is it kosher to say “happy easter”? i should know with a divinity degree, i guess. makes me feel sorta uneasy saying “happy easter” since what we’re observing here was a rather revolutionary event.

maybe we should say “take easter seriously this year, dammit” instead of “happy easter”?

Looting of Baghdad Museum

Salon.com does a fantastic job of presenting the situation at the Baghdad Museum after the US invasion of Iraq five years ago and where things stand now.

There’s a text transcript as well as a mp3 podcast available of a very valuable roundtable discussion…

The looting of Iraq | Salon News: “Among the many unintended and unforeseen consequences of the U.S. occupation of Iraq that began five years ago this week was the wholesale looting of Iraq’s museums and archaeological sites. Iraq has been called the cradle of civilization. Starting with the Sumerian civilization, which more than 5,000 years ago produced what may be the world’s first examples of writing and math, the area centered on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and known as Mesopotamia has been home to a succession of cultures — Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian. Many believe southern Iraq was the site of the biblical Garden of Eden. But within weeks of the first American airstrike, the cradle of civilization had been robbed. Baghdad’s National Museum of Iraq, among the globe’s premier repositories of antiquities, was ransacked over the course of a week in April 2003. Statues were dragged down the steps, artifacts six millennia old were carried off in plastic bags. American soldiers were not dispatched to protect the museum until the thieves were long gone. “

You can download the podcast here.

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is it kosher to say “happy easter”? i should know with a divinity degree, i guess. makes me feel sorta uneasy saying “happy easter” since what we’re observing here was a rather revolutionary event.

maybe we should say “take easter seriously this year, dammit” instead of “happy easter”?

During night 2008.03.18/19 the “Pi of the Sky” apparatus located at Las Campanas Observatory was observing the Swift satellite field of view with 10s exposures from 5:49 UT. At 6:12 UT we observed exceptionally bright optical flash reaching 5.8 magnitudo. It was automatically detected by the flash recognition algorithm.

Untitled

During night 2008.03.18/19 the “Pi of the Sky” apparatus located at Las Campanas Observatory was observing the Swift satellite field of view with 10s exposures from 5:49 UT. At 6:12 UT we observed exceptionally bright optical flash reaching 5.8 magnitudo. It was automatically detected by the flash recognition algorithm.

GRB080319B by Pi-of-the-Sky