October 25, 2006
Penn & Teller
Ralph turned me on to this Penn and Teller "Bullshit" show... which is available out there on the intertubes.
This one is about gun control... it's pretty good. A rare thing, to see a show which uses the power of facts and logic to make its points. I'm pretty sure that if we replaced CNN with nothing but this and The Daily Show, we'd be better for it.
October 17, 2006
October 16, 2006
Livin it up in Republica del Norte
These shoes are simplyawesome.
First of all, look at the profit there. She's selling a $17 product for $215. Those are like, oil company profits, man.
Secondly, I loved this line:
“It’s a reality that we don’t like to look at,” she said. “That’s what an artist points out.”
Maybe if artists would stop making things that we don't like to look at, fewer of them would be starving. If your job is to produce things that are to be looked at... Look, I'm a programmer. I'm not writing buggy management software for the Amish.
... and that's all I have to say. My stance on illegal immigration isn't going to shock any of you, so I'll just not repeat myself.
Arrested for Racism
Here's your article.
The headline ("Schoolgirl arrested for refusing to study with non-english pupils") is a little misleading. Here's what I believe happened, after reading this and one other article:
As part of a class exercise, the students were broken up into small groups to discuss the subject matter. This particular student was placed in a group with 5 asian pupils, only one of which actually spoke english. They began discussing the matter in the language that they all actually spoke. The girl asked to be moved to a different group.
At that point she was arrested and held in a cell for 3 and a half hours.
There's two things happening here that bother me:
- The idea that any time you say or do anything which may be perceived as dividing people based on, well, anything, no matter how accurate, you're a racist.
- The idea that it's acceptable to throw people in jail for racist statements.
There's your table of contents. For the second issue, let me say this - there's a difference between thoughts, words, and actions. If you're a racist and you decide to manifest this by riding around town with a sheet over your head looking for someone to tie behind your truck, you're a monster and I hope you find yourself a victim with a gun. If you actually lay hands on someone or erect a burning cross, you should be punished for your crimes - but not for your thoughts. The racist who gets up from the table when a hispanic man sits down or who talks about how black folks "ain't worth a damn" is a jerk and a moron, but there shouldn't be a legal penalty associated with mere thoughts or even words (with the usual exceptions for riots and movie theatres). I'm not willing to punish anyone for thought crime. If someone commits a crime against a member of another race, the punishment should be identical to someone else comitting the same crime against someone of their race.
And back to the first topic - nothing she did was racist. She didn't want to discuss things in class with people who didn't speak english. So what? Does anyone honestly think that her learning experience would have been enhanced by discussing things with a group of students who didn't speak english? Ok, one of the students in question spoke some english and could have translated for the rest... I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that she might have been better off discussing the material with 5 students she could understand.
If the point of the exercise was to expose the students to people of different cultures and experience 'diversity', perhaps the asian students should have been spread around the class more evenly - wait, no, that might actually be racist.
Let me sum up: The little girl might actually be a racist. If so, boo hiss on her, I hope she learns better. Nothing in the article suggests to me that she's anything other than a normal 14 year old. Remember being 14? When you got discussion time in class, you didn't want to expand your cultural horizons, you wanted to talk to your friends, and if you covered some class material on the way to talking about HOBBY, so be it.
Another case of teachers overreacting.
October 09, 2006
North Korea
North Korea has nukes and a delivery system that can not only reach our allies in South Korea and Japan, but likely American soil.
We lived under the threat of communist nukes for a long time. For some of that long time, the nukes were in the hands of people nearly as crazy as the Dear Leader. So what makes this situation different, really?
- There's not as many nukes and reliable delivery systems
- We can't implement the Reagan solution to this one
- Our conventional military is unquestionably dominant
So, what does all that mean? I don't know either. There really is no diplomatic solution to convince NK to give up its nuclear weapons. Their economy is already in the crapper and to engage in two-party talks now or grant them largesse at the expense of the taxpayer would be foolish capitulation. I'm not sure what the way forward is here. Perhaps it's time to demonstrate that we, too, possess weapons that can reach THEIR soil.
