The opinionated fool declareth:

More evidence that Michael Moore is a bastard. Link. Note that the link might ask for a subscription, but it worked for me once, but not again - maybe you get one free look at the article?

From The Star : Katie's parents hate Tom and his silent-birth, Thetan-hating ways. They want their girl away from the Scientology hocus-pocus and back to the blood-drinking, saint-filled, men-in-dresses normalcy of the Catholic Church. But another person notes that During the Danish cartoon controversy, the Star justified its decision not to reprint the cartoons on the basis that religion was off-limits for ridicule. Yeah. Unless it's Catholics. It's okay, though, because we won't kill you. Link.

It's my birthday today. I've thought a bit more about the death penalty and the judicial/penitentiary systems and I'd like to say a couple more things. Punishment, if it truly serves a penitential role (our word penitentiary comes from the Latin "penitentis" meaning to be sorry and reformed for the mistake or offense you've given) is good, but it seems our justice system has morphed into a sort of strained, quasi-civilized and organized vengeance-extraction system. We let the family members of vitims watch their loved one's killers die... so that they'll have closure - as if ensuring that another person dies and you get to watch "the animal" be killed is closure. I submit that it's all veiled animosity and beastly vengeance taking when it comes to the death penalty. Frakly it horrifies me to see people say "that's what he gets, justice is served" after hearing a death sentence pronounced; something that lowers the victims do...

Today the death penalty serves no other purpose than to fulfill the desire of victims to exact revenge upon their attacker. This is beastly, and completely un-Christian in character and form. I'm not sure why, I just suddenly wanted to say that. Anybody have any input? PS - I'm listening to Gravity Kills' "Guilty" - such a good song... Behind closed doors your words ring hollow What you said they'd be What behavior? Who are you, but I like it Now I'm done with nothing new, sometimes green sometimes blue And I'm guilty, and I'm guilty, and I'm guilty, and I'm guilty And you're guilty too Hey Hey Hey I'm guilty and you're guilty too Hey Hey Hey Hey I'll tell you something, something new You're hearing nothing, nothing true You're killing me, I'm killing you And I'm guilty too One two three, I found you out so easily One two three, I found in you what I found in me The time is wrong, the time is right--be care...

C'mon - they were warned and didn't listen. *sarcasm* Tennis players and coach shot for wearing shorts. Guess they didn't get the memo that shorts-wearers get a .223 hi-velo in the face.

I don't consider myself to have strong opinions about the immigration "issue" other than the fact that the "issue" affects millions of people, could have a potentially giant impact on the future of our country and economy, etc. The thing is I don't really have a grasp on the facts and realistic repercussions that anything might have, so I'm not really a fan of either the GOP or Democratic party's vision, other than the fact that I'm aware that the GOP almost always proposes solutions that bias favor towards the affluent while the Democrats almost always propose legislation that tilts a bit too close to socialistic commonwealth stuff. That being said, here is one man's opinions regarding the House just okay'ed yesterday. Linkzorz! The article is written by Thomas Sewell . It strikes me as a lot of common sense.

Edward C. Green, a senior research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health explained in 2003 that the one in ten failure rate of condoms protection from AIDS is "not good enough for a fatal disease." He added, "The way condoms are marketed in Africa and other developing parts of the world is as if they were 100 percent safe." Uganda's AIDS campaign, which stressed abstinence first and being faithful second and condoms only if one was crazy enough to forego the first two, has been seen as the only successful program in reversing the AIDS tide in Africa. Appearing before the African subcommittee of the U.S. Senate on May 19, 2003, Green stated: "Infection rates [in Uganda] have declined from 21% to 6 % since 1991. Many of us in the AIDS and public health communities didn't believe that abstinence and faithfulness were realistic goals. It now seems we were wrong." You don't say?

