How long do you give Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise? I say, 4 years tops. Quite sad really. But even more sad to me is the fact that she is actually carrying his child and engaged to him. Tom Cruise? Yah he's hot and rich, but my god, he's a freakin' idiot.
My girls won their soccer league, 1st place! It was absolutely awesome. I was so happy for them!
In other news, life really sucks sometimes...
Usually I am pretty understanding of the Muslim Arab world and at times tend to even side with them politically on world issues. A perfect example is Iran wanting nuclear weapons. I don't blame them.
But recently this whole thing with the cartoons making fun of the prophet Mohammed... I haven't actually seen the cartoon, only read what it depicts, Mohammed with a bomb in his turban, something like that. It was first published in a newspaper in Denmark I think, and the Arab world called for boycotts against Danish goods. The west says it is freedom of speech, the Arab world says it is discrimination against Muslims, and calls for the removal of all these cartoons. The western governments say there is nothing they can do, as indeed there is nothing they can do as these are private newspapers that do have the right to print whatever they like. The Arab governments recall their ambassadors, there are demonstrations in Arab nations, and eventually they fire bomb three different European embassies in the Middle East.
This is why fundamentalist religion is the biggest problem in the world today. This is complete idiocy... An insult published in a newspaper, and religious idiots retaliate by burning embassies to the ground. WHAT THE FUCK???? This is also the very reason why you cannot push democracy on foreign countries (can you say Iraq). If the population of the country isn't willing to fight for these very rights, freedom of speech, religion, etc., then THEY ARE NOT READY. Forget about spreading democracy to the world. When they are mature enough to handle the implications of democracy (ie freedom of speech), they will form their own democracy, and NOT ONE DAY BEFORE.
I neglected to post on my last vacation...
I went to Aruba with my friend Lisa, the 15th through the 22d I think it was. We left on a Sunday and came back the following Sunday.
Aruba was quite beautiful. The beaches were awesome, nice white sand, the water was warm, 80 degrees, our hotel was functionally nice, big rooms with kitchenette, living room, bedroom. While we were there we went sailing, snorkeling, an evening cruise on the ocean, a broadway-type show, a submarine on the coral reef, explored the island by jeep (it's only 18x5 miles). We had great dinners every night we were there, went to a casino for about 10 minutes so Lisa could try a slot machine for the first time, laid on the beach every day with a book, and went out a couple times to clubs at night. It was extremely relaxing, and had fun. And then we came back to work. Oh my god, the last 2 weeks have been hard. I have been just so out of wanting to have anything to do with work whatsoever. And I hate it cause it spills into other parts of my life and I enjoy other things less.
This week I'm off to Florida for 3 days for work. Hopefully it will be warm and sunny. But the way it has been this winter in Boston, makes it feel like it's barely winter. We've gotten more rain than snow this winter, and I think it has only dropped below 20 degrees at night 2 or 3 times. It almost feels more like spring. I'm not complaining though.
Americans always seem to think the United Nations is useless. There are some legitimate arguments, the bureaucracy, corruption at some levels, inaction at some key periods in history. But in my opinion, the main reason so many in our government don't like the UN is because it doesn't necessarily pander to the interests of the United States. But anyway, here is a good article discussing some of the good things that the UN has actually done....
Peace on Earth? Increasingly, Yes.
By Andrew Mack
Wednesday, December 28, 2005; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/27/AR2005122700732.html
Seen through the eyes of the media, the world appears an evermore dangerous place. Iraq is sliding toward civil war, the slaughter in Darfur appears unending, violent insurgencies are brewing in Thailand and a dozen other countries, and terrorism strikes again in Bali. It is not surprising that most people believe global violence is increasing.
However, most people, including many leading policymakers and scholars, are wrong. The reality is that, since the end of the Cold War, armed conflict and nearly all other forms of political violence have decreased. The world is far more peaceful than it was.
Why has this change attracted so little attention? In part because the global media give far more coverage to wars that start than to those that quietly end, but also because no international agency collects global or regional data on any form of political violence.
