Thanks to everyone who helped out by ranking my photos that I put up a couple weeks ago.

Using your input, which pointed to some clear victors, as well as my own favorites (which I know a couple of you vehemently opposed), I chose the following picks:


Most Picturesque:




Favorite Experience:




Most Unusual:




Cultural Adventure:

I'll wait here,
You're crazy,
Those viscious streets are filled with strays,
You should have never gone to Hollywood.

They find you,
Two time you,
Say your the best they've ever seen,
You should have never trusted Hollywood.

I wrote you,
And told you,
You were the biggest fish out here,
You should have never gone to Hollywood.

They take you,
And make you,
They look at you in disgusting ways,
You should never trusted Hollywood.

I was standing on the wall,
Feeling ten feet tall,
All you maggots smoking fags on Santa Monica Boulevard,
This is my front page,
This is my new age,
All you bitches put your hands in the air and wave them like you just don't care.

All you maggots smoking fags out there on Sunset Boulevard.

All you bitches put your hands in the air and wave them like you just don't care.

Phoney people come to play,
Look at all of them beg to stay,
Phoney people come to pray.

(The lines in the letter said, "We have gone to Hackensack")
Look at all of them beg to stay

Phoney people come to pray.

All you maggots smoking fags on Santa Monica Boulevard,
All you maggots smoking fags out there on Sunset Boulevard.
All you maggots smoking fags out there on Hollywood Boulevard.

You should have never trusted Hollywood.
You should have never gone to Hollywood.

All you bitches put your hands in the air and wave them like you just don't care.

You should have never trusted Hollywood.


- System of a Down, "Lost in Hollywood"

That's a tough question, and I'm by no means qualified to answer it. However, Gene Kranz, flight director for the Apollo 11 mission, says that NASA's most recent problem is that it is overly risk averse. To find the right balance between risk and progress, NASA will have to attack the difficult ethical question: how many lives is going to space worth? But no, that is not just a question for NASA, that is a question for the nation.

But clearly NASA has other problems too. The program was grounded for 2 years after the Columbia incident, only to have a faulty fuel sensor on the first relaunch scheduled and then to still have a foam problem and be grounded again. Congress needs to take a strong look at the personnel and structure of the organization and its capability to recruit the best and brightest engineers.

Also, obviously, we need to replace the shuttle ASAP. It's planned for retirement in a few years, but its replacement is not readily apparent. The new craft will take advantage of nano technology to make better materials and the new craft will not require the kindof make-shift "fixes" required to keep the current shuttle flying.

It's hiring a U.S.-based lobbying agency to appeal to Congress regarding its economic and trade based goals. But I would say this to China: who you ultimately need to convince is the American people, not a few Congressmen via lobbying. And the way you will convince the American people is to do the following:

- abandon the one-child policy and similar measures that encourage high rates of abortion and especially abortion of female babies

- allow a free press and free political expression amongst your people

- refrain from encouraging negative attitudes in your nation towards Japan

The Notre Dame football season is drawing near, and I can feel it pulsing through my veins.

I'm ready for a fight, and that includes silencing the critics of Weis's hiring and Willingham's firing. This includes the critics who were absolutely sure (miraculously without any evidence) that this was a signal that ND no longer intended to stress grades for its incoming football players. But what do you know, it looks like they were wrong about that too:

Folks are still buzzing over a recruiting visit new Notre Dame football head coach Charlie Weis made recently with a top area high-school lineman, who clearly expected to be wooed, flattered and praised by Weis. Instead, Weis slapped a copy of the recruit's grade transcripts down on the table, chastised him for being an obviously lazy student and told him that unless things changed, Notre Dame wouldn't waste another minute recruiting him. Word is the shocked lineman is now vowing to take his classes much more seriously this school year...

[thanks to Matt Geiger for the head's up on the story]

What is wrong with this woman? [if you have seen the story, do not give it away]

The globe is warming. The question is how much of the trend is man's fault and how much should we do to halt the trend?

