The New York Times: A Day of Devastation

It's instinctive in humans to search for the meaning of an event like this, once shock and grief have begun to subside. And there will be plenty of meanings to find in the ways that humans reacted as this disaster struck and in its aftermath as the relief effort begins. But except for our obligations to help the victims in any way we can, the underlying story of this tragedy is the overpowering, amoral mechanics of the earth's surface, the movement of plates that grind and shift and slide against each other with profound indifference to anything but the pressures that drive them. Whenever those forces punctuate human history, they do so tragically. They demonstrate, geologically speaking, how ephemeral our presence is.

A search of the New York Times since 1996 on the words 'global warming' produces a return set of 12,837 records. Scientists are now claiming that the Earth has not been this 'warm' since the 1500's. The opinion piece referenced above states it best, although it is doubtful that the New York Times is reversing its position on the damage your SUV is doing to the environment.

"...the overpowering, amoral mechanics of the earth's surface, the movement of plates that grind and shift and slide against each other with profound indifference to anything... "

There were no SUV's in the 1500's - what caused the Earth's warming then? The transient nature of mankind is nothing compared to the earth itself. We are but a temporary scourge on the surface of an entity that existed long before we did, and will continue to do so, long after we are gone. I think it is pompous for humankind to believe that it even has the capability to exert such forces as to destroy the earth. And the earth has ways of letting us know...

Welcome to Gmail

A Google approach to email.

Gmail is an experiment in a new kind of webmail, built on the idea that you should never have to delete mail and you should always be able to find the message you want.

If you would like an invitation to Gmail, my Gmail address is below.

The key features are:

· Search, don't sort.
Use Google search to find the exact message you want, no matter when it was sent or received.

· Don't throw anything away.
1000 megabytes of free storage so you'll never need to delete another message.

· Keep it all in context.
Each message is grouped with all its replies and displayed as a conversation.

· No pop-up ads. No untargeted banners.
You see only relevant text ads and links to related web pages of interest.

I have 4 invitations to the Gmail Beta. (That's a large-scale user testing phase, for you non-geeks). Right now the only way to get a Gmail account from Google is to be invited. You can buy invites on Ebay if you want to - but the 4 I have are free. And if you want one, just let me know. alandix - at - gmail.com, you would have to replace the - at - with the & symbol. I am trying to not let this address get harvested by too many spammers, even though it has a pretty awesome built in spam filter. I really like the conversation labeling. So far that is the best feature - no more trying to remember the folder you stuck something in - I really like it.

Archives are working now

In case anyone has clicked on the Archives over on the right and found them to be links to empty holes in Cyberspace - I just fixed it. Funny how a web guy has about 20 broken links on his site and never notices, but finds broken links on someone elses site and spends 20 minutes debugging it for them and sends them a detailed email about how to fix it. (Yeah, I have done that.)

USA versus Everybody

Peace on Earth, good will toward man. Kind between a rock and a hard place when it comes to supporting Taiwan. Independence was something the British vowed to crush at one point in American history too.
China Army Will 'Crush' Any Taiwan Independence Move
Forget about "links" to al Qaida - The militant group Ansar al-Sunna should be as big a priority as bin Ladin himself.
Iraq Militants Post Video on Bombing of U.S. Base
And things aren't going so well in North Korea either.
Nuclear Weapons Program: North Korea
But here is the real kicker, and information you will be lucky to find unless you look for it...
Poll shows troops in support of war
So here is my fear, eventually something is going to pop and I am not entirely sure why it hasn't already. Everyone knows that the US Military is underfunded for the missions it is currently being tasked with. The December 26th natural disaster will surely warrant some diversion of US Military assets for HA missions. If China decides to take back Taiwan, we have to respond. If North Korea invades the South, or worse yet, nukes them, we have to respond. The question is though, with what? Not the Reserve and National Gaurd, they're as tapped out as the active duty forces.
I am not going to predict anything, for fear I would be right. Lets just say I am not comfortable right now. Not one bit.

This just posted to Drudge. Looks like if we help Taiwan in a pinch, Russia may be a possible ally for China. How Nice.

ACLU in Half-Baked Bush Smear

White House-approved "torture" tactics include "sleep deprivation and stress positions," as well as "loud music, interrogators yelling at subjects and prisoners with hoods on their heads."

This is torture? Horse-shit. It's your freshman year at any military academy. Actually, probably not anymore, but it sure was when I went through it. (1992).
Oh my, we better not find out you are yelling at those future murder-bombers. Whatever.