No Religion

Is there really such a thing as no religion? John Lennon seemed to think it would be a wonderful world. What exactly did he envision? People wandering aimlessly with no set of values or principles upon which to live their lives?
But wait, says the philosopher, religion is defined as a belief in a higher power, or the mystical, or in phenomena. Says who?! I find it interesting that religion is being defined by those who disagree with people who claim to be religious. Religious people don't define religion. If one were to analyze all these arguments about religion and government, separation of church and state, etc., one would find some very interesting definitions of religion. Most are defined by secularists and humanists, and other philosphers, who are trying to remove themselves, and everyone else, from "religion." They are using the same arguments that have been used for millenia by anyone trying to extinguish others. To fight your opposition, you have to define them.
The problem is, religion is basically a system or set of beliefs upon which one bases his actions and attitudes. If one believes in God, or a god, or multiple gods, or undefined gods, one conforms his actions to the dictates of conscience which arise out of that belief. One who thinks there might be a god, but doesn't care (agnostic), lives his life on that assumption. One who believes in God, and recognizes God's compassion as what drives God, will conform his actions to that assumption that God is a compassionate God; while one who recognizes God's judgment as being most important will conform his life to that assumption. Likewise, one who believes there is no God, or gods, or supreme being, or whatever, will base his life on that assumption. Perhaps he will think that man is supreme, or he will think that mankind is no more than a fortunate animal. It doesn't matter, for he will conform his actions to whatever his assumption about life might be. He then has a religion. One cannot shake religion, just as one cannot shake the need for oxygen or food. Religion happens. It is there, and not going away just because one does want to be classified as religious.
Why do I bring this up? Well, the first Amendment to our Constitution establishes that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The great downfall of our society has been the assumption that this meant that anything smacking of organized religion does not belong in our government. But where does it mention organized religion? It does not. If one is convinced that his moral dictates require him to seek office, or to vote in a certain way, or to impose a certain value upon society, then for a court to prevent him from doing so solely because his viewpoint is considered to align with an established religion is a violation of the First Amendment. For in so doing, the court is "establishing" the "religion" of the opposite view.
While I have been pondering upon this concept for some time, I must admit that it is a difficult one to explain. Perhaps in my mind, it is becoming more clear, while my explanation of it is faulty. If anyone reading this can see where this concept might be going, feel free to comment. I'll continue working on it.

Funny Undies?

Many people of faith wear symbols of their faith. Hindu women may wear a red dot on thier forehead, while nuns wear the habit. Catholic priests, and other pastors wear a white collar. Other Christians wear a cross, usually on a necklace. Muslims wear certain wraps and headgear. What is the purpose of these unique clothes? Some wear them to make others aware of their faith, while most wear them to remind themselves of certain commitments they have made either to God or to their faith, or to certain principles of their faith or value system. For those who wear these symbols as a reminder to one's self of his or her commitments to follow God, or of his or her relationship to God, would it make a difference whether it is worn for others to see?

I bring this up because it appears that Mitt Romney is gaining momentum as a viable candidate for the presidency. It is inevitable that the issue of the garment would come up, as it already has for him. As he becomes more and more well known, questions about his faith will become newsworthy, and many of us may be confronted with the question about our "funny underwear." I have had a tendancy to shun the issue, as it is really nobody's business what I am wearing under my clothes, but my sweet wife reminded me that it is nothing to be defensive about, and presented the above explanation, which I found to be an amazing reminder as to why I wear the garment.

It's a great day for us libs!

I got an email from a good friend of mine, wondering what happened this week. The best I can say is... I sure am glad I am now a liberal. We won. We completely ignored the facts, analyzed our emotions, pled our emotional causes, and have now received validation.

We were very successful in convincing people to vote on emotion in complete ignorance of the facts. For example, the largest deciding factor for most of us was the war in Iraq. We don't like the way it is going. So we voted for a Democrat who also doesn't like the way it is going. Interestingly enough, George Snuffalufagus said, on ABC this morning, that there is admittedly very little that Congress can do to affect the way the war is going. That is the president's job.

Ignore the facts, vote on emotion.

You should try it.

It is very liberating.

Speaking of the President (I mean "Mr. Bush"), it sure was kind of him to wait until after the election to change out Rummy. Heaven only knows how many of these elections would have gone to the evile Republicans if he had only made the switch last month! Thanks, George! We owe you one.

What is irony?

