photos

Here's some recent photos I like:

C!

E!

Megan!

Me and my mom.

Appeasement, Imams, and Jesus Christ

Caroline Glick, in attempting to bolster a president who would rather bomb his enemies than talk to them, characterized Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmejinedad as "claiming to be divinely instructed by a seven-year-old imam who went missing 1100 years ago"

She fails to mention that Bush claims to be divinely instructed by a 33 year old Rabbi who went missing 1925 years ago.

I wonder what seven year old Muhammad al-Mahdi would have to say about it? No doubt something just as shocking and brilliant as what Jesus said.

Liebermann, Google, Youtube, and propoganda

Today Senator Joe Lieberman called for Google to removed videos produced by so called "Foreign Terrorist Organizations" from Youtube, claiming that these organizations use such videos to "disseminate their propaganda, enlist followers, and provide weapons training – activities that are all essential to terrorist activity."

Mr. Lieberman does not call on Google to remove videos used by the U.S. armed forces to disseminate their propoganda and enlist followers.

Number of civilian deaths in the United States traceable to invasions of sovereign nations by foreign terrorist organizations over the last five years: arguably less than 10,000.

Number of civilian deaths outside the United States traceable to invasions of sovereign nations by the U.S. armed forces: arguably over a million.

The latter divided by the former: 10,000 (as in a factor of 10,000).

Google's motto: "Do no evil". Maybe Google should remove U.S. armed forces recruiting videos from youtube, as a community service.

the math of living by the sword.

I guess Jesus managed to get it approximately right all those years ago when he said those who live by the sword shall die by the sword.

2006 suicide rate among U.S. veterans: 17.3/100,000
Number of U.S. veterans, total: ~25 million
2005 suicide rate among the entire U.S. population: 11/100,000
Total U.S. population in 2005: ~300,000,000
Total number of veteran suicides in 2006: ~4,498 (simple arithmetic)
Total number of suicides in the U.S. 2006: ~33,000 (simple arithmetic)
Suicide rate among *not-veteran* population of U.S., 2006: ~9.27/100,000 (simple algebra)

Conclusion: Veterans are approximately twice as likely to commit suicide than the average non-veteran.

2006 murder rate among U.S. population: 5.7/100,000
2006 murder rate among U.S. veterans serving in Iraq: (this is a little ... nuanced. But we have approx. 1.7 million troops have been in combat in Iraq. And they have killed approx 13,000 civilians. Over 5.2 years. so we have ((13000*100,000)/1700000)/5.2...)~147/100,000

So it looks like maybe Jesus' words are only proportionally true--on a sort of logarithmic scale. Killing 30 times as many people on average only raises your likelihood of committing suicide by a factor of 2.

Here's a mathematical question for you. If this model holds up, how many people on average would you have to kill in order to raise your likelihood of committing suicide by a factor of 3?

There's strong. Then there's army strong. Go army.

death, taxes, and church:

All inevitable?

D talks about church as obligation, and a pastor who, wittingly or not, compares "going to church" to cleaning up vomit. It's worth reading.

Suicide of 120 U.S. veterans every week. And weeping.

U.S. veterans are dying at higher rates from suicide than they are from "combat". 1000 veterans per week are attempting suicide, according to the Veterans administration. See this story.

At the same time we have psychologists overseeing their care recommending that fewer diagnoses of PTSD be handed out.

Look at me--I'm sitting here crying again. I'm a freaking disaster.

But what does it mean for *one* person to attempt suicide, in terms of their own mental and emotional distress, and the aftermath for their mom, their dad, their little sister, their twin brother, their wife, their 6 year old daughter full of questions? It's wrenching. 120 a week dying like this? So many of them are so young, and had no idea what they were getting into.

At least Bush gave up golf in solidarity.

I can guide a missile by satellite, by satellite, by satellite
I can hit a target through a telescope, through a telescope, through a telescope

Who's worse (and giving up golf)

at killing people? (I was going to ask "better", but I thought better of it)

Consider this:

The recent earthquake in China was easily the most deadly earthquake since 2005. It killed at least 12,000 people almost instantly, and multiple sources estimate the final death toll at greater than 50,000.

The recent cyclone in Burma killed more than 40,000 people and the final death toll is estimated to be over 100,000.

But mother nature doesn't really have anything on the U.S. military. Check it out. In 1945, we killed 110,000 people almost instantly in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with the final death toll from those two bombings estimated over 220,000

We've instigated a war which has killed at the lowest estimate 83,000 people over the last 5.5 years, with the actual death toll estimated at over 1,000,000, which works out to nearly 200,000 per year.

Of course not only is our *actual* death and mayhem toll way worse than mother nature's. Our *potential* death and mayhem toll is orders of magnitude worse than mother natures (at least in the short term). Name something mother nature could do tomorrow to compare with, say, an all out launch of the 10,000 active nuclear weapons we still possess. You think Nagasaki and Hiroshima were horrific? *All* of the ones we've got now (yep, all 10,000 of them) are fusion, which means they're at least 1,000 times more destructive than those relatively itty bitty things we dropped on 200,000 people in Japan.

