(no subject)

This morning's bed head is rather exceptional.

Morning muddle

I must go to work shortly, but syreene and scarcrest are passing along interesting articles:

1. You know how bad the situation is when the president's choice for attorney general has to formally pledge not to support torture anymore.

Now think about that, people. Think about why we revile people like Hitler and Saddam, and any country that would do such things to other people. Do you really think it makes you safer? Do you? How safe were those countries when they were overrun by other countries who thought Germany and Iraq's practices were Draconian? What do you think is going to happen when we stop becoming the terrorized and start becoming terrorists on a large, organized scale?

Think about who we are choosing. Think about what they say, and what they have done. And then realize that what they have done is the truth.

Well, that has taken longer than expected...

And about this Livejournal merger. I'm not sure why people are getting so upset about it. The people who run these services have to make a living. I'm amazed Livejournal has been kept free for so long. We pay 20 bucks a year and we expect the same reliability that we expect from our banking institutions. They need to do what they need to do. Because they want to succeed, I think they will make some kind of setup that is still attractive to us as users.

Eeeee hee hee heee

dslartoo just told me to check out the easter eggs on the LOTR series. I have been remiss. Oh so remiss.

I saw the Two Towers featuring Gollum's acceptance speech. And then the spoof interview with Dom (Merry).

Oh, fun. Fun fun fun.

In case I am not the last twit on earth to know how to access the Easter Eggs:

-Go to disk 1 of the Extended edition
-Choose the last set of scenes in scene selection.
-Use the down arrow until you see the gold ring.
-Press enter at the gold ring.

Oh, and for those with wee kids, there's nasty language in the Two Towers egg. Yesssss, my preciouszzzzes.

The Geneva Convention: the Hummel Figurines of International Law

Did the President nominate Rudy for Attorney General?

Ugh. Abu Al Gonsalez was an evasive rascal on his hearing.

Okay, is it just a feature of Asian movies that we have to watch weaponry fly through the air, be it arrows, daggers, or martial artists?

Food for thought: Iraqi Mortality Rate

Many versions of this article are going around, some discussing the survey methodology. It looks to be that before the American invasion, the mortality rate of Iraqis was 5 out of every 1000. Since the American invasion, we are up to 12.3 out of every 1000. Essentially, living in an American invaded Iraq is twice as bad for an Iraqi's health as living under Saddam's regime.

You can read more here, or do you own google search.

An excerpt:
I've long been intrigued by the seemingly limitless human capacity for inconsistency. The deaths of 3,000 people, mostly Americans, at the hands of terrorists in 2001 dramatically altered the course of human events, but the deaths of 3,000 Haitians from last summer's killer hurricanes hardly registered in the public's consciousness. We regard the 9-11 attacks as one of history's greatest crimes - yet the millions who have died in Sudan, Rwanda, The Ivory Coast and elsewhere in equally willful attacks merit, for many of us, little more than a sigh.

There are countless examples of our inconsistent regard of large-scale death. The number of victims most often associated with World War II is 6 million - the number of Jews massacred. Yet we often overlook the 16 million civilians in the Soviet Union alone who perished in the war.

'Simply a byproduct'

The British medical journal Lancet in October published a study placing the number of Iraqi deaths since the American invasion at between 8,000 and 194,000 - with the most likely number statistically being the midpoint, 98,000. Yet I've heard many Americans dismiss Iraqi civilian casualties as a mere byproduct of war.

So, what have we learned today, kids? It's okay to kill if you don't make a big production about it. At this rate, we've acquired about 200,000 eyes for 6,000 eyes (over 8,000 if you count our American Soldiers' deaths).

I'm sure God is proud of us.

To paraphrase a spoof interview of God in The Onion, "What part of 'thou shalt not kill' do you not understand?"