Just the Facts, Ma'am

Teh funnay

2005-05-24T14:35:00.000-05:00

I am a Japanese School Teacher

If you only read a few, make sure you read "Gaijin Smash". Hilarity.

I've been tagged.

2005-05-24T12:19:00.000-05:00

Another one of these book meme things. This one is slightly different from the last one, so I guess I'll go ahead and do it too.

A) Total number of books I've owned: Like Chuck, I have absolutely no idea. The number is large, but not that large. Most of my books are given away after I've read them since I don't have much use for them unless they are educational. I have a small bookshelf full of educational books.

B) The last book I bought: Well, since I never kept my books, I decided to stop buying them and utilize the wonderful public library here in Fayetteville. The last book I bought was a Haynes manual for my motorcycle.

C) The last book I read: Well, I'm currently reading a number of books:

The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower by Stephen King
Zombies in My Hometown by Gary Wedlund and The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks. These are both "e-books", so I'm not sure if they count.
Habitat for Humanity, how to build a house by Larry Haun.

The last book that I completed (i.e. not currently reading) was The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah by Stephen King.

D) 5 books that mean a lot to me:

The Shining by Stephen King
Weaveworld by Clive Barker
Imagica by Clive Barker
Naked by David Sedaris
The Emperor Wears No Clothes by Jack Herer.

E) Tag 5 people and have them fill this out on their blog:
Angie
Charlie
Julie
Will
Brad

Searcy First With Free Wireless

2005-05-23T08:24:00.000-05:00

Searcy parks offer wireless Internet service

Searcy, a city of close to 20,000, has joined the ranks of much larger U.S. cities — including the largest, New York — that are providing wireless Internet in city parks. The White County seat is the first town in Arkansas to offer this service, city officials say. "It works great, too. It’s pretty fast," Castor said.

This is awesome. Hopefully Fayetteville will follow the trend (or get with the program.) I'm kind of surprised that the city funded it though. In other cities, it's been rich philanthropists who've been the founders of these programs. Lord knows there are enough rich people in Fayetteville. Maybe one of them will step up to the plate now that little 'ol Searcy is making them look bad.

Blog round-up

2005-05-11T12:01:00.000-05:00

Being serious all the time is no fun and probably bad for your health. I spend a good part of my day at work reading the news and various "serious" blogs. Sometimes I find that I've had enough and I'm feeling stressed out. When that happens, I make the rounds to my favorite comedy blogs and web comics. I figure most of you could probably use some stress relief, so I'm going to list a few of my favorites here. If you know of more, I'd love to hear about them. I'm always looking for some good comedy. Ahh, I guess I should say that these links can possibly contain adult humor. Not always, but sometimes. Just so you know. Most of them should be work safe though, unless your work prohibits comics or something.

The Blogs

The 'toons

Penny Arcade
PVP Online
The Order of the Stick I think this is probably my favorite of the bunch. Start at the beginning to get the whole story.
Alien Loves Predator
VG Cats
Achewood

I actually read a lot more web comics than that, but they are pretty obscure and not always funny. I tried to stick to the ones that are more consitantly funny on this list.

So what are your favorites? Post 'em up in the comments and I'll check them out.

More GW Screens

2005-05-11T07:37:00.000-05:00

I promised some more scenery from Guild Wars, so here it is. All of this stuff is from the Post-Searing world. Pre-Searing is much more lush, but the "real" game takes place after the Searing.

Click for full size.

Achewood Cracks Me Up

2005-05-11T07:33:00.000-05:00

Guild Wars Screenshots

2005-05-10T09:21:00.000-05:00

So, these are all of my character (I'm so vain,) so there's not much in the way of scenery. I'll try to get some better ones tonight.

Click for full size.

My First MMO

2005-05-10T08:58:00.000-05:00

So, I couldn't resist an MMO with no monthly fee. I went out and sold my Nintendo DS and bought Guild Wars with the proceeds. I'm having a lot of fun with it. I've got about 10 hours of play on my character now, and he's already level 8.

Some things I really like about the game:

No monthly fee. I think I already mentioned that, but I believe that's my favorite part. I like MMO's, and I've played a couple of them during their beta phases, but I've never been able to bring myself to pay the monthly fee.
Amazing graphics. I'll post some screenshots here in a few minutes. They really don't do it justice though. In the shots, you can see all the polygon edges, but in the game, it's very smooth. I've got everything turned up except for the antialiasing which I've got set to 2x. This game is beautiful.
The ability to do a quest with AI controlled henchmen instead of other player characters. Really, doing the quests with other PC's is preferable, but if you just can't get a good group together, no problem, just flesh it out with a couple of henchmen.
The ability to multi-class. Each character gets 2 character classes to pick from. You can mix and match any of the classes and create some pretty interesting combonations.
Once you've been to a city, you can just open your map and instantly travel to it. You have to actually find the city by running around the map first, but once you've found it, there's no reason to run to it again.
Character and Guild customization. You have a pretty good variety of character customizations you can make as far as facial features and body style. Not as many as City of Hero's, but enough to get some individuality. Also, if you join a guild, you'll get a cape that your guild leader has spent some time designing.

Of course, it's not all roses. The game is very new, and there are a few minor things that still need to be worked out. For example:

Sometimes the henchmen or pets get stuck on objects in game and can't move past them. That's very annoying, especially when it's your groups healer, and you don't notice until you're in a fight and she's standing 2 clicks back stuck to a fence post or something.
Automatically travelling to a city via the map will make you leave your party. That's very inconvenient since that means that if you form a party in Ascalon City, and you have a quest in the Sarlac Sanitarium, you'll have to run there, unless of course, you've all already been there, then you can just travel there and re-form the party.
Normally, these types of games have the ability to do command-line emotes like in IRC. For example, if I typed /me dances a jig! in EQ or WoW, the chat window would say "Scott dances a jig!" The game does have a list of emotes you can do, but they're obviously limited.

So, lots of things I like, not too many that I don't like. Over all on a scale from house cats to bearded irises, this game gets a strawberry frulatte.

New Xbox Stats Leaked

2005-05-10T08:43:00.000-05:00

Engadget

These could be completely fake, but some semi-plausible specs for the new Xbox 360, as well as some details about Xbox Live, were posted and then quickly pulled from the TeamXbox forums. The part about it having a 20GB detachable hard drive seems a little sketch, since we’d heard something about it being a 40GB drive, but the rest of it seems to make sense. You have exactly 77 hours to argue over whether or not these are for real.

Update:

Okay, so there's some stuff in there that doesn't make much sense. I'm hoping that this system will be similar to what's posted here though because, wow. It could use some more memory, but other than that, these stats are insane.

Gamespy Smears Guild Wars

2005-05-04T10:44:00.000-05:00

If I didn't know better, I would say that Gamespy is in Sony's pocket. Gamespy reviewed Guild Wars, a new MMORPG without the traditional monthly subscription fee.

Before I get too deep into this, I would like to say that I do not actually own this game, however my best friend, who is one of the most discerning gamers in the world, has filled me in on the relevant aspects.

In Gamespy's review, if you didn't know anything about the game, you would think that Guild Wars is an online clone of Diablo. In one section, the reviewer says

If you're familiar with Diablo-style action RPGs, then you'll know what to expect. When you see an enemy on the field, you simply click on it, run your character to attack range, and begin to whale on it. You then click on your abilities on the screen to execute them, or activate them through hotkeys.

If you've ever played an RPG, you know that the same description could be used for pretty much any of them. The author also fails to mention that there are two control styles. One is very much like Diablo, and the other is more action oriented, 3rd person style. I would say that he can be forgiven for that omission, but he's a reviewer for the most well known game website in the world, so I say screw him. He should have known better. To say that this game is like Diablo is to completely ignore everything about the game except the one control style.

In another section, he complains about the installation media giving him disk read errors. This is pretty common for any game, but my game expert tells me he experienced no such problems. The reviewer goes on to describe how the game does it's streaming content. He talks all about how long it took him to load a level and how much of a problem this is. The thing he leaves out is that this only happens if you're playing the version that's downloaded from the games website. If you install the game from the disks (like any normal person would) this would not happen. There's really no reason to use the streaming client unless you're getting the read errors he talks about. I mean you own the game, so presumably you have the media. I am betting the reviewers disk read errors could have been resolved pretty easily too, but I can't really say since I wasn't there.

My final complaint about this review is with the screenshots presented in the article. These are the 2 worst screenshots I've ever seen for this game. Really, I've seen the game played, and seen a lot of screenshots and it's an unbelievably beautiful game. One of the most spectacular I've seen. But if you were to go by the shots posted in the article, you would not get that impression.

In conclusion, this game is nothing like Diablo. Gamespy is working for the devil. I would buy this game if I could afford it today. Thank you for your attention.

Update

Gamespot has a much better review.

Mind Reader

2005-05-03T08:54:00.000-05:00

It took me about 2 minutes to figure this out, but I still thought it was cool.

Quesiton:

2005-05-02T14:30:00.000-05:00

Why is it called 2nd day air if it takes 4 days?

Red Tape

2005-05-02T10:55:00.000-05:00

Pray that you never have to do business with the Washington County Health Department. I've been trying to get one piece of paper from them for 2 weeks now, and they're telling me things like: "The guy who does the faxing is out today," and "Call this other guy in another department, and he'll get the paper for you." So I call the other guy: "I haven't recieved anything, call the main office back and make sure they've faxed it." Main office: "Oh we faxed it to him on the 28th, and we can't fax it again. If you want it faxed again, you'll have to get the inspector to fax us another copy of your paperwork." So I call the other guy back and inform him that he does indeed have my paperwork, they said so. "No I don't, but I'll call the main office myself. There's not just one guy who does the faxing."

