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Now that’s just rude.  She may not be bright, but don’t call her a dummy.  Oh, wait, they mean as in mannequin.  That’s just wrong.  And painful.  But I don’t think the guy needs to be registered as a sex offender.  He didn’t harm anyone (except himself) and registering him as an offender stigmatized him as a threat to society and what may have been a stupid incident becomes a life changing event.  The punishment may, in the end, be worse for society because of the detrimental effects being labeled "Sex Offender" might cause on this guy.

"My friends, each of you is a single cell in the great body of the State. And today, that great body has purged itself of parasites. We have triumphed over the unprincipled dissemination of facts. The thugs and wreckers have been cast out. And the poisonous weeds of disinformation have been consigned to the dustbin of history. Let each and every cell rejoice! For today we celebrate the first, glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directive! We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology, where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thought is a more powerful weapon than any fleet or army on Earth! We are one people. With one will. One resolve. One cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death. And we will bury them with their own confusion! We shall prevail!"

- 1984 

Happy Birthday.  Probably make good soup.

Spammers use nonsense wording to get around spam filters. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to me. Got this email today: Hello, Q ing f ions - vi rmaExpres op uit overpay or your Meddicat sit our Pha s Sh V X C A P V I a I m r A A n A b o L G a L i z I R x I e a U A S n c M 69,95 99,95 85,45

I think it’s for medications. Silly rabbit.

When I was a kid, I got a book on mysteries of the sea (the Bermuda Triangle, Flying Dutchman, etc.). The only real story that stuck out to me was the Mystery of Oak Island. Located in Nova Scotia, this tiny island has what is called euphemistically a money pit. In this pit is supposed to be a treasure of unimaginable value, but at the price. People have died trying to find it. As a kid it had all the elements of a good adventure story: an island in a remote location, pirates with buried treasure, and traps to catch the unwary. It was a perfect tale.

Over the years, I have read more about the island, finding out the stories of those who attempted to reveal it’s treasures. Franklin Roosevelt, 32nd President of the U.S.A., was involved in a 1909 expedition to uncover any treasure. He also failed. Since then there have been numerous attempts to find the treasure, none succeeded.

So, image my delight when I found out that the island is up for sale. The idea of dropping a cool eight million and owning the island of my childhood is too tantalizing to pass up. Except for the eight million part. Ah well, probably better that I never actually look for the treasure. Childhood fantasies are so much more exciting then reality.

There is a pervasive air of superiority in America, a sense of entitlement that comes from being the only superpower in the world. A good number of people (mostly pundits) assume that Americans are somehow special and deserving of special treatment. I remember listening to the G. Gordon Liddy show a year or so back and hearing the producer say that Americans deserve the rights laid out in the Constitution and that no one else did. Her reasoning was that these rights were reserved to those in America only because they were “American Citizens”. The logic was circular, but a telling clue into the minds of those who believe that Americans are superior to the rest of the worlds population. It’s a disturbing trend that continues today. Apparently, members of the House are mulling changing the “birthright” clause of the Constitution in an effort to reduce illegal immigration.

The problem they are trying to address is simple. People are coming to the U.S. and giving birth to a child. This child, by law, is an U.S. citizen. These children, when they come of age are then turning around and sponsoring their parents for citizenship. Of course, the government could deport the parents before the children come of age, but then they split up the family and put a burden on the government to care for the child. So the answer they propose is to eliminate the birth right of children to be U.S. citizens if they are the child of an illegal immigrant.

So why is this wrong? Effectively, we would be setting up a class system of “Us” vs. “Them”, creating a country club of rights in which those born to certain parents are entitle more rights then those born of a different set of parents. And because of how the immigration system is currently set up, undesirables, and the children of undesirables, will be rejected based solely on their parentage. What is more un-American then that?