Okay, I sent my taxes off in time. If I had known I was getting money back, I’d have done them sooner, but I was pretty sure I was going to have to pay. But hey, they were in the Post Office Monday morning, and I was fine with my taxes until next year. Well, okay, until I have to do my Virginia taxes, but I’ll take care of those this weekend. All I have to do is copy figures, mostly.

Then, Monday night, I suddenly flashed on how it only took one stamp for the envelope, and how it didn’t even weigh a full ounce, and I wondered: Did I remember to include the Schedule D? I quickly got the envelope with the tax forms in it and leafed through the papers. There were two copies of the Schedule D.

Damn. Well, I put one copy in an envelope and decided I’d call the IRS and find out what to do next. Good thing I did, because when I called them this morning, the kind lady on the phone informed me that my best bet was to sit tight and wait for the IRS Error Dept. to contact me. Apparently, if I were to send in another paper, this would confuse them even more and make things take longer, specifically, my refund. If I wait for them to contact me, there will be a fax number, they’ll collect my Schedule D, and send off my refund. If I send it in, they’ll hold my refund until they figure out why they have two pieces of paper with my name and SSN on them.

You know, I actually see her point, and even see the wisdom in this. They still have tens of millions of forms, even with electronic filing, and they need to keep track of them in an orderly fashion.

I wonder how long it’s going to take them to realize I forgot to put in my Schedule D. Perhaps we should start a pool. Hey, yeah, because if I win, I can add it to my refund check, which is going towards an iPod purchase anyway.

Because there are a lot of them.

Bush to raise Iran nuclear issue with Hu

The “Hu’s on first?” joke is so obvious, you almost don’t need to say it.

Hawaii May Honor Humuhumunukunukuapuaa

Man, Hawaiians have the coolest names for things. That’s a fish. Bet you can’t say it five times fast. (It’s called “humuhumu” for short.)

This one is just: Ew. I mean — ew.

Mission Impossible? Tom Cruise boasts of eating placenta

Then again, it’s Tom “I have shit-for-brains because I’m a scientologist” Cruise. Yeah, yeah, I know, some people think it’s a cool thing to do. Well, when I was twelve, I watched my cat eat her afterbirth and ever since, have been utterly horrified at anyone even thinking of doing it. Note to Tom: You’re not a cat.

And what’s up with this Chad guy? I mean, can he stop whining already?

Chad calls for international support
Chad confident of World Bank deal by end of April
Chad softens threat to cut oil production
Chad not to expel refugees

Dude. Chill. I mean, really, it’s bad enough you’re named Chad, but do you have to make the world hate you?

See what happens when you name your son after a 1950s movie star?

Do you remember this post?

An open letter to a blind man
When I was twelve, you moved into my apartment complex. We kids liked you immediately. You had two kids of your own, and you really seemed to like kids. You took us to do fun stuff, like hang out at Newark Airport and watch the planes from the observation deck. You took us to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and the Statue of Liberty. You once took us sledding in the trailer of your 18-wheeler, telling some dozen kids to stay absolutely quiet until the truck stopped so that the cops wouldn’t pull you over and arrest you. It’s one of the coolest memories I have: A bunch of kids and their sleds in the back of your truck, shushing each other as you drove it through the snow to the nearby park so we could take advantage of the great sledding hill. You accepted us all, and we were a group of kids from all ages, four to fifteen.

Except.

Except now, every time I think of you, I think of her, and what you did to her. She was fifteen.

She was fifteen, and you were thirty-six. She was fifteen, and you were in a position of power and authority. She was fifteen, and you abused your power and authority. You had sex with her. She was fifteen. Your oldest child was two years younger than she. You were thirty-six. And you were married.

Well, the blind man wrote me again. This time, he’s bragging about how young his current wife is.

Disgusting.

I copied the post into the email I sent him back.

Can I get a restraining order on email? Or should I just put his email address in the killfile?

So, I’m betting most of my people know what today is. Anyone want to start? No, wait, let me.

“Listen my children and you shall hear…”

My own website is down. The server it’s on is down. The enemy’s gate is…

Nah.

