Boy, I’m Weird

I found this on What Attitude Problem?

You Are 40% Weird

Normal enough to know that you’re weird… But too damn weird to do anything about it!

How Weird Are You?

And then I found this while taking the previous test.

You are dependable, popular, and observant. Deep and thoughtful, you are prone to moodiness. In fact, your emotions tend to influence everything you do. You are unique, creative, and expressive. You don’t mind waving your freak flag every once and a while. And lucky for you, most people find your weird ways charming!

The World’s Shortest Personality Test

The Great Undiscovered Blog

Undiscovered, at least to me.
I know I had heard of him, and talked to him often on chat and yahoo, and we have been in the same circles for a while now, but for what ever reason, never added him to my blogroll and thus never read his blog very often. But I’ll tell you what, Aaron is a great writer, and has allot to say that is worth reading, even if you don’t agree with him, you can at least see his side of things, and that my friends is a hard skill to master. So go check it out.
The Life and Times
It is a good read.

P.S. Blogroll corrected

The Hate of the “Pacifist” Left

Somedays Cao has a way of hitting things on the head. Once again she has. There is nothing I can add to it, so I just send you to her post.

Biggest Laugh All Day

I found this on Cao’s Blog, and just had to share it.

The Thong Song – Starring Kozo

A Tenth Planet, and a Martian Lake

Two big stories in space tonight.
First, a beautiful picture of frozen water in a Martian crater. What a wonderful resource for future colonists. Not quite warm enough for swimming, but a great source of water, fuel, and oxygen.

Also, a big story. This discovery of a new planet at least one and a half times the size of Pluto renews the debate about defining exactly what a planet really is. How many more like this are there out there?

One of the best sites around for all the late breaking info on both of these stories is Bad Astronomy. The webhost is actually a very good astronomer, but he goes after all the fun, but nutty bad astronomy floating around the internet.

One more thing: While looking for Bad Astronomy, I came across Bad Astronomer, a fascinating look at the death of the Orion Project, one of the great “might have beens” in manned space flight.

Air America-gate

My oh my. If you haven’t heard this story, you will.

It begins with former Air America CEO Evan Cohen, who resigned last year from the network after some of its more infamous early debacles. You might remember Cohen was a key part of an HBO documentary, detailing its first days.

Cohen also happened to serve on Gloria Wise’s board and convinced club leader and community activist Charles Rosen to “invest” at least $480,000 in the upstart political talk network.

Rosen has recently resigned from the board, according to New York Nonprofit Press.

The money, intended as a loan to be repaid with interest, was agreed to by Rosen after being sold on the idea of stretching their grant money further, according to one account. Part of the deal included promotional consideration of Gloria Wise’s activities on Air America’s programs.

Did that ever occur? If so, what was the benefit to Gloria Wise?

More importantly, has Air America paid back any of the money to date?

There are many more questions than answers at this point, but New York City’s Department Of Investigation (DOI) is leading the effort to find out where the money went. Will indictments follow?

So far, the activity programs have been saved as other non-profit agencies scrambled to pick up the slack, while investigators look at Gloria Wise’s records.

Cohen may be long-gone from Air America, but who else still at the network might have knowledge of this “investment”?

Has there been a media cover-up? In the Radio Equalizer’s view, yes.

This has all the makings of a huge blogstorm. Hugh Hewitt is all over it, as is Michelle Malkin.
But the blogger who broke the story is Brian Maloney, at The Radio Equalizer. We’ll see if the MSM jumps on this one. I wonder if it would get any coverage if these allegations were made about, oh, say, Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity? I’m thinking you would have heard the story by now if it had.

And here’s an editorial from the Washington Times explaining all this.

The Muslim World is on Fire

If you’ve not read this peice, or heard it on talk radio, yet, read it now. I first heard it on The Laura Ingrahm show early this morning. Let’s pray it’s true:

DUBAI The world of Islam is on fire. Indeed, the Muslim mind is on fire. Above all, the West is now ready to take both of them on.

The latest reliable report confirms that on average 33 Iraqis die every day, executed by Iraqis and foreign jihadis and suicide bombers, not by US or British soldiers. In fact, fewer than ever US or British soldiers are dying since the invasion more than two years ago. Instead, we now watch on television hundreds of innocent Iraqis lying without limbs, bleeding in the streets dead or wounded for life. If this is jihad someone got his religious education completely upside down.

He then lists the bombings in Iraq, in London, in Madrid, in Palestine. And the supposed causes?:

The excuse in all the above cases was the war in Iraq, but let us not forget that in September 2001, long before Iraq, Osama Bin Laden proudly announced that he ordered the killing of some 3,000 in the United States, in the name of avenging Islam. Let us not forget that the killing began a long time before the invasion of Iraq.

Indeed, jihadis have been killing for a decade in the name of Islam. They killed innocent tourists and natives in Morocco and Egypt, in Africa, in Indonesia and in Yemen, all done in the name of Islam by Muslims who say that they are better than all other Muslims. They killed in India, in Thailand and are now talking of killing in Germany and Denmark and so on. There were attacks with bombs that killed scores inside Shia and Sunni mosques, inside churches and inside synagogues in Turkey and Tunisia, with Muslim preachers saying that it is okay to kill Jews and Christians – the so called infidels.

And the consequences for the Islamo-Fascists:

Do the cowardly jihadis who recruit suicide bombers really think that they will force the US Army and British troops out of Iraq by killing hundreds of innocent Iraqis? US troops now have bases and operate in Iraq but also from Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Oman.

The only accomplishment of jihadis is that now they have aroused the great “Western Tiger”. There was a time when the United States and Europe welcomed Arab and Muslim immigrants, visitors and students, with open arms. London even allowed all dissidents escaping their countries to preach against those countries under the guise of political refugees.

It looks like the jig is up:

Well, that is all over now. Time has become for the big Western vengeance.

Visas for Arab and Muslim young men will be impossible to get for the United States and Western Europe. Those working there will be expelled if they are illegal, and harassed even if their papers are in order.

Airlines will have to right to refuse boarding to passengers if their names even resemble names on a prohibited list on all flights heading to Europe and the United States.

What is more important to remember is this: When the West did unite after World War II to beat communism, the long Cold War began without pity. They took no prisoners. They all stood together, from the United States to Norway, from Britain to Spain, from Belgium to Switzerland. And they did bring down the biggest empire. Communism collapsed.

I fear those na�ve Muslims who think that they are beating the West have now achieved their worst crime of all. The West is now going to war against not only Muslims, but also, sadly, Islam as a religion.

In this new cold and hot war, car bombs and suicide bombers here and there will be no match for the arsenal that those Westerners are putting together – an arsenal of laws, intelligence pooling, surveillance by satellites, armies of special forces and indeed, allies inside the Arab world who are tired of having their lives disrupted by demented so-called jihadis or those bearded preachers who, under the guise of preaching, do little to teach and much to ignite the fire, those who know little about Islam and nothing about humanity.

Unless the mythical “moderate” muslims take a firm, and vocal, stand, Mr. Ibrahim’s editorial will stand as a prophetic standard in the current war. A powerful statement indeed.

No Flights Until Foam Issue Resolved….

(AP) In this image taken Tuesday, July 26, 2005 and provided by NASA Wednesday, July 27, 2005, the… Full Image

Oh man, here we go again. Mere moments after the Jubilant Liftoff it was discovered. Another foam problem, after 2 1/2 years and over $1 billion to fix this problem and still no solution. So now the fleet is grounded again. Discovery is at least unharmed (So far) and should return safe.

Where does this leave us? I admire the shuttle allot, and have ever since I was a child…Oh, there’s the problem, shouldn’t we have advanced a little more by now? Why haven’t we? Don’t you think $1billion would have been better spent developing the follow-on shuttle replacement that we cut due to budget concerns?

