Tuesday, February 26, 2008

"In the past five years, the actions and policies of the U.S. government have eroded most of the initial gratefulness Iraqi people had for getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Excessive violence, domination of Iraqi political and economic structures, and the U.S.'s failure to rebuild the physical, social, and medical infrastructures of Iraqi society feed into the increasing anger and violent resistance that have emerged."
Peggy Gish
read the blog here

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Wow.

I want one.
Too bad it costs more than my laptop and it's not available (yet) in a CDMA version.
Here's hoping Alltel picks it up and cuts the price in half.

war

The responsibility for war rests not only with those who directly
cause war, but also with those who do not do everything in their
power to prevent it.

- Pope John Paul II
Catholic Relief Services: the Beginning Years by Eileen Egan (NY: Catholic Relief Services, 1988), pp. 155-156

Friday, February 15, 2008

please take action

Please go to this site:
http://www.godhatesfags.com/contact.html
and give them a piece of your mind.
If you're not familiar with what they do, browse the site for a few minutes and I think you'll be sufficiently upset.

Better yet, hack the site if you can, and protest their "protests" whenever they happen to be in your area.

Thanks.

superdelegates: wait! (please sign!)

Please click here to sign the petition to ask the superdelegates to allow this to be a democratic process. Thanks.

why

Why are you so hard to get a hold of?
It makes my day every time we talk.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Dear Mr. Obama

As future president of the United States, there are many things you will need to do. I was happy to see this paragraph in "The Caucus" blog today:

Mr. Obama gained some points with ecology-minded folks, as well. Michael Cooper of The New York Times writes that he called for “a decade-long investment in a $150 billion plan to create five million so-called “green-collar” jobs to develop energy sources that are friendly to the environment. He also called for a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank, a $60 billion program, which he said would create two million jobs for rebuilding highways, bridges and airports.”

Both of there plans are great...but why didn't you push for them now? We're wasting all of this money on the economic stimulus package that won't be nearly as effective as either of these programs. A third option that would be great for this country (and your campaign) would be to greatly increase the amount of public transportation available. This would create a lot of jobs, reduce our dependence on foreign energy, and take better care of our environment.

Monday, February 11, 2008

story time

I don't usually tell stories here, but for some reason I thought I'd share one today.

I believe I was in 8th grade (it may have been 7th, I think my brain has tried to repress this memory, and such has left some details blurry). At this point in my life I was still very awkward around girls (I'm glad that has changed some, if only a little). My cousin Michelle is about the same age as me, and lived next door. There were a few others in the neighborhood that were our age, and we happened to be hanging out with a kid named Nick that night. I'm not quite sure why, because Nick and I rarely got along, but there we were, out snowmobiling around the neighborhood. Nick went to the same junior high as us, but had transferred from another nearby, and thus knew several people that I did not. This night a girl named Anne from his previous school had joined us. We had two snowmobiles, Michelle and Nick were on one, and Anne and I were on the other. We stopped in the middle of a field for a while to chat about whatever it is that mixed company 8th graders talk about. When we decided to get moving again, I went to start my snowmobile. I gave the cord a good solid pull...and jacked Anne in the face with my elbow. I felt so awful, embarrassed and awkward all at once. (Did I mention I had a crush on this girl? I guess not, but you should have guessed...I was an 8th grade boy with hormones raging, lucky enough to have this attractive girl holding on to me in order to stay on the snowmobile...)

Monday, February 04, 2008

you should probably watch this



On that note, I'm becoming more and more sad that Edwards dropped out, the more I learn about him the more I like him. Here's to hoping that Obama picks him as his running mate.

Saturday, February 02, 2008

teaching

I'm considering teaching. This video is inspiring. Thank you Steve Mahr for introducing me to this.

Friday, February 01, 2008

great

If you're not using Gmail (Google's e-mail) yet, I would highly encourage you to switch. Not only is the amount of storage virtually limitless, but one can send and receive large attachments. What may make the biggest difference though is their spam filters, which I have found to be 99.99% effective. It is incredibly rare that any spam makes it into my inbox or that real mail gets filtered out (years of using yahoo and hotmail still have me paranoid that I'm going to miss something important, so I feel the need to check my spam box regularly.)
On top of it being the best e-mail option there is, it is very well integrated with Google Calendar, Picasa, and Google Docs. In firefox you can even get an extension that integrates Google reader. Oh, and did I mention Google Chat/Google Talk?
And it's Google, so of course the search capabilities are phenomenal. I've never spent more than 30 seconds looking for an old e-mail.
Do yourself a favor and switch today. Stop wasting time sorting through spam and searching for old messages.
(They also support POP3 and IMAP for those needed that feature.)

gross

Exxon Mobil made record profits in 2007: $40.6bn, Shell made record profits of $27.56bn.

Disgusting.