The United States is joining Australia, India, and China in a new multilateral greenhouse gas agreement, in a move to create a replacement emissions regime to Kyoto. Unfortunately, no details are out yet.

The lyrics to Tom Petty's "It's Good to Be King" are remarkably similar to the main character in The Magic Mountain's practice of "playing king." Don't know what I'm talking about? Oh well, the lyrics are good anyways:

It's good to be king, if just for a while
To be there in velvet, yeah, to give 'em a smile
It's good to get high, and never come down
It's good to be king of your own little town

Yeah, the world would swing if I were king
Can I help it if I still dream time to time

It's good to be king and have your own way
Get a feeling of peace at the end of the day
And when your bulldog barks and your canary sings
You're out there with winners, yeah, it's good to be king

Yeah I'll be king when dogs get wings
Can I help it if I still dream time to time

It's good to be king and have your own world
It helps to make friends, it's good to meet girls
A sweet little queen who can't run away
It's good to be king, whatever it pays

Excuse me if I have some place in my mind
Where I go time to time

CNET News.com has an article about cell companies getting into the music download biz-- too bad I had the same thing 3 months ago!

I'm no fan of keeping the Shuttle going longer than we have to, as I think we need a ground-up replacement, but right now we need it, and it's good to be back.

Now we turn to replacing the Hubble.

This is a photo taken from the new camera mounted to view the external fuel tank during launch...

I highly recommend watching this informative piece on why we should all buy robot insurance. [you must have the newest version of Quicktime to watch the movie]

Sick of GTA's sex and violence? Maybe you should consider new Christian-themed video games. Yep they do actually exist, though their sales are nowhere near the numbers produced by mainstream game titles.

First, let me say that I welcome the entrepreneurial spirit of these Christian game companies and I think they are bound to be successful in this niche.

However. Something has always bothered me a bit (just a little bit) about Christian music and now Christian games. And I think I know what it is: while I agree with many of the themes and content of Christian entertainment, I'd much rather those themes reach a broader audience and have a greater impact. In other words, I feel that Christian values and themes are much more powerful when combined with earthly "real-life" themes, and not labeled in a manner that only targets current believers.

So I ask the rhetorical question: what's better-- 5 Christian games and 95 GTAs, or 50 games that incorporate at least some Christian theme or a simple moral and 50 GTAs?

I'm glad I got out of China when I did (j/k), as the nation has now experienced power outages and a mystery pig illness that has killed 17 people.

Many people on both sides of the abortion issue proclaim a goal of making abortion more rare, and one of the commonly proposed solutions is to improve and push the adoption system more.

However, one of the impediments in the adoption system is discrimination, often based on race or other characteristics.

Sadly, when we have supposedly Christian protestant-run adoption agencies discriminating against Catholic couples, it is hard to find signs that the issue of discrimination in adoption will be improved anytime soon.

[thanks to Brendan Magee for the link]

This story may have slipped by the radars of many people, but I think it's significance should not be underplayed: Pakistan's "president" Pervez Musharraf has urged his citizens to declare holy war on Islamist terrorists.

The Islamist terrorists are involved in two battles right now-- one against "the infidels" and one against more mainstream Muslims. Islam's longterm health is contingent on the eradication of any extremist thought based on hate and killing innocents.

Jihad, ironically, might be the most effective method at ridding Islam of the terrorists. Jihad in its most simple form means 'holy struggle.' The Islamists would like to frame that struggle as between their religious ideology and the "heathen" ideology of the West. Musharraf's use of the term is more than clever rhetoric, it is a re-framing of the real jihad facing the Islamic world, and that is internal reform.

Three terrorist bombs went off in Egypt today, killing 83-- mostly Egyptians. And this got me thinking through a theory I've been pondering for a while.

Whenever a party does something, he or she has an ultimate goal in mind. However, such a party also looks at the immediate results of the action and analyzes whether or not they lead to the ultimate desired outcome.

Effects divergence occurs when the actual effects of an action diverge from the ultimate goal.