So that's where I am right now. Waiting for the other guy to call me back and tell me that I'm screwed.

Update

After a couple of phone calls and a talk with the supervisor at the Health Department, I'm finally going to make some progress. Here's what they want me to do: 1) Get another copy of my septic inspection from the inspector 2)Hand carry it to the Health Dept. office to get it notarized by the supervisor himself 3)Hand carry it again to the Water Authority office to get it turned in.

I absolutely cannot believe the amount of crap I've had to wade through to get this done. In a day and age when we've been using digital devices to transfer information for over 20 years, I'm being forced to cart a piece of paper to 2 different offices in 2 different cities, just to get the OK. And what's the OK for? So I can pay them $1400 to put in a meter. You'd think they would want that money. They certainly don't act like it.

Oh, the interminable waiting

2005-05-02T07:53:00.000-05:00

So, we're in the final stretch of this pregnancy thing, and it just seems like it's never going to end. My wife will be in a never ending state of late pregnancy, and we will forever be on the verge of having a baby.

Okay, I'm sure it won't be that long.

We've got the room all set up with our nifty co-sleeper. We've got seemingly hundreds of new baby clothes. Angela has made some pretty cloth baby wipes that I think she could sell on the internet if she were so inclined. She's also crocheting an afghan that is going to be awesome.

Our CNM says Angela can come off of bed rest soon. That will be fantastic. Ang is really getting tired of not being able to do anything. I'll also be glad because that means she'll be helping out with the houshold chores again.

Really, I'm just ready to get this waiting over with, and start getting to know our new daughter. I absolutely can't wait. It's going to be awesome.

Larb

2005-04-27T20:20:00.000-05:00

We went to the local Thai food resturant for dinner tonight. I normally go with the standard garlic pepper chicken, but tonight I decided to be daring and try something new. I ordered a dish that was described as a very popular meal in Thailand called Larb. I figured it must be pretty good if it's so popular.

Boy was I wrong.

Larb was probably the most distusting thing I've ever been served. It was a chicken concoction that had green onions and sprouts mixed in, and was soaked in lemon juice and spices. As soon as it got to the table, I could smell it. And the smell was not good. It smelled exactly like dog poo. I'm not being figurative here. I mean the smell I associate with dog poo was coming off of this plate. Me being an open-minded sort of guy, I decided to go ahead and give it a chance, and piled a little onto my plate with some rice.

It tasted exactly like it smelled.

Foul.

Luckily, I had ordered a 4 spicy (on a scale of 5,) so it was almost too spicy to actually taste. I decided to pile more rice on and tried to drown it in soy sauce. That did help a little, but not very much. I ate about a cup of the stuff before I gave up and started scavenging Angela's plate.

When the meal was over, I expressed my distaste to the server, and she said that it must be an acquired taste, because she loves the stuff. I can't imagine anyone liking that horrible mess, but I suppose she's right. I certainly won't be acquiring the taste anytime soon as I plan on steering clear of Larb from now until the end of my days.

Cramming this week

2005-04-25T10:09:00.000-05:00

I'm taking the CompTIA A+ exam this week. I hear the test is really easy, but I'd hate to drop the $300 and not pass, so I'm going to be spending my free time cramming. That means reduced blogging. I take the hardware portion tomorrow, and the OS portion on Thursday, so I should be blogging more by the end of the week. I'll probably get a couple of drive-by's in over at PW's between now and then, but I'm not promising anything.

Update

Hardware portion down, just gotta take the OS portion now, which I will be doing Thursday. Cramming till then, so no posts! I'll check in again Thursday afternoon to let you know how I did.

Update 2

Yay! I am now an A+ certified technician. It was indeed pretty easy. I'm glad I studied though, because some of the questions were very specific and kinda tricky. All done now though.

The Feds can own your WLAN too

2005-04-21T08:58:00.000-05:00

Fed's crack WEP in about 3 minutes

At a recent ISSA (Information Systems Security Association) meeting in Los Angeles, a team of FBI agents demonstrated current WEP-cracking techniques and broke a 128 bit WEP key in about three minutes. Special Agent Geoff Bickers ran the Powerpoint presentation and explained the attack, while the other agents (who did not want to be named or photographed) did the dirty work of sniffing wireless traffic and breaking the WEP keys.

...

Before we get into the steps that the FBI used to break WEP, it should be noted there are numerous ways of hacking into a wireless network. The FBI team used publicly available tools and emphasized that they are demonstrating an attack that many other people are capable of performing.

An interesting read. The end of the article has some good countermeasures you can take if you're running a WLAN.

Since I live out in the country. I've just been using my WLAN unsecured completely. But if you're in the city, I'd suggest going and checking out that article.

Linguistic Profile

2005-04-20T08:48:00.000-05:00

I took a silly little quiz over at Blogthings and this is what it says about my language:

Your Linguistic Profile:

65% General American English

15% Dixie

15% Yankee

5% Upper Midwestern

0% Midwestern

That's about what I expected. I pride myself on not having any definable accent. I do tend to say "ya'll" sometimes. Don't know where the "Yankee" percentage came from considering I've never lived further north than Missouri. Oh well, it was kinda fun.

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Me and Linux are through

2005-04-19T14:09:00.000-05:00

I am totally done with linux. Until they find a better --more user friendly, more reliable-- way to install software, I just don't want to play. SuSe has almost got it with their Yast system. It's just not enough. If you want any kind of control over where your software is installed or if you want to do any configuring of the software (which is often necessary if you want the software to function properly) you have to use command-line functions, and you have to know before hand which configuration options you want, and what the switches for them are. For example, if you want to install PHP to work with both MySQL and Apache (very common options) you have to open a terminal and type the following in: ./configure --with-mysqli=/usr/lib --with-apxs=/etc/www You also have to make sure that you have GCC, libxml2, and Flex installed before you do that. Then once that's done, you type make. Then when that gets finished running, type make install. Lots of cryptic text will fly by on your screen, and at the end of it all, the system will tell you to ignore certain errors. Oh yeah, you see that part after the 2 with switches... the =/blah/blah? Those are directories that MySQL and Apache are installed in. Have fun figuring that out. This entire process, to me, is unacceptable. Why the heck can't they just make an already compiled distribution that is configurable? Windows has been doing it for over 10 years. What's the hold-up?

Go into any linux forum and tell them you use Windows, and you will be ridiculed mercilessly, and the nerds there are sure to tell you that you are using an inferior OS. In my opinion, they are wrong. In my opinion, a superior OS should be user friendly. That means software should be easily configurable from a GUI. If there are options that need configuration at install time, they should be easily selected via checkboxes. If other software is required for it to be run, it should be included in the package. In Windows, if you need a .dll (Dynamic Link Library) file, it's installed during the original program's installation. Not Linux. If you need a library file, you better hope you can find it on the 'net, or else that program you just downloaded isn't going to install.

Like I said though, they've almost got it with package managers like Yast. They just need to up the user-friendly, and start thinking about the end user a little more.

Update:

All 3 of those programs (MySQL, PHP, Apache2) have Windows installers. I've got them up and running this morning in less than 2 hours. Further validating my abandonment from Linux. I'm still learning how to get PHP to play nice with MySQL, but I think a Windows install is going to work just fine for me.

Update 2:

I was right. I've got it working. So, not including my lunch break, it took me about 3 hours to figure this out using Windows. Compare that to 3 days of unsuccessful attempts in Linux. Pretty clear to me. However, I still can't host my website here since our university firewall prevents it.

My New Toy

2005-04-17T18:46:00.000-05:00

This here book meme thingie.

2005-04-14T19:26:00.000-05:00

JulieB has called me out! I love reading! It's one of my very favorite activities. I've been doing it since I was about 5, and I am absolutely never without a book. So, here goes:

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
I've always thought burning books is a bad thing. But, since I'm bound by the rules of this game, I shall pick the first answer that came to my head: the Bible. Yes, you heard right folks. I think organized religion is the worst institution of man. I am not an athiest, I just believe that religion and God are mutually exclusive. Religion is a way for a few men to subjugate a great many people. Christianity just happens to be the most prominant one (and one of the more anti-woman ones) in my life. So, if I had it my way, the Bible would be the first to go.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Pie-o-Pah from a book called Imagica, by Clive Barker. This is way too complicated for me to explain, but I'll do my best. Pie is a kind of magical creature, neither male nor female. Usually taking the form of a man, he can transform into whatever you desire most. That's probably the best I can do to explain him. You should definitely read this book and learn more about him.

The last book you bought:
Man, that's a tough one. I usually get my books from the library, and haven't actually bought one in a long time. Hmmmm what was the last book I bought? I honestly can't remember what the last book I bought for myself was, but it was probably something educational, like a study guide or an auto-repair manual. The actual last book I bought was a gift for my Dad, Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. I hope this doesn't violate the rules of the game.

What am I currently reading?
Wolves of the Calla, by Stephen King, and Xenocide, by Orson Scott Card. Both are parts of greater series.

