inkbluesky

Dahon launch “lightest ever” folder

The Mu XL has just about everything you would want in a city bike, including plush suspension, lighting, luggage capacity, puncture resistant tires, and style to spare.

Its on my wish list. Well more like my fantasy list since I won’t be shelling $899 for a cool little foldable bike anytime soon.

winter illustration with sleigh. this one and the next both have a little oil paint texture.

winter illustration with snowman wallpaper

Holocaust Denial, Bush Style

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s flirtation with those who deny the reality of the Nazi genocide has rightly been met with disgust. But another holocaust denial is taking place with little notice: the holocaust in Iraq. The average American believes that 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the US invasion in March 2003. The most commonly cited figure in the media is 70,000. But the actual number of people who have been killed is most likely more than one million.

This is five times more than the estimates of killings in Darfur and even more than the genocide in Rwanda 13 years ago.

The estimate of more than one million violent deaths in Iraq was confirmed again two months ago in a poll by the British polling firm Opinion Research Business, which estimated 1,220,580 violent deaths since the US invasion. This is consistent with the study conducted by doctors and scientists from the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health more than a year ago. Their study was published in the Lancet, Britain’s leading medical journal. It estimated 601,000 people killed due to violence as of July 2006; but if updated on the basis of deaths since the study, this estimate would also be more than a million. These estimates do not include those who have died because of public health problems created by the war, including breakdowns in sewerage systems and electricity, shortages of medicines, etc.

Amazingly, some journalists and editors - and of course some politicians - dismiss such measurements because they are based on random sampling of the population rather than a complete count of the dead. While it would be wrong to blame anyone for their lack of education, this disregard for scientific methods and results is inexcusable. As one observer succinctly put it: if you don’t believe in random sampling, the next time your doctor orders a blood test, tell him that he needs to take all of it.

Could be one of the reasons that violence in Iraq has gone down a little, there are fewer people left to kill. Sanctions against Iraq might not have been the perfect solution, but when one goes to war the bottom line was that you do so to accomplish more good then harm.

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