Posting is so much better than forwarding...
You probably missed it in the rush of news last week, but there was actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American.
So an Australian dentist wrote the following to let everyone know what an American is... so they would know when they found one. (Good on ya, mate!!!!)
An American is English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek.
An American may also be Canadian, Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani, or Afghan.
An American may also be a Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho, Apache, Seminole or one of the many other tribes known as native Americans.
An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim.
In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan . The only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of them chooses.
An American is also free to believe in no religion. For that he will answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.
An American lives in the most prosperous land in the history of the world.
The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of Independence , which recognizes the God given right of each person to the pursuit of happiness.
An American is generous. Americans have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need.
When the Soviet army overran Afghanistan 20 years ago, Americans came with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country!
As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any other nation to the poor in Afghanistan.
Americans welcome the best, the best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best athletes, but they also welcome the least!
The national symbol of America , The Statue of Liberty, welcomes your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed. These in fact are the people who built America .
Some of them were working in the Twin Towers the morning of September 11, 2001 earning a better life for their families. I've been told that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 other countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided and abetted the terrorists.
So you can try to kill an American if you must.
Hitler did.
So did General Tojo, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and every bloodthirsty tyrant in the history of the world.
But, in doing so you would just be killing yourself. Because Americans are not a particular people from a particular place. They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom. All who hold to that spirit anywhere, is an American!
Author unknown
Pass this around the World
Monday, October 10, 2005
To Kill an American
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Friday, October 07, 2005
Link of the Day
WOW! This is real *REAL* cool...
...Or, possibly I am just a real *REAL* geek.
I present to you the Flash Earth. It uses satellite images and engines run by MSN and Google to give you a map you can pan and zoom with. Makes you feel like you're at CIA headquarters or something.
This is so cool I think I must declare a contest. You will have to help by not cheating and lighting up the MSN w/labels though or it becomes way way way too easy.
Identify these sites...
Put your answers in as comments... no peeking at other peoples answers first - and no using the MSN labels before you guess.
Truth be told I am a little nervous that some of these sites are accessible. But I guess the resolution isn't really all that helpful if you were truly planning something bad.
Good luck with the contest!
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Compassion or Extortion?
It's pledge week on WDUQ.
Guess I'll be hearing quite a bit more AirAmerica, KDKA, and WPGB this week. Although rumor has it that AirAmerica is in pretty dire straits and may start soliciting donations as well. I didn't hear that from a very good source, but I can't ignore the uptempo to the logo gear pitching on the Al Franken Show.
Still, even the worst right wing whackjob is easier to listen to than "we just need 5 more callers this hour to unlock a $1000 bonus." Kill me now.
Interestingly, this phenomenon is not lost on the management at NPR. And of course rather than react with compassion, well they reacted with extortion. I mean it sounds all nice and everything, but it also has a kind of a "pay up or we'll break your knees" kind of a ring to it. Over the past month, during regular weeks they've been talking up how the pledge drive was coming up,
What does that sound like to you? Compassion or Extortion? Sort of like "listen, you can pay me now or pay me later. It'll be much more pleasant for you if you pay me now."
I guess it worked some. From the time I spent listening today I did hear quite a few times how they were able to shorten the solicitation period due to advance pledges. Or maybe that's just setting us up to believe them the next time they make the offer.
Well, its not working on me, I tell you. I will not be intimidated by these gangland tactics. You'll get my money the same way you always get my money - when you guilt me into it. And not a moment sooner.
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Don't Start Helping Me Now
I have to tell you, my surfing of the right-wing radio has been really annoying for the past two days. Have you noticed how unhappy they all are? Host after host bemoaning how W did them wrong by naming his White House counsel to the Supreme Court instead of the Radical Right ideologue he promised during the campaign. "This is not what we voted for Mr. President!"
Geez. Put a sock in it already.
Ever have a welcome to my world moment? Left and Right are finally together for a brief couple of days here. We're unhappy about the war, the economy, gas prices, the FEMA effort, the CIA leak from the White House senior staff, and the litany of lies told by the man they elected President.
And now he's lied to them. It was only a matter of time. Really it likely has been happening all along. It's just that this one was bald faced enough that it rung right through their fawning and woke them up.
And me? I feel like John McClane in Die Hard: "WELCOME TO THE PARTY PAL!!!"
If y'all had come home from the country club and put down your boilermaker a while ago you might have noticed that this behavior isn't new. The man and his people are devious, money-grubbing technocrats concerned with one mission only: To make themselves as rich as is possible. The governing is just a means, something they have to do to slant the board in their favor.
Who did you think he'd name? Someone that would give the constitution a strict reading and make a fair ruling regardless of the circumstances or someone that when in say 12 years USA vs. Halliburton comes before the Supreme court because it so happens that maybe even 1/10th of what alarmists say is happening actually happened will look at the case and then stand by her man? "Won't legislate from the bench" like he gives two poops over that. "Won't put Cheney in jail." or "Won't take all my money." That's where the man lives.
51% of us noticed that quite some time ago. Next election, just stay home. We'll take care of it. Don't start helping us now.