Five books I would take to a deserted island:
Well dang. Once I've read a book, I usually don't have the desire to read it again. I have read a few books more than once, but it was because they were part of a series that recently finished, and I wanted to refresh my memory before reading the finale. So, if I were going to be bringing a bunch of books to a desert island, they'd have to have some purpose other than entertainment. The only practical purpose they could serve on a desert island would be survival, so I think I'm going to have to steal one of JulieB's for my first pick: the Army Survival Handbook (FM-21-76.) A man's gotta eat, right? Foraging Theory by David W. Stephens, John R. Krebs. Shelter's pretty important too, I would think. Shelters, Shacks, and Shanties : The Classic Guide to Building Wilderness Shelters, by D. C. Beard. The next one would need to aid my exodus from this horrible place: Building Classic Small Craft, by John Gardner. And finally, it might get cold out there, so I'll probably need some kindling... better bring the Bible along. Make it one of those huge Catholic ones. It might have to last a while.

Almost forgot! I'm supposed to infect someone else with this meme, so My Sweetie, Will and Adam, you're up!

Web Server

2005-04-14T09:54:00.000-05:00

I'm attempting to create a web server using my second machine here at work. I'm right at the beginning of the stages right now, reinstalling SuSe, since I totally messed up the installation I had on there. After that, I'm going to install Apache's http server and MySQL database server. Once that's all done, I'm going to see what can be done about moving my blog to there. That would be hella cool because then I would have a lot more freedom. Plus I'm going to actually have to learn a bunch of stuff doing this, so that will be good too.

If anyone has any advice on how to set up my server, I would love to hear it. I'm a total newbie at this, and I'd like to avoid as many pitfalls as possible.

S.W.A.T. 4

2005-04-11T08:21:00.000-05:00

A while back, I did a review of the S.W.A.T. 4 Demo, and gave it a pretty good score. Well I now have the full version and have been playing it all weekend, and all I can say is wow. This game is awesome. The single player is pretty straight forward. It's a tactical FPS. You begin each mission with a replay of a 911 call which describes the situation. Sometimes it's a lone gunman (or woman) going crazy, and sometimes it's a gang war. The objectives are typically something like this: Neutralize suspects; rescue civilians; bring order to chaos. Depending on the difficulty level, you may have different secondary objectives like: no unauthorized use of force; no S.W.A.T. members killed; all weapons accounted for; et cetera. Also, the higher your difficulty level, the more moral your enemies have. So, on easy, these guys give up a lot and do what you tell them to when you enter a room. On hard, they're much more likely to bust a cap. You've gotta be careful though. Shooting armed guys who haven't shot at you yet is considered unauthorized use of force, and you'll lose points for it in the end. You have to wait until they shoot at you first. That really increases the difficulty, in my opinion.

Right from the beginning, you have access to a full arsenal of weaponry. It is the S.W.A.T. after all. You also have access to different types of protective gear, like gas masks or heavy armor. You can load your team members individually or give them all the same load. I like to be ready for any situation, so I load out individually. As far as character customization goes though, that's about it. There's not much in the way of a story line either. You just go from one 911 call to the next. That's okay to me though. I wasn't really expecting to get too deep into the lives of my team members. I think it's actually a good thing.

Now, that's all good. Lots of fun, but the multiplayer is where this game really shines, in my opinion. There are 3 multiplayer game types:

Barricaded Suspects: This is basically team deathmatch. There is one twist though: the enemy can be subdued using non-lethal weapons such as pepper spray or stun guns (among others) and handcuffed. Killed opponents are worth 1 point, handcuffed opponents are worth 5. So as you can see, there's definitely a reward for using non-lethal tactics.
VIP Escort: This game type is a little more complicated. One S.W.A.T. team member is randomly selected to be the VIP. He gets no armor and only rudimentary weaponry (I think he gets a stun gun, not really sure.) For the S.W.A.T., the objective is to escort the VIP to a particular destination on the map (hence the name of the gametype.) For the people playing the "Suspects," the object is a little harder. They have to capture the VIP without killing him, cuff him, and keep track of him for 2 minutes, after which they execute him. This game type is great fun, and might be my favorite.
Rapid Deployment: I've never actually played this game type, so I'm just going to copy the description straight from the website. 3 to 5 bombs are randomly placed around the mission area. S.W.A.T. must locate and disable all bombs within the designated time limit to win the round. If S.W.A.T. does not disable the bombs within the designated time limit, the bombs will detonate and the Suspects will win the round. Very reminiscent of Counter Strike.

Now, being that this is a tactical FPS, there's no jump button. Your character must walk around obsticals. Your character also moves pretty slowly, and the heavier your armor, the more slowly he walks. That's okay with me though since the slower you move, the more accurate your weapons fire. I tend to move around the maps at a crouch so that I get maximum accuracy. The games damage system is very well done. The damage is positional, meaning if you get shot in the leg, it's probably not going to be fatal, but you'll limp. Yes you will limp. Not only that, but if you're dragging your leg behind you, it makes a dragging sound that other players can hear. Also, you will move more slowly if you have damage to your legs. If you've taken damage to your arms or head, your reticule will not go all the way back to a pinpoint, and your shots will not be nearly as accurate.

I absolutely love the realism in this game. I love the fact that you get incentive to not kill your opponents. The single player is fun and engaging (if a little easy,) and the multiplayer is H.O.T. hot. On a scale from cucumbers to dry-erase boards, this game gets a garden weasel.

Circumcision is creepy

2005-04-08T10:16:00.000-05:00

So, I was browsing around the mothering.com website and started to read about male circumcision. Man that was a disturbing read. This practice is absolutely barbaric, and should be stopped. No offense to any parents who've done this to their children. I'm sure your doctor or your religious advisor gave you plenty of convincing arguments for it. But just think about what it is for a second: you're authorizing someone to amputate a part of you're son's sexual organs. Here are some reasons your doctor might give:

Your son's foreskin should be cut off in order to facilitate hygiene.

According to a British scientific journal, the opposite is actually true. Circumcisions cause more dirty than they solve.¹ Also, apparently you should not wash underneath your child's foreskin. It is self cleaning and in many cases will cause damage if it is retracted before puberty.

Your son's foreskin is too tight. It doesn't retract. Or another variation is: the forskin is adhered to the penis and needs to be amputated.

See above. The foreskin is supposed to be snug. This is like saying your eyelids are too tight. They need to be chopped off. The foreskin will gradually disengage from the penis during puberty. There's no need for it to retract at this early an age. As long as your son can urinate, he's fine.

The foreskin has an infection and needs to be cut off.

Jebus Caleebus! Do you ever cut anything else off if it's infected? Crikey!

Your son's foreskin is too long. It should be cut off.

People come in many different flavors and styles. This is what makes us special. Again, as long as he can take a whiz, he's fine.

Your child should be circumcised now because it will hurt more if it has to be done later, or worse, when he is an adult.

This is the most retarded argument ever. He might not remember the pain later, but he can certainly feel it. Most scientists will tell you that children actually feel pain more acutely than adults. This is a blatant scare tactic.

I could go on and on like this. The bottom line is that if your boy can pee, he doesn't need a circumcision. Infections are treated with antibiotics, not surgery. Don't be fooled.

If I ever have a boy, he will not get a circumcision. It's horrible. Personally, I am circumcised. It's never caused me a problem, but I can see how it would. For one, when it first happens, the baby has an open wound in an area that is constantly exposed to urine and feces. Sounds healthy, right! Yeah. Also, apparently the scar tissue can reduce the amount of sensitivity experienced during intercourse. Again, I don't have this problem, but apparently it's common enough. I sure feel sorry for those guys. Dang.

Just say no to unnecessary amputations.

¹ R. S. Van Howe, "Variability in Penile Appearance and Penile Findings: A Prospective Study," British Journal of Urology 80, no. 5 (November 1997): 776-782.

People are dumb

2005-04-07T08:12:00.000-05:00

So, last night was our class/tour at the labor and delivery section of the hospital. What did I learn at this class? Well, mostly I learned that most people are horribly ignorant of the birthing process. The stuff we were supposed to be learning was pretty much all stuff I already knew. We started out with a video that looked to have been produced sometime in the late '70's, back when the idea of a natural childbirth meant you had an anesthesiologist who wouldn't do your epidural if you were too far along. The "teacher" of the class made no effort to mention that the methods used in the video were no longer considered "natural," nor did she really even comment on the video. She also didn't even attempt to mention that Lamaz is not the only childbirth method.

She proceeded to show us different stages of pregnancy using some posters and ask us questions that only my wife and I knew the answers to. (One other guy guessed at a question, and another lady knew a partial answer to another one, but other than that, I was wondering if these people had ever cracked a book in their lives.) Toward the end of the session, she further invalidated herself by telling us all about how they burst the bag of waters intentionally during the labor. NOT NATURAL. Whatever. We are glad that we have a good midwife and not a horribly inflexible doctor. We have a friend who is also pregnant, who I feel sorry for. Her hubbies insurance doesn't cover midwives, so they will be forced to use an OB, unless they want to pay for a midwife. Not likely.

Actually, now that I think about it, I did learn something. Engagement and dilation are not necessarily simultaneous events. You can be dilated and not engaged or vice-versa.

After the little class, we watched another video from the same era which basically summarized everything the "teacher" just told us. Then we went on a tour of the labor and delivery area, which Ang and I already were familiar with since we had to go there when we had that problem with the contractions. That part wasn't quite so excruciating because we got to learn what all the machines in the delivery rooms are for, and what they do in the nursery.

All in all, I consider the experience to have been a waste of time. It took ~~over~~ just less than 3 hours for us to do all this. Time I could have very happily spent sinking battleships in my submarine simulator. I suppose if anything good came out of this it is that Angela and I will definitely be writing a birth plan and making our wishes official.

