One human hunt has ended, with the Penguin now in custidy while the Bin Riddler remains elusive and at large. The Boy Wonder hints he would like to see the Penguin executed, yet prefers to the let the people decide, rather some type of representation he will appoint to represent the people that is. And of course the captured Penguin is ridiculed and displayed for all to see, a sight which of course was strongly objectionable as a violation of the Geneva convention when the shoe was on the other foot, but on this happy occasion such niceties can be overlooked so that the celebrations can begin.

Did you read how the capturers were reportedly just seconds away from dropping a live grenade into the hole and spoiling the party? Overlooking for the moment the obvious point that all details of this heroic and daring capture should be assumed to be fictional (see text above), what if some frightened children or other civilians had been hiding in that hole? Doesn’t it bother you how some people just keep asking annoying questions even on party days?

The United States is reportedly employing Israeli tactics to contain the resistance in Iraq. The war recipe was bad from the beginning, and the disaster continues to unfold approximately as predicted, with the additional bad news that now the image of the United States’ occupation of Iraq is further linked with that of the Israeli occupation of Palistine. Not a good way to win the hearts and minds as they say.

Of course no one expects the military to issue environmental impact statements on proposed new military technology. Now the talk is about using robots in battle. And of course this will happen, and to some degree it already has with the unmanned drones that were used to remotely kill a tall Afghan man not so long ago.

The tremendous military advantage to be gained will be intoxicating, and should be popular with the overextended troops. The atomic bomb enjoyed such popularity initially, having ’saved’ five hundred thousand American troops from a battle that supposedly would have been required to win the war - though that story was a fiction which has since become accepted as history - the United States in fact already had intelligence that Japan would surrender but did not want to share the spoils with Russia which had entered the battle. A good place to start evaluating the impact of new military technologies is to imagine how it would be if your enemy had the same weapons. Certainly no one has any plans to turn back the clock and put the genie back into the bottle, so ultimately our best hope it to create a friendly global environment where no one would think to use such weapons. Unfortunately, there are already too many sources of strife, too many fuses already burning.

The aggressive pre-emptive policy the Bush administation has introduced has unfortunately increased the threat of terrorism by creating an atmosphere of resentment against America in the affected areas. An environmental impact analysis could have predicted this, but who in the current administration bothers to read environmental impact statements anyway?