Bridge the Globe

Iraq Breaks My Heart

Unbelievable.  Just the latest in truly bad news out of Iraq.  If what we need is a political solution, this ain't gonna cut it.

According to a story in the Washington Post, the Iraqi prime minister's office has played an active role in the removal of senior army and police officers who did their job too well:

Since March 1, at least 16 army and national police commanders have been fired, detained or pressured to resign; at least nine of them are Sunnis, according to U.S. military documents shown to The Washington Post.

Although some of the officers appear to have been fired for legitimate reasons, such as poor performance or corruption, several were considered to be among the better Iraqi officers in the field. The dismissals have angered U.S. and Iraqi leaders who say the Shiite-led government is sabotaging the military to achieve sectarian goals.

"Their only crimes or offenses were they were successful" against the Mahdi Army, a powerful Shiite militia, said Brig. Gen. Dana J.H. Pittard, commanding general of the Iraq Assistance Group, which works with Iraqi security forces....

The issue strikes at a central question about the fledgling government of [Shiite] Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki: whether it can put sectarian differences aside to deliver justice fairly.... Before the most recent Baghdad security plan was launched in February, Maliki repeatedly declared he would target militants regardless of their sect.

I guess by "regardless of their sect" he meant "as long as they're not Shiite."

What a fucking disaster.

Watch your back, Superman!

I love when fiction collides with reality.

According to the AP, a British scientist identified a rock discovered in Serbia as having the same chemical makeup as Kryptonite.

"Towards the end of my research I searched the Web using the mineral's chemical formula, sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide, and was amazed to discover that same scientific name written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen by Lex Luthor from a museum in the film Superman Returns," Stanley said.

The material is white, powdery and not radioactive — unlike the glowing green crystals usually depicted in the Superman comics.

I'm still holding on for a human-cat hybrid.  I mean, ethically I'm completely opposed, but I would love to be friends with a Thundercat.

Three Blind Mice Ain't Blind No More!

Whoa.  When scientists start doing stuff like this it totally freaks me out.

Mice, and rodents in general, can't see colors the way we can.  They just don't have the right photoreceptors in their eyes.

But thanks to the wonders of modern magic genetic engeneering, now they can.  Tweak one gene and all of a sudden you've got super-mice.

The new abilities of the genetically engineered mice indicate that the mammalian brain possesses a flexibility that permits a nearly instantaneous upgrade in the complexity of color vision, say the study’s senior authors, Gerald Jacobs and Jeremy Nathans....

“What we are looking at in these mice is the same evolutionary event that happened in one of the distant ancestors of all primates and that led ultimately to the trichromatic color vision that we now enjoy,” said Nathans.

 Scary.