gwax’s rumblings

I’ve been irked at President-elect Obama since he voted in favor of FISA but now I hear that he might kill daylight savings time. Now, you may recall that I passionately loath daylight savings time and abolishing it would shift Mr. Obama closer to my good side. Mind you, not screwing with my time twice a year does not quite make up for giving away my rights but it is a small step in the right direction.

In all seriousness, I don’t know why we need daylight savings time. All it does is make me have to change my clocks twice a year and likely miss at least one scheduled event shortly after the transition. Sleep schedules don’t have much to do with daylight so why are we trying to force to two to coincide. We really need to get rid of these pathetic vestiges of days past and make our time get with the time. I hereby, publicly request that Daylight Savings Time tender its resignation, effective immediately.

I’ve started watching the daily vlog (please tell me I’m not becoming hip) Rocketboom because it covers issues that interest me in a style that I like and the host(ess) is cute. I mention this to you today both because I’ve been watching it long enough to think that it’s worth mentioning to the rest of you and because they actually did something that caused me to pause and take note. Today’s Rocketboom is probably the best piece I have yet seen on the topic of net neutrality; don’t get me wrong, Ask A Ninja did a fine piece on net neutrality too but the piece by Rocketboom does a really good job of explaining why net neutrality is a really important issue and why everyone needs to tell their governmental representatives to keep our internet free. I really don’t want to find myself, ten years from now, lamenting over the way the internet used to be.

The Pirate Party of the United States is a newly formed political party that is derivative of Sweden’s Piratpartiet. Extracted from their website, their platform is as follows:

“The Pirate Party is a newly formed worldwide political party with a chapter in the U.S.. We want to fundamentally reform copyright law, overhaul the patent system, and ensure that citizens’ rights to privacy are respected. With this agenda, and only this, we are making a bid for representation in anywhere we can get elected.”

Seeing as they stand for the same things that I stand for and their platform and agendas do a good job of addressing the big issues that concern me, I think that I might finally have found a reason to stop being a registered independant. Also, what could be cooler than to be a registered pirate?

I recently came across the trailer for Al Gore’s new movie about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, so I figured that I might as well watch it and see what’s up. The trailer on it’s own has completely changed my views on global warming but probably not for the better. There was one particular scene where they were showing what would happen to various coastlines if the South Pole melted causing sea level to rise twenty feet and I had the instant thought that when (”if” if you want to be an optimist) global warming really kicks in, I’ll have to get a bigger boat. Seriously, if there’s apocalyptic flooding, I’ll just pull a Kevin Costner in Waterworld, except without the gills, nautical inaccuaracies or that whole pariah thing.

Somehow, I think the point was to get me to be scared and start fighting against global warming not get me to think about boats. Oops.

It has come to my attention that the endangered Tree Octopus of the Pacific Northwest is suffering through even tougher times than it has in the past and I have decided to join the effort to preserve this unique species. Normally, I’m too lazy to bother being proactive in regards to the environment but things have gone too far with regards to the Tree Octopus. Admittedly, I’m quite a fan of cephalopods but nonetheless, we are doing a very poor job as dominant species here; we have a responsibility to the environment and we cannot allow such a unique and important creature to go extinct.

For more information on organized attempts to preserve the Pacific Northwest Tree Ocopus, see the official preservation site. For more general cephalopod information, I recommend this blog devoted to cephalopods.

I caught a bit of the coverage of Saddam Hussein’s trial this morning on NPR on my way to work and it led me to formulate a prediction for Iraq’s future. The most interesting part of what I caugt was that, today, Hussein asked that he alone be held accountable for the actions of his regime and that the other defendants be acquited. To some Hussein’s request might seem like a noble effort but I’m inclined to suspect that Hussein is a fairly clever guy with ulterior motives. My prediction is this, Saddam Hussein will try to get his accomplices off and be imprisoned in Iraq–it is where he is a criminal, after all. Once the US has extricated itself from Iraq, allies of Hussein will retake control of the Iraqi government and free Hussein (not necessarily in that order). Saddam Hussein will then rule Iraq once more and the US will look like the bunch of idiots that we probably are.

In short, I predict that Saddam Hussein will rule Iraq again within 10 years, probably sooner.

Seems like it’s probably not real, but if it is I’d totally vote for him for president.

That the United States, at one time, had an Emperor has recently come to my attention. I find it rather interesting that history books tend to neglect the reign of Emperor Norton I when recounting American History. The more I read about this man, the more exceptional he is, truly a great American and a patriot. I can honestly say, with great conviction that Emperor Norton I is one of my personal heroes.

