It's been more than a week since I last posted, and quite a bit has happened in my life and in the world. Let's talk about the world.

Two big things have happened recently - that worthless, murdering snake Abu Musab al Zarqawi is running around hell looking for the virgins he thinks are waiting for him; and some 17 men in Canada have been arrested and charged with planning major terrorist attacks in that country. Let's look at these events in a little more detail.

The death of Zarqawi won't end the insurgency in Iraq and won't convince die-hard Islamic fanatics that they are on a dead-end road. If anything, it may make things worse in the short run by bringing more of the lunatics who believe in his twisted philosophy of out of the woodwork. But it does send a useful message to those people: that it may take a while, but we will eventually track you down and let you learn first-hand that there are no virgins waiting to serve you in hell. I think it says a lot about the nature of this war that so much effort was expended on our part to kill Zarkawi without killing innocent people around him. I don't think this was ever something he worried about when planning his outrages.

As for the people arrested in Canada, you could have easily predicted the response: rather than condemning the evident existence of a deadly terror plot cooked up by twisted religious fanatics, the Canadian Islamic community has pulled together to trot out the same old stuff about Islam being a religion of peace, Muslims are being picked on, blah, blah, blah. This is the true message of this event: that Muslims are living in a state of denial, unwilling to admit that the world has left their religion in the dust of the seventh-century Arabian desert, and equally unwilling to admit the fact that - while they loudly curse at the Western "crusaders," the last crusade took place centuries ago...and it's Islam that believes to this day in spreading its message of "peace and understanding" through murder and intimidation.

There are a few books you should read to understand the bizarre mindset of the fevered Islamic mind: The End of Faith, by Sam Harris; Why People Believe Weird Things, by Michael Shermer; and When Religion Becomes Evil, by Charles Kimball. You will probably not agree with everything these authors write (and I wouldn't trust you if you did), but they do provide some very interesting insights and points of departure for thinking about blind adherence to illogical and violent belief systems.

I'd rather write about grandchildren, herbs, good books, music, and the joy of dancing with beautiful ladies in beautiful clothes. Unfortunately, there are those who believe it is their mission in life to remove all these sources of joy and force me to live in the same joyless world they do...or kill me if I fail to see the correctness of their beliefs. They're out there, and we'd better deal with them soon. They aren't waiting for us to wring our hands and worry about legal and moral niceties.

Have a good week. More thoughts are coming...hopefully, more regularly.

Bilbo