The Human Security Report, an independent study funded by five countries and published by Oxford University Press, draws on a wide range of little publicized scholarly data, plus specially commissioned research to present a portrait of global security that is sharply at odds with conventional wisdom. The report reveals that after five decades of inexorable increase, the number of armed conflicts started to fall worldwide in the early 1990s. The decline has continued.
By 2003, there were 40 percent fewer conflicts than in 1992. The deadliest conflicts -- those with 1,000 or more battle-deaths -- fell by some 80 percent. The number of genocides and other mass slaughters of civilians also dropped by 80 percent, while core human rights abuses have declined in five out of six regions of the developing world since the mid-1990s. International terrorism is the only type of political violence that has increased. Although the death toll has jumped sharply over the past three years, terrorists kill only a fraction of the number who die in wars.
What accounts for the extraordinary and counterintuitive improvement in global security over the past dozen years? The end of the Cold War, which had driven at least a third of all conflicts since World War II, appears to have been the single most critical factor.
In the late 1980s, Washington and Moscow stopped fueling "proxy wars" in the developing world, and the United Nations was liberated to play the global security role its founders intended. Freed from the paralyzing stasis of Cold War geopolitics, the Security Council initiated an unprecedented, though sometimes inchoate, explosion of international activism designed to stop ongoing wars and prevent new ones.
Other international agencies, donor governments and nongovernmental organizations also played a critical role, but it was the United Nations that took the lead, pushing a range of conflict-prevention and peace-building initiatives on a scale never before attempted. The number of U.N. peacekeeping operations and missions to prevent and stop wars have increased by more than 400 percent since the end of the Cold War. As this upsurge of international activism grew in scope and intensity through the 1990s, the number of crises, wars and genocides declined.
There have been some horrific and much publicized failures, of course -- the failures to stop genocide in Rwanda, Srebrenica and Darfur being the most egregious. But the quiet successes -- in Namibia, El Salvador, Mozambique, Eastern Slovenia, East Timor and elsewhere went largely unheralded, as did the fact that the United Nations' expertise in handling difficult missions has grown dramatically.
A major study by the Rand Corp. published this year found that U.N. peace-building operations had a two-thirds success rate. They were also surprisingly cost-effective. In fact, the United Nations spends less running 17 peace operations around the world for an entire year than the United States spends in Iraq in a single month. What the United Nations calls "peacemaking" -- using diplomacy to end wars -- has been even more successful. About half of all the peace agreements negotiated between 1946 and 2003 have been signed since the end of the Cold War.
With the Security Council often reluctant to act -- the abject failure to stop the Rwandan genocide remains a key example -- and with too many missions having been denied adequate resources, appropriate mandates or properly trained personnel, these successes are all the more remarkable.
In the wake of last month's global summit at the United Nations, many critics wrote the United Nations off as an institution so deeply flawed that it was beyond salvation. The analysis and the carefully collated data in the Human Security Report reveal something very different: an organization that, despite its failures and creaking bureaucracy, has played a critical role in enhancing global security.
The writer directs the Human Security Center at the University of British Columbia. He was director of the Strategic Planning Unit in the executive office of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan between 1998 and 2001.
This info was recently passed on to me by an acquaintance.
-As part of the American Dream, we have always been risk-takers...a good thing many years ago when taking risk meant entrepreneurship, invention, taming the wilderness. But now, it seems most Americans take risk by shooting craps. In 2002, 7 of 10 Americans took part in some form of legalized gambling (an annual growth rate of 9%). 31% of Americans gambled in casinos. In 2002, we spent $68 billion on gambling, up from $27 billion in 1991. In the 50s, only Nevada had legalized gambling, today 47 states have it. Couple this with the stock market and "reality shows" that offer huge rewards (over 170 of 'em), perhaps the American Dream is now the American daydream (not my words).
