Sometimes funny, sometimes thoughtful, always a good time
The animal kingdom invaded suburbia today: Laralee spotted a hawk flying around the neighborhood, and the kids tracked it down. It had apparently killed a pigeon and was looking for a place to dine.
Eventually it managed to carry the pigeon from the rooftop to a neighbor’s fence, and it was dinner time!
The kids were pretty stoked because they were able to get within about ten feet of the hawk. Pretty cool.
Pumpkin (Kyra’s little gerbil) certainly gets around these days. It seems like she’s involved with every aspect of our daily lives.
She sits on Alex’s shoulder while he does homework, probably whispering answers in his ear.
Today I found this shot– taken by one of the kids– of Pumpkin sitting in an empty baking powder can and surveying the room.
The good news is the little bugger is much easier to care for than a dog, and only occasionally manages to architect an escape and hide under the couch or dryer.
I’m having some problems with a client’s Linux web server, and just can’t figure out the weird behavior. So I’m taking a page from the Windows playbook and rebooting it, on the off chance it’ll fix whatever ghosts are lurking in the machine.
I hate to reboot something that’s been running for 13 months straight, though… it seems such a shame.
[fixed: 11:08:12 up 386 days, 16:52, 2 users, load average: 0.01, 0.04, 0.01
USER TTY LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT
root ttyp0 11:08 0.00s 0.01s 0.00s w]
So Bush exercised the tenth veto of his presidency to overturn legislation that would force the CIA and other covert agencies to adhere to the same standards of interrogation as the military. Thus those agencies can continue doing whatever the heck they want, including the oft-used phrase “enhanced interrogation”, without regard for law or even human decency.
In defending his veto, Bush used his standard rhetoric:
Ahh, the terrorists. Those mythical shadowy figures that make it okay for our country to abandon its standards and sink to their level, if not below it.
The other tired line Bush used was this one:
I call that the Elephant in My Backyard argument. I paid a billion dollars to install an anti-elephant defense system in my backyard, and in the five years it’s been in place, not a single elephant has been in my backyard. Thus, the billion dollars was well-spent and clearly the defense system is the reason there haven’t been any elephants. The Bush administration’s use of this argument is a non sequitur and proves only that they have no strong justification for their course of action.
I can only hope that when he leaves in ten months, some semblance of reason and humanity will return to this nation.
I’m in the midst of a discussion with the Magnificent Seven about rights and freedoms. Dirk just wrote a missive beginning with this statement:
To which I gave a long-winded reply…
In the last five years I think our government has placed unprecedented restrictions on our rights… as have the governments of many other nations. Our world is becoming more of a surveillance society, aided in large part by advances in technology (video cameras, computer storage, massive data processing) but also by a growing fearmongering that the lawmakers use to justify their new restrictions. It’s all based on the mistaken assumption that increased surveillance leads to increased security.
You may contend that I, Jeff, personally enjoy a great deal of freedom. You would be right. Since I’m not on the TSA watchlist (yet) and haven’t attempted the crime of photographing a public building, I’m lucky enough to be able to sit here working and earning an honest wage rather than languishing in Gitmo or some other rendition-happy country. But that doesn’t change the fact that overall I am subject to more laws and restrictions than I was a year ago, and thus my freedoms are diminished.
I’m straying off topic, but I would say there are three categories of laws that curtail freedom:
1) Moral laws (no murder, no rape) which a reasonable human being would agree are necessary to protect the populace. It would be difficult to argue that these laws should be eliminated.
2) Compensatory laws (no stealing, no cheating) which make it possible for us to enjoy fair commerce with those around us. If we steal, we must pay back; if we cheat, we are thrown out of class (or whatever). Many of these laws are reasonable and necessary, although I feel that many more these days have gone too far into the realm of unfair compensation (e.g., the RIAA collecting $200k from a single mom who downloaded music– yes, she was wrong; yes, she should pay for her mistake; no, it’s not right that she pay that much).
3) Convenience laws (show me your photo ID, tell me your SSN, 75-year copyrights) which have been enacted by the legislature to satisfy the needs or wishes of some agency or corporation. I believe the vast majority of these are unnecessary limitations on our freedoms and serve only those who are in power rather than society as a whole. It is these laws against which I am most firmly opposed.
I think we’ve seen a huge increase in category 3 these last few years, and an expansion (in scope and penalty, if not sheer number) of category 2. Off the cuff I’d say category 1 was established even before this country, and remains fairly static.
So, off-topic musings aside, I long for a place where I have more freedoms than I have now. Call me selfish, call me a communist, call me a libertarian nanny-head, but I long for a day where the Government steps back and lets me live my life.
Harumph.