There are oftentimes we wonder if we’ve ever done anything good in our lives. Today, during a time when honeybees are disappearing from our country, I took this picture of one of my girls (all field bees are female) working a sunflower in a sunflower field I planted this year.
I’m a beekeeper. That’s one good thing.
I hope Leonidas isn’t correct in his concern that my letters to the editor could land me without representation in some foreign , secret prison. Nevertheless, this letter was published in the Indianapolis Star on Sunday.
In October of 2002 agents of the United
States government abducted a Canadian citizen, Maher
Arar, from the JFK airport in New York during
a layover on his flight home to Canada. He was then flown to Jordan and ultimately taken to Syria where he
was imprisoned (much of the time in what has been described as a coffin-sized
dungeon) and regularly tortured for about a year. His torture included being beaten with a
shredded electric cable until losing consciousness. Mr. Arar was eventually
released after it was determined that he had no connection with terrorist
organizations. The United States
government repeatedly lied to or misled the Canadian government (an ally, by
the way) when they made inquiries into the disappearance of Mr. Arar. This is unfortunately, not an isolated case.
What has happened to the moral soul of America? Every citizen needs to consider seriously
whether this type of action reflects the values we hold dear in America. If not, I urge all to let their government
know, both in letters to their representatives and at the polls in
November. Because ultimately, when the
government does this, when the government tortures someone and holds them in a
“coffin-sized dungeon” it is we that are doing it. Whether by acquiescence or indifference, we
are responsible.
Bob DeWeese
In the U.S. today being moral means bashing the rights of gays and supporting the rights of fertilized eggs, while torturing innocent people and waging unjust war which causes the death of thousands of innocent human beings is nothing to concern ourselves with. We are seriously off course. If we don’t change course we are seriously fucked.
Please watch this video to see if the Republican majority in congress really supports our troops.
http://www.ifilms.tv/votevetsweb/burns.html
Vote accordingly.
Tonight I sat in our bedroom and stared at the cherry floor. I looked at it feeling I’d seen and was familiar with every inch of it. I cut the cherry trees down, I perspired as they fell, I wrapped the chains around the base of those cherry logs and pulled them from the woods. I helped feed those logs to the sawyer and hauled the resulting boards to the mill. I sanded the floor they were layed on and stained them and applied the coats of polyurethane. I knew them from standing timber to floor. And yet I saw a beautiful grain and color that I had never noticed before in one particular board. I went to my knees to examine it and touch it. It was a cherry board that I had not noticed before. Both of us had been cheated.
Stars fall from the sky while I look away.
This just in from the scientific news front: “A biotechnology company has developed a new way of creating stem cells without destroying human embryos, billing it as a potential solution to a contentious political and ethical debate.”
I think this is wonderful technology. Now we can harvest stem cells (actually just one cell) from the blastocyst without “killing the human being” and then when we’re done, flush those blastocysts down the toilet like God and nature intended. Actually, I don’t know that they’re flushed down the toilet, they are allowed to thaw and then I’m not sure how they’re disposed of, but flushing them, like we do with a lot of medical waste, seems likely.
Next week I start the masters program in bioethics. Being the nerd that I am (not really, I’m joking, I’m not a nerd) I’ve already read the entire textbook for one of the classes and am working on the second. I read about three other bioethics textbooks over the summer as well. I’m excited about it.
I must admit though that I felt a bit weird buying a couple of folders in the “back to school” section of Target surrounded by grade-schoolers.
I bought some back to school clothes too. Since the masters program is internet based I just bought boxer shorts.
I’m ready to start posting again. I’m looking forward to writing about the perspective of being a student and a professor at the same time. I’m looking forward to bringing to the bioethics table the perspective of one that’s been where the rubber meets the road.
Who knows, maybe when this is all over I’ll even understand why using blastocysts for stem cell research is less ethical than flushing them down the toilet. I haven’t got to that part in any of the texts yet.
I think it is entirely possible we’re heading for the big encounter. The possibility of not a world war, but a very brief and very intense war is hovering on the near horizon. Iran is emboldened by the impotence and incompetence of our leadership, as well as the bogged-downness of our misadventure in Iraq.
Bush’s foreign policy is certainly impotent. But it’s dangerous to poke fun or threaten an impotent man that is well armed.
