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Years ago, my dad and I were arguing about the ethics of vegetarianism. I made the comment that 200 years ago, the black were not considered human and therefore without rights. My dad asked me if I believed the oppression of animals is the same thing. At the time I didn’t know how to argue, or have the courage to disagree. Now that I’m older and a little more confident, I believe that the unnecessary oppression and murder of animals are as horrific as if they were occurring to a human animal. But, while I believe that, I also believe that reaction ads, like the ones PETA is doing accomplish little then to “preach to the choir”. Those that participate in the actions do so willingly, albeit it a bit ignorantly, but to confront them with a juxtaposition of the Jewish holocaust to animal factories does little but cause them to react with defensiveness, denying that they are the perpetrators of equivalent crimes. But like so many people, PETA is catering to the belief that shock wakens people up to their crimes. Instead they should try to educate people more and shock them less.

From the beginning, I’ve been against the United States trying to get UN involvement in the Iraq issue. Not because I think the US should “go it alone” against Iraq or that there should be a war, but because the entire process is a sham; the US has no intention of letting Iraq disarm. Essentially, the US has gone before the UN and proposed resolutions that Iraq has eventually agreed to, only to have the US turn around and say they are still going to attack (in essence) because they don’t believe Iraq. It makes the US look like it’s upset that it is losing a game it decided to play and therefor is “taking the ball home” until it gets it way. Case in point, the US demanded that Iraq disarm missiles. Iraq has agreed, in principal (whatever that means), and the US is still saying it doesn’t believe them. It’s become a joke, with Iraq winning the world’s sympathies. The US should either let the UN handle the entire thing or never have gone to them in the first place, attacking Iraq. The US can’t eat it’s cake and have it too.

Four years ago, I went about designing my ideal laptop. While it wouldn’t have compared favorably to todays gigahertz laden wonders, it had one thing that has been missing from laptops until recently: touch screens. Sure, the technology has existed for years (kiosks, expensive laptops), but those were limited in power and performance. Then Microsoft “revolutionized” the market by introducing the tablet version of XP. I’d hoped this would be a big thing and it looks like it will be, according to revised analyst numbers. It just makes sense. For a majority of tasks that the average user will have, the mouse interface is all they need. In my opinion, it is a lot more natural to point with a pen then it is with a mouse. There will always be things that the mouse is just inherently better at (first-person shooter) and it is more efficient to reach and move a mouse from the keyboard then it is to pick up a pen, lift it, and select something with a pen, but these are cases where a mouse could be plugged in and used.

Of course, most of the companies developing tablet PCs dropped low-end components into them because they viewed it as a risk, but now that it’s taking off, I hope they will up the resources. I’ll make one prediction: Microsoft will incorporate the Tablet PC code into the standard Windows XP (or what ever the next version of their OS is called) base, dropping the pretense of separation between the two.

He walks in the shadow of the night, fighting the injustices of man… That or he drops his chew toy behind the couch and get’s tangled up in the curtain.

Yea, sometimes, things just don’t need to be hooked up to a computer:

Well, Turkey has thrown a big old kink into the US efforts to prepare for a Iraq war. Buy demanding more money when the US plans require there lands, Turkey has done a major capitalistic coup that is probably causing those in power to writhe in anger. Gotta love it when the system works (or fails, depending on your point of view).

Actually this could be potentially dangerous to the US. Imagine if Iraq were able to damage or destroy the ships as they were waiting to enter Turkey. In my opinion, that could be a massive set back to the US war effort, and potentially more dangerous, a rallying cry against the US.

There are two extremes in the War on Iraq. One side says “Bush is evil, therefor there shouldn’t be a war”. The other side is “Iraq is evil, therefor there should be a war” . Neither side is right, but they are the most vocal and the ones people tend to hear. Then I read an article like this one., where the author is rational and systematic in his view about why we should attack Iraq. He lays out a decent argument for attacking Iraq without falling into blind emotion. This is how opinion pieces should be done.

I’ve always thought one of the greatest things about our society (and others) is the ability to peacefully disagree with each other without consequence. Then I read articles like this one, where members of the United States Congress are contemplating punishing Germany and France for disagreeing with the US when it comes to Iraq. How dare we call ourselves the “land of the free” if we punish those whose opions differ from ours?

Too further irritate me is their blatant attempt to disgust the US consumer by potentially labeling French wines as containing cows blood. Guess what? A majority of wines out there contain ingredients that would make the average consumer nauseas. From blood to fish bladder (isinglass). This is one of the reasons that the liquor industry petitioned for, and won, an exception from food labeling laws.

Okay, so the normal routine is to put the dogs in the shower, strip down, and then climb in with them. After a bit of struggling with Dash, the two pups are normally pretty clean. Okay, I don’t actually do that, my girlfriend does, but you get the point. Anyway, I’m not sure I’d be willing to spend $34 each to clean the dogs, but I would love to see how they reacted to a dog wash. Aggie would probably like it, but Dash would through a fit.