Republicans say they’re there; Democrats say they’re not! In this article from the 6/22/2006 edition of the NY Sun, reporter Eli Lake reports that “the American military has found more than 500 shells of ordinance containing Sarin or mustard gas.”

The Washington Post writes that US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfield “told reporters yesterday the munitions and canisters found are dangerous to coalition forces.” The newspaper also writes that unnamed representatives of intelligence agencies told reporters that the finding was insignificant.

Sounds like some WMDs are there. Ok…except that those particular 500 have likely been there since prior to the first Gulf War. Well, that does still mean that WMDs are in Iraq, as shells filled with chemical weapons do count as WMDs (even if they are somewhat degraded).

Perhaps the biggest impact of this news is that it raises the possibility that recent reports that there were no WMDs in Iraq when the USA invaded are still premature. That idea, in turn, brings up the prospect that other WMDs may have been missed. Why didn’t the UN weapons inspectors ever find these (since they’ve been there, apparently, since prior to 1991)? Why didn’t the US weapons inspectors/investigators find these in the last couple of years of searching until now?

Scarily, if there are or were other WMDs in Iraq since or when the USA invaded, the risk that parties not aligned with Western interests (at least) may have obtained what was there.

Google Book Search dedicates a page to the works of Shakespeare. You can browse through or search through his comedies, tragedies, romances, and histories.

Those four categories are Google-assigned. It seems that the “Romance” category is really for those that don’t quite fit into one of the other three (so-called “problem plays”). For example, The Tempest is classified as a Romance. It does end with a wedding, but that could easily place it in the Comedy category. Shakespeare uses the fantastic to explore ides of romance, nature, politics and power, etc. The play certainly is more serious than Shakespeare’s comedies, and maybe, instead of just calling it a romance, we should think less about how it fits within the categories of Shakespearian plays and more about with what the play concerns itself. It is important to note that the play was composed later in his life, along with those other “problem plays”.

Note that the word “problem” does not denote a problem in Shakespeare’s life or with the bard himself, but rather a problem with the attempts critics and scholars make to classify his works. Perhaps we should simply categorize it, if we must, as a “later” or “mature” play. You could also call it a “mid-life crisis play’, though whether or not it was written in a mid-life period of Shakespeare’s life is also debatable, of course.

Here’s a good idea: why don’t you read The Tempest yourself? You can, thanks to Google, if you go here and click on the link for the work that you’ll find under the Romance tab.

I am so often amazed by the pertinence of the words in the Bible. Take this section from the fourty-fourth chapter of Isaiah as an example. The ease with which you can identify the parallel between the carpenter that worships the produce of his labor and we, today, who live focused on our own produce: money and possessions, most obviously.

The language is simple and the story flows easily: You have a carpenter. He starts with a line. He grows the line and eventually ends up with what appears to be a piece of art: another man. In the same breath our carpenter-character burns wood he has grown as fire and cooks over it as he warms himself, and he prays to the other half of the wood for some kind of deliverance.

The exposition that follows talks about the carpenters (and our) lack of discernment. The delusion of peoples (both individuals and collectively) is a universal reality: the delusion thrived when Isaiah was put (more or less) into ink, and we live mostly deluded lives today. Sometimes we allow our distractions to lead us; we allow — if not enjoy — the excuses of looking away from where we should be looking. How hard is it to look in my right hand and see the “lie” that rests there?

Nevertheless, I have reproduced this passage of Isaiah not as means of an indictment, but more as a wonderful example of the clarity, insight, and timelessness of the Bible. This comes from the ESV, courtesy of BibleGateway.com:

“The ironsmith takes a cutting tool and works it over the coals. He fashions it with hammers and works it with his strong arm. He becomes hungry, and his strength fails; he drinks no water and is faint. The carpenter stretches a line; he marks it out with a pencil. He shapes it with planes and marks it with a compass. He shapes it into the figure of a man, with the beauty of a man, to dwell in a house. He cuts down cedars, or he chooses a cypress tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. Then it becomes fuel for a man. He takes a part of it and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Also he makes a god and worships it; he makes it an idol and falls down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire. Over the half he eats meat; he roasts it and is satisfied. Also he warms himself and says, ‘Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire!’ And the rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, and falls down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, ‘Deliver me, for you are my god!’

“They know not, nor do they discern, for he has shut their eyes, so that they cannot see, and their hearts, so that they cannot understand. No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, ‘Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and have eaten. And shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?’ He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, ‘Is there not a lie in my right hand?’” ESV

So I just figured out that I took down this blog on accident this weekend…sorry about that. I didn’t realize that the interface I use to configure what scripts I can use on the site were site-wide. They are definitely NOT applicable on a per-directory or per-virtual-directory basis. Not that too many people are interested.

But the site is back now! Note that the format will be changing, hopefully, soon, to one that doesn’t crash some people’s web browsers (sorry Amos!…not that you can read this).