The respected British medical journal The Lancet has published the results of a study by public health experts from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, and Baghdad’s al-Mustansiriyya University. The rather stunning conclusion of the study is:

Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths…

Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children.

Think about this: if a foreign power occupied your state – because we are talking about a smallish country here – and killed 100,000 civilians, including women and children, and showed no sign of leaving, what lengths would you go to in order to fight that foreign power? What about people in neighboring states – who may be your friends and relatives – who have reason to believe the foreign power is coming after them next? What might they be willing to do?

With that in mind, does it seem like a good idea to be in the position of that foreign power?

Arafat’s sick? No way – take a look at this photo from the BBC:

He looks healthy as a horse!

I am not a baseball fan, but I am a Bostonian. With a mind thus unclouded by fandom, I bring to your attention a grim fact: last night, a venerable Boston institution, the Red Sox, effectively ceased to exist.

The Red Sox were not simply a baseball team. They were an allegory for our city. They were a symbol of underdogs everywhere. For many people, they were a minor pagan religion. The Red Sox did not have their following because of their record of success, but because of their character and history.

Even at the seventh-inning stretch last night, with the Red Sox up 3-0, every true Red Sox fan believed that it was still possible for the team to lose the Series. That’s a beautiful thing. If the same happens next year, will anyone harbor the same doubt?

A legendary institution that was a linchpin of a proud and venerable local tradition was destroyed last night; in its place is a mere baseball team. The only thing left is to raze Fenway Park and build a faceless stadium named after a bank in some sterile gentrified neighborhood on the outskirts of town.

But go Sox!

Watching the fourth game of the American baseball championship series, I particularly enjoyed the brief video of the “multi-national forces” in Iraq saluting during the seventh-inning stretch, which I thought was very appropriate for the “World Series”.

Great stuff. "Do you have that in Severe?"

According to a new book, Jacques Chirac was prepared to contribute 15,000 French troops to the war in Iraq, but negotiations broke down when Chirac decided the Bush Administration was rushing to dismantle the inspection process and start the war machine.

But don't forget: we've got Poland!

Learn is a computer program – a Perl script, to be precise – that writes its own blog. Learn does an unconvincing job of simulating human writing, just like real bloggers.

“Our neighbor april says the problem with blogging is completely quirky turkey as well.” We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

That left-wing rag, the New York Times, is at it again:

Bush appeared defensive at the start of the 90-minute debate, and at times the camera caught him scowling or frowning as Kerry relentlessly attacked his record on Iraq. But as the debate continued, he made a passionate defense of the values that are at the foundation of his foreign policy: taking the fight to terrorists and spreading freedom across the planet.