Oodles of stuff

Today has been a very good news day. Starting out, we have a couple of pieces from the Guardian, which reports Tony Blair admitted that weapons of mass destruction might never be found in Iraq. Point for Tony, in my mind. Even though he was wrong about the reasons for going to war with Iraq, at least he's willing to admit that he might have messed up, unlike some other world leaders. Also, in what seems like an American primary special, there were two articles on Howard Dean today, the first involving a look at the people who get involved in political campaigns, featuring a Dean worker in the interview, and the second being a personal evaluation of Howard Dean by a fellow Vermonter, refuting many of the 'granola-lefty' remarks that have been made about Governor Dean.

Mars stories seem to be all over the place, most notably in an article by the Christian Science Monitor, which details how a manned mission to Mars is the next logical step after the Moon and how improvements in technology will help accomplish the mission without bankrupting the country. There is also a more science-oriented piece in the New York Times about the current lander's goal to find if Mars ever had water.

On the music scene, two articles about very different types of music. The first concerns a problem I had not thought about before despite being involved in music for a while: hearing loss in symphony players and some attempts to lower the sound levels they experience during performances to prevent this from happening. The second is about hip-hop's attempt to be less gangsta and more socially conscious, a move which I have both noticed in several artists recently and one which I generally applaud.