-Violence. When Canadians and Americans were asked to "agree or disagree" with the statement that "when one is tense or frustrated, a little violence can offer relief, and that it's no big deal". In 1992, 14% of both cultures agreed that a little violence is okay. In 2000, the Canadians stayed at 14%, whereas the Americans surveyed shot up to 31%. When asked "if it is okay to use violence to get what you want", in 1992 about 9% of both cultures said using violence was acceptable. By 2000, the Canadians surveyed jumped to 12% and the Americans a whooping 24%. So, 1 out of 4 Americans believe using violence is acceptable to get what you want. I think I've seen that 24% driving on the highways and byways.
-Wages. Of the 25 most industrialized nations in the world, the US has the highest earnings inequality between rich and poor. The typical high-income person in the US makes about 5.6 times that of the tyical low-income person. By contrast, high-end earners in Europe make about 3.5 times as much as low-end earners. 17% of Americans live in poverty. In Europe, the number ranges from 5.1 (Finland) - 14.2 percent (Italy).
-Energy waste. In 2000, the US used more than 30% more energy than Europe, even though we have more than 150 million less people.
-Health care. The US and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens. More than 46 million Americans are currently uninsured.
-Safe environment. Between 1997-1999, the average rate of homicide in Europe was 1.7 per 100,000 people. In the US this number was nearly 4 times larger at 6.7 per 100,000 people. MOST SHOCKING: The rates of childhood homicide in the US are 5 times higher than that of the other 25 wealthiest nations in the world COMBINED! The suicide rate for US children is two times higher than the other 25 countries COMBINED. In the US there are more than 2 million people in prisons - that's nearly 25% of the entire prison population in the world. While Europe averages 87 prisoners per 100,000 population, the US averages a shocking 685 prisoners per 100,000.
-HOPE!! 82% of Americans say that God is very important to them and 60% believe religion is "very" important in their lives. This number is 33% in Italy and Poland, 21% in Germany, 16% in Great Britain, 14% in France, 10% in Sweden, and 9% in Denmark. While half of Americans attend church every week, less than 10% of the population in the Netherlands, Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, and Denmark attend religious services ONCE A MONTH.
Here is my response....
Unfortunately I am all too familiar with most of the issues you cited as I have read a lot about almost all of them. I'm sure I could add another 1/2 dozen major issues in which the US lags far behind European nations or Canada. The one "issue" which was juxtaposed against the others was religious inclinations. There obviously seems to be a correlation between the importance of religion to the populace and many of these key social indicators, at least from this limited data set. Unfortunately, it is a strong negative correlation. You would think it would be a positive correlation, that countries that place higher importance on religion and faith would exhibit higher "social advancement" in things like health care, income disparity, violence, energy consumption, etc.
Well, as we are all taught in statistics, a correlation does not make causation, so religion may have nothing to do with key social metrics such as these. But it made me wonder.... It has been my experience that religion in the US allows Americans to displace personal responsibility for society's problems onto groups outside themselves, or to blame society's problems on a lack of religious dedication by the population at large, or to push personality responsibility onto God's shoulders. (There are numerous exceptions, portions of the Catholic church being a prime example, with their dedication to social justice issues.)
If Europe is any indication, these are completely fallacious arguments/ideas. Perhaps Europeans are more likely to take personal action because they don't think that God will take care of it all for them (in contrast to Americans who think they don't have to take any personal responsibility themselves)? It would be interesting to read what research has been done on this issue. I don't recall coming across any.
These are unfortunately sad issues to discuss over Christmas. I wonder if any of the issues you addressed are ever going to get much better. Congress just cut $40B in social welfare programs including Medicaid, Medicare, higher education loans and grants, federal child-support, etc, all programs that help the poor, those without health care, single mothers, etc. Of course there is no talk of repealing the enormous tax cuts from Bush's first term, which if I recall correctly, were around $40B, of which the vast majority went to the richest of the rich....
