#397 Interesting Links XLIV

Noah Millman responds to Ross Douthat's claim that failure is not an option in Afghanistan:

"But failure is always an option. Ruling it out in advance doesn’t make success probable or even possible – it just rules out doing any kind of cost-benefit analysis of trying to achieve it. Worse, it rules out asking whether 'success' actually advances our interests in the region, or actually sets them back."

Jamie MacIntyre, at the time of CNN (is this the same guy that now works for NPR?) unabashedly admitting to being a sorry excuse for a journalist:

"So the dirty little secret is yeah, we sort of informally agree not to report a lot of things that we see and hear, some of it for legitimate security reasons, and some of it because it could just be embarrassing. And the tradeoff is we get a continued relationship with these people and we can get information."

Glenn Greenwald has other examples of "media's servitude to government."  

Chris Blattman shares an account of one of the strangest soccer games ever played.

Parchment and Pen has good list of the top ten discoveries in biblical archaeology.  Link to the first, find the rest at the site.
#10 Assyrian Lachish Reliefs
#9 Jehu's Tribute to Shalmaneser III
#8 Caiaphas Ossuary (I have seen this one in person at a traveling exhibit)
#7 Hezekiah's Tunnel
#6 Pontius Pilate Inscription (I saw this one at the same exhibit)
#5 The Crucified Man (I saw this one at the same exhibit)
#4 Ketef Hinnom Silver Amulet Scroll
#3 Jericho
#2 House of David Inscription
#1 Dead Sea Scrolls

David Bivin places the Pharisees in historical context.

Quote found here: "There are two novels that can transform a bookish 14-year-kid’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish daydream that can lead to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood in which large chunks of the day are spent inventing ways to make real life more like a fantasy novel. The other is a book about orcs."

An animated map and tally of all 2000 or so nuclear explosions that have taken place since 1945.  The cold war is musical.

From the same site, plans for an ancient (2,400 year-old repeating cross-bow).