Prepping for war: Sharon: Iraq poses a danger, but Israel can defend itself  (Ha'aretz)

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had a secret plan to use biological weapons against Israel in the first stage of the 1991 Gulf War, but was unable to carry the plan out, according to a secret CIA document released for publication, Israel Radio reported Monday.

The 1992 CIA dispatch was made public over the weekend by the National Security Archive, a research organization.

The document says that Iraq sent three MiG-21 planes to bomb Israeli targets with regular bombs to check whether they were able to penetrate the Israeli air defense system.

At the second stage, three more MiGs armed with conventional weaponry were to be sent to Israel as a diversion, together with a Sukhoi airplane armed with biological weapons. But the operation failed during the first stage, when the three MiGs were downed over the Persian Gulf a short time after takeoff.

    

Beyond the Gold Standard: Legonomics (The Defective Yeti via Boing Boing Blog)

"The US should make the four pronged square Lego the standard unit of US currency. The bigger Legos will be worth more, and the smaller Legos will be like coins, and those huge Lego plates will be, like, $1000 bills.

* When Bush announces that we're abruptly switching from the dollar to the Lego, your new wealth will depend on how many Legos you own at that moment. In other words, your affluence will become proportional to your nerdliness (which will pretty much make it a wash for Bill Gates, I guess).
* People will have a much greater incentive to save. What can you do with a bunch of saved dollars, except hide them in the Minute Maid Premium Original Low-Pulp Orange Juice container you have in your fridge (not that I do this!!). With saved Legos, you can make castles and life-size blocky replicas of Halle Berry -- hooray!
* Money would suddenly become color-coded, thereby making the US exactly like Canada.
* Legos are, like, impossible to counterfeit. Believe me, I've tried.
* When you tip a pretty waitress you could make a cat or a rose or something cheesy like that. Conversely, when you pay your taxes you could build and send in a pair of $7,860 multi-colored buttocks.