Imagine my surprise!
THe rally i was checking out not about peace. It was about community colleges.
I’m a returning customer of community colleges. This was interesting to me.
I’ll post my story.
Category Archives: random thoughts
investigating peace
There is a peace protest near my work. I am going to check it out. This is a peace hotbed, over here.
I plan to tell you all about it when I come back.
News from the absurd front
I never get a newspaper, like, on paper anymore. But this one was in the plastic wrap and sitting at my bus stop bench. Who could refuse
The front page was grim and scary. But a little deeper, in the California section, I found this story. Here’s the headline:
MUSTARD COMPANY DOESN’T RELISH ANY ATTACK ON ITS NAME
The story goes on to get to the main point:
“THE ONLY THING FRENCH ABOUT FRENCH’S MUSTARD IS THE NAME!” screamed the press release from French’s PR agency. “Recently there has been some confusion as the the origin of French’s mustard. For the record, French’s would like to say there is nothing more American than French’s mustard.”
This comes a a great relief.
If it’s true.
At last! They legalized it!
Appellate Court Rules Media Can Legally Lie. – SierraTimes.Com
This is what happened:
“On February 14, a Florida Appeals court ruled there is absolutely nothing illegal about lying, concealing or distorting information by a major press organization. The court reversed the $425,000 jury verdict in favor of journalist Jane Akre who charged she was pressured by Fox Television management and lawyers to air what she knew and documented to be false information. ”
This is yet another reason why I mistrust all the things on the news right now.
Thanks for this story, Tantek.
There nothing like a little competition
I’ve been posting almost everything I put on here on Blogcritics lately. Eric Olsen, the founder and nagger of blogcritics has this list of the side bar of top posters. To my surprise, I was on it. I was on the top 20! I had no idea.
WELL, I am not one to lose ground. I started making a huge point of posting on that site. I’m now number 7.
I am very inspired by things like that, measures of how I’m doing.
It’s been fun, just making myself post.
I decided that I should stop worrying about being perfect, and just kick out reviews. I think it’s actually improved my writing. Imagine!
I have also been spending a lot of time reading other people’s entries, and commenting on things.
People comment on my stuff there, too. I get very few comments here, mostly because I get very few visitors here.
What can I say?
But there, I got TOTALLY flamed for my Catch 22 review. Imagine! People can be rude.
And we’ve been having a big ole discussion about the top 100 novels list.
Makes me want to publish more lists.
But it also makes me feel like I have to be careful. I don’t like being flamed. But that’s the risk you take when you put your stuff out there. Not everyone is going to like you.
I still like doing it. It’s worth it to me.
War Protestors–What are they good for?
I am a huge fan of peace. Destruction, oppression of peoples, killing, people getting hurt or going hungry are usually part of war. I don’t want any of those things to happen to me, and I don’t want any of those things to happen to ANYBODY.
However:
Those sorts of things happen outside of war, too. And war can be necessary.
Not everyone agrees with me. I have been friends with Mennonites who believed that it was never ever right to take another human being’s life.
“That’s is God’s right alone,” they said.
“But what if a criminal were holding a gun to your wife’s head, and you could step in and kill him before he killed her?”
“I would have to let God take care of that. It’s wrong to take a life.”
I’ve lived with Quakers who had similar beliefs. I think that is a beautiful thing. I have tremendous respect for their determination to live by their values. I’m sure the world is a better place because they are in it.
I myself would blast the living crap out of anyone that threatened my loved ones. I would be so angry that someone was trying to hurt them.
This is so much of what I hear from peace protestors, too.
ANGRY ANGRY ANGRY
whoa.
Back it up, people. What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding?
I like peace. I WANT to be on your side. My heart says, Don’t hurt people!
But the wiser grown-up part of me also knows that it takes hard measures to set things right after they have gone wrong.
And something has gone wrong. Saddam did stuff he shouldn’t do.
So did America.
So did the U.N.
And what do we do now? We can’t go back in time and make a better choice. We are now, we are here, living with the consequences of everything that went before.
What type of consequences do we want to live with in the future? The consequences of war? Or the consequences of not-war?
I say not-war, because I am not sure that the state of things in Iraq were what I could call peace.
