Tsunami jumps seawall in Miyako:

Kesennuma City:

Kamaishi City:

Unknown town:

Approaching the coast:

Sendai airport:

Aftermath in Sendai:

[. . pardon the German legend . .]

Pity the poor people and town of Minamisanriku:

Oklahoma Lawmaker Sally Kern Proposes Bill That Forces Teachers To Question Evolution
Think Progress | Jan 28 2011

State Rep. Sally Kern (R) has proposed the second anti-evolution bill this year in Oklahoma. Entitled the “Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act,” the bill, which will be first considered next month, would require the state and local authorities to “assist teachers to find more effective ways to present the science curriculum where it addresses scientific controversies” and permit teachers to “help students understand, analyze, critique, and review” the scientific strengths and weaknesses of “existing theories . .”

Wait — haven’t I seen her somewhere before?

But the only topics mentioned in the bill as contestable are “biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.”

I have seen her before. Hang on . .

Kern also proclaimed that homosexuality is comparable to “toe-cancer” and that “it’s the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam. Studies show that no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more than, you know, a few decades. So it’s the death knell of this country.”

I bumped into her at a spa . .

. . in Nagano.

Feew bad fowe Meg:

I Wuz Wrong
AUG 27 2010, 11:52 AM ET
The Atlantic

Tyler Cowen and Brad DeLong are fessing up. It’s a Friday in August, with nothing to report but the dismal GDP figures we were all expecting. So I’ll start with the Iraq War:

Meg is bowed. I hate being bowed.

1) I erroneously believed that I could interpret the actions of Saddam Hussein. He seemed to be acting like I’d act if I had WMD. Whoops!

No! Whoops!

. . I wasn’t an Iraqi dictator, which left huge gaps in my mental model of Hussein.

None of us wuz bad owe’ Saddam. Yet a howe bunch of us said “No! Don’t go! Peopowe wiw die.”

2) I erroneously extrapolated the experience of World War II to Iraq. This took several forms:

Dat wuz a wong, wong time ago. And wuzn’t it mostowy Sawdi Awabians dat sneak attacked us at Peaw Hawbow? Whoops!

a) I overlooked the fact that Japan and Germany were both stable bourgeois nations with solid industrial bases long before we got into the act.

Wuzn’t Veewetnam in duwh Sixties? And Seventies?

b) I overlooked the fact that we completely destroyed this nations before occupying and reconstructing them.

‘. . this nations’? Whoops! And isn’t dat onwy two? Not ‘several’?
Wet’s see: a) . . and . . b). Whoops!

3) I was insufficiently empathetic in imagining how Iraqis would feel about our invasion.

You should hab twied to get fuwthew inside Iwaqis’ heads. Like Saddam Hussein — what wuz HE dinking? Oh — whoops! Whoops!

We liked the French for giving us military help during the Revolution. Now imagine that France had invaded in order to liberate us from the British. Even if they really did eventually leave, this would have had much worse results. Looking back, my confi-dence in our liberatory powers seems terribly callous, and it doesn’t really do the dead Iraqis much good that I’m sorry for it.

Meg’s owdew now, smawtew now. Vewy matchew.