One thing that humanity has in common, across the board, are our amazing capacities for both good and evil. It seems one can find any group of people who developed a society and see them go from periods of enlightenment and equality into periods of darkness and hatred, and with many of the most positive and most negative qualities being seen at the same time.

The very fact that humans are morally equal to one another should produce a better sense of understanding the people who are on the wrong side of history, so to speak.

When you look at the clashes of civilizations we’ve seen we often get comical portraits of history: native Americans are all hippies preaching peace and environmentalism while the settlers were war hungry racists; the institution of slavery was applied exclusively by white anglo-saxon protestants on the world, the Japanese were war mongering barbarians exploiting their technological advantage to brutalize all of Asia only towards that end, etc.

It is vaguely true that the victors write history, but in civilized societies it often ends up with the victims writing history out of an acute sense of guilt the descendants of the victors feel.

In no way do I seek to lessen the horror of the atrocities committed by white settlers, slavers and Japanese imperialists, but rather I think it needs to be understood that if the tables were turned there would be the same result. Read the rest of this entry »

I was on a boat, in the middle of the ocean, with several people I knew. We were heading to an island far away. I went swimming, and then I got back onto the boat. This is all that I remember of that. Not a very poignant dream, but I am bureaucratic about some things, and it will be logged.

Dreams are always odd… In this dream, there was going to be a Pornotarium concert. However, we did not know if Jason could make it, so Bialy and me contemplated what to do. He told us he could make it.

The venue was my elementary school’s auditorium.

Before the show we discussed charities to give money to, and most centered around giving them to Haitians.

Everyone assembled and it seemed like we waited forever for Jason to arrive; he did, and we put on an excellent show. The audience remained seated in assembly style chairs the entire time and was mostly composed of families with elementary school age children.

After the concert to celebrate we went to a bungee jumping waterpark. I guess this can only be explained by “jumping hundreds of feet.. WIth a bungee chord… And landing in the water and being pulled back up.”

Sean Bradford and I got into a playful wrestling match near the end of one of these and we fell into the water 200 feet below.

I was happy and then I woke up.

It is always interesting when one of the most powerful espionage organizations takes enough interest in your corporation to forge a partnership — there is a lot we will be able to conclude from this:

The world’s largest Internet search company and the world’s most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity.

Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google — and its users — from future attack.

Google and the NSA declined to comment on the partnership. But sources with knowledge of the arrangement, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the alliance is being designed to allow the two organizations to share critical information without violating Google’s policies or laws that protect the privacy of Americans’ online communications. The sources said the deal does not mean the NSA will be viewing users’ searches or e-mail accounts or that Google will be sharing proprietary data.

 Washington Post

The NSA has deemed that somehow, some way the security of the American internet mogul Google will effect the security of Americans — otherwise, this would in no way fit into a part of the NSA overall view of what its mission and purpose are. The NSA addresses the security issues of Americans particularly on the front of communications intelligence — their entire court for national security is the internet.

What we can conclude is that somehow there are anti-US elements attempting to use Google for purposes that would effect Americans adversely on a large scale, and in all likelihood, we are looking at the Chinese government perpetrating some form of organized attack on Google.

It is still a little odd…

The questions I have: Read the rest of this entry »

At first I thought that this was potentially just a bunch of Republicans complaining in the same vein that they often freak out if Pres. Obama uses a teleprompter for a nationally televised speech that happens to be in a junior high school, but then I got a reading:

WASHINGTON, Feb 3 (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday rebuffed criticism that intelligence was lost by giving a lawyer and other legal rights to the Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up a U.S. airliner.

In a letter to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, Holder also said he made the decision to charge the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, with crimes in the regular U.S. court system.

Holder rejected widespread criticism by Republicans and some Democrats in Congress over how the suspect was interviewed by FBI agents for only about an hour before he stopped cooperating and then was read his Miranda rights, providing him a lawyer and full U.S. constitutional legal rights.

Reuters

That does not make that much sense.

We give Miranda rights to criminals because they are quite different from terrorists. Here is just a short list of the differences: Read the rest of this entry »

These were originally not going to be written because they were exceptionally ridiculous and confusing. These dreams are also graphic and strange — not of a sexual nature, but merely of a generally disturbing nature.  Read if you want.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here is a good article that illustrates the importance of balancing equality legislation with the freedom of private organizations:

The Pope has urged Catholic bishops in England and Wales to fight the UK’s Equality Bill with “missionary zeal”.