1000 Visitors

2005-04-05T14:03:00.000-05:00

Yay JTFM. It would've been sooner, but somewhere along the line I changed my template and forgot to add the counter.

Light Posting

2005-04-05T12:12:00.000-05:00

Sorry I haven't been updating JTFM much. I've been doing a lot of political blogging over at Charlie's site. I thought I'd just do a quickie update here.

I'm playing a new game called Silent Hunter 3. If you're not familiar with the series, it's a submarine simulator. To say that it is difficult would be an understatement. I spent a total of about 2 hours with the tutorial, which is very thorough. I'm on to the campaign now, and it is much harder than I expected. The game aims to be realistic, and if the difficulty is any indicator, they've succeeded admirably. The navigation and secondary weapons systems are fairly straight forward. Hitting ships with torpedoes is probably the most difficult task. Intercepting convoys using information gathered from the sonar and intel data is a challenge. It's more of a rewarding experience than a fun one. On a scale of copperheads to fake afro's, I give this game a chicken foot.

Baby News

Not much to report on this front. Ang is still on bed-rest due to recurring Braxton-Hicks contractions. I've been assigned to the position of slave during this time. All kidding aside, I'm more than happy to do all the housework if it means we get a happy and healthy baby. Tomorrow night, we get to go on a tour of the labor and delivery section of the hospital. That should be a riot. Screaming women and children, blood everywhere. It'll be just like Iraq.

April Fools Day

2005-04-01T06:05:00.000-06:00

Go check out today's Penny Arcade for an accurate description of what April Fools Day is.

I don't like April Fools day. I typically don't participate. The reason is because I don't like to lie, and I don't like liars. People who play tricks on me don't get a chuckle or a laugh out of me, they get labeled liar.

The "holiday" has it's roots in Catholicism (imagine that.) In 1582, the Pope decided to use the Gregorian calendar instead of the Julien calendar. This shifted the date of New Years to Jan 1 from April 1. Many countries resisted this change, some of them all the way up to the 1700's. In order to promote change, the Catholics would essentially make fun of the uninitiated by sending them on a "fool's errand" on April 1.

Great holiday, eh? Change via negative peer pressure.

Thou shalt not bear false witness, anyone?

Free Stock Photos

2005-03-27T18:52:00.000-06:00

Here

I bumped into this site today while looking for stock photos. They seem to have a pretty good free collection. Check it out if you're needing stock photos.

There is a Man

2005-03-27T17:57:00.000-06:00

There is a man who I have admired for a few years now. He's a writer. He's a pioneer. He's a total nerd. Whenever something new of his is published, my awe and ~~jealousy~~ complete devotion grow infinitely deeper. Luckily, he publishes on a regular schedule, and I can get my fix 3 times a week. His name is Jerry Holkins, also known as Tycho of the wonderful Penny Arcade, and he's a genius. He has a way with words that dwarfs the talents of even the best of published writers (especially my own.) He manages to say more in one sentence than some people say in their whole lives.

Like I said, I've been reading his work for a few years now. His work is like reading what my subconscious would say if it could muster the language required. We're about the same age. Have probably had similar upbringings. Yet, he is doing something I can only dream of. The reason is because of his infinitely more powerful command of the English language.

I mention our similarities because on Friday, he wrote this:

We have a relationship to the future that is odd, in that we are constantly trying to create the preconditions for events we expect to happen. We collaborate with linear time to engineer outcomes. There are, however, coordinates in this progression which serve as milestones of a sort: points we can refer to and declare as evidence of forward momentum. Holding the device made it clear. The "future" envisioned by my eight year old self has arrived. Now, we must invent new futures.

The device he refers to is the new Sony PSP, a portable gaming device similar to a Nintendo Gameboy. Now, I bought a Nintendo DS. It's a nifty device, but ultimately a let down. I've been seriously disappointed with the quality of the games, and the stylus thing just isn't working out as well as I would like. I agree that it has potential, but I'm just... well... unimpressed. After reading Tycho's take on the PSP, I think I'm going to be auctioning off my DS on eBay very soon and putting the money toward a PSP.

If the future my 8 year old mind imagined is truly here, I must be a part of it.

THE ZOOMQUILT

2005-03-26T15:00:00.000-06:00

THE ZOOMQUILT | a collaborative art project

I think this is awesome. Go check it out.

Bad Moon

2005-03-25T15:37:00.000-06:00

So, we had a bit of a scare last night / this morning. At about 2:30am, Ang woke up having contractions. They were pretty severe, lasting around 30-40 seconds and being about 30 seconds apart. This is scary, because we're still more than 2 months away from the due date. She woke me up about a half hour later and we waited about an hour before calling the hospital. The emergency room paged our midwife, and she told us to go ahead and come in.

So, with a full moon hanging in the eastern sky, we disembarked for the hospital.

We arrived at the ER about 30 minutes later. They hustled Ang into a wheelchair, and sped her over to the Labor and Delivery wing. The room they put us in was pretty cozy. They had the lights turned down low. There were a couple of chairs around the bed, a TV mounted in the wall, and a boom box near the chairs.

The nurse had Ang change into one of those horrible hospital gowns, and gave her a little exam. They asked a bunch of questions and checked her cervix (1cm.) I was amused, and maybe a little insulted to note that any time the nurse touched Ang, whatever she touched her with immediately went into a big red bin marked WARNING/PELIGRO BIOHAZARD, like she was filled with poison or something.

After the exam, the nurse hooked Ang up to 2 monitors. One was monitoring the babies heart, and the other monitored her contractions. These were hooked up to an ancient PC that displayed a few graphs which we eventually learned how to read. The bottom graph was the important one, since it was the one that measured the contractions. For about 2 or 3 hours, we watched it rise and fall with the tides of her contractions. During this time she got another cervix examination (still 1cm.) After a while, the nurses decided that the only way to stop them was with muscle relaxers. After the first shot, Ang says she didn't feel any more contractions, but the machine was still registering them. So, she got 2 more shots over the course of about maybe an hour or so (I was super tired by this time, and it's hard to say how long this actually took.)

Her urine sample indicated a urinary tract infection (UTI,) and the midwife explained that these can sometimes cause the contractions we're experiencing. Ang was a bit dehydrated too, so the midwife prescribed some antibiotics and lots of fluids.

The midwife said she didn't want to do another cervix inspection since that could set off the contractions again. She went out of the room, and when she came back she said the doctor ordered her to go ahead and do the inspection anyway. Sure enough, almost immediately Ang had another contraction (And what do you know, she was still 1cm.) Luckily, this wasn't a full blown comeback. She just had the one contraction, and then the graph evened out again.

Finally, they gave Ang a shot of steroids which is supposed to help the babies lungs and heart mature a little more quickly, just incase she's born prematurely. We have to go in again tomorrow morning for a second steroid shot. After months of diligently restricting Ang's drug intake, she gets slammed with muscle relaxers, antibiotics, and steroids all in the same day. I think that was the scariest part to me. But I suppose these people know what they're doing, and know what's best. I guess I'll just trust them. Don't have much choice really.

Anyway, everything's been fine since. The midwife told Ang to stay off her feet for a few days, so I'm being her servant. It's kinda fun actually.

I want one of these

2005-03-21T13:56:00.000-06:00

Rubber Magazine - World's First Fuel Cell Motorcycle Unveiled

A British company named Intelligent Energy, has produced the worlds first hydrogen fuel cell motorcycle. This is huge! A motorcycle that runs on what amounts to a rechargable battery. The article says that it can get 4 hours of operation out of 5 minutes of charging time. That's incredible!

It doesn't go very fast, but keep in mind that this is the first of it's kind. The technology will obviously be refined in years to come. By the time we start getting oil out of ANWR, this technology will probably have been perfected. We'll be driving cars that don't need petrolium of any kind.

Here are the stat's as listed by the rubbermag.com article:

Key Components of the Bike Power System

Motor - 6kW, 48 VDC Brush motor (model LEM-170, supplied by LMC)
Motor Controller - Brusa Direct Current (model MD 206)
Fuel Cell - 1kW Intelligent Energy air-cooled (2 x AC32-48)
Hydrogen Storage - High pressure carbon composite cylinder (Luxfer L65)
Hydrogen Energy - 2.4kWeh
Storage Battery - 4 x 12V Lead Acid (15Ahr) connected in series

Performance Data

Acceleration - 0 20 mph in 4.3s (32kph), 0 30 mph in 7.3s (48 kph), 0 50 mph in 12.1s (80kph)
Top speed - 50 mph (80kph) (note: ENV has been tested to 50mph however, with further refinements and redevelopments, this top speed is expected to be exceeded)
Range - At least 100 miles (160km)

Physical

Bike mass - 80 kg (Total mass including CORE)

Fuel

Hydrogen - 99.9% purity
Oxygen - Taken from air
Hydrogen refuel time less than 5 minutes

Interface

Electrical connection - Multi-core (Intelligent Energy specific)

Pretty cool!

Free Fonts

2005-03-21T12:15:00.000-06:00

Mike's Sketch Pad has a ton of free fonts. Yes, not many things on the 'net are truely free, but Mike's not joking around. He's got more fonts than you can shake a stick at.

Apparently he's also got free Photoshop tutorials. I haven't tried those out yet, so I can't really speak for them. I'll give a few of them a whirl later today and see what's what.

In the meantime, if you're looking for some new fonts, give Mike's a click.

