Where It All Began

I was thinking about an incident that occu­rred in an economics course I took a decade or so ago on the commute home this evening. I don't know why it popped into my mind, but for some reason, there it was, pissing me off just like it did when it first occurred. The incident in question was particularly significant because it was responsible for sending me off on my current political trajectory.

7th Time's The Charm

Let me tell you something you might already know:  Windows Vista stink­s like las­t night's diapers.  I gave it a good college try, I really did. I ran it for something like 6 months.  I felt like this was the wave of the future, and I needed to learn how to love it.  But I ain't got that kind of love in me, so a couple weeks ago, I decided to make yet another go at a Linux desktop.

Last Refuge of Scoundrels

As we celebrate the last of the Summer holidays, there's something about the first that's been gnawing at me for a couple months. See, the 4th of July always seems to bring out the angry curmudgeon in me, as few other things can. I don't like the heat. The parade is lame. The fireworks display is crowded, the wait is too long, and the traffic getting home is abominable. Mostly, though, I don't like all the patriots.

Same Old Hag In A Brand New Dress

It's been running a couple weeks without any massive outages, so I guess I should announce the obvious:  I've upgraded the website to Drupal 5.1.  And it really didn't hurt that much.

Tit-for-tat and The Weasel Rule

I've written before on my admiration for The Golden Rule.  I consider
it to be the core of my values, the basic premise from which everything
else is derived.  What more, I propose that a belief in anything else
as an addendum or prerequisite is at best superfluous, and at worst a
digression.  That said, I wont deny that it does present it's own
challenges.

Lambs For The Slaughter

This week, a lone gunman walked into an academic building filled with hundreds of college students and professors and, over the course of a half hour, methodically shot 30 people.  He used two hand guns, sometimes putting as many as three bullets in each body.  He calmly reloaded, presumably, dozens of times while terrified people all over the building hid where they could and wondered if the booms they heard reverberating through the halls would next come for them.

 So let me point to the elephant in this room:  How come all those people couldn't get together for a single decent bum-rush?

Best Friends Forever! Not!

I was listening to PBS the other day on my way home.  They were interviewing Matthew Dowd, a former campaign manager for George W. Bush.  He had just come out in opposition to the President.  The interviewer recalled for him the loyalty that Bush had shown to many of his appointees, often at significant political cost, and asked how he felt about what amounted to his betrayal.  His response was interesting.

He said that one should not be loyal to people, that one should only be loyal to "the Truth we know inside."