Interestingly enough, just after my original letter concerning bias in the school paper, this story was printed on the front page of the Arkansas Traveler (U of A school paper).

Headline: Kimple Hall is falling down
(Kimple Hall is the home of the journalism department... and the Arkansas Traveler)

Exerpts from the story:
"The journalism department might be headed for a crack-up - literally. Some offices in the journalism department are sinking because the grade of the slab on which that part of the building is based has settled, said Bob Beeler, associate director for design and construction. Officials with UA Facilities Management have known about the sinking for three months, and have tried to measure its progress by putting motion-monitoring devices on the cracks that have appeared in Kimpel, Beeler said. The movement stopped momentarily, and then began again three weeks ago, he said."We know it is a problem and we are on course to fix that," he said."

"The sinking could be caused by a dry summer, he said. A lack of moisture could have affected the soil on which the building is based."

The journalism department is sinking.
The foundation is crumbling.


Oh, the irony...

Stirring up the Ark

Well, my letter got printed in the Arkansas Traveler, and the response has been wonderful. One insightful writer, a former journalist, went off on me because she is being stripped of her rights and doesn't know it (or I don't know it, or somebody in Iraq doesn't know it?)? Yeah, figure that one. Another assumed that because I don't like media bias, I don't know much about the war in Iraq, and neither does anyone who else who watches Fox News. (I just wish I could get Fox News.) And then there was Mr. Sturtevant, an Education graduate, who finally got to me. His wisdom and insight left me to ponder things about myself, and I realized that I just think too much. I learned that I have led a sheltered and insulated life. So, after much reflection, and lots of Cutsie Curic, I decided I needed to publicly recognize Mr. Sturtevant's contributions to my life.

Liberal letter enlightens (How do you like that headline?)

Please thank Mr. Sturtevant for bringing to light my unfortunate disposition toward being easily misled. Having reflected upon this personal fault, I am now a changed man. There is no bias in the media. Rove's comments were properly sandwiched between arguments against the administration, and under a headline, which clearly and properly colored his visit and comments in shrouds of protest. I can ignore that such treatment was not given to any of the many stories reporting on activities promoting the illustrious left (e.g., Judge Griffen's story, or the Oct. 9 story regarding the former CIA agent promoting Bush lied to us.)

I can accept that Bush lied to us, even though this greatly distorts the definition of "lie." I can ignore the actual fact that my president acted on faulty intelligence, and patterns of behavior and threats made by Hussein.

Judge Griffen correctly stated that no one invited us to depose Saddam. I can simply ignore the fact that thousands of dissidents had been begging us for years to do just that.

People of faith have no business expressing their moral opinions. Pointing out to another where one thinks that person has gone astray from moral virtue, standing up to protect society from what one considers to be deviant behavior, and defending what one perceives to be morally right is intolerance, and should not be tolerated in our society!

The loss of 2,809 soldiers in a three and a half year war to defend me from terrorists, and the world from madmen who killed hundreds of thousands of people and threatened to use weapons of mass destruction to destroy me and my way of life is too high a price; and not contrasting it to the number of soldiers killed in previous wars does not misguide or mislead people. This number should be placed in front of me at all times so that I might feel the guilt.

Finally, I am convinced that when my school paper speaks to issues outside of campus, it should be to reform those misled conservatives. Leave fair and balanced to Fox News. I should have been more supportive of my fees going to support liberal campaign material.

Again, thank you, Mr. Sturtevant. You have changed my life. By simply ignoring the facts, I shall no longer be misled.

Sam Eastman
Graduate Student
Law

Oprah, or Harpo?

Oprah looked a lot like Harpo the other day, pulling things out of her pocket that have no bearing to relevancy. After interviewing the loveable Michael J. Fox (who I admittedly enjoyed as an actor, and admire for his efforts in pursuing a cure for Parkinson's), Oprah stood in the Holocaust Museum and declared how unfortunate it is that Fox is getting headline coverage, instead of the number of soldiers dying in Iraq.

Grabbing her own spotlight, Cutsie Couric pops up on CBS News to introduce Fox as the unfortunate victim of a political controversy, simply because he wanted to promote a Democrat candidate whom he has probably never met in a state he has probably never seen. Poor guy. (Interesting that he was able to sit relatively still for Cutsie's interview.)