Mike Adams is <3
He's not on all the time, but when Mike Adams is on, he's really on:
Dear (name deleted):
Hi. Thanks for writing to express your First Amendment right to say that I have no first Amendment right to criticize women for having abortions. I love getting emails from English majors, especially feminist English majors. Your assertion that a woman has the exclusive right to terminate a pregnancy without input or criticism from anyone, especially a man, is an assertion I’ve heard often. I’m not at all surprised that you based your conclusion on the observation that women are naturally better at raising babies than men. So, according to you, the whole issue of reproduction is a female issue and men should just shut their mouths.
If I may extend an olive branch and say that I agree that women are better suited for raising children, I hope you’ll return the favor and agree that men are better suited - because of physical differences and differences in disposition – for fighting wars. So, I think a man should be able to fight a war without having to listen to a woman’s opinion about it. Come to think of it, he should be able to turn on his army and murder one of his own troops without having to hear from a woman either.
Just as reproduction is a woman’s issue, war is a man’s issue. So, I would like to suggest that all of you war protesting feminists just shut up and let the men handle these manly kinds of things. A woman’s job is raising babies. Or did you mean to say something else?
Dr. Mike S. (stands for “Seeking to be as condescending as a feminist”) Adams
October 03, 2006
Mark Foley
I'm sure by now you've heard about the Mark Foley case?
He's the Republican Representative who sent explicit emails to one of his pages - one of his underage pages. The republican reaction? absolutely predictable and sickening. I flip over to that bloated gasbag Bill O'Reilly on the way to the animal hospital yesterday and all I hear about is Gerry Studds. Let me be absolutely clear: I don't give two shits about Gerry Studds! The democrats had an opportunity to do right in the Studds case and they chose not to. Now the republicans have a chance to do right and they're circling the wagons and complaining about Gerry Studds.
I don't care if the democrats didn't call one of their own to task for the same thing - I don't care one whit. This is your opportunity, Republicans, to show people how these sorts of things should be dealt with. Instead of talking about Gerry Studds, how about you take Mark Foley out behind the Capitol building and beat the stupid out of him, then turn him over to the authorities once he's too broken to stand under his own power?
Absolutely disgusting behavior from everyone involved, especially Mark Foley. What disgusting me the most is that none of it - not the incident nor the republican reaction nor the democrats seizing the political opportunity - suprises me.
October 02, 2006
More Kitty
My cat is officially "tough".
I took her in today to get 2 shots and to have the microchip put in.
(side note: I skipped on the feline leukemia vaccine - I figure since she's going to be indoors, she'll be ok. Anyone in violent disagreement, please try to change my mind)
Anyway, you know how, after they get shots, cats just lay around and do nothing for the next 24 hours. How even if they're moving around, they completely lose their appetites?
Not so with Samus. She was eating lunch about 3 minutes after we got back from the vet. Pretty sure she's some sort of genetically engineered super-cat sent back in time to, I don't know, rip up the roommate's green chair? Apparently it's the leader of the furniture resistance in the future.
Kitty!
I now have a new kitten named Samus. She's there, basically, to terrorize my roommate's cat when I'm not around. We brought her home and let her go in my closet, hoping she's establish my room as "her" territory. Unfortunately, the other cat (Dig Dug) was under my bed. She looked around a big before heading under there and, well, if cats could talk...
Samus: Hey, what are you doing here? Wanna play? Wanna play? Huh huh huh do ya do ya do ya?
Dig Dug: I don't know who you are or why you're here, but I don't like you and I don't like anything you stand for.
After we got them out of there they were just fine - even though I still don't trust them together when I'm not around, I don't think they're going to fight. Besides, Samus isn't going to be the agressor - she's used to living around a bunch of cats - but she does have her claws, so I'm pretty sure she's not going to lose nor try to be dominant.
Anyway, they seem to be done hissing at each other after that one incident, now they just stare at each other. Another day or two and I might even trust her in the apartment when I go to work :)
