Okay, a stupid little political observation

But one that needs to be made every now and then.

There are at least three main anti-Israel terrorist groups operating among the Arab people of the Occupied Territories: Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade. The three groups have somewhat different goals and different organizations, but they agree on an important point: progress towards a permanent lasting peace between the state of Israel and the state of Palestine is to be stopped by any means necessary. In fact, in a combined act of villany rarely found outside of JLA/JSA crossovers, all three groups recently sent armed killers on a suicide mission to attack Israeli soldiers, because they knew one thing: if they attacked Israel, Israel would respond in such a way as to make peace less likely.

And, sure enough, the next day, Israel responded to the attack on its soldiers by firing rockets at a car on a busy city street in Gaza. They killed people on the ground and in the car, but not the person they were actually aiming at. This has lead to a predictable follow-up, a retaliatory anti-civilian bombing, which in turn inspired more Israeli rocket attacks, which will almost certainly provide shaky justification for another bombing, then more rocket attacks, and boom the Levant is set back. It's like putting bloody quarters in a video game: We blow up here, helicopters attack there, and the peace process goes back ten giant steps.

None of this is news. This type of thing gets wide coverage in all the papers of the Western world. What doesn't get said often enough is: Every time terrorists strike in Israel, Ariel Sharon makes sure they get exactly what they want: less chance for peace. In other words, every time they attack, the terrorists are guaranteed to win.

What I don't understand is why anyone thinks that Sharon is a good leader. If my prime minister responded to lethal terrorist attacks by giving the terrorists what they wanted, over and over again for three years straight, I would seriously think about shooting him myself. Of course, then I'd have to put up with his replacement, so maybe not.

A down day, but not a downer day

I slept very late today, which helped me recover from overexerting myself last night. Sleep is good. My cold is better, though not gone; my surgery incision hurts occasionally, but not much. Both of these are tremendous improvements.

I had a list of errands I was going to try to run, but a weird off-again, on-again, off-again appointment with one of nellorat's students kept us all disorganized enough that I didn't get any of them done. Basically, one of her students is extremely unfamiliar with how her computer works, and I was going to go up with nellorat to provide tech support. Then it transmogrified into two trips, then back to one, then down to none (although I did consult with her on the phone for about 15 minutes while we tried to find some information on the Columbia University web site; eventually we found where the info definitely would be if it existed, and it wasn't, so it doesn't). Along the way, Fred, our Ford Taurus, spectacularly blew out the freon in his air conditioning, with an explosive WHOOSH and a gusher of liquid along the street. This is doubly bothersome since we just had it recharged yesterday. I'm hoping we can guilt-trip the service station into fixing the problem and throwing in a free recharge.

Saw a groundhog, though, so today wasn't a complete loss. And most of our rats are now done with their medicines. We're going to move some of them around, so I'll get a new selection of rats in my study.