But back to Oprah's comment. Fox is getting headline news because he insterted himself into a political campaign of national importance. He is getting headline news because media folks like Oprah and Cutsie wanted to exploit what some talk-show guy they don't even listen to had to say about a Parkinson's sufferer who put himself smack-dab in the center of a political debate (with very few facts, I might add). And then, after shamelessly exploiting this American icon, they decry the very fact that they even had to bring this issue to our attention, when there is other, far more important matters of propaganda which should be our focus.

Oprah, look at your freakin' newspaper. Tell me, without opening the paper, how many soldiers died in Iraq today. Exactly. It's right there. Don't whine about the body count not being in the spotlight. It will not go away. Trust me. So long as it scores political points, it will not go away. And Cutsie will smile in her sad little way every time she gets to report a larger number.

Yikes!

The Dem's have finally come out with their "here's what we'll tell voters we will do after we win the elections" list. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061023/ap_on_el_ge/democrats_in_charge

And, suprise, it includes cutting and running, cutting the military, spending money on investigating the military, hog-tying the administration up in committee hearings (Dem's like committee hearings), and spend, spend, spend. Oh yeah, and spending other people's money along the way, in the form of a minimum wage increase. Wow, $7.25 an hour. Where in the he** did they get that figure? Is there some magic formula that you can plug some concrete numbers into and get a minimum wage? Or, while in the process of searching for their heads, did they just pull it out of their a**(butt)? I mean, sure, here in the heartland, that is not a bad increase. Still won't pay the bills, but it sure beats that old $6.25 or whatever it is now. But some place like California or Illinois, you can hardly buy a snort with that.

So you go, Nancy Pelosi. Yeah, you go girl. Way to set a priority. Before you can even increase taxes, you'll make sure you increase payrolls, plummet the stock market, and really stick it to those evil imperialist pigs who keep this economy rolling.

Vote Democrat. Then roll over.

Please Write Responsibly

Thought you might enjoy this letter to the editor of the Arkansas Traveler. I doubt it will be printed (it turns out it exceeded the wordcount). Enjoy.

Dear Editor,

Shame on you and your staff. You have taken what should be a quality student paper and turned it into nothing more than a shameless rag of propaganda. It is unfortunate that as a student I have no choice but to fund such a machine.

Let me direct your attention first to the visit of Carl Rove, the president's political advisor. One would think that the visit of a man of his position to Fayetteville, Arkansas would be the news story, whether you like him or not. Instead, how are we told of his visit? The front page screamed that he was met with protestors, accompanied by a large picture of two old people carrying three large signs. The article mentioned very little of the substance of his appearance, but seemed to relish in the notion that a few people were unhappy that he chose to come here to campaign for candidates that agree with his ideas.

Contrast that with Monday, October 23. Judge Wendell Griffen of the Arkansas Court of Appeals appears in a church on Sunday, to lecture about how evil Bush is, how much he loves his country, and how bothered he is that people of morals actually wish to promote those morals. It is, of course, his right to promote his morals (although people of morals shouldn't promote their morals politically?), but it would sure help if he would have incorporated a few actual truths into his ramblings (he must have forgotten that a large number of Iraqi dissidents and Kurds had been begging for the US to help get rid of Saddam Hussein for years). But in this instance, the substance of his irresponsible sermon is hailed on the front page of our school paper as a priceless lesson on the need for our nation to be more neighborly (the Good Samaritan was not in the process of battling terrorists who had just blown his right arm off). Interestingly, this appeared directly over an article about the rights of journalists and biases in the media. I wonder where these biases are born.

And then the Opinion page, of course, contains nothing more than further anti-war, Bush hating (or very strongly misliking) bluther, with more misguided references to the number of soldiers killed contrasted against the highly speculative high numbers of Iraqi casualties and more "just tell us the truth, Bush" commentaries. (Maybe you just can't handle the truth?) Interesting, what with the elections so close.

Freedom of speech is great. But please try to be a little more responsible with my fees.

