prayer requests

for the retallic family, who i've known for most of my life.

catching up

pat apparently gets hypocritical as well as jolly when he's drunk, because he decided to complain that i don't update my blog often enough. which is probably true... but considering the fact that it's been over 3 years since he updated his blog, i'd say i'm doing pretty alright.

student loans: as of next week, my loans (from the government, at least) will be paid off. which really means i just get to add a bit more to what i'm paying my parents back every month, but at least they're not charging interest.

europeans = ftl. but only partly, since they did show a bit of common sense in their most recent elections. mostly i have to complain about the way the write down dates. as a reward to myself for paying off the aforementioned loans, i was going to take a trip to belgium and the netherlands to see a couple of bands that don't have any concerts scheduled here in the good old US of A. but thanks to their sideways dating, a show that i originally thought was november 7 (11.07.09) turned out to be july 11, which means the concerts are 4 months apart, not 4 days like i originally thought. so europe will probably get put on hold until next year.

and for now, that's all. we've got some of an unfortunately small number of our "normal" relatives visiting, so i think i should be present for awhile.

quote of the day

yeah, i've been a bit lazy about this lately. like, a month or so. but this quote definitely made me think, "i really need to post this."

“If I had my way, I’d destroy all the mosques and spread the whores around a little more,” the [Iraqi] detective said. “At least they’re not sectarian.”

via AoSHQ

fuzzy math

if you haven't already seen the watchmen, don't bother. several individual parts were far more impressive than the whole, which was disjointed and hard to follow. also, as much as i don't mind females in states of undress, there was a lot of unnecessary nudity. i mean really, can you imagine being the guy who had to animate dr. manhattan's man parts?

best entertainment i've had all week

true, it's only tuesday, but still... good times.



h/t say anything

Quote of the Term

i have always been a fan of the following quote; and as our government prepares to blow roughly 57 zillion of our tax dollars, it once again proves the wisdom of our founding fathers:

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. -- I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

written by Benjamin Franklin, and appearing in the November 29, 1766 issue of The London Chronicle.

quote of the day

"In my many years I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress." --John Adams

question of the day

if you can repeat something, does that mean you can just "peat" it?

brilliant!

only in europe. hopefully. depending on who you talk to, between 1 million and 2.5 million french workers decided to protest the threat to their jobs caused by current economic conditions. the form their protest took? not going to work. if you're not even going to bother showing up for your job, why should sarkozy worry about it?

no, you wouldn't

"if you were God for a day, what would you do differently?" if you mean having God's powers, i'd probably do quite a few things differently, and the world would be a worse place for it. as well-intentioned as i generally am, i am far from perfect. but if you mean actually being God? i wouldn't do a single thing differently. God does what He does because of who He is. God is holy. God is love. God is faithful. God is merciful. the list goes on and on. i may try to be those things, but He actually is them.

which leads up to a conversation i had with my boss the other day. one of my co-workers has been treated rather poorly by her spouse. so my boss decides i need to listen to beyonce's "if i were a boy," to see if i agreed that it fit my co-worker's situation. so i listened. my first response; "this sounds like self-pity." she was essentially singing about how she would treat herself (or girlfriend/wife/whatever) better if she were a boy. which isn't really true; if we're following her stereotype, then if she were a boy, she'd act exactly like the person she's complaining about. also, i would find her much less attractive.

just for you, pat

the same pat who, although he hasn't touched his blog in almost 3 years, thinks i need to update mine. but since the laziness that kept me from posting in 2 weeks is still here, this will pretty much just be a bunch of bullet points.

• the snow is spokane is as bad as they say. most of division was missing a lane of traffic in each direction and getting in and out of parking lots and going through intersections on side roads were offroad expeditions.
• quote of the day: "Some people can put juju inside the helmets and when they are worn the victim can either lose consciousness or be struck dumb," passenger Kolawole Aremu told the Daily Trust newspaper. forget yellow cake... saddam should have been looking for juju in nigeria.
• memo to israel: do it right this time. don't stop until this job is done. maybe after all of this, the palestinian people will realize that groups like hamas are not saviors, but rather the source of their woes. get rid of the terrorists, and israel will have no reason to bomb you.
• i'm going to keep playing (and paying), but i'm starting to get WoW'ed out. any suggestions on a good RPG? i've heard good things about the witcher, but not sure if i want to go out and buy it yet.
• there is no luck in gingerbreadmanville.
• watching through babylon 5 again... great show. much like another one of my favorites (sg-1) though, i have to wonder how it ever made it through it's first season.
• estamos en los estados unidos. se habla ingles aqui.

thatisall.

absorbed!

that title might make sense to some people.

anyways, today the bbc brings us the story of the youngest ever member of cuba's national assembly, 18-year old liaena hernandez. key quote: "Having young Cubans in parliament shows that the revolution continues. It isn't just something from our history." the continuing revolution began on january 1, 1958, when fidel castro seized power. for reference, here are some other revolutions that come to mind:

american revolution: ~8 years, depending on how you count
result: the best country ever
french revolution: ~10 years, again depending on how you count
result: two of the greatest military leaders ever duking it out, and lots of dead people.

both marked major turning points in world history, and took less than 20 years between them to complete. 50 years later, the cubans are still right where they were--fleeing to america on whatever floats--only without soviet assistance and no more botched invasions of their island. cuba, i submit that your revolution is ineffectual, and it's time to give it up.

