Want to see something creepy? Get a $20 bill and do this.
Middle East – Conservative Views
Why They Fight, and Why Israel’s War on Terror is Working. Two interesting articles from a politically conservative secular viewpoint on the real motivations behind Palestinian terrorism and the reason that Israel’s current course of action may actually be working.
Is it really a simplistic liberal fallacy to think that if Israel were to move for concessions and peace, then Palestinian victims of oppression would not resort to extremism? Is it indeed true that terrorism actually rises as movements are made towards greater peace? If so, that would definitely cause me to rethink my sympathy and support for the Palestinian underdog. Yet at the same time, outside of the more warlike Islamic factions who foment terror and suicide bombings, there are far more innocent Palestinian refugees and Israeli civilians who are perfectly willing to live and let live so long as they can go about their daily lives in peace, happiness, and harmony.
Of course, I, like many Americans, am grossly uninformed about the whole historical and political context of the region, and studying it only confuses me further, from having to deal with the maze of political and religious bias surrounding these issues. That’s when I get tempted to just advocate isolationism.
Episode II: The McLaughlin Group
Lucas has previously taken his talking points from the great storytellers and story thinkers of the species: from Joseph Campbell, from Homer, from Thomas Malory, from Akira Kurosawa, from John Ford, from 4,000 years of tradition of epic voyages and grand adventures. But the mythic source he seems to have based this episode on is … “The McLaughlin Group.”
– From yet another unforgiving review of Episode II. Actually, I sort of enjoy The McLaughlin Group. Maybe this next Star Wars movie won’t be so bad after all. ;)
Verisign eats CMMM
It seems Verisign has claimed yet another domain for its hapless victim: ClickMoMukhaMo.com. CMMM’s weblog is in transit right now, over here, but I think I speak for the entire Filipino weblogging community in the hope that, whether this is the fault of Verisign or not, he can soon return to his rightful domain. Read more on these Verisign/NetSol domain woes at NSI Horror Stories.
Good news! The Bereans, a growing Filipino Christian apologetics ministry for whom I recently did some webmastering, now have their own forum, thanks to the kindness and skill of other fellow brothers in the field.
NYT fires Sulllivan
Andrew Sullivan, weblogger and columnist, fired from the New York Times. It only reinforces how “out of it” I am that I only knew Sullivan from browsing his weblog, and had no idea he was such a prominent writer for the mainstream press.
Bagong gupit!
In the Philippines, whenever I walked into the office with a new haircut, the first thing out of most anyone’s mouth was usually, “Hey, new haircut!” (Or, “Uy, bagong gupit!”) Here, however, no one in office or in church has made any comment. Is it a cultural thing?
Ad for Cigarettes and a Will
Heh, I think my copy of Opera has been watching my office browsing habits a bit haphazardly. Practically every page I go to has words like “tobacco” or “cigarettes” in it, so most of the banner ads displayed in the broswer bar are either for smoking products and promos, or for other anti-tobacco movements — but not always. The tobacco-related advertising is still interspersed with general-interest banners from other categories.
The funny part is, right after showing a Philip Morris promo banner, it switched to that of a law firm asking if I wanted help writing a will.
Turtle in MirrorProject
“Man and Dog in dirty reflection watch turtle watching Man and Dog.” Turtles are just such the cutest things. I think they equal hamsters for cuteness.
Legends Cafe Mediterranean
Near Dupont Circle, on 22nd and P Street, there’s a little white and blue restaurant called Legends, and it’s the best Mediterranean cafe I’ve ever eaten from. The owners and cooks are a family of kind old Greeks, and the Beef Gyros and Souvlaki-and-Feta Cheese Pita Sandwiches are so wonderful it brings tears to my eyes to remember eating them. If you’re in DC and you like Mediterranean, go try them. GO!!! Yum yum yum!
Who’s Da Man.
I have just finished a full day doing some seriously heavy tweaking to Lucid Calendar. My modification, needed for the front page of the new SmokeFree.org portal (no, that’s not it yet), will display events on their own per-day page rather than in the calendar directly, and can be included as a tiny little table in a small righthand menu bar.
The hardest part was getting it to print a link to the new per-day page, using a query string that would read the correct date from the calendar by taking a standard table-cell counter-variable minus the number of days from the start of the first week to the first day of the month. I forgot to add a “+1” to compensate for the fact that Sunday is a zero in the date function. Yes, I’m aware that I’m babbling. But it’s all fine now.
At this point, I feel like throwing things to the ground and yelling “WHO’S DA MAN?!?!” at the computer in testosterone-loaded jubilation, just like Will Smith in Independence Day after his F-16 crashed. But lacking the daring to do so, I will just sit here in quiet triumph and mumble “Who’s da man…” to myself in a way that will not cause the other people in the room to stare at me.