Foley's Folly

Dennis Hastert should resign. It is, after all, his fault that Foley sent crude emails to a page. I mean, his name is Foley. Come on! Wasn't there some Saturday Night Live guy named Foley? Oh, it was Farley? (Close enough.) You know, Saturday Night Live... "SNL". Young page boys. Connect the dots. Jeesh, Hastert, you should have seen that one coming from a mile away.
You should have taken Foley's computer away from him last year, and hired an independent Democrat to conduct all of Foley's computer transactions. And then you should have hired a babysitter to sit with Foley at all times, and to read all of Foley's outgoing mail to be sure that the man did not attempt in any way to interact with young people. Heck, you should have just canned Foley right then, when it first came to your attention that Foley was inquiring into the well-being of a page who had been affected by Katrina. That should be enough to tip anyone off that he is a pervert looking to entice young men into a sexually explicit relationship. If you can't make that connection, then you just shouldn't be Speaker of the House.
So bye, bye Denny, you should have made that connection. At the very least, you should have gone to the House Democrat majority leader and at least told her then that there was some scandal going on in the House, and you think that maybe it was better if she just took over as speaker right then and there. That would have been the right thing to do.
Or maybe you should have just convinced Foley that if he wished to pursue that course of action, he needed to go ahead and jump sides then, so he wouldn't be held to the same standards as real people. In fact, if you had given him that advice, he could still have his seat right now. None of this would have come to light. And if it had, it would have been a mild, quiet little talk w/ Ms. Pelosi, and then maybe some public apology, and the calls for forgiveness would have gone out to have pity on this poor man who has been forced to suppress his pedophilia his entire life, and now that he is a Democrat, he is finally free to be what he has always been.
Yeah, Dennis. With all those options, you chose instead to confront the man and warn him to refrain from any further communications with the pages. You chose, instead, to remind him that that was a violation of the Congressional rules and that he must stop such actions immediately. You chose instead to heed the wishes of the parents of the page, and not pursue this publicly. Shame on you, Dennis Hastert, for your reasonable attempts to nip this in the bud right away.
Thank you, Washington Times, for being the first to call for his resignation. One with such an impeccable record of cleaning your own house of perverts should certainly be the first to throw stones inside your glass house.
And, of course, thank you, ABC News, for sitting on this information for so long, when the well-being of a young, high-school page was in jeopardy. Of course, we understand that the release of this information, which you had obviously had for quite some time (and which evidenced that a young high-school page was in jeopardy) only coincidentally came to light just as Congress was wrapping up its final session and getting ready to head into the campaign season. Being the responsible journalistic types that you are, this information (which you sat on for so long while the well-being of a young high-school page was in jeopardy) was of course made public with the sole purpose of informing the public that a young high-school page's well-being was in jeopardy, and something needed to be done right away (or months after it came to your attention that a young high-school page's well being was in jeopardy). There's a reason more people get their news from ABC News than from any other source. It is always so fresh!

The value of an education in Arkansas

It looks like the U of A is truly concerned about giving us an all-around education. In what appears to be an opportunity to explore all career paths, the big sign in the student union reads:

"See what it is like to be homeless. Come learn how to build a cardboard house!"

I suppose if law doesn't work out, there's always...

Don't laugh now...

You know how you think of something really funny, and can't wait to tell someone, but then you get busy and figure you'll do it later, only when later happens, you've forgotten what that funny was?

I had a good one to share with you. It was really going to be funny. Just ask my wife. She probably won't know what you're talking about, but she helped me think of it, and we both got a good laugh. I even said, "I'm going to use that in my blog." And she laughed again because it was so funny. Then I said something else that was funny, and we laughed. And then, in between laughs, she said something else that was even funnier. That sent us rolling. And then we didn't say anything funny for a while, because we couldn't stop laughing. I think we laughed for quite a while.

Then I slept. And now I can't think of it to save my life. And still, as I think upon how funny it was, I have to smile just a little, and chuckle at how funny it was going to be. I am sure that you would have really appreciated it, too.

Now I'm not sure which is funnier: what I was going to tell you, or that I forgot what I was going to tell you that was going to make you really laugh.

Maybe at some point in your day, for no apparent reason, you will smile just a little, and maybe even have to suppress a slight chuckle. And you won't really know why, only that there was something really funny that you have forgotten about, but you remember how funny it was to laugh about.

Well, go ahead and laugh now... and I'll supply the funny later.

Thank you!

Thank you to all who have visited this site recently. It is always fun to see the counter bumping up with each visit.

School has started up again, and I am getting hit pretty hard. Professors like to push you to quit for some reason. Do they not see that the more students stay on the better that professor's job security is? Jeesh! Someone ought to talk to them about that. (Not me, though. I'll be too busy reading their 65 pages per night and writing briefs and proofs on their 5 cases including footnotes and subsections and cross-references and keys and hidden messages, etc, so that I won't be the moron who gets embarassed when yon professor calls on me out of the blue to stand and explain the reasoning of some judge whose name I can't pronounce and whose torturously long-drawn-out opinion I sorted out just 4 hours earlier prior to going to a bed which I haven't seen since 16 hours ago.) Breath in. Breath out.