Quality Control
Here we see a graphic example of what happens when shop carpenters take shortcuts like not using a straightedge or a framing square.
This is the second unit in a row to come out like this. They only have four more tries to get it right.
Let's hope they keep getting it just as wrong.
Politics Test
| You are a Social Liberal (63% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (21% permissive) You are best described as a:
Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test |
Sunday, October 02, 2005
Ellipses...
Sunday may very well become ellipses day... I think we lost our fantasy football game today, well nobody thought we would be undefeated, did they?.. Is a question mark and two periods really an ellipse?.. We had our first successful use of the dining room, I owe some finished pictures some day... I am not going to get to the Lucky 7's tournament this year, that's too bad... Local #3 ratified their new contract, not many details in the paper, I wonder how each side made out... I am still pondering the whole "can't teach that" thing... I haven't gotten that far on my USITT project, or on my book, or the other book... Does it bother you that they say Ronnie Earl is partisan when actually he has prosecuted more Democrats than Republicans?.. I think maybe the world would be a better place if we spent more time thinking about the issues than the backstory... Does it make sense that consumers ought to be protected as much as lenders when it comes to bankruptcy, its not like the credit cards have to give them the money... Longhair kittens apparently share a grooming problem with dairy cows... Months and months later and I still don't really know what an enemy combatant is, you think by now someone would have made it clear... The PTMNews page is humming along very nicely, it even looks like people occasionally read it... Its been more than a week since we've heard from the ECHO:system people, I wonder what's going on there... Lately I've been thinking a lot about the responsibility and accountability of theatre reviewers... LDI may be a bit of an extravagance this year... I still can't believe some of the things coming out of people's mouths passing as commentary... The crazy scheme has just about cleared the first production, I don't know if it is working or not but I think the first show would have been dead without it... Just when I was unconditionally in love with my phone, it seems the new version will have a much better camera... The NPR station here is trying a new tactic: extortion... Did you know that Karl Rove has been put in charge of gulf coast reconstruction?.. I never knew Skin of our Teeth and Fight Club had so much in common... The trusted traveler program is out of money, seems like the future will be wealthy trusted traveler, who didn't see that coming...
Ah, DOS
Sometime I am glad I learned how to use computers before the Mac took over, before windows ruled the roost, before WYSIWYG. I mean, I know that the GUI was a great innovation, and I do really love my WYSIWYG apps, but every now and then I am faced with a problem and I am really glad that ages ago I used to write things like this:
10 ?"DAVID ROCKS "
20 GOTO 10
or maybe things like
COPY A: *.* C:/MYSTUFF/*.*
Does that make me an irretrievable geek? I think not. I mean there is still a use for such things today. Occasionally (although less often now due to some Blogger innovations) I have to type things like
[img src="http://members.aol.com/dboevers/TrinityWeb.jpg"]
or
[a href="http://cmuptm.blogspot.com/" target=" blank"]The PTM Newsbeat[/a]
and really that's about the sum total of what I know of HTML. But it is very much like a word processor I used to have for my Radio Shack Color Computer, or like EMACS when I learned it on the TOPS system at CMU before Andrew swallowed all of campus computing. All systems that you have to kind of have the keys to in order to function, and systems where if you get maybe one thing out of place start to fail.
You know, at least in windows - even XP, that stuff is still there. Sometimes you notice it when you are working in word. You'll backspace through nothing and the font will change or some other change. You've backed over some invisible control code. Used to happen more than it does now, but I still feel like I am catching it from time to time.
The other day I was downloading a file onto my desktop. I got tired of waiting and so I quit the browser, but the file icon was still there. I tried to delete it but the computer insisted that an application was currently using the file and stubbornly refused to let me do away with it. Here's what happened next:
I tried to drag it to the trash - failed
I tried to delete it from the pop up - failed
I shut down every app from the task manager and repeated the prior attempts - failed
I found the icon in the c:\documents and settings\user\owner\desktop directory and tried to delete it - failed
I rebooted the machine and tried to delete it - failed
I went to the command line and tried to delete it manually - failed
I booted the computer into safe mode and retried everything above - failed
At this point I am getting to the end of my toolbox. Then, ah, DOS - the dark place. Being a stagehand at heart I guess I am comfortable in the dark place...
reboot to command line only
CD..
CD..
CD..
CD DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS
CD USER
CD OWNER
CD DESKTOP
DEL (whateverthefilewas).(whatevertheextensionwas)
and then poof! It was gone. Ah, DOS, thank you DOS. I know I could have typed the whole directory string at one time, its an anti-typo behavior I can't shake.
Now, I don't think for a second I am any kind of computer programmer, or any kind of IT guy. But I am fairly sure I know people that would have lived with that icon on their desktop until they bought a new computer before they got even halfway though that troubleshooting procedure.
Do yourself a favor. Embrace some meaningless jargon now and then. Someday it might come in handy.
![[img src="http://members.aol.com/dboevers/TrinityWeb.jpg"]](http://members.aol.com/dboevers/TrinityWeb.jpg){kind=link}