All of which is to say that George W. Bush is currently at the helm of the largest death and destruction machine every created--called the U.S. military. But, hey, at least he has the ... grace and sense of honor to give up playing golf as a gesture of solidarity with the 4,569 dead American soldiers, along with the 70,000 wounded, injured, and ill ones.)

How Hillary could still win the nomination

I was just playing around with slate.com's delegate calculator widget thingy. It lets you see what the delegate counts will be for each remaining state based on percentages of popular vote which you get to choose using nifty little slider bars.

I noticed something kind of kewl. If Hillary wins 3 of the remaining 5 contests by 85%, and the other 2 (at least one of which has to be Kentucky, Oregon, or Puerto Rico, since they have the big delegate counts among the remaining contests) by 86% (thus taking *all* the delegates by Obama not meeting the 15% threshold), then she can achieve a *tie* among all pledged delegates (1617.5 to 1617.5)

Oh dear, wait, that doesn't really work, since Obama picked up at least 8 of Edwards' pledged delegates today and yesterday, and slate's calculator hasn't fixed for that yet. So ... She needs 8 more. So ...

Looks like she'll need to win 3 of them by 86%, and at least two of those have to come from Kentucky, Oregon, or Puerto Rico. And she could win the other two by only 80%, and still end up with a 4 delegate lead among pledged delegates (assuming, of course, that none of the other 12 Edwards delegates endorses Obama)

And then she would merely have to stem ... er, that is, reverse, the tide of superdelegates flowing to Obama (a gain of 40 for Obama and 3 for Clinton over the last two weeks)

It could still happen. I mean she's still got another ... at least 50 million dollars to loan her campaign, right?

I wonder if all those superdelegates feel generally better about themselves these days, with the whole country using this relatively positive word to talk about them in the media, practically every day? I would. I'd get up in the morning and look in the mirror and say "You are a *SUPER* delegate! You are *SUPER*. Everybody says so." =p

God speaks

D says

But God will speak in the midst of our culture and in spite of our religion, for God both transcends and subsists in all faith and all faiths, for God seeks to communicate divine love to all, each in their own language

It's kind of beautiful, in a sense. But at the enormous risk of responding to a quote taken out of context, I would point out that more often than not, to some extent, God fails to communicate what D says she seeks to communicate.

"Pervs" or ....

Jessica at indexed offers this:

(Benjamin posts with apologies to all recovering sex addicts)



Just out of curiousity--do you deal much with the issue of military recruiters in U.K, Australia, Thailand, or wherever you're from? In the U.S. it regularly makes headlines.

Obamania

Obama is now officially a word in the Enlgish language, says Global Language Monitor. They also say we are 4,876 words shy (short) of 1 million current English words.

Here's a challenge--how about another word that could be used in place of "shy" or "short" in the preceeding (previous, foregoing, former, last ... penultimate) sentence?

=)

Here's a fun CNN video about all the words based on "Barack" and "Obama".

Or check out slate's enccylopedia baractannica

Hillary Clinton ahead in popular vote!

according to her web site.

The way she arrives at these numbers is thusly:

First, include the popular vote from Florida.

Second, include the popular vote from Michigan (where Obama's name wasn't on the ballot), but choose *not* to give the votes for "uncommitted" to Obama.

Thirdly, do some kind of funny magical math for the vote numbers in Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and Washington, so that Obama gets these totals in those 4 states:

Iowa: 940 votes
Nevada: 4773 votes
Maine: 2079 votes
Washington: 21629 votes

as opposed to what he actually got, which was ... approximately ...

Iowa 38% of 236,000 ~ 89,680
Nevada 45% of 117,00 ~ 52,000
Maine 59% of 46,000 ~ 27,000
Washington 68% of 200,000 ~ 136,000

How silly can we get? I'm actually surprised.

If I were Hillary Clinton, and I actually believed this stuff, I would *totally* go buy a powerball lottery ticket.

throw-away humans and documents

Today the powers that be (that is, "we") dismissed charges against Mohamed al-Kahtani. al-Kahtani has been held in in prison by the powers that be (that is, "us") since early in 2002--in Guantanamo Bay. While there, he has been "interrogated" (that is, tortured) by the powers that be (that is, "us"). Prosecutors have said that he is "unprosecutable" because of the things the powers that be (that is, "we") have done to him during his time at Guantanamo.

Now that charges have been dropped, one has to ask oneself two questions:

1. What shall be done with al-Kahtani, after imprisoning and torturing him for 6 years?
2. What shall be done with the U.S. constitution--specifically the fourth through the eight amendments in the Bill of Rights.

One gets the sense that what is happening is that to some degree we are choosing to throw both al-Kahtani and the document upon which our government is based in the rubbish heap.

Why Obama should get Hillary to be his VP

My friend Russell has convinced me. I said "If Hillary's the VP, I'm voting for McCain."

And he said "Don't you understand the new role of the VP? It's to protect the president's life. The key is for the VP to be at least twice as offputting to the people who hate the president as the president himself. Hence no one has even seriously tried to do in George W. Bush. And no one tried to do in Clinton, perhaps for similar reasoning--those who disliked Clinton that much found Gore at least twice as repulsive. And those who dislike W. that much find Cheney at least twice that repulsive."

With Hillary as V.P., we need fear a horrifying JFK type ending a lot less. It makes sense to me.