One of the hallmarks of terrorists, if not THE hallmark, is that their actions almost always amount to effects divergence and they continually fail to recognize this. Irrationality results.

Look at the recent binge of Islamist terrorism... After September 11, I will guarantee you that more Muslims and Arabs have been killed than Christians and westerners. Look at the Egypt bombing. Thus far the greatest effect that the Islamist terrorism is achieving is to make the Middle East a hell for the people who live there.


Note: this is the first in three posts I will make on terrorism and the need to understand what differentiates it from other forms of war and conflict.

Only a few days after Unocal decided it would favor Chevron's bid over that of China's CNOOC oil company, the government of China decided to raise it's exchange rate with the U.S. dollar and to adopt a slightly flexible monetary exchange regime, a move highly pushed by the U.S.

This is good news for the U.S. trade deficit which will shrink slightly over time as a result of the increased valued of the Yuan to the Dollar. However, some companies such as U.S. tech companies could see their margins squeezed by slightly more expensive parts from Asia.

Overall this is good for the world's overall economic health.

This post by Michael Romano...


The rating on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, has been changed. Formerly rated an "M" -- the video game equivalent of an R in the movie world -- this title has been reclassified an "A." This is the video game equivalent of an NC-17. As a result, just as theaters won't show NC-17 movies, most major retailers will stop stocking GTA: San Andreas. Rockstar Games (the creator of GTA) will re-release an edited version without the problematic elements, so that it can sell games under the M label and get its product back in stores.

This is the first time that a game's rating has ever been changed after it shipped. None of the GTA installments since GTA III should have shipped with anything less than an A. However, to do so now, because of the new developments, is hypocrisy of the worst sort.

Let me explain. The whole source of this controversy is a modification of the game called "Hot Coffee" that unlocks source code hidden in the original. From conversations with friends who own the game (I've never played San Andreas, though I have played GTA III and Vice City a lot), San Andreas has some optional missions in which you can romance one of several girlfriends. After a while, the girlfriend will invite the main character back to her apartment for "coffee." I think at that point, you see a shot of the kitchen table, and maybe a cup of coffee. In the background, you hear the sounds of your character and the girlfriend having sex.

The Hot Coffee mod changes this mission. With the mod, you see the girlfriend performing simulated fellatio on your character, and then you see your character and the girlfriend having sex. In fact, you get to chose one of three positions. And there's some sort of minigame where you have to tap buttons or manipulate the joystick to build tension and last long enough to pleasure the woman. You get different messages depending on whether the sex ends too soon or lasts just long enough.

Here's the kicker, though: no genitalia is ever shown. In fact, the characters are mostly clothed. I understand that breasts are shown, but you can see breasts in the game normally, visiting strip clubs. Given what's shown, the game's modded scenes are more appropriately described as simulated dry-humping than simulated sex.

With only this information, it might seem understandable that the rating on GTA: San Andreas has been changed. However, the GTA games (III and beyond), are in my opinion, both some of the greatest video games of all time, and probably the most violent and sexually explicit mainstream games of all time. Here are a sampling of some elements:

- You have always been able to hire prostitutes to service you. They join you in your car, take some money, the car rocks back and forth, and you regain health.
- You can shoot off body parts -- head, arms, legs -- which explode in a shower of blood. In fact, some "rampage" missions (killing sprees) specifically require you to do this
- You can kill just about anyone walking around, at any time, with any weapon.
- You can kill cops just about any time you want to. Kill enough cops, and you get to take a crack at killing the SWAT team, Miami VICE, the FBI, and eventually the National Guard.
- There is one particular mission in Vice City that calls for you to chase down a person with a chainsaw and dismember him, a la American Psycho.
- Each game contains gangs consisting of various ethnic groups (Hatians, Italian Mafia, Japanese Yakuza, etc.). Several missions call for wholesale extermination of rival gangs.
- GTA III included a mission where you retrieved donky porn, stolen from a porn mogul.
- Vice City allowed you to buy a porn studio. Your star actress was a barely-clad, ridiculously-endowed woman voiced by Jenna Jameson. The porn studio missions included one where you blackmailed a politician by taking photographs of him, in drag, with Jameson's character. And cinema scenes commented on how your supporting actor had gotten the job by fellating every man on the set.

GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas (I'm sure) are all phenomenal games. GTA III was revolutionary and fundamentally set the standard for gaming for years after its release. Each game is incredibly fun and addictive, owing largely to the free, open gameplay and hundreds of tasks for the player to accomplish. However, the games were never anything but adult. Children should not be playing them. Their content is more violent than every violent movie I can think of; their sexual content is more lewd than anything but hard-core pornography. To say that this hidden content changes anything is ridiculous, stupid, and insulting. If this new element is worse than everything else in GTA, our culture is way too prudish on sex, as compared to its glorification of media violence (of course, this is nothing new).

Ok, I have an update on the latest bombing in London. My theory that the bombs were built as duds to send a message, appears to be incorrect. According to this article, the backpacks had full power bombs in them, but the detonators that went off, failed to detonate the bombs.

It is also increasingly apparent that the bombs were from the same guy. They were chemically and physically similar to the July 7 bombs, and the method and timing of them was also very similar.

I don't think this guy is going to stop until he is apprehended or killed.

Google took NASA imagery of the moon and plugged it into their Google Satellite engine and produced the very cool Google Moon which lets you view and zoom in on the landing sites of the Apollo missions. Two days ago marked the anniversary of the first moon landing, btw.

Zoom in all the way... I dare ya.

A week ago I ran a post about the possibility of a cold war between the U.S. and China due to a comment by a Chinese official that they would nuke us if we defended Taiwan.

However, I must now admit that I am guilty of hype in regards to this story. The Chinese official who was at the center of that story was a general and did not speak for the Chinese government.

Today the government released a statement that China would not be the first party to use nuclear weapons in a war.

Four separate explosions hit London subways and a bus today, but only one casualty was reported. Further, authorities believe the explosions were just detonator caps attached to dummy (dud?) bombs? But the timing and targeting is nearly identical to the previous bombings that hit London and claimed several lives.

My theory is that it's the work of the same mastermind living in the UK and this is his way of signaling that he continues to be a threat and can attack in similar form whenever he feels he needs to.

This type of braggadocio usually leads to quick capture, I suspect.

...in the Arab-Israeli conflict. With Israel and Palestine's respective governments making solid steps to advance the peace effort, extreme elements in both societies are fighting their own respective governments-- as opposed to the seemingly endless cycle of Palestinian terrorism and brute Israeli response that we have seen in past years.

If the PA can succeed in controlling the terrorists and Israel can successfully withdraw settlers, a lasting peace in the region might finally be on the horizon.

I was going to write a long post on Roberts and my thoughts on his jurisprudence, but Josh has a very thorough and insightful read at IndyLaw Net. Why is it that Ann Coulter is unhappy, some Democrats are signaling tepid support, and some Democrats are crapping their pants? Well go read Josh's post and find out...

Judge John Roberts, Jr. will be the next justice in the Supreme Court. His stance on Roe means that Senate Democrats will vehemently oppose him and will filibuster. With compromise out of the picture, Senate Republicans will exercise the constitutional-procedural option and consent to Roberts on a simple majority vote.

Roberts grew up in Indiana and went to Harvard for undergrad and law school. He has firmly stated his opposition to Roe v. Wade and is a fairly consistent judicial conservative. He is currently a judge in the D.C. circuit.

I was going to write a lengthy post with speculation on Bush's pending Supreme Court nominee, but I decided to let the leaves fall first. And so they have... Sources are reporting that Bush will announce the nominee and all eyes are on 5th Circuit Judge Edith Brown Clement.

Based on the press's success rate at calling Bush's cabinet nominations, I'm not banking any money on Clement, until I hear the name from Dubya's mouth.

By the way, if it is Clement, then Daniel gets kudos for calling it early.

Update: It appears that my caution may have been well-founded. ABC News is reporting that informed sources are telling them that Clement is NOT the pick.

