Mobile chem labs found in Iraq (?) According to CNN, some portable chem- and bio-weapons labs were found hidden underground in Iraq. They were weaponless, but evidently they were full of documents that may indicate their possibly sinister purpose. What this article really does for me, though, is impact against CNN's credibility. Last week I complained that CNN, MSNBC and others were sticking with their main headline, "Chemicals found in Iraq!" when other news sources were reporting that the chemicals were determined to be pesticides. In today's article, in the last paragraph, we read:

Last week, troops from the 101st Airborne found a stash of chemicals, which was investigated as possible nerve agents, but the material turned out to be pesticides, Freakly said. The United States will further examine the latest find, he said. [CNN]

The news networks consistently jump the gun, reporting speculation rather than news, and they appear to learn no lessons from their mistakes.

An interesting site showed up on the ad banner today, titled Is Atheism Against the Law? By "Law" they mean the first law of thermodynamics. The premise is that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed "by natural means" (the latter part is not actually part of the law; the law actually says that matter/enegry cannot be created or destroyed by any means, period). The author of this argument then notes that there is matter, so it must have been created by something supernatural (assuming, of course, that it needed to be "created" in the first place). I have a similar argument, though mine has a different title: Is Belief in an Immaterial Soul Against the Law? The theory goes like this:

The soul is supposedly the thing that is truly you, that survives after you die, and most importantly all of our choices are made via the soul. Whenever I choose the right, for example, it is my soul that actually does the choosing. In the act of choosing, the soul produces observable effects in the physical world without being itself in/of the physical world. By inducing an effect which has no natural cause, the soul is able to increase the amount of energy in the universe. Since most Christians believe we act with "free will" in all/most of our actions, we must conclude that people are constantly creating new physical energy all the time. You could, in principle, put a person in an energy-capturing device and have him make a lot of decisions, thereby creating a perpetual motion machine. (One might argue that the soul-energy output is very tiny, but we should still be able to measure it). Even the Bible speaks of unlimited soul-energy: supposedly even the mustard seed has access to enough energy to "move mountains." We must be talking about Terra-Watts. Enormous! So the question is, with all this energy available to us, why do we need to eat? Don't tell me its original sin, because Adam and Eve needed to eat in the Garden of Eden even way back before they ever originally sinned. It seems like this whole "sin" thing could have been avoided if God had the foresight to create Adam with a little more soul and a little less stomach.

I really don't know what to say about Chris's post below, about the looting of the National Museum. The articles I've been reading about the looting in general have been devastating. This one, from the Washington Post is good. The looting has been far worse for the city than the bombing campaign was. The priorities of the Marines are also clear:

Some Iraqis, however, question the allocation of U.S. forces around the capital. They note a whole company of Marines, along with at least a half-dozen amphibious assault vehicles, has been assigned to guard the Oil Ministry, while many other ministries -- including trade, information, planning, health and education -- remain unprotected.

And then, of course, there is the following extremely plausible and highly likely explantion for this:

"They wanted to let these robberies happen so the Iraqi people will be bankrupt and they will need American assistance," said Mehdi Zuemi, a clerk in the Foreign Ministry who observed his office being destroyed today. "They'll use our oil to pay for it."

And I loved this part:

At the National Museum of Antiquities, Amin said she wants American soldiers -- and lots of them. Today, as she led a small group of journalists through the museum, five looters armed with an ax sneaked into one of the rooms, prompting several of the journalists to give chase. "They will keep coming here until there is nothing left to take," she said.

Like I said, I don't know what to say.