Update on that story I linked to, regarding Iran legislation designed to make non-Muslims wear visible markers showing themselves as such: "It is now clear the story is not true," Douglas Kelly, the National Post's editor in chief, wrote in a long editorial on Page 2. "We apologize for the mistake and for the consternation it has caused not just National Post readers, but the broader public who read the story." Link.

What the heck is this all about?

Really enjoying the Dolorean this morning. I suggest you do the same. There's a little sample for you over yonder in the "Currently Playing" section along with a little description. Although the song I have uploaded is from their ablum "Not Exotic," if you are interested in buying an album of theirs, I'd suggest "Violence in the Snowy Fields" as overall it's probably a bit better than NE, and you can get it from eMusic. morning watch by dolorean i found myself again on the morning watch for those of us who cannot sleep just because of the things we’ve done we wake up early with the starlings and as night’s sins fade away and bee stings lose their swell so begins my day, so ends my hell and as night falls i prepare my bed and curse the pillow’s stony lies for just as sure as my body begs for rest i’ll be up before the sunrise.

"...the Dutch physician who performed euthanasia noted that: 'To kill someone is something far reaching and that is something that nags at your conscience. . . . I wonder what it would be like not to have these cases in my practice. Perhaps I would be a much more cheerful person.'" -From E. J. Emanuel et al., The Practice of Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide in the United States: Adherence to Proposed Safeguards and Effects on Physicians , 280 JAMA 507, 507 (1998). :(

Why the fuck not? Link to an unbelievable story. Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims. Because that's always a good idea. Fear not, though, I'm sure if things start really looking bad (after the first two hundred thousand or so of my Christian, Jewish and other non-Islamic friends are murdered) the U.N. will pass some piss-shit two-bit "mandate" backed by their limp dick policy of jacking off while people die and screaming like pansy-face socialists in French accents while watching women get machete'd on television and their maids and house-servants cook their dinners for them while people are starved to death by their oppressive "president" and enjoying their afternoon tea and nasty biscuits while reading stories of this fucking lunatic in Iran waving around sam...

Power-drunk crazy man delivers speech to massive crowd chanting "Death to America!" Oh wait, it's the "President" of Iran! Video footage. Everything about this man is scary. First he wrote that letter to Bush, and now it looks as though he'll write a letter to Benedict XVI ... Note that this is exactly what the Caliphates did back in the day when Muslim armies were gearing up to march against what would come to be organized as Europe. I'm just sayin', it's like straight out of the history books.

??????!!!!!!

Professor Holterhoff ... Assistant Professor of Petroleum Geology in the Department of Geosciences. Not too shabby. :)

Oh, no, no, NO! I put on Toby Keith, you know, just because the maternal parental unit purchased it for me a while back and it's different from the usual stuff I listen to... ...and I liked it! And now I'm whistling "Whiskey Girl" and... I hate it. What a stupid song. But... the tiniest bit enjoyable to listen to... Gag me.

Dan Brown sez: The only thing fictional in “The Da Vinci Code” is the characters and the action that takes place. All of the locations, the paintings, the ancient history, the secret documents, the rituals, all of this is factual.

An update for those of you who never see: I've got it. Check out this random picture. I'm smiling (not crying...)

Nike announces new hijab/burka active-wear. Keeping the women fit... and in line ... "Cuz otherwise we'd have to let 'em burn to death!" Linkage. So weird that Nike is catering to this outrageous institutionalized sexism, a rotting part of Islam that shouldn't have lasted much past the 1300s. Wowzers - that almost sounded like a Leftist statement I just made! Haha - but seriously, it's worse than just sexism. The institution of hijab is a transparent and obvious enslavement of women. Be quiet, do not speak to men, do not go outside, do not let yourself be seen, and never ever be recognizable. It says two things: 1.) that Muslims traditionally cannot develop a reasonable solution to their problems, and that 2.) the female form is somehow bad. So, the first thing, the whole "reasonable solution" thing. I can respect the fact that Muslim men recognize that the female form, just looking at it, can be a temptation to sin. I recognize the same thi...

