Honzo October 30th, 2005
What is on your nightstand?
On mine are the following books:
- A Theory of Justice by John Rawls - I know the plot from my Political Philosophy class, but I wanna read the source material
- Mere Christianity by CS Lewis - Great book, a foundation of my faith, read it a while ago and I am re-reading it now
- The
Magician’s Newphew by CS Lewis - Started it last night and finished it
last night. When Aslan sings Narnia into form… wow. It is the
precursor to the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Classic.
- The
Man of Her Dreams, the Woman of His by Joel and Kathy Davisson - I am
being asked to review this book for it’s use in a church.
Honzo October 30th, 2005
Telegraph | News | Victims of insurgents in Iraq top 26,000
The paper says we killed 9,000 civilians and the Insugency outside Terrorist Forces have killed 26,000. We try our hardest not to kill the innocent and the terrorists’ goal is to kill innocents.
Who are you rooting for? If you are rooting for us, shouldn’t you
root for the mission? There is what it began as, and there is what it
has become. I am still for both, but I do recognize that there is a
difference.
Honzo October 30th, 2005
Source: Marijuana by Java Blog
Their source: Jack E. Henningfield, PhD for NIDA, Reported by Philip J.
Hilts, New York Times, Aug. 2, 1994 “Is Nicotine Addictive? It Depends
on Whose Criteria You Use.”
Ok, out of the drugs on the list:
- Nicotine
- Heroin
- Cocaine
- Alcohol
- Caffine
- Marijuana
The following are legal:
Yet, Marijuana has the least negative efects and it is illegal. Does this make sense?
Honzo October 28th, 2005
I totally just got Prime and Proof mixed up.
Seriously, I can understand trotting out two similarly themed movies at
the same time with different overtones, like Deep Impact and Amegedon,
but who in congress allows two movies named after mathatical/logical
terms to run at the same time?
Meredith and I will go and see one if not both of those movies this weekend. Guess which one of us wants to see which movie.
In the last few weeks I have taken advantage of a surplus of Meredith’s working hours to see a couple of Sci-Fi flops, Doom and Serenity.
I felt like I pretty much had to see both movies. I went in to each
with no expectation and in each they were therefore exceeded. Only
thing was that Serenity was a good movie and Doom wasn’t.
Honzo October 28th, 2005
BBC NEWS | Middle East | UN raps Iran’s anti-Israel remark
Man, now the the UN has condemed Iran for the remarks that it has made towards Israel, I can sleep better at night.
If they would only condem the other bad things in the world, perhaps it would not be such a messed up place.
The UN statement said: “The Security Council condemns
the remarks about Israel attributed to Mr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
president of the Islamic republic of Iran.”
The BBC’s Laura Trevelyan, at the UN in New York, says all 15
members of the Security Council agreed to the statement after
discussions about the wording.
Honestly, who can stand in the face of such harsh words?
Note: The BBC just changed the picture in
the article from one showing a burning jewish flag with a bunch of kids
hold pistols or toy pistols to one showing a man with his fists in the
air in anger towards the Jews.
Honzo October 27th, 2005
Durring some reading this morning, I came across this chart. It is
the GPD as a percentage for the last five years. As I looked at the
chart I wondered what the effect on the chart would have been if taxes
would not have been lowered. I cannot get it out of my head that it
would have been much lower across the board if that would have been the
case. Then again I am not much of an economist.
Source
Honzo October 26th, 2005
The president of Iran said today that Israel should be “wiped off the map” and describes it as a “disgraceful blot.”
Boy, this sounds like a swell guy, eh? Oh yea, as the primary meathod,
he hopes that the Palestinian will do the dirty work for him.
Somebody please, let this nation develop nukes. Two predictions:
- Israel bombs Iran’s nuke sites.
- Iran either goes to war or somehow else attacks Israel within the next ten years.
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Israel should be wiped off map, says Iran’s president
Iran’s new president created a sense of outrage in the
west yesterday by describing Israel as a “disgraceful blot” that should
be “wiped off the face of the earth”. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who is more
hardline than his predecessor, told students in Tehran that a new wave
of Palestinian attacks would be enough to finish off Israel.
Also read the New York Time’s: Iran’s New President Says Israel ‘Must Be Wiped Off the Map’:
“The establishment of a Zionist regime was a move by the
world oppressor against the Islamic world… The skirmishes in the
occupied land are part of the war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds
of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land.”
One of the better Articles on this is by Radio Free Europe: Iran: Qods Day Brings Out Anti-Israeli Sentiments
This whole “Radical Islam” thing is just a clever ruse by the Bushies, no?
Honzo October 26th, 2005
Finish the job. Don’t cut and run.
Something else worth reading: Are the Statistics or Heros?
The problem is that to truly honor something means, by
definition, to hold it in high respect and esteem. Members of the media
may hold the sacrifices of individual soldiers in esteem but it’s fair
to say that, as a whole, they have significantly less respect for or
belief in the causes for which those soldiers are fighting and dying in
Iraq. The result is that much of the mainstream media can’t separate
the men from the mission, and feel that to write positive stories about
Iraq or stories truly honoring our soldiers would be seen as propaganda
supporting the policy (and indirectly the President)….