Pope Benedict XVI said the legislation “violates natural law” and could end the right of the Catholic Church to ban gay people from senior positions.

The Pope has confirmed he will come to the UK this year, the first papal visit since John Paul II in 1982.

The government said the bill, which is currently going through Parliament, would make the UK a fairer place.

And gay rights campaigners have condemned the Pope’s comments.

‘Unjust limitations’

The Pope told the Catholic bishops of England and Wales gathered in Rome: “Your country is well-known for its firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all members of society.

“Yet, as you have rightly pointed out, the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night I was out with some of the neighborhood crew and one of the women there was really digging for some sort of information, or a sort of admittance, you could say….

“Why did you like that girl?” she asked me, and I meekly said something along the lines of her being nice and having similar hobbies. She nodded and it was a non-issue…

Later she asked some fellows what he likes in women and the guy had the nerve to say that he likes a woman’s “heart.”

Unfortunately at this point I had had a few drinks and was willing to say the butcher’s truth of it.

“Everyone likes women’s hearts, but if that were true fat girls would have men tripping over each other to date them. Ugly people have the best hearts –probably not because they are good hearted people, but probably because experiences resulting from their ugliness has made them the most empathetic of people, and because if ugly people were mean and hot tempered, who would they ever be friends with?”

After I said this I got a round of high fives from all of the women present, and the men vaguely scowled at me.

I told them what matters to me, first and foremost, is the happiness I get from someone, and part of that happiness is the concept of sexual attraction and status — you want someone who both turns you on and also builds your status as a person. Of course, a part of ‘happiness’ is also how nice and good hearted a person is, but who would want to be with a person who gets you made fun of because they are so overweight or unattractive, and who you cannot be sexually excited about?

As I have gotten older the physical standard has dropped, certainly, but the fact is that I am not going to marry a pumpkin shaped woman unless I have no other recourse. The last thing I want to spend the rest of my life doing is going into the workplace or walking around a mall having people wonder why a non-morbidly obese man is with a morbidly obese woman. Yes, I love the Tao Teh Ching and I love non-conformity but that does not mean I would not be upset if everyone around me thought I had some sort of mental problem.

I just would like people to no longer utter such contemptuous lies.

Saying that you’re attracted to women or men by their hearts? Are you kidding me?

Oh, yeah, sure, I like nice people as much as the next guy but I have something also called integrity.

I am not going to be such a brazen hypocrite because I am no longer a teenager who thinks people believe the lies.

And I simply do not have the gall to make statements to people who are disadvantaged by their physical presence that really, truly, I am not with you because you are ugly… I am just not with you because I value people’s hearts.

In an odd way that is so ironic — it is almost as if by saying we value people’s hearts with our words we are taking away the one advantage the ugly have…

Believe that people truly love other people for their hearts long enough and then you get a world full of ugly people with bad hearts. Oh, the irony!

On that note, I think this circumstance best summarizes my opinion:

An overweight 14 year old girl looks up to her father and says,

“What do you look for in women, dad?”

“I look for women with good hearts… But, really, if you want a boyfriend you should go jogging, dear.”

An interesting story out of the UK concerning hospital conditions:

A grandmother was so disgusted by the filthy conditions and neglect on a hospital ward that she bathed and cared for the patients herself.

Janet Halsall, 74, was admitted to Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, for three days to have a scan on her liver, when she was shocked to see staff repeatedly ignore pleas for help and leave fellow elderly patients to ‘fend for themselves’.

The kind-hearted pensioner was so appalled by the conditions in the hospital that she bathed, washed and tucked in the frail elderly patients herself.

Can it really get any better than it currently is?

This is rather interesting — apparently Pres. Obama thinks that the Nukes are more important than President Bush. I see this as being rather embarrassing to the White House.

I also will say that I generally agree with lots of spending on nuclear weapons; our current wars involve most conventional forces fighting guerrilla and terrorist insurgents. It does not make much sense to me other than making the tensions with the Russians potentially worse:

‘Nobel Peace Prize-winner Barack Obama ups spending on nuclear weapons to even more than George Bush’

President Obama is planning to increase spending on America’s nuclear weapons stockpile just days after pledging to try to rid the world of them.

In his budget to be announced on Monday, Mr Obama has allocated £4.3billion to  maintain the U.S. arsenal - £370million more than George Bush spent on nuclear weapons in his final year.

The Obama administration also plans to spend a further £3.1billion over the next five years on nuclear security.

Mail Online

It would make more sense to spend more money on disposing of more of the nukes if his stance is to rid the world of them.