Because I see so many other people commenting on this election politics things I want to weigh in with my view on the matter. This “great divide” in our country is between a whole bunch of people that are all exactly alike; the so-called-liberals are acting out in exactly the manner that they always criticize the so-called-conservatives for. Both parties are fighting for the same socio-economic system and they only differ on the specific moral issues that they would like to fight over. It’s a one party system and one of your candidates won; quit your bitching about pathetic little “issues” and start paying attention to what’s actually wrong with our culture.

Well, the election was yesterday and I voted; it was kind of cool I guess. Last night I went over to Burton-Connor to hang out with Nick and watch the results come in; the hanging out was more interesting than the results, which is kind of sad. It’s been pretty much deadlocked and it still is, with neither candidate claiming victory, though it looks like Bush has won. In the end, I only care a little bit because I see it as a one party election where we are voting between Rich Capitalist A and Rich Capitalist B. I am just so disillusioned that I don’t really care. Maybe if Bush wins he’ll drive this country into the ground so fast that no one will be able to hide that rich people own our government. Ok, I’m done being cynical and sarcastic; back to apathy. George out.

I continue to notice that every time any individual is accused of terrorist like actions, they are said to have Al-Qaeda connections. This makes me wonder, which of the following conclusions is correct: in order to be a terrorist one must obtain their Al-Qaeda membership card, we only care about Al-Qaeda terrorists or we want to blame all terrorism on Al-Qaeda to give it a face. Al-Qaeda, the real world equivalent to Command & Conquer: General’s GLA.

While we’re on the topic of Al-Qaeda, I know the guy that runs the al-qaeda.net web domain. He’s a nice guy actually, half Egyptian, but no terrorist, mainly runs the domain as a lark so that he can send and receive email by it. I’ve been trying to convince him to turn the domain into a group blog so that we can all have fun with the thing.

I guess the point is that not everything Al-Qaeda is evil (at least the larks aren’t) and I don’t buy that everything terrorist is Al-Qaeda.

In case you haven’t heard, ex-president Ronald Reagan died yesterday.

It’s finally happened, I’m starting to give a damn about politics (guess it had to happen sometime). You might notice that I’ve added a few more blogs to my links on the left (that’s where I turn for my body politic and I will probably add more as I start reading them). I try to get a decent spattering of different political points of view so as to be able to make my own opinions.

In case anyone cares, here’s my take on various political issues right now: We’re wasting tons of money on a war that we shouldn’t be fighting. We’re bullying the rest of the world. We’re ignoring most of the problems that exist in our own country. We’re returning capitalism to the hell that it was more than a century ago. Our education system is going down the tubes. The average American cares more about pop culture than his or her own well being. (Needless to say, these are all bad things in my opinion).

That should serve as decent reference for anyone that wants to know my views. Oh, and I don’t like to associate myself with any party because I believe that giving a name to my belief system gives the name power at the expense of my actual beliefs (why can’t democrats and republicans do what they believe in and not simply follow the party line?).

This recently came in through AIM channels:

May 19th is national gas boycott day. With gas prices on the rise, something must be done to send a message to the gas companies. If no one in America buys gas on the 19th the gas companies will lose an estimated $45 MILLION dollars! If you’re not happy with paying over $2.00/gallon please do not buy gas on May 19th. Please re-post this so that it will be able to reach as many people across the country as possible.

I guess that means don’t buy gas tomorrow. A little late in tossing the post out what with the boycott tomorrow. Mind you, I haven’t verified the statistics so don’t yell at me if they’re wrong and if it matters to you, check them yourself. I don’t really know if it’ll do anything but we can all go one day without purchasing gas, so why not?

Christening a new section of my www server, where I will keep information that I deem to be important to make public, I have put up a copy of the Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on the treatment by the Coalition forces of prisoners of war and other protected persons by the Geneva Conventions in Iraq during arrest, internment and interrogation. The thing has a long title, but I wanted to put it all in there so that there was no bullshitting around. Suffice it to say, this isn’t pretty. I’m sure that most of you out there know that the Geneva Conventions say no torturing but that’s pretty much what we’re systematically doing to people we deem valuable in Iraq. If we’re going to set ourselves up as the police of the world shouldn’t we at least obey the world laws? Isn’t this the kind of thing that we went into Iraq to stop?

UPDATE 2005-09-23: I have removed the report from my information folder because I realized that I don’t actually care about the report. I care about the incidents described, but not the report itself.

As of late, I have taken to listening to Rant Radio’s talk radio shoutcast stream. Their modus operandi appears to be freedom of information, which is an issue close to my heart. This is just a plug, but I encourage you to take a look (or listen rather).

If you don’t want to bother with their website, you can just tune in [64k|24k].