Anyway, I guess what I am saying is that I may have a difficult time breaking away from the amusements of first year law school to keep this site updated very regularly. But I will not abandon you. Just keep checking back at least 2 or 3 times an hour to see if you will be the first to read my radomly entered musings.

P.S. If anyone else would like to contribute a short paragraph about life in the real world, too bad! Get your own site! Hahahahahahahahahaha....cough, cough, sputter... ha. No, really, just send it to me at ikinya6@yahoo.com ,and if I think that it rises to the highest of standards as set forth in the examples of my previous entries (this one not included - because it is not a previous entry), and shows a strong line of reasoning and thoughtful meditation, and I agree with it, and I think you might get your feelings hurt if I don't publish your thoughts, then I might (notice the emphasis the "might") just include it for the rest of the cyberworld to enjoy (or at least the 3 or 4 of you who even look at this site).

How now brown cow

I do not want to get into the habit of snatching up one of those pass-along funny e-mails and posting it on my blog, but this one really got me. If you haven't seen it already, I think you will enjoy it, and will forgive me this one time. I promise it will seldom happen again. (I edited a little bit, and added my own at the end.) Also, I wish I could give credit to whoever originated this, but I do not know. I hope he/she won't mind my publishing it.


POLITICAL SCIENCE 101 - - 2006**
DEMOCRAT
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Barbara Streisand sings for you.

REPUBLICAN
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?

SOCIALIST
You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

COMMUNIST
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot one, milk the other, and then pours the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.
You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows.
You are surprised when one cow drops dead.
You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses.
Your stock goes up.

FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains.
Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows but you don't know where they are.
While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have some vodka.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.

TALIBAN CORPORATION
You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts.
You get a $40 million grant from the US government to find alternatives to milk production but use the money to buy weapons.

IRAQI CORPORATION
You have two cows.
They go into hiding.
They send radio tapes of their mooing.

BELGIAN CORPORATION
You have one cow.
The cow is schizophrenic.
Sometimes the cow thinks he's French, other times he's Flemish.
The Flemish cow won't share with the French cow.
The French cow wants control of the Flemish cow's milk.
The cow asks permission to be cut in half.
The cow dies happy.

FLORIDA CORPORATION
You have a black cow and a brown cow.
Everyone votes for the best looking one.
Some of the people who actually like the brown one best accidentally vote for the black one.
Some people vote for both.
Some people vote for neither.
Some people can't figure out how to vote at all.
Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which one you think is the best-looking cow.

CALIFORNIA CORPORATION
You have millions of cows.They make real California cheese.Only five speak English.Most are illegal.Arnold likes the ones with the big udders.

LIBERAL
You have two cows.
Unfortunately, your cows are burping and farting and melting the polar ice caps.
However, you can't slaughter the cows, because that would be cruel.
But you can sign them up for Medicare.
They are then treated for gastrointestinal problems and collect disability checks because they can no longer work.
They sue you for illegal imprisonment, and you are forced to join the peace corps and install freezers in Antarctica

Rember the joke about...

Air conditioner salesmen in Alaska?

No, really.

The Inuit (Eskimos, as we called them in my day) are buying air conditioners! I'd like to shake that guys hand (except that it was probably Gore, so can I just pass on the hand shaking?).

According to Mr. Alister Doyle of Reuters, Monday, Aug 7, it is apparently so warm in Alaska that the Eskimos need an air conditioner. Reaching highs of 88, those fellows just can't stand it any longer. Check it out at this address:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060807/sc_nm/environment_warming_dc

In case it doesn't work, let me quote a little here:

"Better known for building igloos during hunts on the polar ice, Inuit in the village of Kuujjuaq in Quebec, Canada, are installing 10 air conditioners for about 25 office workers.
"These are the times when the far north has to have air conditioners now to function," said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, a leading campaigner for the rights of 155,000 Inuit in Canada, Alaska, Russia and Greenland.
"Our Arctic homes are made to be airtight for the cold and do not 'breathe' well in the heat with this warming trend," she said. Temperatures in Kuujjuaq, home to 2,000 people, hit 31 Celsius (88 Fahrenheit) in late July."