Update 2: Bush will announce at 8 PM EST that Judge Roberts of the D.C. Circuit will be his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

IUPUI overseas programs sponsor a photo contest, which includes students who participated in the IU Law summer in China program, and I have decided to enter the contest.

I have narrowed my photos down to 9 for each of the four categories of the contest, and I would like your help to narrow them down further. Therefore, if you'd like to help, please take a look at each of the following 4 photo albums and rank your top 3 photos in each. You can e-mail me your picks or you can post on the comments. The photos are numbered for convenience.

1. Most Picturesque: Photos depicting beautiful international settings (view the album)

2. Favorite Experience: Photos depicting you or fellow students in a favorite experience abroad (view the album)

3. Most Unusual: Photos depicting something unusual encountered while abroad (view the album)

4. Cultural Adventures: Photos which illustrate aspects of the host country culture (view the album)

Sean Colleran, who runs the ND football site Kelly Green, has a link to a site that is selling kelly green ND football t-shirts, with the proceeds going towards the Toys-for-Tots program.

The official "The Shirt" sold at Notre Dame is piss yellow and has an uber-cheesy saying on the back. So I'll be buying one of these kelly green shirts instead.

In this editorial to the NY Times two Thursdays ago, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn has restated the Catholic Church's opinion regarding evolution. In this telling statement, "To speak of chance for a universe which presents such a complex organization in its elements and such marvelous finality in its life would be equivalent to giving up the search for an explanation of the world as it appears to us." Cardinal Schönborn has attempted to put the Catholic Church on the side of the "intelligent design" hypothesis. This is merely creationism by another name, and is a betrayal of the Catholic Church's history of supporting the use of scientific reason to learn about our natural world.

Intelligent design (ID), for those of you who are unfamiliar with the subject, effectively states that the complexity we see in our world today, such as the bacterial flagellum and the human eye, is so irreducibly complex that the only valid explanation is that it was designed by some higher power. ID purposefully stays away from Biblical explanations so the concept is seen as more scientific than religious in nature. But make no mistake, despite the Ph. D. credentials flashed by The Discovery Institute and other pseudoscientific "research groups," ID is merely another attempt to contort scientific data to fit a pre-established view of the universe.

There is no conflict between what Cardinal Schönborn calls "neo-Darwinism" and the existence of God. The Catholic Church still supports the concept of free will, so why not free biological evolution? Evolutionary biology says that organisms evolve through genetic mutations that give the organism a certain advantage that leads to increased reproductive success. This leads to the development of new species that are better adapted to new environmental conditions. Attributing this apparently random adaptation to God's divine plan in no way contradicts current scientific knowledge or Catholic teaching. ID is merely a cleverly disguised way of throwing up our hands and saying that the universe is too complicated for the human intellect to understand, which contradicts Cardinal Schönborn's stated purpose and stifles our God-given reason and intelligence.

China wants Taiwan. They claim it under their "constitution" and students and professors I spoke with there both feel Taiwan rightfully belongs to China.

The United States has vowed to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion.

China has built a sizable amphibous force that would make an invasion of Taiwan a possibility and they have made the assumption of Taiwan a public goal of the nation. If the United States intervenes and attacks Chinese forces, the Chinese now say they will use nukes against us.

Of course, if they did that, we'd retaliate with our vastly superior nuclear force which would be more than ample to destroy their entire nation.

Okay, that's the setup, but what's the prognosis for the future? China could very well respond to this imbalance in nuclear power between their nation and the U.S. by building up their nuclear stockpile and delivery capabilities. If they did, then the U.S. would essentially be drawn into a second cold war in terms of mutually assured destruction.

The Chinese must realize, and both the U.S. and the Chinese people, must convince the Chinese communist leadership that such a step by them would be wasteful, unproductive, and pointless. Is Taiwan, a nation that China already trades with, an area worth spending trillions to build a nuclear force to gain leverage agains the U.S.?