I flew down to Orlando last Sunday for a 4 day stay for a work conference. The work part was boring, but got to go do fun stuff every evening in Orlando. Night 1, went to the Epcot center with friends and did this tour of the world thing where they have restaurants and buildings of the respective cultures. Drank a little too much, was flirting with the Moroccan girl in one of the Moroccan stores. Night 2, went out with a couple friends to the clubs in Pleasure Island, a part of Disney where they have like 6 night clubs. There was this girl I sort of knew from Boston that was in Orlando on business, so I invited her to come. She drove down and went to the clubs with us. She proceeded to get drunk and hit on me all night. I am never into people I barely know trying to get too friendly too fast. It annoys me. So I was not that thrilled with her. Anyway, she was pretty drunk and couldn't drive home. The rest of us were tired and wanted to go to bed cause we had to be up at 6:30 for the conference. We all went back to the hotel and I kept drunk girl company for a little while hoping she would be able to drive home soon. No chance of that. Finally I told her she could sleep in my room in my other bed for a while and then drive home. Needless to say, I woke up the next morning and she was still sleeping there. Psycho girl. I don't know what she was thinking about any of that....
Night 3, went out with larger group of friends from work, like a dozen, to several clubs. Had fun dancing until 2 in the morning. Haven't been to a good techno club in a long time, so it was especially awesome.
Night 4, went out with a different group of people from work, most I didn't know. We hung out at 70's/80's club; I hate dancing to that stuff, most of it anyway. 2 cute girls in our party proceeded to attract the attention of some drunk loser who wouldn't take the hint and leave them alone on the dance floor. I had to get in his face and get him gone. This is one of those times where it was probably good to be 6'8" as it reduced the chance of trouble...
Went home the following morning after 4 hours of sleep. I think I have finally caught up on my sleep, 2 days later. I haven't done that much "partying" in years (going out so much), probably since early college or high school. It was fun though, for once in a long while....
This afternoon spent some time with friend Christina.
Then went over to Lisa's place and we grabbed Ethiopian food and then chatted for a while afterward. Lisa is just like one of the coolest people I know. I'm lucky to have met her.
Ah, off to another week of work. Well, should be abbreviated due to the holidays, and I should succeed in working mostly half days for the week.
Bush is the biggest fool of a President I could possibly imagine. The latest? Well, they just had 2 weeks of talks in Montreal, attended by 157 nations, on what the world can do to reduce global warming, curb carbon-dioxide emissions, etc. As the entire world came to agreement, and had constructive talks that will hopefully and likely lead to global initiatives to reduce our destruction of the environment, our piece of shit country WALKED OUT of the talks and refused to have anything to do with them. So the US will go it alone, again, and not join the international community of 157 nations. Are you shitting me????? Thank you Bush, you idiot, for making us the stupidest country in the entire world. You disgust me. You are a pathetic and sad fool that lives in your own bubble of ignominious ignorance. You are a disgrace to Americans and a disgrace to the entire human race.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/09/AR2005120902037.html
I am really really angry right now.
Every day that goes by Bush provides more and more evidence that he is the single greatest destructive force on the entire planet. Forget Saddam Hussein, North Korea, Iran, and maybe even bin-Laden. No, Bush, you are the #1 criminal in the world.
Sorry, I needed to vent. GRRRRR.
Well, nothing fantastic for me this last week. I practiced soccer with one of the girls from my soccer team, her younger sister, and dad. I ran through lots of drills and taught them lots of new things with a soccer ball. This was the first time I have ever got to do something with such a small group, only 2 kids. It was really great, and fun for all of us. I could concentrate 100% on those two kids for 1 hour instead of trying to spread my attention across 16 kids. I think it is likely really good for them too for their soccer development.
Plus, without fail, they make me smile. All I have to do is spend 10 mins with almost any of the girls and it lifts my mood. And Jayna, the older kid I coach and played with this week, is one of my favorite kids to be around. She is fantastic.
Off to Florida for 5 days on Sunday for work. Gonna ditch the 12" plus of snow we got today!!!
