Feb

3

Students Should Start Protesting Now

Filed Under Gov't & Politics, The World, University | Leave a Comment

Obviously students have the Zimbabwe government running scared. They have ordered the schools not to re-open in two weeks and only re-open in two months after elections. There has been demonstrations in the past over rigged elections.

So… Rather than go to every effort to make sure the elections appear legitimate, the approach is to take a preemptive strike against the students. The students should take to the streets now (or in two weeks when their schools do not re-open).

Jul

28

Racism

Filed Under Personal / Relationships, The World | Leave a Comment

Lacey’s story about her first brush with racism in Houston reminds me that they were well intentioned. I am not very hard on such people because my so very white grandmother has made similar comments. Hers was that the neighborhood was suffering from all the crime, the specific example was that my bike was stolen out of our yard. Actually it was stolen by a white kid on the street.

Despite that my father is black and my mother (her daughter) is white, to my grandmother I wasn’t black. I pointed out that to most people who make similar comments who don’t know me consider me black and part of the crime problem because I am black. She never made such a comment again (at least in my presence). I was 13 or 14 at the time.

A couple years later, a guy who was part of my “crew” told me he believed it was morally wrong for blacks and whites to interbreed. However, he didn’t consider me a bad person. I was highly offended at the time. It took a while for me to understand people have lines they consider good or bad, but the line can be easily moved at whim.

Being a mixed kid, race is something I have to deal with almost every day. For the most part, I have come to have blinders to many things that upset those who are still sensitive. There are plenty of opportunities to get upset:

  • Slow service at a restaurant.
  • Sales people following me in a store.
  • Police officers stopping the path to shadow me.

Why get upset over other people’s ignorance when it doesn’t have an impact on me? The police officer who arrests me just because I am “black” would, of course, have a lawsuit coming.

Jun

2

Prayers

Filed Under The World | Leave a Comment

My heartfelt prayers go out to the Baha’is in Iran who are undergoing the latest wave of persecutions.

Iran’s Bahai Religious Minority Says It Faces Raids and Arrests - New York Times

Members of the Bahai religious minority in Iran said this week that the government had recently intensified a campaign of arrests, raids and propaganda that was aimed at eradicating their religion in Iran, the country of its birth.

Mar

12

Not So Secret

Filed Under The World | Leave a Comment

Keeping secrets is difficult. People blab. People are slackers. People are clueless. However, due to the media we expect the CIA (and FBI and federal government in general) to be on the ball. Their job is to protect us. So we want to believe they are best of the best of the best; that everyone there has a 150+ IQ, has a ENTJ personality, is moral, is just, and is closest gadget freak.

Reality is people who work for the CIA are not like James Bond. They are more like accountants. Mistakes are common. Failure of imagination lies with the administration whose task is generally to keep things running smoothly. Only when things embarrass the administration do they seek to be more imaginative.

Report: Web Searches Can ID CIA Employees - Yahoo! News

The identities of 2,600
CIA employees and the locations of two dozen of the agency’s covert workplaces in the United States can be found easily through Internet searches, according to an investigation by the Chicago Tribune.

The newspaper obtained the information from data providers who charge fees for access to public records and reported on its findings in Sunday editions. It did not publish the identities or other details on its searches, citing concern it could endanger the CIA employees.

Jul

4

Frivolous Lawsuits

Filed Under The World | Leave a Comment

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian astrologist who says
NASA has altered her horoscope by crashing a spacecraft into a comet is suing the U.S. space agency for damages of $300 million, local media reported on Monday.

NASA deliberately crashed its probe, named Deep Impact, into the Tempel 1 comet to unleash a spray of material formed billions of years ago which scientists hope will shed new light on the composition of the solar system.

“It is obvious that elements of the comet’s orbit, and correspondingly the ephemeris, will change after the explosion, which interferes with my astrology work and distorts my horoscope,” Izvestia daily quoted astrologist Marina Bai as saying in legal documents submitted before Monday’s collision.

A spokeswoman for a Moscow district court said initial preparations for the case were underway but could not say when the hearing would begin. NASA representatives in Moscow were unavailable for comment.
Source: Russian astrologist sues NASA over comet crash

Bolding my own.

According the NASA scientists on NPR’s Science Friday, the anticipated change in the Temple 1 comet’s orbit would 33ft. Wow… that is about $10 million a ft.

Jun

4

Our Changing Planet

Filed Under The World | Leave a Comment

The BBC has a news article on the UN release of an atlas which highlights how humans have changed the Earth. Cities are larger than ever. Whole mountains have been leveled. Swamps have been drained. Stronger storms have altered coastlines.

Apr

16

A Little Crowded

Filed Under The World | Leave a Comment

The countries who put stuff up in space should I think be responsible and safely drop all of the junk left up there. While the place is pretty big, collisions between objects in orbit are still pretty likely when there are so many items up there.

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