2003.12.23
 | --Bad Guys from "Robotto Keiji". The Henshin Hall of Fame has a lot of information and pictures from these Japanese fighting shows. |
Quote of the Moment
What if it is for life's sake that we must die? In truth we are not individuals; and it is because we think ourselves such that death seems unforgivable. We are temporary organs of the race, cells in the body of life; we die and drop away that life may remain young and strong. If we were to live forever, growth would be stifled, and youth would find no room on earth. Death, like style, is the removal of rubbish, the circumcision of the superfluous. In the midst of death life renews itself immortally.Hadn't heard much about him or his wife 'til my old highschool friend Tom K. mentioned scoring a collection of his works at some kind of garage sale. His Foundation has a website.
Bad News of the Moment
So, obviously, the elevated terrorist threat level is on everyone's mind. I keep finding myself heading over to Drudge Report...new news really does show up there more quickly, it was talking about the California Quake about 15 minutes before anyone else online.
They linked to this rather stark and scary story from the LA Times via azcentral.com.
So, yeah, I'm a bit nervous. I think the chance of something hurting me or my loved ones is small, of suffering the economic impact along with everyone else moderate. I think our country is really resilient, though. We survive stuff all the time, earthquakes, blackouts, republican administrations...I think even our economy is made of pretty tough stuff. Although it's hard to figure how 9-11 might have slowed the economic recovery over the last 2 years, we did have a bounce back once the shock wore off.
You wonder about "chatter". I know one of the troubling things of the moment is that there are multiple sources of intelligence, but when you hear about the chatter...the fact that they don't get much specific info makes me think either they're seeing encrypted stuff they can't crack (or don't have the wiretapping options I was assuming that they do) or that it's stuff in public forums, like websites. And if it is websites...well, there's going to be a ton of wishful thinking with that stuff. And they downplay the Saddam connection, but that has to tie in to that kind of evil hope chattering.
Feh. In all, I still come back to the idea that radical religous belief and nationalist/pan-nationalist sentiment is a serious problem.
(Followup: sometimes when I want some positive spin on current events in general, I look to the conservatives; Christopher Hitchens' Slate piece on Qaddafi (Kadaffi, Ghadaffi, Daffy Duck, whatever) has a side note putting Osama Bin out of it and describing a generally better situation. That doesn't make the current terrorist threat go away, still it's vaguely comforting to read.)
Stupid Question of the Moment
The Boston Bruins aren't doing so well. They say that their record is 2-7-5-1 for their last 15 games Errr, does anyone know what that "1" means? Win, Loss, Tie, ????
Update: googling around, maybe it's some kind of "overtime loss" record? Weird.