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/12/01/news/saf.php
Check this out... An African nation just allowed gay marriage. So we now have an African nation with a woman president (Liberia), an African nation with the highest percentage in the world of women in the government legislature (Rwanda), and an African nation that allows gay marriage (South Africa). Not quite so backward as people seem to think sometimes huh?!!
I got my new car!!! Finally. I originally ordered this thing in June. So it's a 2006 Infiniti G35 Coupe. It's beautiful, fast. Every day I walk out to my car and have a smile that I am lucky enough to drive such a cool car! But it has been a little boring cause it has a 1500 mile break-in where you can't get on on the gas much at all. Grrrr. Very frustrating.
I need to go on a vacation. I've been chatting with my friend Lisa about a Caribbean vacation... You can find wicked cheap tickets from Boston to the Caribbean. Aruba is now $274 round trip. How can you not take a trip for that cheap to some new exotic destination? So, hopefully after this Xmas will go somewhere warm.
I have to say, this I find funny... Of course it is political, but it is also very very ironic that a foreign country is selling deeply discounted heating oil to poor Americans, when our own damn government really isn't doing shit and could care less about the poor....
Inexpensive Heating Oil Arrives in US from Venezuela
By Mil Arcega
Washington, D.C.
25 November 2005
Thousands of poor Americans will receive discounted home heating fuel this winter, thanks to an unusual arrangement with Venezuela, a country whose government is at political odds with the U.S. government.
Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez, followed through on his promise to help the poor. Only it wasn't in South America.
Just outside Boston, in the state of Massachusetts, the first delivery of discounted home heating oil from Venezuela went to Linda Kelly. Cheaper fuel means the mother of three will not have to choose between eating or heating and she's not concerned her hardship could be used by Venezuela to embarrass U.S. President George Bush.
"I don't see any political issues, I just want to keep my family warm," she said.
CITGO, a subsidiary of Venezuela's state owned oil company is supplying the fuel at 40 percent below market price, or about 15 to 20 cents less per liter.
The arrangement is seen by political analysts as an attempt by Mr. Chavez to improve his image with the American public by providing assistance to low income residents at a time when U.S. oil companies and U.S. lawmakers have been reluctant to do so.
The Bush administration calls the home heating oil program a political ploy, but U.S. Congressman William Delahunt calls it a humanitarian gesture.
"This today is about people, it's not about politics," he said.
But politics has marked the running argument between the leaders of the two countries. Julia Sweig at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations says the heating oil program is an attempt by Mr. Chavez to boost his popularity and push his brand of anti-capitalist, anti-American politics.
"He sees himself as a modern day revolutionary," said Ms. Sweig. “He sees himself as unifying Latin America, as building a Latin America that is independent from the United States."
The U.S. is the largest purchaser of Venezuelan oil, which accounts for 80 percent of the country's exports.
The average U.S. household is expected to spend 27 percent more for heating oil than it did last year. Under the agreement, qualified Massachusetts residents and institutions will receive more than 12 million gallons of discounted heating oil this winter.
Yet more evidence that shows greenhouse gases are causing global warming... But of course, we do little to nothing to make real change, at the helm of Bush and company.
Rise in Gases Unmatched by a History in Ancient Ice
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: November 25, 2005
Shafts of ancient ice pulled from Antarctica's frozen depths show that for at least 650,000 years three important heat-trapping greenhouse gases never reached recent atmospheric levels caused by human activities, scientists are reporting today.
The measured gases were carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Concentrations have risen over the last several centuries at a pace far beyond that seen before humans began intensively clearing forests and burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels.
The sampling and analysis were done by the European Program for Ice Coring in Antarctica, and the results are being published today in the journal Science.
The evidence was found in air bubbles trapped in successively older ice samples extracted from a nearly two-mile-deep hole drilled in a remote spot in East Antarctica called Dome C.
Experts familiar with the findings who were not involved with the research said the samples provided a vital long-term view of variations in the atmosphere and Antarctic climate. They say the data will help test and improve computer models used to forecast how accumulating greenhouse emissions will affect the climate.
