Mexican Dreams

I had a dream that Kate, Veronica, Renata, Harry, Cat, Jason and I were all sitting around a big table with a white, white table cloath eating corios. Now, in my dream (which I suspect may have been inspired by an amazing lunch at Veronica's house) corios were basically the same as flutas--actually, they were exactly the same as flutas...except that they were called corios. We were all laughing and talking and eating, and Kate was sitting on my lap, putting salsa on my corios for me. Then Kate's alarm went off and I woke up to find her nuzzled up against my chest as we napped in her bed.
It was a very good dream.

Helloooooo Ooooooouuuut Theeerreeeeeee!

I'm kind of curious to see who reads this thing...so if you read this blog. Please leave a message on this poste saying so. If you happen to be someone I don't know (which is unlikely) then please feel free to leave a bit saying something about yourself if you wnt to.
Either way, I'm curious to see whose's reading this...so please post.

IAMSOINSAINLYTIREDAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!

You know, it never ceases to amaze me how three and a half hours of sleep can do so much and so little for you at the same time.
I feel like Someone's been charging me by running an electric current through me, but they've been doing it for way too long. I want to do something like going out and runnnnnnnning around waving my hands in the air, or fighting someone, or going somewhere, or just jumping-up-and-down-in-the-same-spot-untill-I-have-a-heart-attack. Then again, I also just want to go to sleep.

Silly Zack, Trix are for kids.

To Govern Well or Fairly? Or Maybe just Fairly Well...

I feel like there are two big ideas when people talk about "good" government. In one, people want a government where everyone gets a say, where everyones interests are represented, and where everyone is heard and is a part of the decision making process in some way, shape, or form. In the other, people want a government that will make wise decisions that will benefit everyone as a group. The trouble is that while these ideas may seem compatible in theory, in practice you can only have one or the other. You don't usually get both. Governments that are fair (ie that are beholden to the people's wishes) tend to make bad decisions because "the people" often don't know what the best decision really is and everyone tries to do what is in their individual best interests anyway. Business tries to screw labor, labor tries to screw business, one region want's to have priority over the next, and each class, each familly, and more than anything else, each individual is out for itself. We don't do a good job of looking after the group as a whole rather than ourselves. This results in a tumultuous debacle of a decision making process, since the government has to try and please as many people as possible or face the prospect of being thrown out of office, and as a consequence policy is designed to please rather than bring results and can be inconsistent according to the shifting winds of popular oppinion. On the other hand, regardless of whatever else you might want to say about it, it is fair. The majority always wins (whether they're right or wrong) and if you can get the majority then you can get your way no matter who you are. Incidently, fair isn't the same thing as everyone getting their own way...that's just inconsistent and impossible.
On the other hand you can have a government that governs well but doesn't really ask anyone's oppinion. Because decision making is taken out of the hands of the mob, they cna make decisions to benefit the whole system rather than having each element of it try and screw over the others. They can do what's best for the group and trust that as life improves for the group life will improve for the each individual in the group as well. Now, no one is always right and this applies to givernments as well as people...but you have a much better chance of being right if you can take the time to sit down and think things our rationally rather trying to appease several different factions all at once. The trouble with this is that the enlightened people making the decisions aren't always so enlightened, and that when you get people in office who are dishonest or downright evil, it can be a bother to get them out. On the other hand, it is possible to have a system where the government makes the decisions and the people can remove the government only in dire circumstances.
Quite frankly, I think that the differnce between these two systens doesn't lie in the system istelf so much as the culture of the people in the system. People can choose leaders because they want them to implement the policies they want, or they can choose leaders because they trust their wisdom, intelligence, and competence and accept that the reason why they elected them in the first place is because they believe that these people truly do know best.

So, which do you choose?