Or maybe even another X-prize. What do you think Burt Rutan could do with a $1billion contract? Or any other serious commercial venture for that matter, wouldn’t another incentive prize have been more effective? Maybe this time instead of pouring another billion into an aging fleet who has seen her day, maybe, just maybe we should invest it into our private sector ventures, and allow them to take a new look at it, and maybe solve some of the problems we have been having. Might that be the answer to keeping our star trek styled dreams alive?

Why haven’t we gone further than the moon? Why aren’t people on mars yet? Don’t you think at the rate of advancement we saw in the 50’s and 60’s that we should be much further out by now?

I don’t know, you tell me, isn’t what we need, a new solution? Because this one just ain’t working.

Thanks be to the Mudville Gazette, and all of my sources.

A Little Levity For Today

Ten Thoughts to Ponder

Number 10 – Life is sexually transmitted.

Number 9 – Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

Number 8 – Men have two emotions: Hungry and Horny. If you’re wife see’s you without an erection, she better make you a sandwich, quick!

Number 7 – Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a person to use the Internet and they won’t bother you for weeks.

Number 6 – Some people are like a Slinky…..not really good for anything, but you still can’t help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs.

Number 5 – Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.

Number 4 – All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.

Number 3 – Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut saves you thirty cents?

Number 2 – In the 60’s, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.AND THE

NUMBER 1 THOUGHT FOR 2005:
We know exactly where one cow with mad-cow-disease is located among the millions and millions of cows in America but we haven’t got a clue as to where thousands of illegal immigrants and terrorists are located. Maybe we should put the Department of Agriculture in charge of immigration.

Why We Fight: Tony Blair

There has been no better explanation of the enemy we fight, and what is at stake than Tony Blair’s speech on 7/16/05. Here is the text of that speech, in full:

The greatest danger is that we fail to face up to the nature of the threat we are dealing with. What we witnessed in London last Thursday week was not an aberrant act.

It was not random. It was not a product of particular local circumstances in West Yorkshire.

Senseless though any such horrible murder is, it was not without sense for its organisers. It had a purpose. It was done according to a plan. It was meant.

What we are confronting here is an evil ideology.

It is not a clash of civilisations – all civilised people, Muslim or other, feel revulsion at it. But it is a global struggle and it is a battle of ideas, hearts and minds, both within Islam and outside it.

This is the battle that must be won, a battle not just about the terrorist methods but their views. Not just their barbaric acts, but their barbaric ideas. Not only what they do but what they think and the thinking they would impose on others.

Religious ideology

This ideology and the violence that is inherent in it did not start a few years ago in response to a particular policy. Over the past 12 years, Al-Qaeda and its associates have attacked 26 countries, killed thousands of people, many of them Muslims.

They have networks in virtually every major country and thousands of fellow travellers. They are well-financed. Look at their websites.

They aren’t unsophisticated in their propaganda. They recruit however and whoever they can and with success.

Neither is it true that they have no demands. They do. It is just that no sane person would negotiate on them.

This is a religious ideology… Those who kill in its name believe genuinely that in doing it, they do God’s work; they go to paradise.

They demand the elimination of Israel; the withdrawal of all Westerners from Muslim countries, irrespective of the wishes of people and government; the establishment of effectively Taleban states and Sharia law in the Arab world en route to one caliphate of all Muslim nations.

We don’t have to wonder what type of country those states would be. Afghanistan was such a state. Girls put out of school.

Women denied even rudimentary rights. People living in abject poverty and oppression. All of it justified by reference to religious faith.

The 20th century showed how powerful political ideologies could be. This is a religious ideology, a strain within the world-wide religion of Islam, as far removed from its essential decency and truth as Protestant gunmen who kill Catholics or vice versa, are from Christianity. But do not let us underestimate it or dismiss it.

Those who kill in its name believe genuinely that in doing it, they do God’s work; they go to paradise.

