Letter to the editor of the Philly Metro, re Eric ladley's article France should learn from Ronald Reagan:
Eric Ladley has a weak grasp of history and a partisan view of politics.1) If France followed the lead of Ronald Reagan, we could be counting on them to be supporting and arming Saddam Hussein; it was the Reagan administration that guided Mr. Hussein to power--financially, militarily and politically. Furthermore, we could count on France to be selling missiles to enemy states so that they could fund right-wing guerillas in Latin America, and we could also expect that France would be reducing taxes and increasing military spending to the point of near fiscal ruin.
2) If the Shah had held on to power to this day, Iran would be a seething morass of militant Islam that hated the United States with a fervor that would make Al-Quaeda look like a church booster club. The Shah held on to power via the brutal Savak, an American trained and funded secret police force. Jimmy Carter rightly ended U.S. support for this (and other) repressive regimes, via drastic cuts to the CIA and other policy changes. It is ironic that this action contributed to the overthrow of the Shah and the taking of American hostages, but it was certainly not Mr. Carter's policies that led the Iranian people to hate us.
3) The contention that France is "perfectly in line with the far left in this country, represented ably by former President Carter and numerous movie stars" is cute, but it omits a more important observation. France and Germany are democracies, and the majority of people in both countries are opposed to military action against Iraq at this time--and their government policies reflect that. Perhaps Mr. Ladley admires the sort of democracy that Turkey practices, where the government supports US Policy even though 90% of their population are opposed to war in Iraq. I hope that is what Mr. Ladley likes, becasue it is increasingly the kind of democracy we practice in the United States as well.
4) Mr. Ladley's use of the statistic that "59% of Americans support military action against Iraq" is hard to argue against directly. He probably should have included his source...but that's besides the point. From what I can find, the latest statistics according to a An ABC News/Washington Post survey taken Feb 19-23, 54% of Americans (that's 4% more than half) think we should attack iraq, and 39% (that's 11% less than half) are against it. Those numbers are hardly a mandate from the people. Furthermore, a Zogby poll found that if Americans were asked if we should attack Iraq without "significant United Nations or international support" the numbers fell to 43% in support, and 50% opposed.
Ronald Florence has written an article on how to install LyX on MacOSX, using Apple's X11 beta, taTex and fink. And ghostscript, xdvi, gv, imagemagick, and ispell.
Hokey smokey. Am I open source yet?
A List Apart seems to be a nice place, their sentiments against bloggers
notwithstanding.
This tip comes to you care of Ready.gov--your guide to surviving a terrorist attack:
Time: Minimize time spent exposed [to a nuclear blast and resulting fallout] will also reduce your risk.
My risk of what? Being a pile of radioactive ash? Newsflash for Herr Kapitan, mein Kapitan: Being exposed to a fucking nuclear blast is generally fatal in less than a second.
Also good to know:
If I read that infographic correctly. my handy-dandy you-are-here point places me down the fucking street from the nuclear blast. I wonder if these guys have ever seen the training films of nuclear bombs going off... I mean, jeezuz chreezuz. This is my govenrment's advice? A nuclear bomb goes off down the street and I should "Consider if I can get out of the area?"
Consider if you can get out of the area;
Did I wake up in a cartoon?
The ever irreverent and I guess wacky Crazy Apple Rumors Site has a story that Apple is really trying to care that Opera may stop developing for the mac, now that Safari is all out and everything.
I didn't know that anbody even cared enough about Opera to make jokes about it.
My favorite reformed racist Robert Byrd had a few comments on the senate floor the other day. The highlight:
I truly must question the judgment of any President who can say that a massive unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over 50% children is "in the highest moral traditions of our country".Amen.
The US is abandoning plans to introduce democracy in Iraq after a war to overthrow Saddam Hussein, according to Kurdish leaders who recently met American officials. The Kurds say the decision resulted from pressure from US allies in the Middle East who fear a war will lead to radical political change in the region.FAN-tastic. So the US will go fight a war to remove a dictator and replace him with a military junta that will then, no doubt, be replaced with yet another dictator or military junta.
USA! USA! WE AER TRUELY TEH #1!!!!!!!!
What is facinating about this whole line of thinking is that somehow the argument doesn't think of the current situation (frequent bombings, sanctions, a population near total poverty and starvation, an impending war of possibly unimaginable chaos) as "destabilizing" to the region, and yet democratic elections that might produce a modicum of representation to the 75% of the country's population that are Shia Muslims or Kurds are viewed as too dangerous to the balance of the region.
Of course, Noam Chomsky has a few ideas about this, but he seems to be generally dismissed as a silly old liberal partisan by most people I talk to.
Woo-hoo! Three day weekend! If you haven't heard--and you did because no one but 3 of my friends reads this--we got a boatload of snow here in the Philadelphia area. A few pics:
The red car, parked so classily on the front yard:
The back moat and bridge:
I just got in from shoveling, and boy are my arms tired!
Apple posted an article for relative newbs (as far as web services goes) --Web Services With WebObjects
Oh, and I sort of figured out what was wrong with bookmarklets for movable type and the Safari browser. Not like I was able to really fix it or anything.
Good night.
So, assuming you're on a mac... have you checked out Konfabulator! yet?
I won't hype it for you, except it's the coolest ware I've seen in about at least 3 months.
Go check it out, and if you're Windows only, don't feel bad about crying. Ok, so maybe it's not that cool. I have seen a few faces fall already when they asked me if there was a windows version though.
Ha. ha.
If you haven't heard, it snowed last night. Everything in Philadelphia is closed today. Even classes at Temple are cancelled. However, all Temple Empoyees are "expected" to come to work. If we don't go to work, we lose a vacation day.
I'm not going; it's totally absurd. I don't know who makes these decisions, but they clearly either live on campus or next door to it.
My only consolation is that they had to go to work today in the snow.
I just found out about this great new law we have here in Pennsylvania.
Under a state law that takes effect today, almost every student in Pennsylvania - from preschool through high school, in schools public and private - must face the Stars and Stripes each school day and say the pledge or sing the national anthem. It is "one of the most stringent pledge laws in the United States," said Greta Durr, a researcher for the National Conference of State Legislatures, which tracks state lawmaking across the nation.... Private and parochial schools may claim an exemption if compliance would violate the religious conviction on which the school was based. Quakers and Mennonites may pledge allegiance only to God, so those schools will not have to comply. Individual students may refuse on religious or philosophical grounds, but their schools are required to report their decisions to parents or guardians.
I feel more patriotic already. Nothing like liberty without a little less choice, eh?
added new icons (29-49)
altered random image script to reflect new icons
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to do: write new random image script so duplicate
images are not allowed.
oh, and I had this really strange dream on Saturday.
Anyone who knows me knows that I don't put much stock in prophecy, and I'm not a christian...but still, this really creeped me out, sort of like the Nostradamus documentary I saw when I was 10:
Does it make you think of anything?
All I wanted to say is said best by saying nothing at all:
