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From CNN.com: China: Tibetans planning suicide bombs

“To our knowledge the next plan of the Tibet Independence forces is to organize suicide squads to launch violent attacks,” Wu Heping, spokesman for China’s Ministry of Public Security, said at a news conference, according to a translation of his remarks by The Associated Press.

That’s real believable.  What’s next a claim? That the so-called “Tibet Independence” forces have weapons of mass destruction?

He did not provide details or evidence, and Samdhong Rinpoche, prime minister of Tibet’s exiled government, dismissed the accusation.

“We never heard (of) Tibetan independence force, such a group or people. Now, our suspicion is that the PRC (People’s Republic of China) might be staging such a violent act in the name of Tibetan people to mislead the world community,” he said in Dharamsala, India.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Chinese government manufactured an incident.  I think they desperately want to crackdown Tibet and they think that “fighting terrorism” would give them the cover they needed from international scrutiny.

From NYTimes.com: McCain ‘Surprised’ by Iraq Developments

As he launched a tour here designed to highlight his family’s long tradition of military service, Senator John McCain said Monday that he was surprised by the latest turn of events in America’s current war in Iraq.

“Maliki decided to take on this operation without consulting the Americans,” Mr. McCain said on his campaign bus as it rolled through downtown Meridian, saying that the move showed independence but that he had expected the military to focus on Mosul.

“I just am surprised that he would take it on himself to go down and take charge of a military offensive,” he said. “I had not anticipated that he would do that.”

How can McCain be surprised by anything that goes on in Iraq.  It’s been pretty clear that the Iraqi government doesn’t listen to us.  We’ve bought time for them with our “surge”, but time and lives have been wasted as the Iraqi government is no closer to building a coalition that will hold the country together. As long as we’re there “protecting” them, no real steps towards working things out will be made.  No one wants to negotiate a settlement when they believe they can win total control in the future.  So we have two options.  Stay there for a longer, indefinite duration or start to slowly pull out and let the Iraqi government realize that total chaos will break out unless they find their own solution.
 

Battlestar Galactica Season 4- the final season begins on April 5, 10PM.  SciFi Channel is currently running a Battlestar Galactica marathon in HD that threatens to fill up my DVR.  Last night I caught Kobol’s Last Gleaming, a two parter from Season 1.  The first five minutes are some the best moments you’ll find on television. This is the first time I’ve seen it since it originally aired and it totally captivated me again.  Kobol’s Last Gleaming is only the 12th and 13th episode of season 1 and already the characters are multifaceted and the numerous plot lines are setting up events that are just taking place now.

I can not wait for Season 4 this Friday!

UPDATE: It turns out that not all the episodes are in HD.  Season 1 is all letterboxed.  I think I must have recorded Kobol’s Last Gleaming on the Universal HD channel not on SciFi Channel. 

From the NYTimes.com: Hollywood Producer Set to Make Shows for Xbox

Mr. Nocas said that about 10 million people had signed up for the Xbox Live service. Roughly 18 million of the game systems have been sold worldwide, he said.

10 million sounds like a decent number of people, but what percentage of them have actually buy media on Xbox Live?  I’ve bought upgrades to Halo 3 and one retro game- Super Bomberman and that’s about it.  I joined Xbox Live for one thing- multiplayer gaming.

There are a few things about the Xbox 360/Xbox Live service that makes it a no go for me for video purchases.

1. The Xbox 360 sounds like a vacuum cleaner when it’s on.  It’s tolerable to play Halo 3 because I don’t have choice, but I do have other choices for watching video.
2. Microsoft Points– Why does Microsoft have to its own currency?  It’s a money grab because you have to buy your points in blocks.  And because of this, you always have points sitting there leftover.  Because of this, I buy as little as possible.
3. Portability- Xbox Live purchase aren’t portable and I can’t play them on my iPods.
4. Xbox Live interface clunky.  I’m always flipping through trying to find things that should be easier to find.

When I see my Xbox 360, I see one thing.  Video game platform.  Not a set top box.  Not in this incarnation of the Xbox.

It seems you’d have to be from Kansas not to be rooting for the Davidson basketball team yesterday in the NCAA tournament.  On the ticker at the bottom of the screen, Davidson was abbreviated as David.  Appropriate, except this time David lost to Goliath with Kansas going to the Final Four.

This was my first NCAA with a HDTV and it’s absolutely amazing.  One weird thing.  Coming back from commercial breaks, the text graphics on the screen often were out of focus and slowly came back into focus.  I thought it was my eyes at first, but later I paid more attention to it and it was really happening.  Not really sure what that’s about.  Otherwise everything else was crystal clear!

From NYTimes.com: Salmon Virus Indicts Chile’s Fishing Methods

A virus called infectious salmon anemia, or I.S.A., is killing millions of salmon destined for export to Japan, Europe and the United States. The spreading plague has sent shivers through Chile’s third-largest export industry, which has left local people embittered by laying off more than 1,000 workers.

But the latest outbreak has occurred after a rash of nonviral illnesses in recent years that the companies acknowledge have led them to use high levels of antibiotics. Researchers say the practice is widespread in the Chilean industry, which is a mix of international and Chilean producers. Some of those antibiotics, they say, are prohibited for use on animals in the United States.

Many of those salmon still end up in American grocery stores, where about 29 percent of Chilean exports are destined. While fish from China have come under special scrutiny in recent months, here in Chile regulators have yet to form a registry that even tracks the use of the drugs, researchers said.

It’s a real problem that consumers don’t know where their food comes from or what’s been used in the process of creating it.  

From the AP on NPR.com: Dean Says Attacks Getting Too Personal

This is an interesting interview because Howard Dean has mostly been pretty quiet about what might be done to resolve the fractious campaign between Obama and Clinton.

About surrogates attacking:

“You do not want to demoralize the base of the Democratic Party by having the Democrats attack each other.”

The supporters should keep their mouths shut about this stuff on both sides because that is harmful to the potential victory of a Democrat.”

I definitely agree with this.  Too much chatter by the “surrogates”.  For the most part, no one knows who these surrogates are until they say something that gets picked up by the media.  Do we really need to hear what Geraldine Ferraro has to say?  She hasn’t been relevant in years.  Or Obama’s advisor Samantha Power?

I felt that most of the attacks originally started with the Clinton campaign, but I feel like members of the Obama campaign has joined “silly season” too.  That’s unfortunately the way politics are these days.

He said it is good for the candidates to debate controversies like the incendiary sermons by Obama’s pastor and Clinton’s different accounts of danger on a trip to Bosnia as first lady. If Democrats didn’t deal with them now, he said Republicans will surely make use of them in the fall.

Unfortunately there’s not a lot of debate about these issues except barbs being tossed at each other.  It’s true though that these issues will be old hat by the time the Democratic nominee faces McCain.