Political religion

Everyone is angry at the Pope. Why? Because he said something that is true.
I'm not talking about the Islam being evil part (although certain extremist sects can sometimes do a pretty good impression of it) but when he says that Islam was spread through violence this is a simple matter of fact. Quite frankly I don't care what your oppinion happens to be because what you think has absolutely no effect on what actually happened. Now, it may not be politically correct to point this but that doesn't change the truth.
In case you doubt me, here is me evidence.
After Muhammed and his followers were driven out of Mecca they began to wage what would today be termed a geurilla war against caravans going to and from Mecca, raiding them and killing those on them to take their supplies.
When Muhammed had finally converted enough people to retake Mecca, he return and smashed all of the smaller idols around the Ka'abah, declaring that they were false and that people should only worship Allah--does this sound like the first hints of religious repression to anyone other than me? Also, the only reason why the people of Mecca let him in was that he returned at the head of an army and would have crushed the city had they not done so.
In the years follwong Muhammed's death the Muslim faith conquored the rest of the Arabian Penninsula through force and began to extend along the coast of Africa and in the middle east where they waged war on the resident Christians, mainly those living in Spain, on the African Coast, and in the Byzantine Empire.
Does anyone think that Byzantium fell by itself? Muslim armies took Constantinople and renamed it Istanbule before they marched up the Balkans before they were just barely turned back at the gates of Vienna by Polish hussars.
So anyone who says that Islam didn't spread through violence is either delirious, uneduacted, or catering to the current trend of political correctness in which case they are, as the French say, "a species of idiot."
I haven't read anymore of the Pope's transcript than what I can find quoted in news reparts since the Vatican is charing people to publish it (which is clearly an attempt to keep it from circulating, but given the reaction that they are getting, I don't blame them) but from what I have read, the Pope hasn't said anything that isn't true in principle. I'm neither a catholic nor am I a fan or the new Pope, but while I don't particularly like him, I do defend his right to say what is true even if it does offend people.
Now, I'm not saying that there haven't been ugly epsodes in Christian history, but that doesn't change the fact that Islam had a violent beggining, and is just as violent in the modern day. Yes, Chrstians have had dark spots such as the Crusades (although I might add that the holy land was Christian to begin with before Islam conquored it) and the conquest of the New World, but Islam has had just as many. The fact is that these day Christianity is fairly peacfull while Islam is going through a violent stage. There are people who protest that this is not so, but I don't see any evidence to the contrary. The Yom Kippur war wasn't very peacful, was it? The 9/11 attacks were religiously motivated as is much of the violence in the middle east. It hasn't been very long since Hezzbolah stoped launching rockets into Israel, now has it? Further more, for further evidence just look at the responce to the Pope's speech. Five Christian churches, many of them not even catholic, were attacked in Yemen in retaliation against the Pope's remarks, and I'm sure there wasw other violence elsewhere. Regardless of whether the Pope is right or not, I don't go around attacking people just because they offend me. If anything, these people are proving the point that they are accusing him of making (which, incidently isn't actually what he said). It's not as though these elements of the Muslim populaiton are responding with reason to this.
Now, some people will say that these are just radical elements of the Islamic faith and that they do not truly represent Islam...but the fact of the matter is they do. Islam isn't just the perfectly thoughtful, peacful muslims, it's the angry radicals too. Islam is all of Islam, not just the good parts...The same is true of Christianity and Judaism.

Here are some things that I generally enjoy, listed in no particular order:


Shaving with a fresh razor
Taking long, hot showers
Watching Kate's hips sway when she moves
Drying off with a warm towel straight from the dryer
The ache you get the day after you excersize a lot
The word aranciata
Dawn and Dusk
Taking pictures of the sky
Cloudy days that have a real depth
When Kate kisses me awake in the morning
Going to bed early, falling asleep effortlessly, and waking up in time to watch the sun rise
THE CITY
Christmas
Women
Scotland
Books
Movies that have good plot, good acting, and good fights
When my friends call instead of the reverse
Dim sum
Meatbuns
Short poetry in general, and haiku in particular
Japanese food
Firefly
fireflies
Authors who can dream of convincing worlds
Books that don't just tell a story
Wood-block prints
Martial arts
Watercolor paintings
Montaik
The beach
Sailing
That warm feeling you get after you've just woken up and your bed and pillow conform perfectly to the shape of your body
When I think of something new
The distant past
dreams
Wrstling for fun
The idea of a world of principle
The feeling Kate's lips on my own, and of her body in the circle of my arms
Medical stuff
When herbal remedies actually work
Arguing
Music
Cats
Wolves
Memoryfoam
Meerkats
Mongese
When I manage to do more than seven pullups
When science fiction is intelligently written
A good massage
The straight punch
When Kate rubs my head
Sleep
The smell of thyme
When the grass gets dewy
A good science experiment
Seeing other worlds with my own eyes
Mars
Europa
Rainbows
Peregine falcons
The idea of kami
The idea of the Way
Living in a world with vaccinations and penicillin
Kissing
When I block, and it works
My sheets
When I talk about intelligent stuff with my friends
Snow
Storms
When I sleep through my alarm and it's ok
Lightning
Bookstores
The smell of old books
The smell and feel of the air right before a storm
Dinner
Biology
Those glass balls filled with electricity
Chocolate
Apple pie

