"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx
Sometimes blogger makes me want to scream. I have been trying to add comments to a couple of blogs and it will not let me. I keep getting booted out and asked for my log-in and password information.
Yet when I enter it, I get booted out again. I have gotten thrown out of nicer places than this. Hmmph.
“(CNN) — In a videotape that aired Monday, Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man pledged to continue fighting the United States until it changes its policies regarding Muslims.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, in tape broadcast by the Arabic-language Al-Jazeera television network, said there are two ways to deal with Muslims — “either with respect, or as if our lives and property are available for you to invade.”
How convenient it must be to pretend that you have no role in the conflict, just an innocent bystander. I am not surprised by any of this. I expect to see OBL and crew try and sow more dissension by attacking allies of the US.
Followed by the attack will be more offers of peace, provided that said allie agrees to AQ terms. It is a problem that we need to focus upon.
Health Insurance is a necessity, it is just not something that you go without. It doesn’t matter if you are baboon at the Cleveland Zoo, you need it. The problem is that the baboon at the Cleveland Zoo likely has a better plan than you and I.
During this past month my wife and I have been evaluating our current health plan versus the company plan. I have yet to take the company plan because it is not cost effective nor efficient, so I pay out of pocket. The problem is that I have been paying almost $600 a month for an HMO.
It irritates me to no end that we still haven’t figured out how to provide better and more affordable coverage for our citizens. There is no reason that I can see that gives a real explanation for why this is so. And all I see are rising premiums. It is shameful.
I found a link to an interesting story about the current war in Iraq over at Crossing the Rubicon2.
It is titled WMDs camouflage real reasons behind Iraq invasion and it provides some good food for thought.
It is really about a book by George Friedman in which he discusses America’s Secret War against AQ and answers some of the questions about why the US did not go after Saudi Arabia for their role in supporting AQ.
“From this fortress headquarters, Friedman writes, al-Qa’ida (“the Base” in English) pressed its grand design for an Islamist world federation, a new Caliphate, which would ultimately match, if not dominate, other superpowers. Global terrorism would be the means. Al-Qa’ida’s opening moves – attacks on American embassies and other establishments abroad – were aimed, in Friedman’s opinion, less at damaging the US than provoking it to a reckless assault on Islam.
This, al-Qa’ida believed, would stir the “Islamic street” to a confrontational mood with the West and rebellion against non-fundamentalist Islamic regimes, establishing the foundations of the great federation. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the US, confident of its hegemony, had concluded that “war was now optional”, that no power existed that could force it into war.”
Read the whole piece, it is worth some time.
I am not completely happy with how this blog looks. There are a number of things that just rub me the wrong way. It is not like this is terrible, but it feels choppy and uneven. I suppose that is kind of a good description of me, I am choppy and uneven. But this is not about me.
I think that I’d like to have categories for my posts and I’d definitely like to clean up the look a little bit more. It would be nice if all of the posts used the same font, but some of that is to be expected with free software.
Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful to have this opportunity and think that overall this appears to be a pretty good product, but I know that there are some coding issues that are not as clean as they could be.
The bottom line is that I still write for me and for no one else. I find this to be so cathartic. But the rules of the blog ensure that I also admit that I really enjoy the interaction. I like knowing that there are people reading this everyday, even those of you who do not comment.
A very dear friend would say that I just like being stroked and to that I say, so what. Who doesn’t enjoy being complimented. But the reality is that a large part of what I get from this blog comes from being able to engage in dialogue. Readers require honesty and that is important.
Without readers it is a little bit like clapping with one hand. Although, if I was stuck in that situation I would smack my chest. It wouldn’t quite be a clap and it might make me look more simian like than I do now, but I don’t give up easily.
Good night from Los Angeles, the Shack is closing early this evening.
“They were wrong. Six years after that horrible day at the dock in 1996, Mickey Poduje (pronounced “poh-DOO-yay”) entered a Boston laboratory and had a metal device the shape of a figure-8 pressed to her right temple. It sent magnetic pulses into her brain. And the result, published just this year, is that her speech did improve slightly.
It’s one of a handful of recent experiments in stroke patients that sound like the fantastic promises of an old traveling medicine show. Improving speech by zapping the brain with magnetism? Making weakened limbs work better by putting coils on the head and releasing current so weak it could come from a battery?
Those ideas have spurred interest in a handful of laboratories in the United States and abroad. The few preliminary results produced so far are not cures. They are more intriguing than life-changing. But scientists hope that with further refinement, the techniques could provide new tools for treating strokes, which attack some 700,000 Americans a year.”
Technology, you have got to love it. But at the same time you have to wonder if the cures for many of our ailments are already here, just undiscovered.