The United States cannot afford a misadventure in Iran like it is currently mired in in Iraq. But cowboy Bush just might be thinking that this is the perfect time to cruise missile and possibly nuke Iran back into the stone age.
Iraq under Hussein posed no threat to the US. Iran, emboldened by our quagmire in Iraq and possibly nuclear armed is a threat to the US. Our mindless, born again, support of Israel blinds us. There are dumb-ass leaders leading the US and Iran right now. The perfect storm is brewing.
Hope to see you on the other side.
The following was printed on salon.com today.
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld began pushing for an attack on Iraq. “We all said … ‘No, no.
Al-Qaida is in Afghanistan, we need to bomb Afghanistan,’” Richard Clarke remembers. “Rumsfeld said there aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq.”
He forgot Indiana.
Yes, the Hoosier State had about as much to do with 9/11 as Iraq did.
But Indiana has apparently got something prewar Iraq lacked: a boatload
of high-value targets.
That’s how the Homeland Security Department sees it, at least.
DHS’s National Asset Database lists possible targets of terrorist attacks, and, as the New York Times
reports this morning, Indiana appears in the database more often than
any other state. We’re talking one and a half times more often than New
York. Twice as often as California. About 21 times as often as the
District of Columbia.
Can’t think of a likely terror target in Indiana?
You’re just not trying hard enough.
Actually, we can’t tell you about any terrorism targets in Indiana,
either — the Times report doesn’t identify any of the 8,591 potential
targets there. So we’ll imagine for a moment that the Indianapolis 500
is on the list, and the Statehouse, and maybe Michael Jackson’s
childhood home and that high school where “Hoosiers” was set. But those
would be significant targets compared with the ones the DHS lists for
other states. As the Times reports, the National Asset Database
includes “targets” such as a petting zoo in Woodville, Ala., the annual
Mule Day Parade in Columbia, Tenn., “Nix’s Check Cashing,” the “Mall at
Sears,” an “ice cream parlor,” a “tackle shop,” the “Bean Fest” and the
“Beach at End of a Street.”
For the rest of the article go here:
Really, if there are 8591 potential targets in Indiana then Richard Snyder’s septic tank/shit sucker truck which is parked only a mile from my house has got to be on the list. This place would smell like hell if it was hit by a terrorist bomb. I think this would fall under the category of “chemical weapons” if the contents were released into the air.
At any given time, half the residents of the county are in Wal Mart so Wal Mart has to be on the list too. Actually I don’t care if they blow up Wal Mart but I hope that Circuit City and the tractor supply store aren’t on the list.
We have the ugliest, most dysfunctional interstate exchange in the nation at the I-65 exit. I might actually blow it up myself and it’ll be blamed on the terrorists.
Shit! This is scary living in Indiana now. I’m gonna lose sleep over this. Not! I really do hope that Richard Snyder’s septic/shit sucker truck doesn’t get bombed though.
The wood floor saga continues.
While clearing my oldest daughter’s room for the placement of hardwood floors, Deb and I lifted a large TV that just didn’t have a reasonable way to grasp. An immediate pain shot into my back and left leg. I herniated my L4-5 disc at least briefly. I fell to the floor with pain in my back and leg. My quadriceps were weak and I had (and still have) numbness on the inside of my left shin (which tells me it’s an L 4-5 problem). Oh well, it’ll get better. It seems to be anyway.
Despite the fact that I am sore from my waist down from sanding and finishing floors (except for the inside of my left shin which is still numb) and once simply falling down because my left quads are weak, things seem to be going fine.
Deb can’t stand being in the house because the stain and polyurethane smell makes her seriously ill. So I’ve been doing the staining and polyurethaning because it doesn’t bother me.
However, by the end of the day today it dawned on me that I was disoriented and having trouble following the lines of boards that had been finished. I was high from the smell. Really high. Come to think of it, my lower extremities didn’t hurt as much either.
A picture series of these floors from their start by being cut by me from our woods to the end of their being finished in our house is forthcoming.
Can’t do it now while I’m stoned though.
Got a new computer with a 64 bit dual channel processor. Drivers are not so readily available, but can be found with dilligence, patience and alcohol driven relaxation. When working, the speed is blinding. Spending much time powering this system up.
Wood floors going in as well. I blogged about the trees I was cutting down last winter to be made into wood floors . . . well, they’re going in. Pictures will be forthcoming.
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