2005-03-21T10:04:00.000-06:00

Starting a home business

2005-03-14T17:49:00.000-06:00

So, I've decided that my income is not enough and I need a second job. The only problem is that I don't have time for a second job. So, what I'm going to try to do is get a home PC repair business started. I've created a flyer that I'm going to put up around the different towns I live near, to try to drum up some business. I've got plenty of experience fixing computers, so I'm pretty confident about the actual work aspect of it. I'm a bit nervous about the legal pitfalls though. I'm thinking I'm going to have to have the customers sign some sort of TOS, but I'm not too sure what all should go in it. Something that would guarantee that I would be paid of course. Probably some sort of liability statement too.

If anyone has any advice in this area, I'd love to hear it.

Killer Photoshop Tutorials

2005-03-10T18:41:00.000-06:00

Photoshop Magazine Article Companion Site

These tutorials are awesome. I've learned more in 20 minutes today than I ever knew about Photoshop. Simply amazing. Some of them are kinda old and use an older version of PS, but I was able to find the equivalant tools/options fairly easily.

They guy who writes them is named Bill Willmore, and he's a genius.

Little bit 'o tweakage

2005-03-08T13:06:00.000-06:00

Did a little tweaking to the template today. I added the texturized background, and a border surrounding the links section. Hope it's not too atrocious. I might do some more stuff to the header and footer later. We'll see though. I'm trying to preserve the simple look here.

Ahh the joys of childbirth

2005-03-08T10:25:00.000-06:00

So, I'm reading this book called The Birth Partner, and it's making me a little nervous. The book is written to prepare a person to help a woman give birth. It encourages me to do things which will hurt my wife in order to help her prepare. Things like perenial massage. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly willing to undertake all manner of things to prepare my beautiful wife for the act of childbirth, but I have a hard time doing these things if they are going to hurt her. We are going to be having a natural childbirth (provided there are no complications,) so more than likely I will be performing many of these types of techniques.

Something else that makes me a bit nervous... the book encourages us to prepare for the possibility of a stillbirth. This is not a good subject for me to be thinking about, but I agree with the books assertion that we should probably think about it now while we can do it with a relatively clear head, rather than trying to sort things out after the fact when we would obviously be very distressed. I try not to dwell on it too much. I tell myself things like "People have babies all the time. This is what we were made to do." The possibility of it makes me very nervous though.

On a lighter note, Angela is on her way to the womens clinic right now to have her diabetes test. She's never displayed any symptoms, but the CNM thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and do the test anyway since she has a family history of diabetes. Apparently women can develop diabetes during pregnancy. She's also scheduled for another ultrasound today, but I have a feeling that was a typo as the CNM didn't mention anything about it in our last appointment, and I can't see any reason to have one now. Whatever though. We like getting them done. It's fun to see the baby squirming around in there.

Speaking of squirmy babies... I played with our daughter for the first time the other day. Angela and I were lying in bed, and the baby was bopping around in there, so I started thumping and poking Ang's belly, and she would kick back! It was pretty cool. We did it again for a while last night. It's really neat. I can't wait to have the baby on the outside so I can play with her in a more direct manner, but I think this was just too cool. To me, it indicates that we have a very healthy and smart baby in there. One that responds to outside stimulii in an appropriate manner. She seems very strong too. Ang is always saying that the baby knows kung-fu.

Fetal Development

2005-03-04T14:07:00.000-06:00

Your baby's growth over 40 weeks.

Thought this was kinda cool. We're at 28 weeks now.

Damn Crank Addicts

2005-03-04T08:22:00.000-06:00

So last night I get a call from my Dad telling me that the neighbors have a trailer that they don't use, but which is furnished and fully functional. Well apparently, some meth-heads broke into it, cooked some meth, trashed the place and left. This trailer is about 200 yards from my back door, across a dirt road. Unfortunately, I have close personal experience with these people*, so I know that they're generally not dangerous. They're usually too malnourished to be a physical threat, but the chemicals they use to make their drug are highly volatile, and could explode any time. This would almost surely set the trailer on fire, and the fire could easily spread across my field and to my house. My house that is very old and not built to withstand fire of any great measure.

We've been seeing little 1 prop planes fly over a lot lately, and Dad and I both think they are DEA planes. We're supposed to be on the lookout for cars in the trailer's lot and reporting to a detective if we see any. I can only hope it's not my sister. It's one thing to be an addict, but completely another to break into someones residence and trash the place just so you can cook it. I have no problem calling the cops on someone like that. I don't really care who it is.

So, for the first time since I moved in, we've been locking our doors and been on the lookout for strangers. Suck. Stupid redneck crank heads.

*I have a sister who is not really like a member of our family because of it. It's actually very painful, and it sucks that she doesn't even seem to care.

Refdesk.com

2005-03-02T08:23:00.000-06:00

I think I may have posted about this before, but if you missed it, you should really check out refdesk.com. You want to know about something? You can probably find it at refdesk.com. They have subjects ranging from grammar to gas prices; job finders to jury duty; and everything in between. One of the reference desk librarians here at the university showed me this site, and it's been indispensable ever since. I don't use it as much as I should though, as you can probably tell if you are a grammar expert. My grammar is pretty bad, but when I really want to be correct, I go to refdesk.com and they hook me up.

Thought I would dodge it

2005-03-02T07:47:00.000-06:00

I've got a bit of a cold. I thought I would dodge it as I watched all my cow-orkers catch it last week. Looks like it just took a little longer to affect me. I went to bed pretty early last night and didn't even read my book, which is very unusual for me. The words were making my head hurt though, and I figured that I would need the sleep. I felt pretty good this morning except that I didn't want to get out of bed. Now that I've been awake for a couple of hours though, I'm not feeling so hot. I'm at work, and I hate to call in sick, especially since I take a sick day about every 2 weeks now for our doctors appointments, so I hope it doesn't get too much worse. I need to save all the vacation time I can. I expect when the baby comes, I'm going to need about 2 weeks to adjust. I've been reading plenty of stories about new parents having to stay up till the wee hours of the morning feeding/diapering/coddling/et cetera.

Incidentally, here is a very funny story about having children from the father's perspective. It's called It's Just Another Baby and I think it's pretty funny.

Plenty of Christian Visitors

2005-03-01T08:30:00.000-06:00

I've been getting lots of Christians through here, but none commenting. I wish you would all comment. Where are you all coming from? It's a little strange to me to be getting attention from Christians. I've never really been religious, so I'm wondering what it is that ya'll find so interesting. (Or not interesting since you're not commenting.)

TerraServer is Cool

2005-02-28T20:31:00.000-06:00

The arrow is pointing at my house. The south pond is the one featured in my first picture dump. The north one is actually nicer; has fish in it, benches, and is somewhat clean. The ponds are still adjusting to life without the cows which were banished from our lands about 3 years ago. When this pic was taken we actually still had cows on the land, and the barn was still standing. It's amazing to think that all of the buildings in this pic were built in the 1940's (by my great Grandfather on Moms side,) including the one I'm currently living in.

Since then, the barn has been razed, and a house built in its place.

New Template

2005-02-27T14:42:00.000-06:00

I've gotten tired of my old template, and am going to mess with this new one until I get it where I like it. I like the layout, but not too hot on the colors. We'll see what happens.

Update: Well, I'm finally done. I'll probably do some more tweaking to it later, and add background images and such.

Something weird: it was originally supposed to have like a blue border, but I think the blogger bar is messing that up. Also, I can't seem to get the "email this", and "Edit this post" buttons to appear. It just gives a blank, underlined space that is hyperlinked to those activities. I've just removed the reference to those things for now until I can figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Exeem

2005-02-26T17:21:00.000-06:00

Exeem is Bittorrent + Kazaa. You may have noticed all your favorite torrent sites gone. This is the newest thing. Get it before the MPAA finds out.

Black Car Magnets

2005-02-26T14:10:00.000-06:00

I can only hope that this was inspired by me. That would be cool. They say it was suggested by a customer... was it any of you?

SWAT 4 Demo

2005-02-26T13:43:00.000-06:00

Well, I just downloaded, played and beat the SWAT 4 Demo all in about 25 minutes. Needless to say, it was very very easy. Granted, I played it on "Normal" difficulty, but really I expected more of a challenge. I won't say it wasn't fun though. The objective was to clear a garage building of enemies, rescue civilians, and specifically rescue a particular civilian. You've got a team of 4 helping you clear rooms and detain subjects. Pretty much anything you can do, you can order your team to do. I tend to go that route because I don't get shot as much that way. Besides, why have a team if you're just going to run point the whole time?

The pace was a little slow, but it's a realistic game, so I guess that's the way it was supposed to be. Seems like the AI was a bit dumb though. If I heard gunshots and people shouting about police, I'd probably either run or surrender. Not these guys though. No armor and a crappy 9mm handgun and they're ready to take on the whole SWAT team.

The game gives you the ability to create your own missions, which I think is super cool. In the demo, all you can really do is modify the garage mission, but it seems there are other tools missing that would allow more creative freedom.

On a scale of bicycles to weasels, I give this game a yogurt salad.

(Hint: that's a good score.)

Photo Dump 2/26/05

2005-02-26T11:54:00.000-06:00

Pics

Photo Dump 2/25/05

2005-02-25T08:56:00.000-06:00

Todays photos.

I've started carrying a digital camera with me so I can snap things at will. This is the first dump of hopefully many more. I'm gonna work on the style of the page a bit more so that it's not so plain. But maybe not. Sometimes plain is good.