Or the state of things in America.
I am not sure about it. I don’t know. I wish I understood. I wish that I had been reading things all along and learning about the situation before it had come to this.
Now, it’s come to this. And what am I to think? War is not a good thing. What can we do to not have war?
How can I know what is the most important?
I can’t devote my whole day to studying it out. Most people in America cannot do this.
BUT!
We have thought of that. This smart for-the-people-by-the-people place I get to live in, we came up with freedom of speech, and then later came up with University systems. We, taxpayers, pay to have people sit around and study important things out so they can get back to us and tell us.
Sometimes, it is in the form of a classroom, this telling us. But when something is so broadly important, I think that these people that I pay to study things should get the information out to more people.
I’m not saying tell me what to think, but laying out the options might be nice.
I feel very let down by the people who are supposed to be our intellectuals.
I think they are not doing their jobs.
Tenure was set up to give professors the security to be daring in their thoughts, to reach farther than others might with safety. I think its a good idea.
But all those people are not putting it out there.
Give me a break! If I can get 4 spams of Michael Moore’s stuff, why can’t someone whose opinion is vastly more informed give me an email that makes some logical sense?
This was first made clear to me with the “Not is our Name” petition that went around the ‘net after September 11.
The statement is one of great weight. I want to resist the bad things they talk about.
But I was not given one shred of evidence of the things they accused the government of doing.
If it is happening, why don’t they point to it?
We are only told to “resist.”
Oh, wait. We are also told to post little globes everywhere.
I feel betrayed. Many of the people who signed that list are people I admire.
Why haven’t they given us a better argument?
Truth shouldn’t be difficult to prove. The fact that no evidence is given makes me wonder if it’s true.
For the times…
The Theory’s method of signing out made me think of this.
I do hope for peace.
This is my favorite
MIR-
The russian (and generally slavic) word for peace. If you write it like this:
MUP
It looks closer to the cyrillic letters.
I like it because the same exact word, same exact spelling, same exact pronunciation means
WORLD
So,
MIRA MIR
or
MUPA MUP
means “peace for the world”
mirnyy
or
MUPHUU
means
“peaceful”
this is the name of the town in Yakutia, Russia that I lived in for a year.
It was peaceful, and I am grateful that it was peaceful when I was there, in 1992.
Moscow had just been less peaceful.
That is my personal favorite word for peace.
Mir, mira mir, dla vcex
peace, world peace, for all.
A good definition
My new blogfriend, NathanNelson, wrote a great post about what blogs are and where they came from.
I know that a lot of my readers (hi mom!) have asked me about the word blog and been quite confused by my explanation.
I think if you’re confused, you should go read Nathan’s Post.
It might clear a few things up.
new friend
I have a blog friend. PURELY from the blog world.
He’s kind of funny, check him out:
Nathan Nelson
But you know what else? He actually took the time to help out with the search for Elizabeth Smart. I am impressed. I have never done anything like that.
He gets the good neighbor/Samaritan award of the day.
Elizabeth Smart
Abducted Girl’s Relatives Say Her Captor Brainwashed Her
“Meanwhile, Elizabeth is playing the harp so much that she has blisters on her fingers, said Angela Smart, her aunt, adding that her niece has a new goal — to go to New York City and study music at the Juilliard School.”
I feel so much for Elizabeth Smart. I feel it in my heart, I can understand how she could have been kept with this man Emmanuel for 9 months and not escape.
Don’t abused children protect their parents? “I fell down the stairs.” And I know that when I was married to an abusive husband, I was very careful to explain away suspicious noises and defend his treatment of me.
how hard is it to believe that Elizabeth Smart turned around to defend her captor? He was supposed to be an emmisarry of God! According to himself.
Your logic is a little crazy when you are fourteen years old and kidnapped at gunpoint from your home. This man talked in the same type of language as all the respected men in her family. THose men who got up in church and talked about God will and the lost sheep and such.
It would be so comfortable for Elizabeth to believe that her captor was acting benvolently towards her.
And now, she is home. And she has to find a way for life to make sense again.
I understand how music must be such a comfort to her. Not words, not talking. Talking is too concrete and frightening. But music can give her some expression.
I pray that her family can give her the kind of support she needs.