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Showing posts from October, 2006

When Iraq Passes 9/11

As of today, the United States has lost 2816 soldiers in Iraq. According to Wikipedia , 2973 people (excluding the hijackers) died as a result of the September 11, 2001 attacks. This excludes the 19 hijackers and twenty-four listed as missing. So. Not to get too grim and all, but we're 157 deaths away from the Iraq war costing more American military lives than the total of confirmed non-hijacker lives lost as a result of the 9/11 attacks. When will Iraq pass 9/11? Over the last six months, U.S. forces lost an average of 68-69 soldiers per month. If trends continue -- and they're getting worse -- the date of passing will occur sometime near the beginning of 2007. In real terms, of course, we're long past that bitter milestone. 9/11, after all, was an international tragedy, with victims from dozens of countries (it was the World Trade Center, after all); by comparison, total coalition deaths today number 3055. And military deaths are just the beginning: hundreds o

The last blogger on the planet

Not exactly true. I had one of my classes (I'm a teacher) run a blog several years ago. And I've posted on a number of multi-user blogs like Daily Kos . But as Joseph Gordon-Levitt said in 10 Things I Hate About You , "I'm back in the game." Possible topics: rhetoric, the teaching of writing, poetry, politics.