Enjoy

Bush in Germany: With a Hush and a Whisper, Bush Drops Town Hall Meeting with Germans

2005-02-23T14:40:00.000-06:00

SPIEGEL ONLINE

During his trip to Germany on Wednesday, the main highlight of George W. Bush's trip was meant to be a "town hall"-style meeting with average Germans. But with the German government unwilling to permit a scripted event with questions approved in advance, the White House has quietly put the event on ice.

Every day I am more embarrassed by the man. What a bastard. Yellow bellied, chicken hearted, bastard.

via WRH

Politics moving

2005-02-23T11:00:00.000-06:00

I've been invited to be a member of the very illustrious Pusillanimous Wankers (boy, that's a mouthfull.) I am very honored to accept this invitation, and look forward to wanking it up over there.

This site will revert to a more personal format. If you don't care about babies or farm life, it might get a little boring here for you.

Thanks again Charlie. You're my hero.

Note: This post will stay at the top for a week. Not that I have any regular readers, but just in case someone was confused. Hopefully a week's long enough.

The F-word

2005-02-22T20:24:00.000-06:00

The F-word

Naaah... couldn't be... could it?

I didn't create this

2005-02-22T15:00:00.000-06:00

But I think it makes about as much sense as thinking that the AARP is pushing a gay agenda. Also, look at the size of that cheeseburger!

The Real Reason We're Causing Trouble for Iran

2005-02-22T12:47:00.000-06:00

Iran takes on west's control of oil trading

Iran is to launch an oil trading market for Middle East and Opec producers that could threaten the supremacy of London's International Petroleum Exchange.

Get ready cuz here we come.

A Kick in the Pants

2005-02-22T10:41:00.000-06:00

A Kick in the Pants

It's unfortunate that Bush doesn't understand what is happening in the world he so arrogantly believes he owns. The European trip he's on now is a barely concealed attempt to strong-arm support for his upcoming invasion of Iran. An invasion, according to former UNSCOM weapons inspector Scott Ritter, that Bush has already approved, and is slated for June 2005.

We'll check back in June and see if he's right.

Credible Evidence Emerges That Jeff Gannon Coordinated With the G.O.P. to Bring Down Former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle

2005-02-22T10:23:00.000-06:00

The Credible Evidence Emerges That Jeff Gannon Coordinated With the G.O.P. to Bring Down Former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) in 2004 Election

Did US Military Kill Journalists in Iraq

2005-02-22T09:15:00.000-06:00

Intervention Mag

In our unbrave media world no one defended a charge that seemed on the surface indefensible.

[...]

It is well known that the US military was hostile to “unilateral” reporting from Iraq and that journalists were warned, threatened, intimidated and, yes, killed by not so “friendly fire.” After two journalists died April 8th 2003 at Baghdad's Palestine Hotel after a tank shell was lobbed into a hotel known by the Pentagon as a media site, Reuters called for an independent investigation. The International Federation of Journalists angrily demanded a real probe.

Not only were they ignored but other media companies would not even join their call. I dissect the incident in my film WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception) with five footage sources, interviewing a Reuters reporter who survived and believes her non-embedded team was “targeted.”

On the same day Al Jazeera bureau chief Tareq Ayoub was killed when a US plane rocketed Arab Media offices whose coordinates had been provided to the Pentagon. There has been no probe or apology. This list goes on.

Whiskey Bar: Bitter Enders

2005-02-21T13:10:00.000-06:00

Billmon continues to put things in perspective.

One of My Hero's is Dead

2005-02-21T09:41:00.000-06:00

RIP Hunter S. Thompson

I really can't think of anything fitting to say... I wish he hadn't done it. Why do all the really important ones seem to do this? The man was a rebel and a genius. I can only hope he didn't suffer.

via Shakespears Sister

The Objector: Home of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors

2005-02-19T11:41:00.000-06:00

The Objector: Home of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors

Can anyone explain this?

2005-02-18T14:07:00.000-06:00

TheStar.com - Border talks called `disturbing'

"What they envisage is a new North American reality with one passport, one immigration and refugee policy, one security regime, one foreign policy, one common set of environmental, health and safety standards ... a brand name that will be sold to school kids, all based on the interests and the needs of the U.S.," she said.

Aside from the obvious paranoid conspiricy stuff, what the heck do they mean about the "brand name" stuff? What are they talking about?

Troops say it's hard to get medical care

2005-02-18T14:02:00.000-06:00

USATODAY.com - Troops say it's hard to get medical care:

The troops described an Army bureaucracy that loses track of wounded reservists, drops medical coverage before some are healed and often inflicts hardships on families.

More of that vaunted "support" for our troops.

Please, bring them home before more families are put through this mess. Bring them home today. Now.

A list of UN Resolutions against "Israel"

2005-02-18T12:42:00.000-06:00

A list of UN Resolutions against "Israel"

As Bush trots out the old "defying UN resolutions" excuse for invading countries in the middle east, it's important to know that our closest allies in the region are the biggest offenders.

Here is a list of UN resolutions that Israel has not complied. As far as I know they have ignored every single resolution. But the situation is far worse than would at first appear, it involves the serious distortion of the official Security Council record by the profligate use by the United States of its veto power. (See Table)

Israel’s, defiance goes back to its very beginnings. This collection of resolutions criticizing Israel is unmatched by the record of any other nation.

I'm interested to know how many the U.S.A. is in defiance of. Of course, the righties would tell you that it doesn't matter because we don't answer to the UN. Kinda contrary don't you think?

EverQuest II - /pizza

2005-02-18T09:24:00.000-06:00

EverQuest II - /pizza
The people at Sony are pure genious.

PLEASE DO NOT STOP PLAYING TO EAT. Don't forget the extra cheese, butterball.

This is John Negroponte

2005-02-18T09:07:00.000-06:00

Coming Soon to the United States? Plan Condor, the Seque

It may seem strange now that Elliot Abrams and John Negroponte would have facilitated Argentinian fascists (who refined their torment of Jewish victims back in Buenos Aires by torturing them beneath portraits of Adolf Hitler). But Abrams and Negroponte did just that. Argentinian officers trained members of the Honduran army in techniques of mass repression while John Negroponte was ambassador in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa from 1981 to 1985. There he worked closely with Honduran armed forces chief Gustavo Alvarez Martinez to impose a "national security" state on the Argentine model – that is, a police state based on extra-judicial murder.

As US ambassador in Honduras, John Negroponte displayed cynical contempt for US Congress and legitimacy, shamelessly violating the 1983 Boland Amendment restricting aid to the Contra. On Negroponte's recommendation, the Reagan government gave Alvarez Martinez the Legion of Merit in 1983 for "encouraging democracy." Alvarez Martinez was reponsible for disappearing over 140 trades unionists, students and other leaders of the Honduran popular movement between 1981 and 1984. In 1989, in a test case, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights convicted Honduras of forcibly disappearing four people between 1981 and 1983. During that period, under Negroponte's proconsulship, Argentinian and Israeli terrorists helped the Honduran military refine their techniques of repression.

Well written. Well documented. Go read.

Social Security Calculator

2005-02-18T09:05:00.000-06:00

Social Security Calculator

I think this is awesome

2005-02-16T15:03:00.000-06:00

Penny Arcade! Child's Play Update

Go check out what violent video games have done to the people who play them.

Yahoo! News - Va. School Board OKs Keeping Bible Classes

2005-02-16T11:26:00.000-06:00

Va. School Board OKs Keeping Bible Classes

Okay, I know what you're thinking. It's off campus, so how could it be bad? Well, just imagine the huge storm this would brew if it was Islamic kids going to study the Koran during school hours. Just what do you think these rednecks would be saying then?

It's Starting

2005-02-16T10:26:00.000-06:00

CNN.com

(CNN) -- A large blast has been reported near the southern Iranian port city of Dailam, in the province where the country has a nuclear power plant, according to Iranian state television.

The television report initially quoted witnesses as saying Wednesday's explosion was the result of a missile fired from a plane seen overhead.

The Globe and Mail

Iranian state television described a plane flying over the area immediately before the explosion, which occurred near the southern port city of Dailam.

Descriptions then diverged.

Initial reports said that the plane, which was not officially identified, had fired a missile. The possibility was later raised that it could have been an Iranian plane and that it had jettisoned a fuel tank that had happened to land in the area.

Aljazeera.com

The Russian-built 1,000-megawatt Bushehr power plant, Iran's only nuclear reactor, is expected to begin operation in late 2005. Dailam is about 100 miles from the nuclear facility.

Crude oil prices surged and the U.S. stock futures witnessed a sharp drop following the reports.

Iran’s Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi accused the U.S. on Wednesday of using satellites and other tools to spy on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

I'm a scared American. In fact you could say I am terrified.

Britain Wanted A 'Sexier' Iraqi Weapons Report Claims Scientist

2005-02-14T15:01:00.000-06:00

Britain Wanted A 'Sexier' Iraqi Weapons Report Claims Scientist

An Australian scientist involved in the US search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq today said the CIA censored his reporting so that it suggested the weapons existed.

He also accused the head of Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee of wanting to to make the report “sexier.”

[...]

“We left the impression that, yes, maybe there were ... WMD out there,” Barton said. “So I thought it was dishonest.”

If this is true, it proves that the government knew they were lying to us when they told us all about those WMD's Sadaam was supposed to have.

Let me say that again... THE GOVERNMENT LIED TO YOU TO START THIS ILLEGAL WAR. How's that make you feel?

If you don't like using the word LIED when to referring to the government, you could say that they manipulated the intel to suit their needs. The bottom line is that their need was a war in Iraq. They were just looking for an excuse.

