"Thank you for writing." - Joseph Heller
"America needs your continued leadership, courage and passion." - Gary Hart
An occasionally thoughtful, often warped, sometimes poet. A chapbook of such poetry can be found here.
This applies only to my commentary. Any quoted work of other authors are not included in this license unless directly specified.
Microsoft insists no responsibility for the Slammer worm that debilitated computers over last weekend due to a vulnerability in their SQL Server software. A patch was posted back in June…so any company hit hadn’t installed the patch.
So…following this logic…there is one company you would definitely expect did **not** get hit by the worm. Well, you’d be wrong. It seems Microsoft did in fact get hit. Guess they didn’t install their own patch….
“Daughter of mine, you are 18. You will not date a 44 year old man.”
“What’s this news clipping of you pursuing a 17 year old…you’re almost sixty!”
“That’s not true. We only talked on the phone a few times.”
“And I am only friends with this man, too.”
“Hah!”
“Hah! to you too!”
Role of father played by Mick Jagger. Role of daughter played by Elizabeth Jagger.
Pot, Cattle, Block
Bush is declaring a Sanctity of Human Life day. It is on the anniversary of Roe v Wade.
To quote Bush:
“By working together to protect the weak, the imperfect and the unwanted, we affirm a culture of hope and help ensure a brighter future for all.”
So why don’t those on Death Row belong to the “weak, imperfect, unwanted” category?
Does it matter that the US is one of only 7 countries in the world that executes its children?
A child unborn needs protection. A child born, can be killed by the government if it so desires.
The Supreme Court has recently declared that executing the mentally retarded is cruel and unusal. Why? Because the mentally retarded have the mind of a child. However…it’s alright to kill children, even though they have the minds of children, because….
He had heard the news about the pig that shot the slaughterman.
He had heard about the swans that kept a town in total darkness.
The worm thought to itself, “I’m just a worm, the size of a fingernail, what can I do?”
He found a way to cause trouble.
Meanwhile…a battle on another front is taking shape between two groups who should be friends….a vegetarian and animal rights activists. It appears the vegetarian wants to tatoo some poetry on some piglets.
Lieberman announces his candidacy for 2004
If it comes down to a choice between him and Bush, it will be an easy choice to make. However, I am unlikely to vote for him in the primaries. The article above refers to him as a “centrist”. He’s too much of a centrist for my tastes. I agree with him on some issues, but not enough. However, if the economy is still in the same shape as it is now, I have no doubt he stands a good chance of beating Bush. I wish he were a candidate I could throw my energy behind completely. He isn’t.
Footballer’s mare attacks his bride on wedding night. The football player implies the horse was acting out of jealousy. Making one wonder….the horse was jealous to see the bride in the football player’s bed, because?
Illinois Governor George Ryan: “Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death. I started with this issue concerned about innocence. But once I studied, once I pondered what had become of our justice system, I came to care above all about fairness…. If the system was making so many errors in determining whether someone was guilty in the first place, how fairly and accurately was it determining which guilty defendants deserved to live and which deserved to die?”
States with the most executions since 1976
Texas 289
Virginia 87
Missouri 59
Oklahoma 55
Florida 54
In 2001, 90 per cent of all known executions took place in China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the USA.
Seven countries since 1990 are known to have executed prisoners who were under 18 years old at the time of the crime - Congo (Democratic Republic), Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, USA and Yemen. The country which carried out the greatest number of known executions of child offenders was the USA (17 since 1990).
Amnesty International recorded three executions of child offenders in 2001: one in Iran, one in Pakistan and one in the USA.
More on Gov Ryan’s recent actions
I’ve written several poems and essays over the years on this topic. Here’s one:
The creep who murdered a little girl will now be murdered himself. I’m not sure what this will accomplish.
The girl will still be dead, other girls will still be at risk from other murderers who are always certain of their invincibility, and society could equally be protected
by sentencing the murderer to jail without parole.
We say we value human life, but we are one of very few countries who destroy life, in this manner.
We cite our religious codes: An eye for an eye; a life for a life. Neither the Vatican, nor Israel would execute this criminal.
Aeschylus in Ancient Greece taught us adding more blood does not wipe the slate clean.
The creep, black, who murdered a little girl, white will be executed. Meanwhile the murderers of black children get prison terms.
We say we value human life, but clearly some humans are more valuable than others.
Our founding fathers believed it was better 10 guilty go free than one innocent be jailed. That is why we are innocent, until proven guilty.
However, it appears, we now believe it is better 10 innocents die than one guilty
be allowed to live out his life in prison.
The creep who murdered a little girl will now be murdered himself. I am not sure what this will accomplish. I am not sure what will be gained.
Pete Townshend of The Who has been charged with downloading child porn
His defense is that he was doing research on child porn
Calling the death penalty process “arbitrary and capricious, and therefore immoral,” Gov. George Ryan cleared Illinois’ death row Saturday, commuting 167 condemned inmates’ sentences in the broadest attack on the death penalty in decades.
—
This is excellent news. Most of the 167 will now serve life-without-parole.
I can’t see the argument why killing them is better than life-without-parole. Due to the necessary appeal process to protect someone not guilty from being executed (which isn’t 100% effective as it is), execution is actually more expensive than life imprisonment.
I don’t see how execution teaches society that murder is wrong…since obviously proponents of execution think murder is alright as long as the government is doing it.
And there is no evidence that it deters. Murderers tend to believe they won’t get caught, so any potential punishment is irrelevent to their thinking process.
NIKE creates ads denying use of sweatshop labor
Californian sues NIKE for deceptive advertising
NIKE’s response, “Sure, it was deceptive, but it wasn’t advertising. We weren’t trying to sell shoes. We were engaging in politics.”
Next thing we know…NIKE will announce its candidacy for President.
Back in June I wrote how the Milky Way Galaxy was being charged with shredding another galaxy. Now it turns out it wasn’t a first offense
Here’s a story on a woman so drunk, she decides her 5-year old son should steer the car while she operates the pedals.
Swans are joining the Great Animal Rebellion
There has to be a better way to get into the Guinness Book
Psychologist reduces happiness to mathematical formula: P+(5E)+(3H) [if only the ‘H’ were a ‘Z’…]
Australia starts the Resistance-Movement. Crocodile Jailed
An international battle over the bones of St. Nick
And perhaps the biggest news shocker of all: The parents of the “cloned baby” refuse to allow DNA verification. **gasp** that was so unexpected. Though there is already talk of a documentary…
We still await news from the Italian Scientist who said there’d be a clone born in January….
When she and Green broke up, I thought I might have a chance to move in and fill her void….so to speak. Now it appears Drew’s getting married again
Everyone knows NYC is a dangerous place to live, right?
Well…the number of murders in Manhattan in the year 2002 was lower than it has been for 100 years.
Not per-capita. The total number. In 1902 there were 102 murders. In 1972 there were 661. In 2002, as of Sunday, there were 82. The Manhattan police are definitely doing something right.
Author of Peter Pan, James M. Barrie died in 1937. Under old copyright law, copyright would have normally expired in 1987, fifty years after the death of the author.
A recent congressional act extending copyrights by 20 years in the US would take that to 2007. However, this math is irrelevant, say the owners of the copyright.
As the owner is not, as one would have expected, Barrie’s descendents.
Apparently Barrie turned the copyright over to a hospital for children in 1929, and an act of British Parliament awarded the hospital the copyright inperpetuity.
A Canadian author recently wrote a sequel, and is challenging this notion.