Mr. Alyster Doyle uses this as an example of the impending doom that is global warming. Also, there is some reference to my dear mission country of Norway, where some poor vendor is complaining about selling ice cream... or not selling ice cream today because... it is raining.

"Today we've sold almost nothing," said Miriam Eid Bergan, 20, working at an ice cream parlor in Oslo's main street and looking out the window as people hurried past in the rain. "When it's sunny the queue can stretch down the street."

Uh, am I missing something here? Who buys ice cream in the rain, anyway? So, is the fact that it is raining in Oslo the oh-so-sought-after hard evidence that SUV drivers in Texas are causing global warming? It seems I saw a few showers myself when I was there, and that was before the day of the SUV.

Well, not to spoil the ending to this story, but...

maybe the Eskimos didn't necessarily buy the a/c's for the cool air. Mr. Eskimo-Inuit-American-Canadian admits, down there at the bottom of the page, that they bought them more to keep the dust from coming in the open windows and getting all over their nice, new computers.

"Larry Watt, mayor of Kuujjuaq, said one reason for ordering air conditioners was to stop dust from outside blowing into computers. Before the municipality owned computers, the windows could be kept open in hot weather."

And as for Mr. Oslonian and his ice cream stand, it appears he purgered himself when he claimed to have such a long line on sunny days.

"And Bergan in the ice cream shop in Oslo said: "People are buying fewer ice creams here than five years ago ... Maybe they're buying somewhere else or they worry about eating so much sugar."

See, he, too, admits that maybe he overstated his position a little bit, and in the interest of full disclosure, people are really not buying his ice cream, because they don't like the sugar? or maybe they are buying it elsewhere? Or maybe they don't think it's quite hot enough to buy ice cream. Or maybe they don't buy from you because maybe you're a liar? Or maybe they have finally up and moved to America where we can still buy SUV's (if we want).

Or perhaps, they are on business trips... to sell air conditioners to the Eskimos.

Greenpeace gone bad? Huh

My wife and I were watching "Without A Trace" on CBS last night. Interesting plot. Boy gets kidnapped. Parents are asked if they have any enemies. Dad: none that he knows of; Mom: lots of them. She is lobbyist for the petroleum industry. OK. That's a start. So have you been getting any threats, lately? Tons every day, she replies. Any violent environmentalist groups? Well, there is this one...

Awww, I hate it when you can so easily eliminate a suspect on these shows, not by any of the usual deductive methods that one would logically use if one were a real detective, but just from knowing how Hollywood works.

See, in the real world, such an extreme environmentalist group might actually be capable of such a horrific act. Trust me, I just read a whole bunch of responses to AlGore's Yahoo-Answers question. (Yeah, Gore, who I thought was soooo smart as to invent such things as the internet and time travel, doesn't even know how to keep the sun from fluctuating it's temperatures to stop this global warming trend that is going is going to kill us all tomor---









Ha gotcha. No, he posed a question online about how to best attack all us non-believers - presumably in a figurative way - and got a whole laundry list of mindless zombies, some of them quite aggravated at me.)

Anyway, I asked my wife what the chances were that this environmentalist group had anything to do with the boy's abduction. She just gave me that 'yeah, right!' look. So we then began speculating about who is actually going to get blamed for this and determined that it is either some right wing petroleum group trying to protect themselves since this lobbyist is probably actually going Benedict Arnold on them, or some business-type people upset with the minimum wage increase and the effects it will have on their roughnecks.

We were close. It turns out the Dad was going turncoat on his pharmaceuticals company, and that made some pro-business people (who of course must be wackier than any hey-dude-greenpeace wacko) very uncomfortable.

Suprise, suprise.

Thanks, Hollywood, for another unexpected twist!

Impatient Hacker

Because I am too cheap to set up my own wireless network, I am forced to rely on the kindness of strangers. Most of them, however, have me locked out, and after about two... thousand random mixes of letters and numbers, I have yet to open one of them. However, one beautiful soul, whom I have never met, occasionally pops up on my list with an unlocked network. Kind of exciting. I don't know whether I should even be writing about this. I don't want Al Gore knocking on my door and giving me noogies with his burly beard and then lecturing me about my body heat melting the polar ice caps and wondering why I do not go into hibernation like the groundhog.

Having said all that nice stuff about this anonymous superhighway donor, I sure wish she (I think it's a she... Al, do you know?) would get a little more power. Jeez, it's like watching molasses grow (or grass in January, maybe)!