I gotta say, though, that all this last-minute "holy crap, I have to make it look like I've been reading and learning for the whole last year" cramming mode of this past weekend has given me a fresh love for Sevendust... When the treble percussion and guitars explode in at the beginning of Black, you just know you're going to kick some ass.

Two things: 1.) This is without a doubt the funniest damned article title I've seen so far this year . Bwahahaha! 2.) My yearly progress review is today at 2pm. I went earlier to the store and got some nice cheddar cheese and crackers as well as a mixed fruit platter to hopefully get my academic comittee in a good mood, but still - it might be rough. The Man on the Brink™ might be looking at some kind of probationary academic period. So, if you've got a space 20 seconds, go ahead and intone an Ave Maria or Pater Noster or, you know, if you're all industrious and stuff, you could do both. Heaven knows if it'll help.

Hoo - now this is rich! Want to hear something funny? BBC's 24-hour (CNN-style) network television station recently screwed up pretty big while trying to interview an expert about a recent court case involving music downloads. You see, they accidentally grabbed the expert guy's cabbie ... You just have to love the expression on the guy's face when he realizes he's being introduced as some internet music distribution big-wig. He reminds me of a character from Guy Ritchie's Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels or Snatch . Poor sod. So, here's a link to the story: Link. YouTube link to the actual BBC video (in case the link from inside the story doesn't work). Sadly, what the guy had to say isn't much worse in quality and insight than what the actual "expert" would probably have come on to say. So funny! :)

Both the Dalai Lama and the Successor of Peter are called "His Holiness," although surprisingly, the Catholic "His Holiness" wasn't the one condemning oral and anal sex as an ordered way of sexual conduct in a recent interview. The title of the blog post says it all: Religious right wing homophobic bigotry from no less than the Dalai Lama . "A Western friend asked me what harm could there be between consenting adults having oral sex, if they enjoyed it," the Dalai Lama continues, warming to his theme. "But the purpose of sex is reproduction, according to Buddhism. The other holes don't create life. I don't mind - but I can't condone this way of life." And the highly-quotable sure-shot from later in the blog entry: Western elites don't realize how alone we actually are in the world in our belief that sex is an utterly private activity that can be disassociated from commitment, biological constitution, community, gender, just ab...

Andrea Clarke has died. At least it was from progression of illness rather than lethal witholding of treatment. Bless her...

I admit, looking at the bloody fragments that it produces isn't what many would call pleasant , but to expose people to it often introduces surprising feelings... among which may be compassion for a fellow human being. Other people react in other ways . I'm not sure exactly where I stand on exposing people without their consent to images of the frank reality of the consequences (physical) of abortion. You can recall recently that I had that picture of an aborted 8-week-old baby with the caption under it saying, "This is what choice looks like at 8 weeks." But... what of it? It's not like that's something I made up. Not many people understand that a child looks like that after only 8-weeks, and that since many people (mistakenly, I believe) judge that the unborn people don't qualify as people "since they don't look like us, grown up humans" I think it serves a purpose to demonstrate how early that line of thinking breaks down, although it...

Again from Andrea Clark's sister ( Link ). From the link: How am I doing? I am doing FABULOUS! My sister, Andrea, is GETTING WELL. Her white blood cell count has been down to normal for the FOURTH day in a ROW now, and she has been able to get off of the blood pressure raising drugs that she has had to be on for MONTHS. She is doing GREAT. Her new doctor ... has also halved the amount of pain medications that she is taking, so that she can talk to her family. He says that her condition is "serious," but that she does have the ability to get much better. The futility proceedings are stopped now. Because this new doctor took over her case, it is all stopped. I'm so happy I don't know what to think, or say, or do. Not only is my sister NOT going to be put to death by St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, but it also looks like she is RECOVERING from her heart surgery, finally. Find that doctor and thank him/her!!! Amazing that it takes a medical doctor to save the day -...