Change Coming

2005-02-14T11:00:00.000-06:00

Today I was sitting in my lab, and I totally thought this girl was reading my blog, until I got close and noticed that it wasn't mine. That's when I decided that something has definitely got to change about my template. I'm not too sure what it's going to be yet. Probably some sort of border down the sides of the post area if I can manage to make it look good. Who knows, maybe I'll get crazy and make my own template. But probably not. Look for subtle changes starting today (I hope.)

Update: Haven't had much time for anything but work today (imagine that... working at work.) I'll get creative another time I guess. I might do some more drive-by postings a little later.

Letters to George from a Serviceman and His Wife

2005-02-14T10:00:00.000-06:00

Go read.

The commander refused to approve his request for Conscientious Objector Status. My husband then took it to the Brigade CSM who did his best to talk my husband out of it. Going so far as to tell my husband that "the people we are going over there to kill rape 8 year old girls."

My husband's response... fathers rape their daughters in America, uncles rape their nieces, and pastors rape altar boys, and yet no American soldier is ordered to go to where that person lives and shoot them with an M-16."

Good point.

Iraqi's Want Us Out

2005-02-13T09:55:00.000-06:00

It's going to be hard for the neocons to present a good case that we should continue our military presence in Iraq. It's been evident for a while now that these so called "insurgents" are actually Iraqi's repelling invaders, not foriegners who have something against the U.S., and now the election results are in and it seems that Shrub's puppet Allawi is in dead last. Iraqi's have overwhelmingly (48%) voted Shi'ite muslims into power, with the Kurdish candidates running second (25%.) With the Iraqi resistance controlling virtually every road into and out of Baghdad, can there be any question that the Iraqi's want us out of their country?

So what will the wingers and neocons do now? The very thing they abhore has happened. Iraqi women can say goodbye to the freedom they've enjoyed. Christian Iraqis will probaby have to go into hiding, or flee the country in order to enjoy religious freedom. Do you think Bush and the neocons will respect the Iraqi's wishes to be an Islamst nation? Or do you think they will respect the wishes of the new government for a U.S. withdrawl timetable? Bush has already said that he will not, so it's not really a question. The Iraqi's obviously don't have the freedom we've supposedly brought them. Is this what the neocons and wingers were talking about when they preach about bringing freedom to the oppressed? What good has come of this? Why did all these thousands of people have to be tortured and die? Does any of this sound fair or even sane to anyone?

Support our troops, bring them home, quickly, before any more of them have to die for this nonsense.

Edited for spelling and grammar.

My Wife is Teasing Me

2005-02-11T16:35:00.000-06:00

My b-day is monday, and all I've seen of my presents is this pic:

Black Ribbon Day

2005-02-11T09:21:00.000-06:00

Today is the first day I'm sporting my protest ribbon. I'll take a picture of it when I get home tonight. So far, nobody has said anything about it, but it's early. I'll keep this post updated if I have any encounters with the right. Hopefully nobody decides to kick my ass for it.

Update for clarification: I'm not against the soldiers, just the war. I wish the government would stop misusing our soldiers and bring them home. Not just my friends and family, but all soldiers deployed in Iraq. We have no business there, and my ribbon is a protest of our continued presence there. I am anti-war, not anti-soldier.

The New Nihilism

2005-02-10T10:14:00.000-06:00

The New Nihilism

Common to all these lives was Nihilism, which while popularly described as a “belief in nothing” is more accurately described as the absence of belief or faith. Whereas atheism was an absence of belief in gods, Nihilism was an absence of faith in anything, including society itself. The twin horrors of World War 1 and the Spanish Flu created a climate in which nothing seemed to be worthy of trust, either spiritually or governmentally. Those who had seen the horrors first hand could not bring themselves to plan or work for the future. “Future” was something that could not be relied upon.

A new nihilism is starting to appear in the United States. Like the Lost Generation, this malaise proceeds from multiple sources.

This guy is one of my favorite bloggers. He's been doing it for about 11 years now. Before 'blog' was a word.

Black Ribbon

2005-02-10T09:41:00.000-06:00

Every time I see one of those yellow "Support our Troops!" stickers, I want to throw up. However, I'm starting to think that the left is not fighting back with the proper tools. We're trying to appeal to the intellectual side of people. This just won't work in America. If it can't be condensed into a 5 second sound byte, the American public won't get it. So, I'm going to start a fashion trend. I'm going to wear a little black ribbon all curled up to resemble the yellow ones. It's easy. It's explosive. It's noticible. The 3 things I believe are necessary ingredients in any American propaganda campaign. If only one person a day notices it and it makes them think for a second, then I'll be happy.

Yahoo! News - Palestinians Attack Israeli Settlements

2005-02-10T09:29:00.000-06:00

Yahoo! News - Palestinians Attack Israeli Settlements:

Read this article carefully. They'd like to spin it to make you think that Palestine violated the ceasefire, but check out the parts I've bolded:

"The Israeli army said there were no injuries in the mortar attacks. But the flare-up in violence, which has included the fatal shootings of two Palestinians, has presented the first serious test to the truce declared by the Israeli and Palestinian leaders this week.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the mortar attacks, saying it was avenging the deaths of two Palestinians on Wednesday. One, a Hamas activist, was killed while handling explosives. The second, apparently a civilian, was killed by Israeli troops as he approached a Jewish settlement in southern Gaza, the group said."

So, Israeli troops shot and killed a Palistinian as he approached a checkpoint. Shot. Killed.

Note that it's Abbas who's "moving quickly to preserve the cease-fire," not Sharon. Apparently it's okay for Israeli troops to shoot random civilians during a ceasefire.

Bonus Points for Linux

2005-02-10T08:11:00.000-06:00

So, I went searching for an avi to mpeg2 converter today. I started out looking for Windows clients, but all my hits on Google were for shareware products. Most of which won't convert anything over 1Mb for free. 1 megabyte. One. To get full functionality, you have to pay money. $15 for this, $30 for that. For file conversion. Boggling.

So, I altered my search to include the word 'linux', and what do you know, every link that came up was for freeware. I haven't actually tried any of them yet because I only had about 10 minutes to do the searching this morning. I'll do more searching and testing tonight, and if I find one that works easily, I'll post my results.

Update: Okay, so not so cool after all. First download 8 different applications. Then for each one of those applications, download between 4 to 10 library files. Then execute a really long and not-very-intuitive-at-all command using the terminal. I've given up. I guess I'm going to warez me some windows software to do it because this is just too difficult.

Government and Tyranny

2005-02-09T10:05:00.000-06:00

DJ Paul Edge Blog: Government and Tyranny

This has all been said before, but it's nice to have it all in one place. Go check out Bush's blatent disregard for American values.

Wage Peace Campaign : AFSC

2005-02-08T12:46:00.000-06:00

Wage Peace Campaign : AFSC They've got a downloadable movie that I actually haven't watched yet, but it's called the "Wage Peace Movie". Go check it out. Sign the petition to support our troops by bringing them home.

Einstein@Home

2005-02-08T06:29:00.000-06:00

World Year of Physics 2005 - Einstein@Home

Einstein@Home is a project developed to search data from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (LIGO) in the US and from the GEO 600 gravitational wave observatory in Germany for signals coming from extremely dense, rapidly rotating stars. Such sources are believed to be either quark stars or neutron stars, and a subclass of these are already observed by conventional means as pulsars or X-ray emitting celestial objects. Scientists believe that some of these compact stars may not be perfectly spherical, and if so, they should emit characteristic gravitational waves, which LIGO and GEO 600 may begin to detect in coming months.

Bruce Allen of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's (UWM) LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) group is leading the development of the Einstein@Home project.

Einstein@Home is one, small part of the LSC scientific program. It is being set up as a distributed computing project, which means that it relies on computer time donated by private computer users like you to search for gravity wave-emitting compact stars.

Apparently, I'm not the only one...

2005-02-07T18:13:00.000-06:00

...who doesn't understand the SS debate.

Jesus christ, indeed. How did this man become President of the United States? How, I ask you. As Kos mentions, it almost seems like a joke.

Go read. If for nothing else, there are some good "Bushism's" in there.

Update: Okay, I just realized I linked to Kos again. From now on, instead of regurgitating everything he posts, I'm going to try to think of a better way to do this... maybe a permenant Kos sidebar item with alerts or something. We'll see.

Daily Kos :: Privatization debate is over (or it should be)

2005-02-07T13:08:00.000-06:00

Daily Kos :: Privatization debate is over (or it should be)

Yes, I'm linking to Kos again... Jeez doesn't this blog every produce any original content? Well, sometimes. I have a hard time with the whole SS debate because I really don't know much about economics, so I let the other lefties in the blogosphere debate it for me.

In a rational world, when your opponent concedes your position, you've won the debate. As Josh reports, Cheney did as much Sunday on Fox:
"We're going to borrow $758 [b]illion over the next 10 years to set up the personal retirement accounts. We think that's a manageable amount ... Trillions more after that," Cheney said, acknowledging that the personal accounts will help younger workers but will not solve all the problems of solvency.
We were told social security was in crisis, and that privatization was the solution. Now, the adminstration admits that the system is not in crisis and that privatization won't solve the system's projected future shortfall (but will add trillions in debt).

Of course, the GOP isn't exactly known for being sane or logical, so I'm sure we'll continue to hear them press for a change in our SS system. Admission or no. Crisis or no.

The Abu Ghraib Scandal You Don't Know

2005-02-07T10:40:00.000-06:00

TIME Online Edition

In what amounted to a perversion of the traditional doctor's creed of "first, do no harm," the medical system at the prison became an instrument of abuse, by design and by neglect.

