Author: cosmo

09/18/2006

Consider a few quotes from the President:

We are also there because there are great stakes in the balance. Let no one think for a moment that retreat would bring an end to conflict. The battle would be renewed in one country and then another. The central lesson of our time is that the appetite of aggression is never satisfied.
There is no single battleline which you can plot each day on a chart. The enemy is not easy to perceive, or to isolate, or to destroy. There are mistakes and there are setbacks. But we are moving, and our direction is forward. I think I reveal no secret when I tell you that we are dealing with a stubborn adversary who is committed to the use of force and terror to settle political questions.
This is a war of unparalleled brutality. Simple farmers are the targets of assassination and kidnapping. Women and children are strangled in the night because their men are loyal to their government. And helpless villages are ravaged by sneak attacks. Large-scale raids are conducted on towns, and terror strikes in the heart of cities.

But it’s not President Bush– it’s President Johnson, speaking of the Vietnam War in the late 1960’s. Interesting how he paints a picture of a terrorist enemy who is brutal, barbaric, and requires unprecedented measures to defeat. One could easily make that argument for every enemy the United States has ever faced.

Yet today we hear about how The Terrorists are so much worse than all of the enemies we’ve ever faced, how the government needs extraordinary powers to stop them, how we as citizens must steel ourselves for a war that may never end, how we must always be standing ready to sacrifice our rights and our freedoms in the name of the cause. Why is today’s war any worse than those of the past? How are the al Qaeda fundamentally worse than the Viet Cong?

Quoting Glenn Greenwald:

The only difference is that, for the first time, we have a President who claims that America is too weak and ineffective to defeat those enemies while adhering to our defining values and a superior set of civilized norms. George Bush is the first President, certainly since World War II, if not ever, to claim that we have to become the enemy and to descend to their barbarism in order to protect ourselves. What is new and unprecedented is not the enemy we face, but the fundamental and depraved changes to our national character which the President insists we much accept in order to win.

09/14/2006

The weather has been absolutely fantastic lately– perfect for ultimate. Today’s game was a great one. We play games to seven points, and in today’s game the scoring went something like this:

  • they started off the game by scoring two in a row. 0-2 them.
  • we stopped being lazy and scored four in a row. 4-2 us.
  • they took back the gauntlet and scored four in a row. 4-6 them.
  • we rallied against their game point and scored two in a row. 6-6.

    • So it was down to the last point, and everyone was tired because it was a tough game. After a few minutes of play, we had possession and I broke deep. I left my defender far behind me, and the throw came. It was a long bomb– probably a fifty-yard pass– but it was fading deep to the back corner of the end zone. I shifted into high gear and sprinted for all I was worth. The disc kept fading, and I knew I wouldn’t make it. I dove, but it was a foot out of reach. Dang.

    The game continued for perhaps another five minutes or so, with possession trading back and forth crazily. There were amazing defensive plays, a few lucky passes, and it was anyone’s contest. I love that kind of ultimate– everyone is playing to their maximum ability, everyone is absolutely exhausted, but everyone knows they only need the one break to win the game.

    Finally, I got the disc at about half-field and saw one of my teammates cutting across the end zone. I threw a forty-yard pass that curved exactly the way I wanted, and he met it near the sideline. Score, game over.

    Awesome.

09/14/2006

As if the demotion of Pluto– err, I mean 134340– wasn’t enough, the IAU has now renamed Xena to the much less cool name of Eris (the Greek god of lawlessness). The moon of Eris is Dysnomia.

It’s getting harder to keep track of the outer solar system these days…

09/13/2006

I was poking around the web a bit and came across a web site with this image on their home page (I’ve blurred the rest of the header to protect their identity):

For some reason that photo is funny and weird and creepy all at the same time. A couple of men on a beach… one guy holding a little globe and smiling at it… his friend putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder. It gives me shivers. What kind of stock-art photographer came up with this pose?

Yech.

09/11/2006

To commemorate Patriot Day, I present a copy of a revised Terrorist Threat Level scale. It shows the number of fatalities in several different categories, beginning with the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. (One could argue whether or not this was a “terrorist” act in the sense that the current administration uses the word, but no matter.)

Yep, it’s clear we need to be concerned about being killed by terrorists. The irony, perhaps, is that as I write this I’m battling a stuffy nose. I see that dying from the flu is six times more likely than dying from a terrorist act. Hopefully I’ll recover okay.

09/10/2006

Laralee and I really enjoy playing Settlers of Catan, a strategy board game that involves commerce, planning, and a little bit of backstabbing. The only real bummer for us is it’s a three- or four-person game, so we can’t play as often as we’d like… we have to wait until we’re hanging out with friends who are willing to play.

I figured the kids are old enough now to grok a game like this, so today I sat down with them and explained it. Alex and Kyra took to it right away, and played surprisingly well. Kyra started out strong, and Alex took a little longer to get moving but was soon cruising as well. The game ends when someone hits ten points, and near the end it was 9-to-9-to-9, so we were fighting for that last point. Kyra ended up victorious, although I think Alex was going to win on his next turn.

So all in all it was a lot of fun, and both of them are excited to play again. Finally Laralee and I will be able to get our “Settlers fix”!