9/11 Memorial

I went a 9/11 memorial this evening. We listened to the the college president speak to us about love and hate and the danger of blind faith. We all lit candles while an accapella group sang and the American Flag was lowered from the pole where it flew at half-mast all day, neatly folded up and carried away. Then we all stood there in the chill evening surrounding the flagpole in a circle, starring in to our candles silently to reflect. I remembered the sound that the first plane made and how strange and unbelievable it was to sit in class with Madame Gonzalez and stare up at the tv while disaster unfolded when we should have been doing french. More than anything else though, I remember walking home with my father at noon through streets coated with dust while public transport shut down all around us and people staggered up from ground-zero coted in white dust. They would have looked like ghosts except that the tears they were weeping left skin-colored tracks down their cheeks.
And I can't help but be angry at the organization and the people who did this too us. Who took people who normally would have worked an eight or nine hour day and gone home to their famillies and instead forced them to face the choice of jumping eighty or one hundred stories to a quick death or die slowly by fire. Those who could not chose died when the Towers collapsed.
I am also angry at those who leaders who should have taken care of us and instead chose to lead us on a wild goose chase of lies and failures because they thought that it would yield more productive results and make them look better. Lies may change appearences, but only the truth produces results. Remember that only the truth brings justice.
WE WILL NEVER FORGET. I WILL NEVER FORGET.

College Haiku

Drunken yelling in
the hall. Then Crickets join in.
Man, I want to sleep

1) Think honestly within yourself in your dealing with all men.

2) Constant training is the only Way to learn strategy.

3)Become familliar with every art you come across.

4)Understand the Way of other disciplines.

5)Know the difference between right and wrong in the matters of men.

6)Strive for inner judgement and an understanding of everything.

7) See that which cannot be seen.

8) Overlook nothing, regardless of its insignificance.

9) Do not waste time idling or thinking after you have set your goals.

--The Book of Five Rings, by Musashi: "Endnotes to the Book of Earth"


Somehow we started there and ended here. Somewhere along the way, something went very, very wrong.

The End of the Corcodile Hunter

Two days ago Steve Erwin died. Hail and farewell to the Crocodile hunter. The man was invincible; he would wrestle crocodiles with his bare hands, reach and pick up venous without thinking twice and stand there talking camly while they twisted in the air and did their best to do him in. The thing is, they never could. No matter how hard she tried, Mother Nature never could strike that man down--untill now.
Some people called him crazy and I'll admit that I laughed at him more than a couple of times myself. In retrospect though, it's hard to not have at least a little respect for a man who could--and would--willingly go and take on deadly creatures mono-a-mono.
Anyway, sane or otherwise, I'll miss him and I think that the world is a sorrier, more boring place for his passing.
The ironic thing is that what killed him in the end isn't really that dangerous: a stingray. Stingrays can be nasty--being venemous and all--but the venom washes out if you just stay in the ocean for a bit. Plenty of people get stung all the time and end up just fine--cruises let you swim with them some times. He got stung in the heart though, at which point there isn't much anyone can do. It's ironic that the man who wrestled crocs with his bare hands was killed by the fairly gentle sting-ray.
At any rate, I'd like to announce a brief moment of silence for Steve Erwin, whose presence and acts heroism (insanity?) will be missed.