...

there was also medical disarray at the prison: amputations performed by nondoctors, chest tubes recycled from the dead to the living, a medic ordered, by one account, to cover up a homicide. That in itself would have made Abu Ghraib a scandal even without the acts of torture inflicted on the inmates by their guards.

Emphasis added.

Media Player Wars

2005-02-07T10:12:00.000-06:00

This morning on the way to work, I heard this broadcast on NPR. Contrary to what the website would have you believe, this program was more of an advertisement for Windows Media Player than an examination of "the wide array of software that makes it possible to listen to audio and view video on a personal computer." Towards the end of the piece, the broadcaster proclaimed (paraphrased here) that there was no one media player for all of your files. This is simply not true. There is one player to rule them all, and it's called VLC Media Player. It's played every type of file I've ever asked it to, including Quicktime files. I haven't tested it with real media files, but that's mostly because all the .rm and .ram files I can find on the 'net are streaming, and VLC doesn't do streaming. Streaming is hella lame anyway, and everyone should give you the opportunity to download files rather than forcing you to stream them.

While we're on the subject, you should not be using Quicktime or RealPlayer. They both are very annoying, and RealPlayer is actually a big fat piece of spyware. You should uninstall those applications and use Real Alternative and Quicktime Alternative instead.

Kos

2005-02-06T14:53:00.000-06:00

Congress Suspends All Laws

It would empower the Secretary of Homeland Security to suspend any and all laws in order to ensure the "expeditious" construction of a set of barriers and roads south of San Diego, to keep illegal immigrants out. It also would prohibit ANY judicial review of the Secretary of Homeland Security's decision to suspend any law.

Sets a really bad precident if passed. Allows the government to just ignore inconvenient laws in the name of security.

How can this be our president?

2005-02-04T14:48:00.000-06:00

Bush tells CBC he's 'unfamiliar' with Voting Rights Act

President George W. Bush met with the Congressional Black Caucus Wednesday for the first time as a group in nearly four years, but what CBC members said stood out the most was the president's declaration that he was "unfamiliar" with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the most significant pieces of legislation passed in the history of the United States.

Say it ain't so. Our president isn't familiar witht he Voting Rights Act?!? How did this guy make it? I am so confused.

Any requests?

2005-02-04T13:31:00.000-06:00

I was going to post the video of our last ultra sound, but then I realized that it's almost 120Mb. If I get a bunch of requests for it, I'll post it, otherwise not. So, if you're up to downloading about 5 minutes of blurry ultrasound video, post in the comments, and we'll see.

Oh Irony

2005-02-04T09:26:00.000-06:00

Shia cleric ahead in Iraqi polls.

The coalition of Iyad Allawi, the Iraqi interim Prime Minister appointed by the Americans, is heading for election defeat at the hands of a list backed by the country's senior Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, partial results released yesterday indicate.

The results from Baghdad - where Mr Allawi was expected to do well - show the one-time CIA protégé with only 140,364 votes compared to 350,069 for the alliance, which is headed by a Shia cleric who lived in Iran for many years.

We destroyed the only secular government in the area and are about to replace it with one on par with Iran. What was that about spreading american values, Bush? If this guy wins, the government he forms will probably immediately call for the withdrawl of coalition forces from Iraq. Something that Bush is dead set against.

Instead of freeing people, we're effectively enslaving them to their clergy members. All you anti-burkha wingers out there can reap what you've sown. Of course, since this war is all about oil anyway, I guess everything will probably turn out all right for you after all.

Wait, what's that? The price of oil went up again today? Oh well... ummm... never mind then. I guess nothing you planned for is going to happen. Are you sure pre-emptive war is a good policy?

Linux can save you money

2005-02-04T07:57:00.000-06:00

So, I've been using SuSe Linux v9.2 for about a week now, and I have to say... I mostly like it. This is coming from a long time Windows fan too, so don't take that lightly. I'm still learning some of the basics of system administration on Linux, so I can't give a final verdict yet, but from what I've seen Linux could do a lot of people a lot of good.

You may have already heard about the proposal (Link to pdf) in LA to divert funds used on proprietary operating system software to the police force, by switching to an open source operating system. I think that a similar move could greatly benifit just about any organization using computers solely for office applications (i.e. word processing, spreadsheet analysis, presentation composition, photo editing, and much more.) The version of SuSe I downloaded for free, came with a ton of applications that if they were proprietary would have literally cost a fortune. The office productivity package, called OpenOffice is even compatible with Microsofts file formats. So, if someone sends you an Excel spreadsheet, Word document, or a Power Point file, you'll have no trouble opening them or editing them. OpenOffice also has a version compiled for Windows, so if you don't want to switch to Linux, but also don't want to pay hundreds of dollars for an office package, it might be a good solution for you.

Here at the university, we of course have hundreds, possibly even a thousand computers running Microsoft Windows, or MacOS. Both of these are proprietary, and cost loads of money for a single license just for the operating system. That's not even counting the hundreds of other applications the university has to purchase licenses for to run on the proprietary systems. I have no idea how much it's costing the university to keep these licenses current, but I bet it's easily a half a million dollars per license cycle. The money saved could be used in more productive ways, like purchasing new classroom technology, or since state universities are actually more of a football institution than an educational one, the money could be used for more training equipment, or uniforms. Or maybe that money could be put towards scholarships for exceptional students.

At any rate, I haven't completed my evaluation of the software by a long shot, so look for more on the subject in the future. At the very least, public institutions could save their taxpayers dollars by using something that's free, and possibly just as good as the very expensive alternative.

Lies Lies Lies

2005-02-02T14:40:00.000-06:00

Ever wonder about this or that program or grant or whatever it is that Bush promises us every year in his state of the union speeches? Well, Will has cleared the air for us. Go check out his post regarding promises kept and otherwise.

Also: it seems Konqueror has problems copying and pasting text, or else I would have posted a quote. If I get it figured out, I'll edit this post.

Half of Bankruptcy in USA Due to Medical Costs

2005-02-02T11:19:00.000-06:00

Half of Bankruptcy Due to Medical Bills -- U.S. Study

Half of all U.S. bankruptcies are caused by soaring medical bills and most people sent into debt by illness are middle-class workers with health insurance, researchers said on Wednesday.

Tell me again why socialized medicine is bad for the USA. Seriously, our current obviously isn't working. Sure, socialized medicine might lower the standards of quality we're used to in hospitals today, but how might it improve our overall standard of living? 2 million americans in poverty because of their medical bills seems like a bigger problem than long lines at the doctors office.

New Sidebar Item

2005-02-02T09:34:00.000-06:00

Cost of War counter. Searching for quotes about how cheap and easy the war will be from top Bush members, I ran into this page. Thought it was a good reminder. If you visit their website, you can see how much the war has cost each individual state, and even break it down to major cities costs. Here in Arkansas, we've paid a low amount. Only $1.2b so far. I feel sorry for states like NY or IL who've paid $12b and $8b respectively.

RSS Popper

2005-02-01T10:35:00.000-06:00

If you are an Outlook user, this free plugin will give you RSS feeds. No more using seperate apps for RSS and email.

Digby's done it again

2005-01-31T17:32:00.000-06:00

Here:

I don't think we need to be dishonest, but I fear that we are going to be bulldozed over and over again, even if we win the battle for social security, if we try to hang our hats on the moral case for good government.

Read the whole post. I think that we definitely need to change tactics, and I think Digby's got the right idea.

Cool!

2005-01-31T17:22:00.000-06:00

Nasa's mission to the edge of the solar system, and beyond

The mission will involve launching a space laboratory and could answer some basic questions about the nature of interstellar space, as well as laying the groundwork for the first journey of exploration beyond our solar system to the stars and their planets.

One more religiously fueled law is probably going to pass

2005-01-31T08:49:00.000-06:00

Yahoo! News - Bill Aims to Curb Out-Of-State Abortions

The bill's advocates evoke the image of a girl being impregnated by an abusive older man who then drives her to an out-of-state abortion clinic so the girl's parents and the authorities won't find out about a relationship that might have been illegal because of age differences.

Opponents of the bill say it would criminalize the well-meaning acts of an aunt, older sister or other confidante who assist a girl terrified of being beaten or evicted from home if her parents learned of the pregnancy.

Good points on both sides, however I would argue that the advocates point is probably not going to be a very common situation. A much more likely and horrifying scenario to me is that this bill gets passed, and some poor girl accidentally kills herself while trying to have a home-brewed abortion. Or, your nice aunt who doesn't know about this law gets a heafty prison term, effectively ruining her life. So, now instead of having an abortion and possibly killing something that isn't sentient, 3 lives are completely ruined and most likely become a drain on the welfare system.

Here's a bit of good news:

"We're proceeding as if it's going to pass," said Lorraine Kenny of the American Civil Liberties Union's Reproductive Freedom Project. ACLU lawyers already are studying possible challenges on grounds that the bill violates the right to travel from state to state and does not make an exception for cases when a girl's health is jeopardized.

If memory serves, most objections of this type tend to have a good impact. So, there is some hope that once this passes, it'll get struck down again.

Here's my favorite part of the article:

"Judges in Alabama call teens who seek abortion murderers, force them to sit through religious programming, and still deny their petitions," Dalven said. "For these teens, going out of state is their only option. ... It's been a critical safety valve that would be lost if this bill is passed."

How the hell is this even legal? Seperation of church and state anyone? Hello?