The datacenter it’s in is “experiencing problems” and will be back up and available shortly.

That’s what I’m telling people who are writing in and wondering where their sites, servers, and stuff went off to. Sounds much better than “They went to the zoo” or “The end of the Internet is Nigh! Repent! Repent!”

*sniff* *sniff*

A/C sounds have shifted. Interesting smells in the air. The phones still work, but the toilets are having a hard time flushing.

More people write in, asking when the situation will be resolved.

Sorry, but I left my Crystal Ball at home. And there’s no birds to sacrifice so I may augur their greasy, juicy guts.

I consult my Trick Knee. It goes “Woof!” and plays dead.

Beer o’Clock rapidly approaches.

He says he’s doing it to win his freedom. But you don’t plead guilty if you’re innocent.

What the former University of South Florida computer science professor did do, however, was publicly admit for the first time that he aided associates of a terrorist group.

By pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to provide services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Al-Arian acknowledged helping three known associates of the group with various nonviolent activities and repeatedly lying about what he knew.

As a result, Al-Arian likely will serve several more months in prison, then be deported to an undetermined country.

In a statement, the U.S. Justice Department, including Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, hailed the agreement as the result of years of investigative and prosecutorial effort.

Say buh-bye, Sami.

Once he’s out of prison, he’s out of the country. He is being deported.

I guess this wasn’t just a freedom of speech issue, after all.

Danny Gillerman is my new hero.

The Palestinian representative to the United Nations, Riad Mansour, spoke Tuesday night at the U.N.’s Security Council for the second time since the ascension of Hamas to power in the Palestinian Authority, without mentioning the word Hamas. Mansour again declared that
the PLO was the sole body representing the Palestinians.

Following his comments, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Gillerman deviated from his speech, and turned to the Palestinian representative, saying that there was one word missing from his speech – Hamas. You didn’t use that word even once, Gillerman told Mansour, adding: Come, I’ll spell it out for you how they say Hamas H-A-M-A-S. Mansour blushed and was silent.

Gillerman asked Mansour to explain who he represented – Mahmoud Abbas who condemned the attack or Hamas who said it was a justified operation.

But I suspect that Mansour didn’t really blush.

The bombs that terrorists use are among the most evil weapons ever invented. The explosives are bad enough, but palestinians have chosen to add metal pieces to the bombs to increase their deadliness, and to deliberately wound as many Israelis as possible. These extras are manufactured in “metal shops” throughout Gaza and the West Bank, which is why you hear about the IDF firing missiles into “metal shops,” and see the owners bemoaning the loss of their factories and insisting they were not involved in the manufacture of bombs.

The mechanics of a terrorist bomb:

The explosive belt usually consists of several cylinders filled with explosive (de facto pipe bombs), or in more sophisticated versions with plates of explosive. The explosive is surrounded by a fragmentation jacket that produces the shrapnel responsible for most of the bomb’s lethality, effectively making the jacket a crude body-worn claymore mine. Once the vest is detonated, the explosion resembles an omnidirectional shotgun blast. The most dangerous and the most widely used shrapnel are steel ball bearings 3-7 mm in diameter. Other shrapnel material can be anything of suitable size and hardness, most often nails, screws, nuts, and thick wire. Shrapnel is responsible for about 90% of all casualties caused by this kind of device.

The metal shards do the most damage.

The main killing power of any bomb is not the explosion itself (the shock wave is rather small because of small quantity of explosives used) but the fragments of its jacket, which are launched in all directions by the explosion. In air force bombs and in many types of artillery shells the pieces are formed out of the steel casing, which is split into small pieces in an explosion.

In anti-personnel tank shells and in some kinds of artillery shells part of the internal payload is dedicated to shrapnel- such a shell is filled with several thousand of needles (”flechettes”). Sometimes these flechettes are made of plastic, which do not show up on x-rays. Palestinian terrorists realized this principle long ago and use it widely. More than 90% of the victims injured are hit by the bomb shrapnel.

The most widely used and the most dangerous shrapnel consists of ball bearings 3-7 millimeters in diameter. In the most severe terrorist acts - in the Delfinarium, Sbarro, in the banquet hall in Netania - the bombs of the suicide-bombers were filled with steel balls.

