excerpts.

Software design and development gives one a nice artificial sandbox to exert power and, might I add, easily lose and find sanity.  That's a topic for another day.  Today, NPR woke me up at 6:20 to tell me 65+ people were blown up in mosques in Iraq.  Shia, near the Iranian border.

Guardian NY Times Al Jazeera

Two suicide bombers blew themselves up at two mosques during Friday prayers in Khanaqin, Iraq, near the Iranian border and about 90 miles NE of Baghdad.  Khanaqin's mostly Kurdish.  The Sheik Murad mosque and the three story Grand Khanaqin Mosque got housed and they're digging people out of the rubble.  About 75 people dead so far, with 75 injured.  A third suicide bomber targetted a bank in town.

I'd make a Google Earth kml, but what's the point? (semi-intentional pun)  I've wanted to make a list of attacks on Shi'a for a while, but I don't have the motivation right now.

Also, in Baghdad, two car bombs (a white van and a white truck) blew up about 30 seconds apart near what was the intended target - al-Hamrah Hotel, where some international reporters live/work (first one to rip the blast barrier to the hotel, second for the hotel - the second one fell into the crater created by the first and never made it to the hotel). Blast barriers stopped the trucks from doing damage to the hotel, but a bunch of residential buildings collapsed with 6 people dead, at last report.  For some reason, all the reports mention how many cars were damaged, too: about 30.  I don't know why I find that odd.  Maybe because I keep hearing Dominque de Villepin saying anything under 100 burned cars a day is normal.

• Nov. 2, 2005 - A suicide bomber blows up a minibus in an outdoor market packed with shoppers ahead of a Muslim festival, killing about 20 people in Musayyib, a Shiite town south of Baghdad.
• Oct. 31, 2005: A car bomb explodes on a bustling street in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, killing 20 people.
• Oct. 29, 2005: A bomb hidden in a truck loaded with dates explodes in a Shiite farming village northeast of Baghdad, killing 30 people.
• Sept. 29, 2005: Three suicide attackers detonate car bombs in the mostly Shiite town of Balad, north of Baghdad, killing at least 99 people.
• Sept. 19, 2005: A car bomb rips through a market in a poor Shiite neighborhood on the eastern outskirts of Baghdad, killing at least 30 people.
• Sept. 14, 2005: A suicide car bomber strikes as day laborers gather to find work in the heavily Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah in northern Baghdad, killing at least 88 people.
• Aug. 17, 2005: Three car bombs explode near the Nadha bus station in Baghdad and at the nearby Kindi Hospital, killing up to 43 people.
• July 16, 2005: A suicide bomber detonates explosives strapped to his body at a gas station near a Shiite mosque in Musayyib, blowing up a fuel tanker and killing about 100 people.
• March 10, 2005: A suicide bomber blows himself up at a Shiite mosque during a funeral in the northern city of Mosul, killing at least 47 people.
• Feb. 28, 2005: In the deadliest single strike since the fall of Saddam Hussein, a suicide car bomber attacks mostly Shiite police and National Guard recruits in Hillah, killing 125. Some of the dead are at a nearby market.
• Feb. 18, 2005: Suicide bombers attack two mosques, killing 28 people, while an explosion near a Shiite ceremony kills two other people.
• Dec. 19, 2004: Car bombs tear through a Najaf funeral procession and Karbala's main bus station, killing at least 60 people in the two Shiite holy cities.
• Aug. 26, 2004: A mortar barrage slams into a mosque filled with Iraqis preparing to march on Najaf, killing 27 people.
• March 2, 2004: Coordinated blasts from suicide bombers, mortars and planted explosives strike Shiite shrines in Karbala and in Baghdad, killing at least 181 people.
• Aug. 29, 2003: A car bomb explodes outside a mosque in Najaf, killing more than 85 people, including Shiite leader Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim. Although officials never gave a final death toll, there were suspicions it may have been higher.