Proletariat wins again!

Cool! We got a minimum wage increase! The economy is saved! And all is good in the world. The millions of parents who are still on their first job (you know the one they started at sixteen, and have never left, even though the only wage increases they have received in the last twenty years came from the government) can rejoice because now they can afford their rent. The government has felt their pain, and at long last has again forced those nasty business-type folks to give generously of their means to help their poor, exploited labor force. Of course, those poor folks won't be able to do anything more with their newfound wealth, since every store they buy from is also feeling generous and providing the same increase to their poor exploited laborer, and then kindly recouping their losses from their customers.

And those union guys can finally get that raise to bring them into the $65-$85 an hour range, since thier contracts are based on the minimum wage rates, and naturally they have really been struggling, what with raising 2.8 kids and having to pay an additional $20 each month of their own insurance. Now they can finally upgrade to the sparkly fishing boat with black specks in the carpet and get rid of that old trowler they have been shamefully forced to use for weekend recreation. Problem now is, do they strike over whether to be allowed to wear shorts to the company picnic at Six Flags, or over the more pressing matter of pushing for Fishing Days in addition to their Holidays, Sick Days, Vacation Days, Personal Days, Birthdays, Floating Holidays, Boss's Days, Union Employee Appreciation Days, and the monthly Company Picnic. If they're going to buy a boat, they at least deserve the courtesy and respect of the company to allow them time to use it.

Sadly, those of us who have not been paid minimum wage since junior high, yet have failed to securely latch onto the back end of the union bosses, find ourselves a few steps backward. After having worked for several years and earning our wage increases, and seeing our paychecks slowly reflect some contrast with the minimum wage, we have once again been slapped back down by those caring, feeling politicians. (Present company excluded, of course. I have been on a two week, unpaid vacation, waiting on my used-to-be-higher-than-minimum-wage job to start, after having recently moved the family here to Fayetteville.)

I shouldn't complain, though. I should rejoice. The Proletariate has scored yet another victory against those selfish bourgiousies. Go Proletariate. Yea, team! I guess, in a way, this has only brought more exclusivity to the work force. The logical argument is that a rise in the minimum wage will cut jobs, because now that a store owner has to pay an extra $2 an hour per employee, he can either raise his prices, or cut one employee for every four to make up the difference. (Or both) But he is not going to do that. No, he has a better idea. Now, he can pay less than he was paying originally by hiring illegal immigrants. In fact, he won't even have to pay their social security any more. (And you thought it was just that Americans were too good for those jobs.)

So here is the scenario. Almost all minimum wage jobs are held by teenagers, or adults who either can't hold a job long enough to get the raise after sixty days, or were teenagers just yesterday and are entering the workforce for the first time. Somehow, Congress is under the impression that those are the people who are supporting a family and deserve a raise (I guess they must have reviewed all those employee evaluation reports). Banking on all other economic factors remaining unchanged, they have mandated employers to give them more money. After an intense nationwide search, they have found the one person who actually was supporting a family on a minimum wage job, and can now claim to have championed the worker. Meanwhile, on the other side of our Southern Border, someone who really is supporting a family on less than a dollar a day is gearing up for a crossing, knowing that there are now millions more jobs in America offering eighty times more than what he was earning in Mehico.

Thanks, Congress! Check's in the mail! Shhhh....

Hacking on Sunday

My wife took over the computer again this morning. She hadn't read her sunday school lesson yet, and since our ward drew the short straw and can't enter the building until 12:30 in the afternoon, she decided to study this morning.

Not wanting to be the only dummy who didn't read the lesson (never was a problem in our old ward), I was frantic about what to do. So I opened up the laptop and discovered that somebody had failed to secure their wireless connection. Curiously, I decided to see what it would be like to hook up (I'm too cheap to set up my own wireless). After prodding my computer (I guess it had a conscience) I got online, and promptly directed myself to lds.org to look for my lesson.

Now I'm wondering: is there irony in freeloading onto someone else's connection to study a sunday school lesson?

Nu wae uv speling? I dunno

There is a movement to revamp the way we spell. It has been ongoing for a hundred years, endorsed by such people as Mark Twain and Teddy Roosevelt, who used simplified spelling in all his White House correspondence. I am not sure just how I feel about it.