…The left will say this is propaganda from a right-wing rag. But
the one striking difference between the Post and the rest is that at
least The Post is willing to treat our dead soldiers as “heroes.” The
New York Times had no problem writing exhaustively about the heroes of
9/11, but when it comes to Iraq all we get are body counts.
Honzo October 25th, 2005
The car that makes its own fuel
A unique system that can produce Hydrogen inside a car
using common metals such as Magnesium and Aluminum was developed by an
Israeli company. The system solves all of the obstacles associated with
the manufacturing, transporting and storing of hydrogen to be used in
cars. When it becomes commercial in a few years time, the system will
be incorporated into cars that will cost about the same as existing
conventional cars to run, and will be completely emission free.
Crossing fingers….
Honzo October 18th, 2005
I heard about Rollyo today. It
allows you to create custom search engines based on sites that you
enter in. You can use this search rolls on your site, in your firefox
browser, create widgets, share your search rolls, and even import your
bookmarks for easy entry of sites.
Honzo October 18th, 2005
Quantum Mechanics Interpretations - Damn you Plank! If you and the others had just not figured it out, all sorts of weird paradoxes would not plague my mind at night. What do you mean that me simply observing what is happening determines the outcome?
Neutrinos finally found. They do exist!
Ok, I am finally tired.
Honzo October 18th, 2005
Day of Defeat Source is a good, good thing. I actually held my own against the online uber-players.
The NBA season tips off November 1st at 6 PM Central Time… oh yea. Prediction? Heat beat the Spurs in 7.
Mugabe goes ape-shit at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation conference in Rome,
but has some points, like farm subsidies and food aid in/from the west
crippling the agriculture of Africa. But I think alot of the blame has
to go to Mugabe and his policies. Some of them are pretty terrible.
Law and Order me to stop watching it someone! It was kinda funny
when Ice T got shot by some street thugs. I checked the sound track and
Ice-T did not have one of his own songs in the back ground.
Cuban goes Mugabe on Google and Splogs.
I have been taking practice tests for the GRE yesterday. Kept
getting 25 and 26’s our of 30 on the first two verbal sections. Most of
the wrong answers were due to lack of ridiculously obscure words at my
finger tips. I don’t know if those scores were good or not.
Started re-reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. I am putting my notes online at the Philosophy Blog in the comming weeks.
Been working on trying to meld the inescapableness of
consequentialism’s merits and the undenyable hold of deontology in an
ethical theory. I kind like what I have but it is leading me somewhere
I did not want to go. Hope to post some of it later.
Oh yea, how could I forget:
What happened in Toledo was terrible. The gangs let the Nazi’s win. I can understand the anger, but I cannot understand nor accept nor dismiss the riot.
That is about it.
Honzo October 16th, 2005
According to the Washinton Post, there are lots o’ Scandals a brewing right now. This has lead to the urge to gloat
by some that are opposed to the Republicans. Others maintain that this
is typical of the first year of a reelection of a president and say
that dispite the lowest approval ratings yet for Bush, “Every president since 1963 has had approval ratings, at one time or another during his administration, at least five points i lower than Bush’s current nadir1.”
Here are the lowest approval ratings for the last seven presidents 2:
- Johnson: 35%
- Nixon: 24%
- Ford: 37%
- Carter: 28%
- Reagan: 35%
- Bush I: 29%
- Clinton: 37%
- Bush II: 39.5%
On a personal level, while I am frustrated with the lack of accoplishment on several issues, mainly Iraq, Social Security Reform, Tax Code Reform, Gay Marriage and Illegal Immigration. However, I don’t see the “winds of change”
in favor of the Democrats and the people taking their country back.
While political power may shift back to the Democrats, I don’t know
that it will. The same and greater frustrations lie in their camp as
well. For me and my political goals for the United States, I do not see
them as a viable alternative. This lack of a viable alternative leads
some to think that conervatives will remain in power as things get better in the counrty next year:
Things could change, of course, but my guess is that the
next year’s news will be better for the administration and for
Republicans than the past year’s. The price of gas has likely peaked;
Iraq will continue to stabilize, and troops will come home; absent more
natural disasters, the economy will resume its steady growth; Harriet
Miers will be confirmed and start voting with conservative majorities
on the Court. Most likely, liberal dreams of the end of the
conservative era will have to be deferred again.
————————————————
Footnotes:
i
The 41.5 figure from the quote was the average approval rating at time
of the post, at the time of this post the average approval rating was
39.5 and the the lowest of them is 37%.
Honzo October 16th, 2005
Wikipedia Articles of the moment:
![Hundie Jo [Dot] Com](http://www.hundiejo.com/wp-content/plugins/ttftitles/cache2/7d6a910bbe08845c0836a517a70936d5.png){kind=small}
