Googs!

Today’s List

Things my father in law wished I had:

1. An axe
2. Barring that, a hatchet
3. A Depression Era sense of thrift 
4. A bow saw (editor’s note: Acquired!) 
5. Pruning shears (editor’s note: Have them, just didn’t tell him) 
6. Some practical knowledge 
7. An old can 
8. Barring that, and old ice cream bucket 
9. Physical stamina 
10. A sanding block 
11. A pick 
12. A job (implied)

A public service announcement

Ladies, if you are going to take sexy pics of yourself in the mirror, would it kill you to clean the mirror first? Ask yourself, Do we want to look through a haze of toothpaste splashes? No, we don’t.

<gasp!>Terrorists can be white!

This country really needs a fundamental shift in what a “terrorist” is. The post-9/11 paranoia of Muslims/brown people has created a false idea of what is “terrorism.” And law enforcement/media are not helping, as the opening paragraphs of the Washington Post story demonstrate:

The California man who calmly opened fire on two police officers at an entrance to the Pentagon Thursday appears to have acted alone and was not connected to any terrorist plot, Pentagon police chief Richard S. Keevill said.

the story then continues:

36-year-old John Patrick Bedell, was dressed in a business suit and carried two semiautomatic weapons and “many magazines” of ammunition, Keevill said. “He walked very directly to the officers and engaged,” Keevill said.

and:

Police are looking at possible anti-government Internet postings by Bedell, Keevill said, and still trying to establish his motive for the attack at a doorway to the nation’s defense headquarters — one of the busiest, most prominent and closely guarded buildings in the Washington area.

In a story specifically about Bedell’s writings, we learn:

Bedell harbored ill feelings toward the government and the armed forces, and had questioned the circumstances behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/05/AR2010030500510.html?hpid=topnews

Finally:

“There are no indications at this point that there are any international or domestic connections to this incident at all,” Keevill said. “At this time it appears to be a single individual that had issues.” 

What the investigators mean, is that there is no connection to any Muslim groups. But that would be profiling. A man who appears to have written anti-government statements who then attacks representatives of that government is either a terrorist, an enemy of the state, a traitor, or possibly all three. Just because he was white and a native-born American doesn’t mean he’s not a terrorist.

But the media, and some law enforcement, seem to be too gutless to call a spade a spade (see aftermath of Austin/IRS) crash and call angry,white Americans who purposely inflict harm on citizens or people representing the government in order to make a political point, terrorists.

What is it going to take to decouple the idea of terrorism from Muslim?

A Historie of Groundhogge’s Day

Groundhog’s Day today has become a charming February staple of school children and morning network shows. Both constituencies would be shocked to learn the tradition’s more lurid origins.

The practice has it’s roots in a peculiar judicial pact between the Pennsylvania Dutch and the “English” of Western Pennsylvania. With connotations of The Passion, every winter the Pennsylvania Dutch would turn over their most wanton criminal/sinner to the English for punishment. These cast-offs were guilty of crimes so heinous that even shunning was not severe enough.

So at the behest of the Pennsylvania Dutch, the English would take these men and women and bury them alive (hence the term ‘groundhogge’ or today’s more modern spelling: groundhog).

After three days the groundhogge was dug up (give it up for our forefathers, they knew how to work Biblical symbolism) in front of the Pennsylvania Dutch elders. If the sinner still lived, s/he was beaten to death with 2x4s to be used later in that day’s barnraising.

Eventually the vagaries of societal niceties and the law caught up with this tradition, and so the sinner was replaced by a rodent, and still breathing after three days was replaced by “seeing one’s shadow.”

Nobody knows where the six more weeks of winter comes from. That part’s just weird.

Me, other places

Have you ever wondered about my thoughts on the future of television, or the future of human genetic manipulation? Sure you have! And so have others, which is why I’ve been interviewed recently on both topics.

For my thoughts on the future of television as a family activity, make with the clicky here: Not Suitable for Family Viewing

For my thoughts on transhumanism, navigate your Internet web browser to this Uniform Resource Locator:  KTLS: The Future of Transhumanism

As always, my thoughts in 140 characters or less are available on Twitter, just look for @Cekent.