I have always been pretty good about spelling. I made it all the way to my third grade spelling bee. But I got knocked out by 'sailor' which I spelled 'sailer' (which is an actual word, by the way, meaning something that sails). But after losing a demanded recount, I have recovered and become a sort of walking dictionary. My oldest daughter is, too. (I'll make sure she gets a fair shake at her spelling bee.)

But some people have a hard time with it. And that is why God (spelled G-o-r-e by some) invented the internet. Now, we can say 'wazzup' and 'lol' and spell innrnet a hunnert difrent wayz.

I guess there are several ways people learn. For me, suffixes and prefixes build upon the base of the word. It makes sense. I can better make out the meaning of a word by finding its root, and then deducing from the additions to it what its concept it. Phoenetic spellings would change all that. The argument is that children would learn to read faster. I am not so sure, in light of what I just mentioned. Children would have a harder time learning meanings. They would have to read out loud just to hear what the sentence is saying.

There is a comparison to Germanic languages, in which spelling more closely resembles the sound of a word. Having learned Norwegian, I understand where the argument is coming from. The problem with the argument is that Norwegian words can be 15-20 characters long, and consist of 4 or 5 words all lmushed together. And they evolved differently than English. They still use base words, which are kept whole in the word, and other words are added as suffixes and prefixes, or compounds. We could model after this, but to do so would require that we standardize the spellings of base words only. But we would still require a standardized way of adding to them.

We would still require some standardization of the language, otherwise we are left playing MadGab every time we sit down to read the paper or a fairy tale. "Wuns upon a tiem ther wuz a lidul gurl hoo woer a red hud. Shee wuz cald Lidul Red Rieding Hud." or "Subwae riedr sliesd in paer sa atak." Which brings up the other problem of local dialect. For example, is it "pak th ka at Havad skwae" or "pok th ko at Hovod skwe" or "park th kar at Harvrd skwer"? And when you build a shishkabob, do you skewr or skeur? Duz Santa's raendeer leev huf marks on th ruf, or huuf marks on the ruuf?

And then there is the graphic designer who should also be heard. There are some letter combinations that just will not go together, like "LJ" or "kd". So maybe we can design our new written vocabulary to accomadate the designer, as well.

Interestingly, to read some of the founders' writings, it becomes apparent that spelling was not really as important as the message. Apparently, it wasn't until the late nineteenth century that standardization was enforced, probably by some liberal who felt that government had to control everything.

It wouldn't really bother me to see some of our sounds reduced to fewer letters. 'C' is an almost useless letter, as is 'Q'. Except you would still use 'c' for the 'ch' sound.

Perhaps th bigst advantej iz thet it wud keep reedrz frum faling asleep in th midul uv a blog. It wud be liek plaeyeeng a gaem.

Hav urself a gud dae, y'all!

The big, empty room

Starting your own blog site is kind of like standing in the middle of a great big empty warehouse. Only there are no real dimensions. Just size. See, no one knows your here, so no one visits. I can just sit here and yell, 'Hello!' in every language I know (2). If I imagine that there are actually walls, then eventually I hear a faint echo, 'hello'. Or, if this hidden corner of cyberspace is limitless, then my voice just sounds lonely and muted. I can run around in circles, or pick my nose, and no one will even notice.



"Hey, watchiss!" I say, to no one in particular, as I hum the national anthem, while flicking my nostrils to make it sound like a ukulele. I don't get any applause.




Hmmm...




Well, I guess I'll just get out of here, then.








Uh, yeah, I'll just be going now....








.............. hmmm.















Uh, where's the door?

Birthday Wishes

Today is my wife's birthday. I know what her wish is. We are over one hundred miles apart. But thru the magic of some very expensive cell phones, we can stay close. Today, we ate cake and ice cream together. She and the girls sat around the table, and I in my car, sitting at the park. We both got the same Ben&Jerry's flavor (her pick). She picked out her own cake (I found something that would work, but was way too rich). We sat together, smacking our spoons. It was almost like I was right there. But not really.

Her birthday wish is mine also: that we could be in the same house together. We know the time is almost here when I can finally live there (I am working in Russellville while waiting for law school to start), but that doesn't help right at the moment. She wants her hubby, the girls want their dad, and I want my family. She sends me pictures, and I get to hear her voice telling me all about her day. I love her voice. It smiles. But I like to see her eyes when she talks, and watch her lips move. Her face knows at least three times as many expressions as most. And every now and then, for no real reason, while she is in the middle of talking, she will reach over and just touch my arm.

She loves me.