Category: General

A few days ago, I was feeling argumentative so I sent off a scorching rant to an editorial by “Brother Kelly Boggs” a Creationist pastor (see letter a few blogs below.) I didn’t really do it for their sake, and didn’t expect a reply, but lo and behold, not only did “Brother Kelly” send be rebuttal, but so did a member of “The Baptist Press.” The responses aren’t really worth mentioning, since they missed the point of the email. The best part though was the “biblical evidence for why we should attack Iraq” in one of the emails (apparently supporting evolution and/or atheism automatically makes you a peacenik.)
Ah, bashing religious fundies by day and liberal wackos by night – are there any sane people left in the world?

Someone stole my bike. They didn’t just steal it, they snatched it between 6 and 8pm from outside my apartment, with me at home, the windows wide open, and my computer playing music. It was a really nice new and expensive bike too, that I had just been getting used to enjoying. I think any sentiments of what I think of the thieves or the College Station police department would be superfluous.

On a more positive note, I’ve been working on my art collection. On of the highlights is a gallery of bad art. Half of the pieces are famous examples of modern art, going for millions of dollars, and half are made by amateurs/kids/me. Which is which?

On a more positive note, Sea lions are being used to guard U.S. ships in Gulf. I think it’s kinda cool: “the animals were trained to mark people but not to kill. The mammals can dive to 1,000 feet, swim at speeds up to 25 miles per hour, as well as see and hear better under water than any human or mechanical device the military has.”

MSNBC reports that much of North Korea’s income comes from slave labor camps whose products are “filtered” through China and often ends up at U.S. markets. (I wonder if most libertarians support that as “free trade”?) North Korea has basically become one big slave labor camp — one which many people are deperately trying to escape at the punishment of death (or worse.) As anyone but a Marxist would realize, North Korea’s communist economy has been a miserable failure:

“At the end of the Korean War nearly half a century ago, incomes in the North were actually higher than in the South. Since then, average income and living standards have been falling in inverse proportion to their rise in South Korea. Now, according to CIA estimates, the average North Korean exists on roughly $1,000 a year, compared with $18,000 a year for South Koreans.”

North Korea’s fanaticism however, hasn’t diminished:

“Refugees who were picked up in China just trying to make a living are likely to get six months’ imprisonment in North Korea, but there is no crime worse than wanting to defect to South Korea.
“It is the severest crime,” said one of the refugees who escaped last year through a foreign embassy in Beijing and did not want his name used. “Surely they will be executed. Or even if they are not shot, they will be sent to a political prison, and they will have to suffer there all the rest of their lifetimes, and they will die there.”

It seems like every single blog on the internet has an ode of some sort to the downed space shuttle. Not all are positive — Laurel things that it’s time to privatize (i.e. close) NASA because it’s a waste of taxpayer’s money. I think it’s important not to confuse the spirit of discovery that allowed man to go to space, and the particular method by which that is being done today.
The International Space Station, (whose massive cost overruns may well have caused maintenance failures that caused Columbia to blow up) is a perfect example of the wrong approach to take to space exploration. The ISS is a typical result of multinational bureaucracies trying to make a political statement (under a scientific cover) and I could have told you with near certainty when this plan was just an idea that the true cost of the ISS was wildly underestimated. In an age when space tourism has become practical (as the Russians have shown) and commercial satellites are launched on a regular basis, a government-run space agency should stick to military applications, and leave the space exploration to businessmen. Skeptics will complain that there is not enough research money for a private version of the ISS, but I bet if the government allowed private enterprise to decide which areas research should go to I am sure that the results would be much better, even if a private ISS takes longer to build.

My internet access (most of the city’s in fact) was down because Cox Internet messed up. Grrr…this just isn’t my week. I went to my ECON class today (more on that later) and realized that I had somehow forgotten to go to last Thursday’s class…I’ve missed many classes during my 22 years, but I’ve never, forgotten about one.

I think I need a “mood” indicator….today’s is “Highly Irritable”

Someone hacked my server today. No, they didn’t deface my homepage with some porn — they got into my arg gallery and “ATH” decided to delete my collection of paintings by Tamara de Lempicka. Sadly, I didn’t have a backup since that was it was recently added. How pathetic is that? Some peope hack Microsoft, IBM, CIA, etc, but these punks decided to go after my art. Anyway, with the database file safely out of the way (something I should have done as a precaution), this shouldn’t happen again. Just shows that you can never be too carefull about your mission-critical…online art gallery.
Edit: They struck again, exploiting a vulnerabilty in the gallery code. I traced the attack to Montevideo, Uruguay (IP: 200.149.0.209) If anyone want’s no snitch to ISP (yo no hablo espanol) it’s http://www.telemar.net.br/

I lost my keys today. I got off the bus and unlocked my bike on my way to get some food but when I got to Taco Cabana for some burritos, the keys were gone. I retraced my path, but someone had definitely taken the keys in the five minutes it took me to come back to the bike rack. Needless to say, I was pissed. I was locked out of my apartment, unable to leave my bike anywhere, and my roommate doesn’t come home till late at night. When I got home, I climbed on the rails of my second story balcony, removed the net, and forced the window open, jumped to the ledge, climbed up, opened the window, and barely managed to avoid breaking the computer I landed on inside. It took me five minutes just to clear of my desk enough to step on it, but thankfully, none of the neighbors called the cops for me. Unfortunately, I am still going to have to get new locks for my bike, and keys/locks for my door and bike. Grrr. Lets hope whoever has my keys doesn’t use the Net much

If someone were to sum up everything I ever found wrong with the state of modern philosophy, this would be it. Note the source.

In case you haven’t seen it before, I’ve recently updated my art gallery.

Also, check out another one of my recent projects.