Some climate experts not involved in the research said the findings also confirmed that the buildup of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe emissions was taking the atmosphere into uncharted territory.
The longest previous record of carbon dioxide fluctuations, compiled from ice cores collected at the Russian research station at Vostok, in East Antarctica, goes back slightly more than 400,000 years.
"They've now pushed back two-thirds of a million years and found that nature did not get as far as humans have," said Richard B. Alley, a geosciences professor at Pennsylvania State University who is an expert on ice cores. "We're changing the world really hugely - way past where it's been for a long time."
James White, a geology professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, not involved with the study, said that although the ice-age evidence showed that levels of carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases rose and fell in response to warming and cooling, the gases could clearly take the lead as well.
"CO2 and climate are like two people handcuffed to each other," he said. "Where one goes, the other must follow. Leadership may change, or they may march in step, but they are never far from each other. Our current CO2 levels appear to be far out of balance with climate when viewed through these results, reinforcing the idea that we have significant modern warming to go."
The new data from the ice cores also provides the first detailed portrait of conditions during ice-age cycles that occurred more than 400,000 years ago - a point in Earth's two-million-year history of cold periods and warm intervals after which some unknown influence lengthened ice ages and shortened and amplified the warm periods.
Both before and after that transition, the ice record shows, there was always a tight relationship between amounts of the greenhouse gases and air temperature.
While the overall climate pattern has been set by rhythmic variations in Earth's orientation to the Sun, the records show that carbon dioxide and methane consistently made the interglacial climate warmer than it would otherwise have been, said Thomas Stocker, one of the researchers and a physicist at the University of Bern in Switzerland.
Last year, the same cores provided new evidence that the current warm period, the Holocene, which began about 12,000 years ago, is similar to the longer warm periods that were typical before 400,000 years ago, and could last at least another 16,000 years.
The European team is analyzing deeper, older sections of the Dome C ice cores, and the researchers said they might be able to take the climate record back 800,000 years, possibly providing information about yet another early warm interval similar to the Holocene.
The new long-term record is essentially creating a subset of climate science, letting scientists compare different warm periods. They can then sort out influences, including greenhouse gases, said Gavin A. Schmidt, a climate modeler at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan.
I watched this documentary tonight called "Born into Brothels." It documents the lives of 8 children born into the brothels of Calcutta's red light district. Parts of it are incredibly sad. Yet this is one of the most touching, incredible stories I have ever seen. It brought tears to my eyes over and over again. These kids are just incredible, so beautiful. They give you hope.
But my god, does it infuriate me at the same time, that we have created a world where this happens to children. Each and everyone of us is responsible. You know, fuck the world up for my life, I can deal with it. But how can we do the same for these children?
This was easily the best movie I've seen all year....
I like this article...
Phony Theory, False Conflict
'Intelligent Design' Foolishly Pits Evolution Against Faith
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, November 18, 2005; Page A23
Because every few years this country, in its infinite tolerance, insists on hearing yet another appeal of the Scopes monkey trial, I feel obliged to point out what would otherwise be superfluous: that the two greatest scientists in the history of our species were Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, and they were both religious.
Newton's religion was traditional. He was a staunch believer in Christianity and a member of the Church of England. Einstein's was a more diffuse belief in a deity who set the rules for everything that occurs in the universe.
Neither saw science as an enemy of religion. On the contrary. "He believed he was doing God's work," James Gleick wrote in his recent biography of Newton. Einstein saw his entire vocation -- understanding the workings of the universe -- as an attempt to understand the mind of God.
Not a crude and willful God who pushes and pulls and does things according to whim. Newton was trying to supplant the view that first believed the sun's motion around the earth was the work of Apollo and his chariot, and later believed it was a complicated system of cycles and epicycles, one tacked upon the other every time some wobble in the orbit of a planet was found. Newton's God was not at all so crude. The laws of his universe were so simple, so elegant, so economical and therefore so beautiful that they could only be divine.
Which brings us to Dover, Pa., Pat Robertson, the Kansas State Board of Education, and a fight over evolution that is so anachronistic and retrograde as to be a national embarrassment.
