I think I used up all my narrative rations for the week last night, so here are some links to stories that might be worth a read.

Science: The scientific community isn’t as monolithic on global warming as the MSM would have us believe. Interesting side story on that: In my days at NASA I heard quite a lot of talk about global warming, mostly affirming that it’s just the biggest worstest threat ever (and most of that, from astronomers who actually didn’t know much more than the average guy on the street about global warming). But one scientists who until recently was head of a NASA earth science group railed that the NASA PR people were inserting global warming tales into science releases that had nothing to do with global warming. So don’t believe all the hype coming out of the government’s various PR machines, and don’t take one scientist’s word (cough Jim Hansen cough) as though it’s holy writ for all scientists, even within NASA. It’s a large organization, employing thousands of scientists. Climate scientists don’t all agree with each other; some are just better at generating buzz than others. The warming proponents are also getting better at enforcing orthodoxy on the skeptics, via harassment and threats.

Religion: Gideons arrested for distributing Bibles. Distributing Bibles is what the Gideons are all about. If the story is accurate, then they were on public space outside a school, which is itself public property, and thus exercising their constitutional rights to peaceful assembly and free speech. So what’s the problem?

War: Al Qaeda’s man in Iraq has a new podcast out. MEMRI has the translation, which reads in part:

“We [hereby] inform the Sunnis of a [new] plan called the Plan of Honor, which is more comprehensive and more perfect [than the existing plan] and includes not only Baghdad but all parts of the Islamic State [of Iraq]… [This plan] will end with Bush announcing the failure of his [security] plan and signing an agreement of defeat… The goals of the plan are: to defend our people and our honor; to rout out the invaders and eradicate the remaining pockets and bases of heresy; to butcher the wounded Crusader tyrant and take advantage of the collapse of morale among [the Crusader] soldiers and commanders; to unite the ranks of the mujahideen and to strengthen the foundations of the Islamic State [of Iraq].

Andy McCarthy sizes this up nicely.

And

Our war with the Persians has [now] begun just like our war with the Byzantines, only the Persian rule is [even] more depraved and despicable than that of the Byzantines…

These guys are living in the past. Byzantines=us, though the Byzantine Empire collapsed about 40 years before Columbus came to the New World. Persians=Iranians, though the Iranians haven’t gone by the name “Persians” since about 1935. But I’m sure all this violent talk is Bush’s fault anyway.

Al Qaeda already takes credit for driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan. It will take credit for driving us out of Iraq, if we leave any Qaeda forces alive there. And now Al Qaeda already has its sights set on…Iran?

One more: Al Qaeda’s living in the past. Here’s what the future might look like. Eh.