In an explosion, the balls are launched with such speed, that their power is close to a bullet’s. You could say that in an explosion the suicide-bomber shoots several hundred bullets in a single moment.

Aside from steel balls, nails, screws and so on, nuts and washers are also used. Nuts are easily glued together to form tiny plates that can be pressed in, or even tied by a tape to the plates of the explosive to hide it better. Likewise, nuts are also stringed on a thread or on a piece of wire, as shown on the photographs.

Israeli doctors have become so accustomed to suicide bombs, they have developed a trauma routine that made an American trauma surgeon wonder:

It certainly gives one pause, as an American living in a free, open, and safe society, to understand that the Israelis have dealt with suicide bombings long enough to have their national trauma registry reflect that fact.

This is what gave him pause:

Primary blast injury is caused by the rapid outward spread of the shock wave. Injury to gas-containing organs, such as perforation of the middle ear and blast lung injury (BLI) are most common (22.1% and 18.2% of victims, respectively). Of all patients with BLI, 82% of victims aboard buses and in semiconfined spaces will suffer from moderate and severe forms of BLI compared with 33% of victims in open spaces. S econdary blast injury is caused by penetrating missiles that are propelled by the blast wave. More than 85% of victims of suicide bombing attacks (SBA) suffer from penetrating shrapnel and debris, most commonly to the head. Tertiary blast injury results from a patient’s body being displaced by expanding gases. Burns are termed quaternary blast injury and are also notably more common after explosions inside confined spaces compared with open spaces (33.9% versus 5% of victims, respectively). The hallmark of injuries after an SBA is the combination of blunt injury, multiple penetrating injuries with extensive soft tissue damage, and burns. Half of all patients hospitalized will be seen in a trauma unit setting and the same proportion will be admitted to an intensive care unit. Victims of SBAs are more severely injured compared with other trauma victims. Typical injuries include penetrating injury to the head (55%), extremities (49%), and torso (40%), burns (27%), open fractures (22%), and BLI (18%).

Here is an article I have referenced before, which contains X-Rays of the victims of palestinian terrorist bombs.

Messing said one of the victims he saw while in Jerusalem had around 300 individual metallic fragments within his body. The metal fragments, measuring from millimeters to centimeters, were imbedded in the young man literally from head to toe, he said.

“Several of the fragments penetrated into his vital organs. He sustained a punctured colon, a collapsed lung, and a lacerated liver and kidney. I could actually feel the nails under his skin where they had burrowed and lodged,” Messing recalls.

Shrapnel is what killed Phillip Balhasan, who stayed alive long enough to realize his children had survived, and to hug them tightly before he collapsed.

But even this is not enough for the terrorists. They also soak the shrapnel in rat poison, because it causes hemorrhaging — victims may bleed to death before they can get to the hospital.

Remember all of this, when you hear the world tell Israel to “use restraint” in responding to this attack. Remember all of this, when you read about the innocent metal shop owners who insist their shops were only making nails and screws for construction purposes.

Remember all of this, when Israel is the nation that is demonized by the blind, hateful people who wear checked kaffiyehs at anti-war protests, and call Israel an “apartheid state” for building a separation barrier — to keep out the monsters who would use bombs like I have just described.

Remember this, when you look at the pictures of the results of the bombing, and notice the thousands of dents in the metal surrounding the bombing area — the mark of the ball-bearings and other metal shrapnel.

These are the people with whom the world sympathizes: Those who create and set off the bombs. Not the victims. The bombers.

And that’s the worst evil of all.

First-time visitors: There is much more on the main page.

Upate 4/22: Apparently, this post has been linked on various international link sites, including a British one. There is now an inundation of people who think I will post their anti-Israel rants. Read this post, A No Israel Bashing-Zone, and you will understand why your comment doesn’t appear. If you don’t like the policy, well, gee. Life’s tough.

The latest poll of palestinians shows that 61% of them do not want to recognize Israel.

More on this later, when I get time to analyze the poll.

They also think that Israel is going to negotiate with Hamas.