"Bulgaria, the 'quiet American'"

From United Press International:

Bulgaria, the 'quiet American'
By Sam Vaknin
UPI Senior Business Correspondent
From the Business & Economics Desk
Published 2/11/2003 1:01 PM

SKOPJE, Macedonia, Feb. 11 (UPI) -- Last week, Bulgaria, sitting on the United Nations Security Council, was one of 10 east and southeast European countries -- known as the Vilnius Group -- to issue a strongly worded statement in support of the United States' attempt to disarm Iraq by military means.

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[CADRE] PEIslanders Faced With War

The below is an essay I got published in The Cadre--the UPEI student newspaper--in its most recent issue. I might have a regular column, I might not, but anyways.

***

No one will be surprised when the Persian Gulf War Part II begins.

We can take it for granted that, in no more than a month's time, the United States will have begun attacking Iraq no matter whether or not it gets the approval of the United Nations Security Council. We can also take it for granted that given the huge technological gap between the United States' almost science-fictional military forces in the Persian Gulf and Iraq's sanctions-depleted military, the war will end with an American military victory. Whether or not the United States will be able to effectively manage post-war Iraq is another question, but that doesn't really matter: What does matter is that the United States will find itself in charge of a country halfway around the world with a very troubled past, and that this will change everything.

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Stevie Smith, "Not Waving But Drowning"

I found this poem as part of my efforts at compiling a list of everything I've read (for ENG 493, of course). It bears reproduction.

(ENG 192, fall semester 1997.)

***

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

A star 7.5 lightyears away?

Discovery of a New Nearby Star

We report the discovery of a nearby star with a very large proper motion of 5.06 0.03 arcsec/yr. The star is called SO025300.5+165258 and referred to herein as HPMS (high proper motion star). The discovery came as a result of a search of the SkyMorph database, a sensitive and persistent survey that is well suited for finding stars with high proper motions. There are currently only 7 known stars with proper motions > 5 arcsec/yr. We have determined a preliminary value for the parallax of 0.43 0.13 arcsec. If this value holds our new star ranks behind only the Alpha Centauri system (including Proxima Centauri) and Barnard's star in the list of our nearest stellar neighbors. The spectrum and measured tangential velocity indicate that HPMS is a main-sequence star with spectral type M6.5. However, if our distance measurement is correct, the HPMS is underluminous by 1.2 0.7 mag.

An argument in favour of invading Iraq

Right here.