Dover distinguished itself this Election Day by throwing out all eight members of its school board who tried to impose "intelligent design" -- today's tarted-up version of creationism -- on the biology curriculum. Pat Robertson then called the wrath of God down upon the good people of Dover for voting "God out of your city." Meanwhile, in Kansas, the school board did a reverse Dover, mandating the teaching of skepticism about evolution and forcing intelligent design into the statewide biology curriculum.
Let's be clear. Intelligent design may be interesting as theology, but as science it is a fraud. It is a self-enclosed, tautological "theory" whose only holding is that when there are gaps in some area of scientific knowledge -- in this case, evolution -- they are to be filled by God. It is a "theory" that admits that evolution and natural selection explain such things as the development of drug resistance in bacteria and other such evolutionary changes within species but also says that every once in a while God steps into this world of constant and accumulating change and says, "I think I'll make me a lemur today." A "theory" that violates the most basic requirement of anything pretending to be science -- that it be empirically disprovable. How does one empirically disprove the proposition that God was behind the lemur, or evolution -- or behind the motion of the tides or the "strong force" that holds the atom together?
In order to justify the farce that intelligent design is science, Kansas had to corrupt the very definition of science, dropping the phrase " natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us," thus unmistakably implying -- by fiat of definition, no less -- that the supernatural is an integral part of science. This is an insult both to religion and science.
The school board thinks it is indicting evolution by branding it an "unguided process" with no "discernible direction or goal." This is as ridiculous as indicting Newtonian mechanics for positing an "unguided process" by which Earth is pulled around the sun every year without discernible purpose. What is chemistry if not an "unguided process" of molecular interactions without "purpose"? Or are we to teach children that God is behind every hydrogen atom in electrolysis?
He may be, of course. But that discussion is the province of religion, not science. The relentless attempt to confuse the two by teaching warmed-over creationism as science can only bring ridicule to religion, gratuitously discrediting a great human endeavor and our deepest source of wisdom precisely about those questions -- arguably, the most important questions in life -- that lie beyond the material.
How ridiculous to make evolution the enemy of God. What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein? Even if it did give us the Kansas State Board of Education, too.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, is being made into a movie. It looks amazing!
http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/narnia/
I went to a local Unitarian Universalist church on Sunday evening to watch the screening of a documentary called "Walmart: The High cost of Low Price." It was a pretty good film, and bashed Walmart pretty hard. It was a little too full of anecdotal evidence though; it could have used more hard facts.
Regardless, Walmart is the epitome of everything that is wrong with capitalism. They don't give a crap about their employees and pay them next to nothing, have terrible benefits, exploit cheap foreign labor markets for near slave-labor, put local family owned business out of business at the drop of a hat, all in the name of providing the cheapest product possible with the only intent to earn the greatest profit possible. Let's see, last year their revenues were $285 billion, and their net income, profit, was $10 billion. They made $10 billion dollars in one year, and yet their average salary per year is $13,800 per person for a full time sales associate. This is below the federal poverty line for a family of three...
Want to read more?? http://www.wakeupwalmart.com/facts/
I miss my kids on the soccer team.... Over the past couple months of coaching these girls I have found myself very quickly, and somewhat to my surprise (because of how quickly), coming to care very deeply about every one of the kids on the team. It has been a somewhat strange, but almost always an incredibly positive experience in every way.
And because of that I have spent a lot of time and thought in considering my actions and words very carefully, in advance, and after the fact, recognizing how important what I do and say is. I still have a lot to learn.... For whatever reason, my actions around adults, often, I don't really give much thought, at least with those I don't know or am not close to. But with the kids, it is different....
Our soccer season was done a week ago. I went to the indoor game just to watch the girls and say hi. Most of them came up to me with wonderful smiles on their face, excited to see me there, and chatted for a little while. Incredible how these kids can make you feel. Strange....
