Around the web today

Thucydides (aka Brad Malestein) of Contemporary History graces us with one of his rare but poignant posts. This one deals with what we should do with Iran and I couldn't agree more:

If, however, we went out tomorrow and declared war on Iran, and bombed their nuclear facilities and cities until they surrendered or were blasted into the Stone Age, the glorious struggle would be a lot less glory, and a lot more struggle. Iran would have difficulty supplying terrorists, for one. Enthusiasm for risky terrorist ventures and suicide missions would wane, since there is a difference between dying for a cause and dying for nothing. Also, rather than guessing that Iran may have nuclear weapons in ten years, we would have a better estimate: never.

Elsewhere Robert Tracy of Illustrated Ideas posts a piece by Jack Wakeland of TIA about Cindy Sheehan with which I am in substantial agreement. Here's the most relevant paragraph:

And - most of all - Cindy Sheehan's grief does not give her license to condemn American civilization. Her grief does not exempt her from being morally judged by the rest of us. There is no excuse for what she is saying. She hates America for its virtues. She's purposely acting to undermine political support for a war of necessity. She is attempting - through the political process - to impair our national defense during a shooting war. She's evil.

Finally there's some positive science news from Switzerland in this story:

Professor Hohlfeld concludes: “We have shown that fetal skin is a substitute for biological skin that can provide burned patients with a very high quality of skin in a short time with no additional grafting techniques . . . In view of the therapeutic effects of this technique along with the simplicity in application, fetal skin cells could have great potential in tissue engineering.”