astronomers have created a rough map of a planet orbiting a distant sun-like star, employing a technique that may one day enable mapping of Earth-like worlds. Since the planet just charted is a gas giant and lacks a solid surface, the map shows cloud-top features. Using the Spitzer infrared space telescope, astronomers detected a bright hot spot that is offset from "high noon," where heating is greatest.

For images and other details:
Extrasolar World

The news about Herod's tomb is very interesting. Though it took them all day, by this evening even MSNBC had corrected the error regarding when Herod ruled. It certainly took them long enough. Kind of odd, really.

Herod's tomb has apparently been discovered. The AP story, reprinted by both CNN and MSNBC, both get a minor detail wrong, reporting that Herod began ruling in Judea around 74 BC (which is actually about when he was born):

Herod became the ruler of the Holy Land under the Romans around 74 B.C.

Encyclopedia Brittannica gets it right (as does Wikipedia):

Herod the Great, Latin Herodes Magnus Roman-appointed king of Judaea (37–4 BC), who built many fortresses, aqueducts, theatres, and other public buildings and generally raised the prosperity of his land but who was the centre of political and family intrigues in his later years.

So, besides the date being wrong, it is also a bit imprecise in suggesting that he ruled the "Holy Land" when in fact he only ruled a piece of it: Judea.

I emailed MSNBC's science editor at 6:04 PM PDT; as of 11:48 PDT the mistake remains. I wonder if they'll ever bother to make a correction? I can't imagine that they'll actually pay any attention to an email from me, after all.

UPDATE:

CNN's website at least, has the correct date up now. Perhaps MSNBC will notice eventually and follow suit.

May Day has been a holiday for Communists for many years. I ran across the suggestion, by way of Instapundit today that, just as there is a Holocaust Rembrance Day for recalling the slaughter of millions by the Nazis, that perhaps May 1 should be transformed into a day to remember the 80 to 100 million people murdered by those who marched under the banners of Communism in such places a the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Cambodia, Poland, Rumania, East Germany, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslavakia and the like.

Communism is and was at least as great an evil as Nazism; I find it startling the numbers of people who still hold it in honor.

Stephen Hawking lands after zero-G flight, MSNBC

"He had a wonderful time. Far beyond our expectations," Diamandis said. "The medical indications were better than expected." After six parabolas, Zero Gravity tried to call it quits, but Hawking insisted they do more, said Noah McMahon, chief marketing officer for Zero Gravity and Hawking's coach for the flight. They decided to keep going because he was doing so well."....

In preflight interviews, Hawking said Thursday's trip was also meant to show "that everyone can participate in this type of weightless experience" — even people with disabilities as serious as his. Diamandis said that Hawking was the first person with his kind of disability to take a weightless flight, and the outcome showed that "others can follow in Dr. Hawking's footsteps."

I'm glad it went well and that he had a good time. Everyone will be able to travel to space some day.