"He trusts you. He'll even let you hurt him, because he loves you so much". So it was said, about my cat Wally. He seems to really enjoy scooting up to me while I read or program, and stretch his neck over my wrist, and fall asleep like that. It's kind of nice. Although he doesn't tend to stay there, I like putting him on my back while I program.

Politics.. The senate appears not to be dancing along to BushJr's Goose-Step. The whiny ex-Cubans, who most politicians are eager to court, at least on a national level, are naturally much less powerful outside of the national arena and florida, and the rest of the country is actually taking steps to put an end to the blockade, moving in the completely opposite direction of BushJr (pretzels be unto him). On that front, I need to start reading a few more online non-american newspapers -- I'm curious as to what exactly is going on WRT Castro. I read the Moscow Times to track russia (although it's westerner-run..), which is always interesting, and Al Jazeera, to get another interesting viewpoint on the world. The UN News Service is another good source of info that's fairly non-America centric. I probably should read BBCNews.. and although I occasionally read the People's Daily (China's national newspaper), I don't do it as often as I might. Actually, I tend to get pretty dirty looks, reading some of these at the Coffeeshop -- Taiwanese and South Korean people tend to not like seeing the People's Daily on my screen, Hebrews tend to dislike seeing Al Jazeera (no surprise -- there's a form of mild racism that's accepted in both communities), and random americans tend to dislike seeing the Moscow Times. I occasionally read the Jerusalem Post, but it very much is Al Jazeera's counterpart.. For a brief time, I was reading the Le .. no, the *sigh* St Petersberg Times, but I get irritated enough at the name change that I don't really visit there anymore.. While finding the URL to it again though, I found this funny story about Gorby. Anyhow, I wish I knew more languages so I could read the non-english papers.. I can kind of read the Frankfurter Allgemeine, but it doesn't give me much additional stuff beyond the BBC News..

The Labour Party in Britain continues to have problems holding together. Galloway, who represented Glasgow in Parliament, got the boot from Blair. However, this might end up hurting Labour more than expected -- Galloway is popular, and will likely run as independant. At a time when leftists inside the Labour party (which is pretty fat, when it comes to the span of opinions it covers) are already dissatisfied with Blair, it might actual lead to a split of the party, or at least destabilize Blair, which would be a good thing (in my eyes). One of the more interesting reasons Blair put for kicking out Galloway is suggesting that foreigners resist the American/British invasion, with an interesting quote:

George Galloway incited foreign forces to rise up against British troops at a time when they were risking their lives

I find this interesting to chew on -- it's an interesting point on the issue of treason and national loyalty. Of course, the opposing forces were risking their lives, but from the stated viewpoint, when one's country's lives are on the line, one has the duty to cease to act as an independant moral agent and, if not rallying the forces that happen to be of the country one is in, then to be silent. Or am I missing the point somehow? If I felt strongly enough that the United States were acting villainously, I would be happy to do what I could to sabotage the American efforts. It is better to be a good person than a patriot. I'll go further, and say that there's nothing particularly good about being a patriot in the first place.

The press is making a big deal over the Florida euthanasia case, but I find it profoundly uninteresting (but I'm still writing about it in my BLOG, make of that what you will) -- although I'd like the doctors involved to have complete discretion when the person does not provide adequate statement of their wishes in terminal cases, I don't really feel very strongly about the defaults there, so long as they can be overridden with a "living will" or something similar. In my opinion, if you haven't gone through the trouble to fill in a form to decide these things, it leaves you with not that much standing to complain about how things should be for everyone.

I'll be debating some people from Cross-Seekers at some point, I think. I don't know much more yet, but it'll be fun. If I wern't opposed to their ends, I'd offer to help them redesign their website :) It needs some work...

Irritating -- ogg123 on linux will play multiple listed files, but NOT IN THE ORDER YOU PROVIDE IT. More incentive for me to keep improving my mpg123/ogg123 wrapper scripts...