Itunes marks its one billionth download. That's a lot of songs. I did contribute, but 194 is just a drop in the bucket.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Saturday, February 18, 2006
I don't have the money yet...
...but I hope to in the future.
No, not the $300 million lottery. The sub-orbital space flight. Perhaps when I have the money it will be orbital.
Friday, February 17, 2006
Want a million dollars?
Come on, already! This has gone too far! If you are in doubt, ask the families of the 11 people who died today because of the continuing violence.
Email that was sent to me:
Muslims fly commercial airliners into buildings in New York City.No Muslim outrage.Muslim officials block the exit where school girls are trying to escape a burning building because their faces were exposed.No Muslim outrage.Muslims cut off the heads of three teenaged girls on their way to school in Indonesia. A Christian school.
No Muslim outrage.Muslims murder teachers trying to teach Muslim children in Iraq. No Muslim outrage.Muslims murder over 80 tourists with car bombs outside cafes and hotels in Egypt.
No Muslim outrage.A Muslim attacks a missionary children's school in India. Kills six.
No Muslim outrage.Muslims slaughter hundreds of children and teachers in Beslan, Russia. Muslims shoot children in the back.
No Muslim outrage.Let's go way back. Muslims kidnap and kill athletes at the Munich Summer Olympics.
No Muslim outrage.Muslims fire rocket-propelled grenades into schools full of children in Israel.
No Muslim outrage.Muslims murder more than 50 commuters in attacks on London subways and busses. Over 700 are injured.
No Muslim outrage.Muslims massacre dozens of innocents at a Passover Seder.
No Muslim outrage.Muslims murder innocent vacationers in Bali.
No Muslim outrage.Muslim newspapers publish anti-Semitic cartoons.
No Muslim outrage.Muslims are involved, on one side or the other, in almost every one of the 125+ shooting wars around the world.
No Muslim outrage.Muslims beat the charred bodies of Western civilians with their shoes, then hang them from a bridge.
No Muslim outrage.Newspapers in Denmark and Norway publish cartoons depicting Mohammed.
Muslims are outraged.Dead children. Dead tourists. Dead teachers. Dead doctors and nurses. Death, destruction and mayhem around the world at the hands of Muslims .. no Muslim outrage ... but publish a cartoon depicting Mohammed with a bomb in his turban and all hell breaks loose.
I know that not all Muslims agree with, and some were outraged about, the above acts. However the extremists have out-shouted the moderates. The above hyperbole may demean some, and for that I am sorry, but at least that's all I did. I didn't go out and set anything on fire; I didn't advocate the death of anyone; I didn't commit murder. I exercised my right to a free press. (And no, the lack of a free press does not give justification for other actions).
If you disagree or were offended, please comment back. Debate, I love it; I don't react well to someone trying to kill me.
California Attorney General Argues Against Amicus Briefs
In the court case to defend California's law of the definition of marriage as one man and one woman, the attorney general is arguing against some of the strongest arguments defending the law.
According to William Duncan in National Review:
In California, the situation seems even more troubling. Not content to let amici parties offer the arguments for marriage that the state is unwilling to, the attorney general's office has made submissions to the court that attack the arguments offered by amici.
*Amici curiae are "friends of the court briefs" that are written by third parties who support one of the parties in the case.
I plan to investigate further to see what arguments are not being used.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Flowers to 500 People
This is pretty cool. I'm sure that he is popular now.
Florida teen sends roses to 500 classmates - U.S. Life - MSNBC.com
Monday, February 13, 2006
Christian School Targeted Over Cartoon Controversy
Associated Press Reports:
Police fired tear gas and wielded batons Monday to stop about 7,000 students protesting cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad from marching on the governor's residence in northwestern Pakistan.The students had marched to several universities in Peshawar and hurled stones at a Christian school, breaking windows and causing other damage. They also threw stones at shops in the main business district, chanting "Down with America" and "Down with Denmark."
Implanting electronic tags in workers
I object to implanting ID tags in humans for three major reasons.
- Security of information. If someone can legally read the ID tag information, someone can illegally read the ID tag information. I don't mind machine readable ID cards - either bar code or computer chip. I have a few myself. However, I can choose when and where they are read. When they can be read by a scanner remotely, I do not decide to whom the information goes.
- Privacy of information. I don't like the idea of being tracked everywhere I go. Yes, I know that cell phone companies can track me because of my cell phone, and I know I leave an electronic footprint every time I use my ATM/Credit card. I don't have anything to hide, but I don't like the idea of someone being able to surveil me remotely.
- Manipulation of information. The ability in the future to manipulate the information, either by a hacker or government agent disturbs me. Once the ID tag is associated with financial information, the concern increases. I don't think there is any current threat, but I've seen enough science fiction to not like the idea of contorl over a person.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Cartoon Fiasco: Why? " Muslims take their religion more seriously than Christians"
This has gone far enough! Riots, embassy torchings, death threats, arrests for printing cartoons - chalk that up to Islamic extremism. (And yes, all of those are separate links)
But WESTERN Governments shutting down websites? That goes too far.
Appeasement will not eliminate the problem, only the symptoms. I agree with the Danish Government's refusal to appologize and find it unfortunate that the newspaper did. The newspaper did not do anything wrong, legally or morally. And the "reactions" to the cartoons are not reactionary at all. They were planned.
Look at the timeline of events. Someone had to orchestrate the demonstrations, for it did not take months for the people to get upset.
Furthermore the chantings of this crowd in Malaysia show that this is not the proper reaction of a group wanting the rest of the world to take their claims seriously.
"Long live Islam. Destroy Denmark. Destroy Israel. Destroy George Bush. Destroy America"
These sentiments may be intended well:
"The West should treat Islam the way it wants Islam to treat the West and vice versa - they should accept one another as equals" - Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi
But he declared posession of the cartoons as illegal and shut down a newspaper for reprinting them.
Do I advocate purposely offending others based on their religion? No. And reprinting the cartoons just to rile someone up is wrong. But giving up the right to free press and having to worry about censorship from the government because of the childish (yes, throwing a tantrum is childish) actions of others is also wrong.
The radical Islamists are our generation's book burners who search for secular Galileos and Newtons. They are the new Nazi censors who sniff out anything favorable to the Jews. These fundamentalists are akin to the Soviet commissars who once decreed all art must serve political struggle — or else.
If we give in to these 8th-century clerics, shortly we will be living in an 8th century ourselves, where we may say, hear, and do nothing that might offend a fundamentalist Muslim — and, to assuage our treachery to freedom and liberalism, we'll always be equipped with the new rationale of multiculturalism and cultural equivalence which so poorly cloaks our abject fear...
The deluded here might believe that the divide is a moral one, between a supposedly decadent secular West and a pious Middle East, rather than an existential one that is fueled by envy, jealousy, self-pity, and victimization. But to believe the cartoons represent the genuine anguish of an aggrieved puritanical society tainted by Western decadence, one would have to ignore that Turkey is the global nexus for the sex-slave market, that Afghanistan is the world's opium farm, that the Saudi Royals have redefined casino junketeering, and that the repository of Hitlerian imagery is in the West Bank and Iran.
The entire controversy over the cartoons is ludicrous, but often in history the trivial and ludicrous can wake a people up before the significant and tragic follow.
“Can you explain why Muslims are so angry over a cartoon and why they are rioting, killing and making threats?”
...First, I think Muslims take their religion more seriously than Christians.
The war/battle/hallabaloo is not "West vs. Islam" -- but "against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)