‘Legitimate targets’

From the mid 1990s onwards, statements from Al-Qaeda, gave very clear expression to this ideology: “Every Muslim, the minute he can start differentiating, carries hatred towards the Americans, Jews and Christians. This is part of our ideology. The creation of Israel is a crime and it has to be erased.

“You should know that targeting Americans and Jews and killing them anywhere you find them on the earth is one of the greatest duties and one of the best acts of piety you can offer to God Almighty. Just as great is their hatred for so-called apostate governments in Muslim countries. This is why mainstream Muslims are also regarded as legitimate targets”.

At last year’s (Labour) party conference, I talked about this ideology in these terms.

Its roots are not superficial, but deep, in the madrassas of Pakistan, in the extreme forms of Wahabi doctrine in Saudi Arabia, in the former training camps of Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan; in the cauldron of Chechnya; in parts of the politics of most countries of the Middle East and many in Asia; in the extremist minority that now in every European city preach hatred of the West and our way of life.

This is what we are up against. It cannot be beaten except by confronting it, symptoms and causes, head-on. Without compromise and without delusion.

The extremist propaganda is cleverly aimed at their target audience. It plays on our tolerance and good nature.

It exploits the tendency to guilt of the developed world, as if it is our behaviour that should change, that if we only tried to work out and act on their grievances, we could lift this evil, that if we changed our behaviour, they would change theirs. This is a misunderstanding of a catastrophic order.

Their cause is not founded on an injustice. It is founded on a belief, one whose fanaticism is such it can’t be moderated. It can’t be remedied. It has to be stood up to.

And, of course, they will use any issue that is a matter of dissent within our democracy. But we should lay bare the almost-devilish logic behind such manipulation.

‘Callous indifference’

If it is the plight of the Palestinians that drives them, why, every time it looks as if Israel and Palestine are making progress, does the same ideology perpetrate an outrage that turns hope back into despair?

If it is Afghanistan that motivates them, why blow up innocent Afghans on their way to their first ever election? If it is Iraq that motivates them, why is the same ideology killing Iraqis by terror in defiance of an elected Iraqi government?

What was September 11, 2001 the reprisal for? Why even after the first Madrid bomb (in March 2004) and the election of a new Spanish government, were they planning another atrocity when caught?

In the end, it is by the power of argument, debate, true religious faith and true legitimate politics that we will defeat this threat.

Why if it is the cause of Muslims that concerns them, do they kill so many with such callous indifference?

We must pull this up by its roots. Within Britain, we must join up with our Muslims community to take on the extremists. Worldwide, we should confront it everywhere it exists.

Next week I and other party leaders will meet key members of the Muslim community. Out of it I hope we can get agreed action to take this common fight forward. I want also to work with other nations to promote the true face of Islam worldwide.

Round the world, there are conferences already being held, numerous inter-faith dialogues in place but we need to bring all of these activities together and give them focus.

Defeating the threat

We must be clear about how we win this struggle. We should take what security measures we can. But let us not kid ourselves.

In the end, it is by the power of argument, debate, true religious faith and true legitimate politics that we will defeat this threat.

That means not just arguing against their terrorism, but their politics and their perversion of religious faith. It means exposing as the rubbish it is, the propaganda about America and its allies wanting to punish Muslims or eradicate Islam.

It means championing our values of freedom, tolerance and respect for others. It means explaining why the suppression of women and the disdain for democracy are wrong.

The idea that elected governments are the preserve of those of any other faith or culture is insulting and wrong. Muslims believe in democracy just as much as any other faith and, given the chance, show it.

We must step up the urgency of our efforts. Here and abroad, the times the terrorists have succeeded are all too well known.

Less known are the times they have been foiled. The human life destroyed we can see. The billions of dollars every nation now spends is huge and growing. And they kill without limit.

They murdered over 50 innocent people (in London) last week. But it could have been over 500. And had it been, they would have rejoiced.

The spirit of our age is one in which the prejudices of the past are put behind us, where our diversity is our strength. It is this which is under attack. Moderates are not moderate through weakness but through strength. Now is the time to show it in defence of our common values.”