On Friday I went on a date with this girl. It was fun. We had dinner and chatted, and then the Jazz bar we were at had a funk-jazz band play. Their music was great and totally fun. We danced for a while and then eventually went home. She was cool, I had fun. But frankly, the best part was that she was 6'0" tall!!!! It was so great being around a tall woman, it's hard to describe unless you are tall yourself I guess.
3 day weekend, now back to work. Sigh...
High school student elected as mayor of his hometown in Michigan. For real!!!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4429192.stm
Here is one of the most fantastic pieces of bullshit I've read in months... While we are paying out of our freakin asses for all products petroleum…
U.S. Energy Companies Report Record Quarterly Profits
U.S. energy companies are reporting record quarterly earnings this week. Exxon Mobil has reported a third-quarter profit of $9.92 billion -- the largest quarterly total ever for a U.S. company. The Los Angeles Times notes the figure amounts to more than what Coca-Cola Co., Intel Corp. and Time Warner Inc. earn in an entire year. Third-quarter profits at ConocoPhillips, the country's third-largest oil company, are up 89 percent. Together, the 29 major oil and gas firms are expected to earn $96 billion this year, up from $68 billion last year.
So my new job is going pretty well. I can't say I'm exactly enjoying it, but it is better than before. I stay busy, the days go by faster, and I feel like I'm contributing in some way. These are all good things...
Still playing soccer outdoor, although the weather is starting to suck all the time. Time for indoor. Have 3 weeks of outdoor left though.
I'm still doing the coaching soccer thing. It just continues to get better. I've taken two coaching courses through the massachusetts youth soccer association that have been extremely beneficial. The more I do this, more time I spend time with the kids, the more I learn. I really love this.
Tonight I took one of the girls on the team to our adult soccer practice. It was so cool. She's really amazingly good for being 11 years old, enough so that she could more or less play with all the adults without them being too easy on her. She would steal the ball from them, dribbled around a couple of them. She had fun, and it was just so cool watching her play with all the grown-ups and doing well. On top of that, she is a complete sweet-heart. She is very kind, friendly, always has a smile on her face, is so coachable. I just can't say enough about this kid. She's amazing. If I have a daughter like her some day I will be luckier than life. Anyway, she's my favorite on the team. I have to make a concerted effort not to show it though at practices. But really, I can't complain about any of our kids. They are all great, and all a blast to coach and play with.
These 11 year old girls are just good for me... You know, I am often too serious, too much of an adult, and these girls are exactly the opposite in many ways. They are teaching me many of the things I lost when I grew up.
I also tried out this online dating thing. I've found it to be pretty cool so far. It just gives you the opportunity to meet a ton of people that you wouldn't normally otherwise meet. So we shall see though... I just started not too long ago, so haven't actually met any in person yet, lol. We shall see.
Winter is a coming....
A recent poll of Iraqis and what they think of the American and British occupation...
"Forty five per cent of Iraqis believe attacks against British and American troops are justified. 82 per cent are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition troops," the Sunday Telegraph said quoting a "secret" poll commissioned by British Ministry of Defence.
The opinion poll, carried out in August, was conducted by an Iraqi University research team, which was unaware that the data compiled by it would be used by the coalition forces.
It said less than one per cent Iraqis believed that the coalition forces were responsible for any improvement in the security conditions in the country.
Sixty seven per cent of Iraqis feel less secure because of the occupation, the survey said adding that 43 per cent of Iraqis believe conditions for peace and stability have worsened.
Seventy two per cent do not have confidence in the multinational forces. It also debunks claims by both the US and British governments that the general well-being of the average Iraqi is improving in post-Saddam Iraq, the poll said.
These findings appear to contradict claims made by the Chief of the General Staff Gen Sir Mike Jackson, who only days ago congratulated British soldiers for "supporting the Iraqi people in building a new and better Iraq", the report said.
Seventy one per cent of people rarely get safe clean water, 47 per cent never have enough electricity, 70 per cent say their sewerage system rarely works and 40 per cent of southern Iraqis are unemployed, the report said.
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