More in on the Rove-Plame affair... Rove testified to a grand jury that he was told Plame's name by Novak. Also, her husband said that Plame was not clandestine at the time Novak reported her name.

In other words, if Rove's story flies, he's in the clear.

Apple reported a 321% increase in profits over the same quarter a year ago, as well as record revenue. iPod sales are up over 600% and Mac sales up 35% over the same period.

And this time the stock behaved as it should have :-)

Chief Justice Rehnquist released a statement today effectively saying 'The rumors of my retirement have been greatly exaggerated' and promised to stay on for yet another term.

Robert Schmuhl, head of Notre Dame's Program of Journalism, Ethics, and Democracy, had this to say to conclude his latest piece in Notre Dame Magazine:

With the media world teeming with choice, our relationship to it will be radically different, as we try to deal with the endless welter of messages. 'Keeping up' with contemporary affairs (a civic notion of an earlier era with far fewer sources) will demand a conscious effort of constant scrutiny. The age-old worry over gaining access to information is over. Now it's a matter of selection and attention -- and assuming new obligations of the 21st-century citizenship.

I finished reading The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, a couple weeks ago, so now I've been looking for a new book. I would highly suggest reading it, btw. It's a fascinating study of love, intellectual growth, and sickness-- both human and that which plagued Europe before WWI. If you want a book to make you question the meaning of life and to ponder the deep questions, this one's for you.

Anyways, I have selected my next project and that is The Protestant Ethic & The Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber. It's one of those works that I regret not being required to read in undergrad. Further, with powerful economies arising in non-Christian nations, such as those of the east, I think it a particularly useful time to test Weber's arguments against modern reality.

I'll report back with notable quotes and arguments from the book.

"Indeed, devising earnest new ideas is the very thing liberals enjoy the most. Accusing them of having no new ideas is like accusing a member of the Kennedy family of excessive sobriety: If anything, the actual problem is just the opposite. Liberals have way too many new ideas and don't think seriously enough about prioritizing them."

- Jonathan Chait, from "The Case Against New Ideas" The New Republic

SEN. MCCAIN STARS IN BOOB RAUNCH FEST!



Now I'm definitely going to see that movie.

Check back soon for this post in response to Daniel's post 'The terror attacks' below...

Two Sundays ago I asked if Karl Rove was the person who leaked the identity of then undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame over a year ago.

Today we know that Rove did talk with Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, and according to e-mails released by Time and comments by Rove's lawyer, it seems apparent that Rove discussed Plame in some manner but did not identify her by name.

Of course, the Democrats and the NYTimes smell blood and would like this to become a scandal that will eventually force Rove to resign.

The White House press corps was in a virtual war with press secretary Scott McClellan yesterday (in a highly recommended comical read), with reporters asking him to explain his comment months ago that Rove was in no way involved in the Plame affair and to affirm President Bush's earlier statement that he would fire whoever was responsible for outing Plame. [Thanks to Daniel for the link]

Of course, all of this is moot, if Plame was never truly underground as some have suggested. Either way, Rove's involvement will hinge on the exact nature of his comments to Cooper and maybe others. There's still more to learn, and I'll keep DC updated on this story.

Rest assured that the prosecutor in the Plame case, Pat Fitzgerald, will aggressively pursue the case until the pertinent facts are known, as I have reliable information to believe he will.

Fellow blogger Allison Martin, who is a guest blogger on DC and whose own blog is listed in DC's sidebar, was quoted in this AP article about blogging and anonymity. Congrats to her!

I begin the end of my absence from this blog with a note on commenting decorum. In general, this has been a problem on IndyLaw Net, but it was also an issue in the comments on the post below this one, as I don't need to point out.

In general, and I don't mean to leave myself out of this, I think people are far more brave debating in text comments than they would be in person. While this has the positive benefit of encouraging frankness, it also has the consequence of encouraging immaturity and personal insults.

Patience and vigilance are useful in combating bad decorum, I've found.

The terror attack on London was a great tragedy. As an American, it just reinforces my belief that radicals could hit us in the United States any day and as a country we must get a grip and deal with the problem of radicalism.