bass ackwards

i'm really not sure how amazon's shipping system works. i preordered Wrath of the Lich King a good two months before it came out, with regular shipping, and it got to me 4 days after the game released... which also happened to be one day after i went out and bought another copy because i got tired of waiting. last thursday, i ordered some beef jerky--a type i really like, but haven't been able to find locally lately. i chose the free "super-saver" shipping, which in theory is slower. the package shipped the next day, and was waiting for me when i got home from work. and it was shipped through the US post office, which is generally not known for it's speed. heck, it takes me three days to mail something from here to spokane, and i can drive there in less than three hours.

happy belated birthday

to the prince of darkness:

held up by the sheriff

we were well on the way to breaking the record (12 minutes) for fastest council meeting. and then the sheriff showed up. but harvey is a cool guy, so we didn't mind too much. and it still took less than 20 minutes, so i'm a happy camper.

various and sundry things

wow, i've been slacking lately. but it's been slow at work as well, so i've had a bit of time to peruse the BBC website for news... here are a few things i thought were interesting.

1) obama has already managed to piss off al-qaeda, so he can't be all bad. it was definitely in poor taste for al-zawahiri to refer to obama as a "house-slave" though. regardless of what may have brought the insult on, basing it on his skin color--which he has no control over--is pretty lame.

2) gays in california are still pissed about proposition 8; apparently "majority rule should not set the law." which, who really wants that messy democracy stuff anyways? they may actually have a pretty good case; if the courts deem this a revision to the state constitution instead of an amendment, it would have required a 2/3 vote in the legislature before being passed on to the voters. which brings us back to the majority thing; the gay rights folks got a majority of judges to agree to hear an argument that the proponents should have got a supermajority to vote in favor of prop 8 before the regular majority got to vote in favor of it. so apparently majorities are okay, as long as they agree with the gay rights people. personally, i'm going to side with sir elton john on this one. i don't remember the exact wording, but it was something along the lines of "marriages are for straight people, civil unions are for gay people... if you're getting the same basic rights, why should you care what it's called?" one is a relationship between two people of opposite sexes, and one is a relationship between two people of the same sex; they are, in fact, two different things.

3) philosophical questions for the day: number 1 is the only one i actually came up with an answer for, so i'm going to go ahead and post the whole thing and then give my answer and reasoning.

1. SHOULD WE KILL HEALTHY PEOPLE FOR THEIR ORGANS?

Suppose Bill is a healthy man without family or loved ones. Would it be ok painlessly to kill him if his organs would save five people, one of whom needs a heart, another a kidney, and so on? If not, why not?

Consider another case: you and six others are kidnapped, and the kidnapper somehow persuades you that if you shoot dead one of the other hostages, he will set the remaining five free, whereas if you do not, he will shoot all six. (Either way, he'll release you.)

If in this case you should kill one to save five, why not in the previous, organs case? If in this case too you have qualms, consider yet another: you're in the cab of a runaway tram and see five people tied to the track ahead. You have the option of sending the tram on to the track forking off to the left, on which only one person is tied. Surely you should send the tram left, killing one to save five.

But then why not kill Bill?

no, we don't kill bill. in both situations given, at least one person is going to die regardless of what happens. in the original question, if we don't "harvest" bill, he continues living his happy, healthy life. besides which, we really don't know if his organs will actually save the people they're intended for. they could be rejected by the host, or the doctor could screw up the operation, and there are probably several other things that could go wrong as well. also, back to the first example they give... if the hostage taker gives me a gun to shoot one of the other hostages dead, the first thing i'm going to do is shoot the guy that took us hostage, and we're all free. the end.

random question

believe it or not, i made it through my entire school "career"--high school, community college, and real college--without taking a single chemistry class. so i've got a chemistry-type question that randomly popped into my head the other day.

what happens if you drop an oxygen absorber into a glass of water? assuming there's actually enough to absorb all of the oxygen in the water, are you left with liquid hydrogen or hydrogen gas, or does something else entirely happen?

bummer dude

congratulations, mr. obama. i really hope that i was horribly wrong about you.

question of the day...

amd or intel? i want a quad-core cpu, and hope to be rocking dual graphics cards in sli/crossfire as well. any recommendations are welcome.

more on the bailout

which i was actually planning to write a few weeks back, but got lazy. go figure. in my defense, my original link broke, and i had to track down a new one... all the .pdf versions are coming up no good.

my favorite section, which i hope i'm reading/interpreting wrong, is 112, which states (emphasis mine):

The Secretary shall coordinate, as appropriate, with foreign financial authorities and central banks to work toward the establishment of similar programs by such authorities and central banks. To the extent that such foreign financial authorities or banks hold troubled assets as a result of extending financing to financial institutions that have failed or defaulted on such financing, such troubled assets qualify for purchase under section 101.

that same section 101 that tells us the treasury secretary can purchase troubled assets "from any financial institution, on such terms and conditions as are determined by the Secretary, and in accordance with this Act and the policies and procedures developed and published by the Secretary."

so on top of wasting money to cover the stupid financial institutions in our own country, we're going to be covering for the mistakes made by other countries as well? i think we should focus on our own problems first and foremost.

speaking of focusing... president bush's original proposal was 3 pages long. the finished bill was 451 pages, and roughly 330 of those (i think it was actually a few more, but don't remember the exact page number) had absolutely nothing to do with the economic crisis. 75% of this bill was just addons to get enough of the senators to abandon any common sense they might have had and vote yes. to make it "good" enough for people to go along with, they had to turn it into a very bad bill indeed.

so, there are my two cents. i may have a bit more later... at work i get a copy of the banc investment daily; most of it is way over my head (or "above my pay grade"), but they've had some good things to say about the bailout.