“A site dedicated to fiction and film depicting the end of the world, apocalypse and nuclear war. Plague, famine, drought and war all feature….. Populations decimated, survivors struggling to re-build after the apocalyptic event…” Study up now, be the most prepared on your block (and, no, this isn’t Tom Ridge’s site).

10 most dangerous intersections in the U.S. Also, search for the dangerous intersections near you.

Blair may find it politically impossible to commit UK military to the US-led offensive on Iraq. CBS News (Well, there’s always the Spanish!)

House cafeterias change names for ‘french fries’ and ‘french toast’. Much blinked to already; others lampoon this because of the waste of money, but more simply it is an embarrassment to come from the same country. CNN

“Dr. Helen Caldicott, one of the world’s most determined peace activists, is imploring Pope John Paul II to go to Baghdad as he is the “only person on earth who can stop this war” in Iraq. (see below)

Caldicott has organized a letter writing and e-mail petition, urging people around the world to write to the 82-year-old Pope asking him to travel to Baghdad and stay there until peace has been achieved.” CommonDreams

There’s more: “Deepak Chopra… proposed Wednesday that the Pope, the Dalai Lama and himself serve as human shields to avoid bombing in Iraq and to rid the world of Saddam Hussein.” GoMemphis

“The first President Bush has told his son that hopes of peace in the Middle East would be ruined if a war with Iraq were not backed by international unity.” Times of London [thanks, walker]

over Iraq war plans Reuters

“Men who are fanatical about cars identify vehicles using the same brain circuitry used to recognise faces, new research shows.” New Scientist

I’ve often suspected that car designers, consciously or unconsciously, evoke facial expressions in the front end design of car models — or is it just my confused neurological processing?

Secretive U.S. ‘counter – disinformation’ office back

A Cold War-era office with a shadowy name and a colorful history of exposing Soviet deceptions is back in business, this time watching Iraq.

The Counter-Disinformation/Misinformation Team’s moniker is more impressive than its budget. It’s a crew of two toiling in anonymity at the State Department, writing reports they are prohibited by law from disseminating to the U.S. public.

The operation has challenged some fantastic claims over the years — a U.S. military lab invented AIDS, rich Americans kidnapped foreign babies for their organs, the CIA plotted to kill Pope John Paul II.

Since the office reopened in October, it’s been responding to Iraqi claims about America, which tend to be more plausible and sometimes remain in dispute. Salon

On this day in 1923, James Joyce wrote to his patron, Harriet Weaver, that he had just begun “Work in Progress,” the book which would become Finnegans Wake sixteen years later:

“Can’t hear with the waters of. The chittering waters of. Flittering bats, fieldmice bawk talk. Ho! Are you not gone ahome? What Thom Malone? Can’t hear with bawk of bats, all thim liffeying waters of. Ho, talk save us! My foos won’t moos. I feel as old as yonder elm. A tale told of Shaun or Shem? All Livia’s daughter-sons. Dark hawks hear us. Night! Night! My ho head halls. I feel as heavy as yonder stone. Tell me of John or Shaun? Who were Shem and Shaun the living sons or daughters of? Night now! Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm! Night night! Telmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night!” Today in Literature

Use of veto by permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: French President President Jacques Chirac said Monday that France was prepared to veto the U.S.-backed resolution on Iraq if necessary, joining Russia in saying it would vote against giving Iraqi President Saddam Hussein a March 17 deadline to disarm. Chirac, the most determined opponent of authorizing war, seemed to kill the chance the U.S-backed ultimatum would pass, saying his country, which has veto power in the Security Council, would vote against any resolution leading to war. The six undecided members of the U.N. Security Council weighed delaying a deadline for Iraqi compliance to April 17, a month later than demanded in a U.S.-British-Spanish draft resolution, diplomats said on Monday. Russian Foreign Minster Igor Ivanov said his country would vote against the U.S. and British resolution in its current form, but left open the possibility of approving an ammended proposal. Britain would consider a compromise U.N. resolution that extends an ultimatum to Hussein beyond the March 17 deadline already proposed, British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s spokesman said Monday. Columbia Newsblaster summary