But my greatest fear is not what happened in London today, though it is terrifying. Honestly, it could have been much much worse.

My biggest fear is a nuclear weapon. Consider this quote, on using the atomic bomb as a weapon.

"Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at [EDIT], against those who have starved and beaten and executed [EDIT] prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans."

Who said this? Not some Muslim radical. It was President Truman (the edits were used to disguise the words "Pearl Harbor" and "American." Back when he was considering whether to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, he reasoned that the Japanese were brutes, they attacked us first and it would bring the war to an end.

Could not this same basic reasoning be used by a Muslim radical in detonating a bomb on an American city-or any city for that matter? It would not be based on correct reasoning (and neither was Truman's reasoning because hindsight is always 20-20).

I have long felt that if a nuclear bomb was used on America it would be pure historical irony, and in some eyes, historical justice. We came up with the bomb, we spent $2 billion dollars (a LOT of money in 1930s dollars) developing the bomb and we justified, morally, using the bomb to kill hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.

I am not a moral relativist and I believe in absolute rights and wrongs. What happened in London this morning was wrong and so would the detonation of a nuclear bomb.

Rather than lashing out against others who do wrong against us and get high-and-mighty attitudes against them, perhaps understanding where they are coming from and what their motives and perspectives are would be a better strategy? Then we ought to destroy and eliminate them from this Earth.

Part of the reason I have remained loyal to Apple (in heart, if not in my purchases), is that they are relatively immune to viruses, spyware and other malicious Web-based attacks on my property, identity and information.

This is about to change, according to the virus protection industry. As Microsoft-based products harden against web-based attacks, the bad people who perpetrate these attacks on the Internet will look to other ways of doing damage. A prime target will be Apple products. As they become more prevalent, they will be a more attractive attack. Also, Apple is not harden and most likely not ready for what these people are capable of. Apple has enjoyed relative peace when it comes to hacking and viruses, allowing their systems to become soft.

As I write this post on an Apple PowerBooks, I am realizing that I will not forever be safe. Similar to the way the U.S. was protected by oceans on both sides, Apple products have been kept safe. But that will change in the near future.

At least 3 subway bombings and a bombing of a double-decker bus leave at 45 dead and hundred injured in London. So far, a little known group called "Secret Al Queada Jihad of Europe" has claimed responsibility for the attack, but authorities have no independent verification of who is at fault.

If this traced to Islamicist terrorism, then it is undoubtedly a statement on Britain's cooperation with the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan. The G8 summit provided the timing and the symbolism.

I pray that Europe learn to face this continuing threat with resolve and that the moderate and peaceful Muslim believers are able to purge jihadist thought from their ranks.

I'm going to be out of town until Sunday afternoon/evening, but I've already been alerted that a handful of fantastic guest posts are on the way.

So, to save space and time, I'll wrap up several articles I've been looking at lately... Let's roll!

Some say that President George W. Bush is an evil man who wants to kill off old people and starve the poor, but apparently he is a good friend to Africa. However. We've also learned that bicycles are not a friend to young George, and Segways aren't either for that matter. In totally related news, circumcision and AIDS are not very friendly with each other either.

It all connects. I promise.

Journalists like brevity. Well there ya go, WashPost, eat your heart out: the English language in its most poetic. (though at least I don't mislead the nation with my headlines)

I saw this as a signature to an e-mail I received yesterday:

"People are like stained glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within."

- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Critics of the gay marriage movement often make a statement like, "Gays are trying to upend a 5,000 year old institution." Stephanie Coontz, writing for the NYTimes, makes a convincing point that this is not the case:

Heterosexuals were the upstarts who turned marriage into a voluntary love relationship rather than a mandatory economic and political institution. Heterosexuals were the ones who made procreation voluntary, so that some couples could choose childlessness, and who adopted assisted reproduction so that even couples who could not conceive could become parents. And heterosexuals subverted the long-standing rule that every marriage had to have a husband who played one role in the family and a wife who played a completely different one. Ga