I had to end it with Debb yesterday.
I guess this means that I'm going to Martha's wedding in two weeks. Jason's flying in from the west coast, and everyone else is returning to Ohio. It's going to be fun. I might also go to Cowtown next weekend -- I need to be with friends. Speaking of which, I went to the tree last night with Dmitry, and we're likely to be loaning each other a lot of books -- similar interests, and moderately similar collections.
To make Matlab work on my laptop, I had to install FlexLM, a really irritating license mangler. This makes me unhappy. Speaking of irritants, Miguel, one of the open-source people who're known by a single-word Monicker, has more clueless and evil commentary. He thinks that the Linux community need not worry, because the rest of the world will force the U.S. to go to weaker patents and to use Linux everywhere. He seems to be unaware that the U.S. is pushing the rest of the world to adopt its stronger patents *sigh*, and that the U.S. never gave a damn about the rest of the world. There's almost no metric system use here, American TVs and cellphones work differently than the rest of the world, and most Americans pathetically never even leave their home state. Of course, Miguel is notorious for his pessimism as well, in that he thinks .NET will be big, and is pushing his open-source implementation of it, Mono, as hard as he can, having written some big and useful software in Csharp. I don't know many geeks who like what he's done -- it may make sense for businesses, offering them a migration path away from Windows, but Csharp really doesn't offer anything Java doesn't, it's in fact less useful, and Miguel's a little bit too enthusiastic about it (OTOH, having met Miguel, he seems enthusiastic about almost everything). Moving on to other people with a different view on things, I came across this gem on Amazon.com, as part of a review of David Horowitz's autobiography, and as a time-honoured internet tradition, I shall make fun of it.. well, actually I won't -- it's too obvious. Just make sure you note the quality of the homeschooling she can give her kids with such poor grammar, and na klar the traditional threat of the truly backward, that they're going to outbreed everyone else in a few generations.. Here:
I have studied communism off and on during the intervening twelve years while living in The People's Republic of Boulder Colorado as a closet Conservative. I shared my rightist views with other's when opportunity presented over the years, but mostly I stayed home and read books while nurturing my additional four children.
My husband and I have home schooled off and on during these past few years - and I would like to suggest to those who feel hopeless about the power elite's control of our universities, and media not to give up on the parents of today. We who are educated about these important political issues are raising large families of holisitcally nurtured, gently educated, and un-propaganized children. My best memories of home school are the daily lessons my husband taught our children in American History. We would say the pledge and sing The Star Spangled Banner, and then he would teach the children about our amazing Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and together we testified of our faith in and dedication to the principles of freedom.
The radical leftist's are aborting away most of their children, and in the end, it will be the our children and grandchildren who will be the leaders of the future. I have walked in homeschooling and dedicated parenting circles for many years now, and those outspoken leftists who always seemed to dominate conversations, wether we were talking about breastfeeding, politics,or education are now somewhat confused and not so confident of their worldview.
David Horowitz's Radical Son is a powerful and passionate rebuke of leftist thought and political activism. I will use it to continue teaching my children the Truth.
I would hope that the older generation of passionate conservatives would remember the young mothers and fathers of today who are quietly and steadfastly teaching our own the principles and practices of Freedom when you get discouraged or are feeling hopeless. Thousands upon thousands of parents are homeschooling and many who have children in public or private school are teaching and sharing these truths in consistent ways with the next generation. I know dozens of families with young children who are committed to Freedom and understand the sacredness of our responsibility to teach, promote, and share freedom with the rest of humanity.
Please read Horowitz's book if you feel any inclination to leftist radical activism. It will cure your of such delusions in a matter of hours.
Jenny Hatch
It's priceless...
Oh, another thought -- remember how U.S. 'peacekeepers' are not to be subject to international courts, because there was fear that said peacekeepers would be prosecuted due to political reasons? Well, this Iraq prison scandal is the perfect reason why they should be subject to said courts. They're facing a court martial, and then will likely be discharged and go home. They belong in prison for life, no chance of parole. And, some quick to doublethink folks are quick to come up with excuses for the people who did the abuses.. "Just following orders" "Just a scapegoat" "Wrong place in wrong time" "I don't believe my sister did what was in those photos" "merely posing" No! Being in the military doesn't excuse one from what one does, neither does any such situation. As a moral agent, one is responsible for one's actions to the degree that one is aware of them. Asked to do something you won't do? Resign, or tell them you won't do it. Responsibility to one's self is a higher calling, always, than to obey one's "superiors". And, of course, if someone you care about deeply does something you dislike, don't deny it, learn to deal with it.
The U.S. is looking to spread its aggression to Cuba now. I've increasingly come to the conclusion, based on some readings of the history of U.S. intervention (spurred but not based on a recent Adbusters article), that almost all U.S. interventions in other countries' affairs have been the result of business lobbying to fight nationalization of factories and the like, and in fact the battle against communism has never been anything but profit protection, having nothing to do with human dignity. Of course, the fact remains that we do have more human dignity in capitalistic systems, but mixed markets provide the same thing, perhaps more dignity than either communism as tried and the relatively raw capitalism in the United States. The U.S. has often appointed as leaders of other nations thugs that are far more brutal than socialist elected leaders... American foreign policy was and is disgusting. Wars, if/when they are fought, should be fought for the betterment of humanity, not fatter pockets.
Occasionally people break ranks in a surprising way..
Russia suffered a big setback recently -- the regional leader was killed and several other Russian figures were injured in a car bomb attack. I wonder if Russia will manage to hang on to Chechnya..
Let's end with some humour, and a comic.