Bankok Blogging...

You know you grew up in the 80s if you've ever seen this video

I do like it very much when the hotel that I'm staying in has free wi-fi internet access. Not too bad of a trip so far. I am scheduled to go to Chiang Mai of course, but they made it so we stay one night in Bankok (and the world's my oyster) before we head on up there.

The good news is that I've talked to some people who know the schedule of events that say we get a couple of days off in the middle and that our days don't go past 1500 or 1600 each day. So it shouldn't be too taxing and I should definitely get to go on at least one tour. If they have it, I'm going to go visit the Karen tribes to see if I can get any shots like this:

Women from the Karen Padauong tribe that lives in Northwest Thailand and Southeast Myanmar

Of course, I'm no National Geographic photographer so it may not be exactly like that, but you get the idea hopefully.

Come one come all!!!

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El-e-va-tion!

Finally a reasonable picture of the elipse from the U2 shows

Okay, so I wanted to point out exactly where I was for Monday's U2 shows. I think it's pretty clear that I was one of the lucky few. And to think that Dave Peck bought those tickets a mere 6 hours before the show started. Un freaking real. So all the U2 guys were out walking around on the elipse that you see there from time to time.

What a great night.

And now a moment in history...

Do you remember the good old days? You know, way back when. Like when the administration still insisted that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq just waiting to be found. They said that they knew were the weapons were, that they were "in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."

Well as it turns out, it is official, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, none, nada, zippo. All the proof the administration said they had, Tony Blair's dossier, everything wrong. Dead wrong (and now there may be up to 100,000 dead Iraqis to go with that). The tragically funny thing is that this ultimately makes Saddam Hussein more trustworthy than George W. Bush. Do you remember that big contriversial interview that Dan Rather did with Saddam Hussein on Feb 24, 2003? Here is a small snippet of a transcript from that interview:

Translator For Saddam Hussein: Thank you. The President says, the United States - the world - knows that there is nothing in Iraq of… whatever the noise has been made about. And I believe that that noise and the fleets that have been brought around and the mobilization that's been done were, in fact, done partly to cover the huge lie that was being waged against Iraq about chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

And it was on that basis that Iraq actually accepted Resolution - accepted it, even though Iraq was absolutely certain that what it had said, what the Iraqi officials…had kept saying, that… Iraq was empty, was void of any such weapons, was the case. But Iraq accepted that resolution… in order not to allow any misinterpretation of its position.

And, indeed, in order to make the case absolutely clear that Iraq was no longer in possession of any such…weapons. Iraq accepted to agree to deal with that resolution. That is why, when you talk about such missiles, these missiles have been destroyed. There are no missiles that are contrary to the prescription of the United Nations in Iraq.

These missiles were des - missiles that were proscribed - have been destroyed and are no longer there.

Hindsight is 20/20 you might say. Better to attack and not find them than not attack and get hit with them. Everyone thought there were weapons.

Not exactly

[July 17, 2002]RITTER: No one has substantiated the allegations that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction or is attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction. And of course that is the reason we have been given for going to war against Iraq -- because of the threat posed by these weapons. It has been nothing but rhetorically laced speculation, not hard facts, that have been presented by either the United States or Great Britain to back this up, and until they provide hard facts, there is no case for war.

...

RITTER: I believe Washington D.C. is using the concept of inspections as a political foil to justify war. America doesn't want to inspectors to return. The best way to stop war is to get the inspectors back in. I believe it should be the policy of the United Nations to get the inspectors back in.

Scott Ritter became the "liberal" media's pinata until his credibility was completely shot. Then we attacked and now everything that he ever said has come true.

Kind of makes you want to scream doesn't it?

Holy cow what a night!

Just a short post for now because I'm tired as all get out but I'll post more tomorrow. Not only did we have general admission tickets to the U2 show tonight, 2 of the 3 of us won the random drawing to get into the elipse. Yeah, I was 10 or so feet from Bono. Awesome! Even better, a little while later I turned around and saw Eddie Vedder standing not 15 feet away from me. Totally cool! I even got to say hi to Eddie and he said hi back. Sweet!

What an amazing show and to be where I was...oh man it was just unreal.

Raise your hand if you saw U2 last night!

ooh ooh, I did! I did!

Now raise your hand if you're going to be seeing U2 again tonight.

NICE!

More to the point, I'm going to be seeing U2 again and this time I have general admission tickets with a chance of randomly being able to go into the elipse to watch Bono and the rest of the band walk out right beside me! Holy freaking cool! I'm so excited.

The show last night was so awesome. Seriously, it was unreal to get to see U2 perform Sunday Bloody Sunday live. Well I'm off. I'll post more tomorrow I'm sure.

So you remember Adam Yoshida?

So do you remember how I went on a bit of a rant the other day about Adam Yoshida and his ridiculous red herring? Let's flash back to the pertinent parts shall we?

Similarly, I’m against abortion for national security reasons. More abortions means fewer people, which means a smaller economy and fewer potential soldiers (or, alternately, more immigrants, which is also not a sustainable solution).

Boy, oh boy, has Tbogg given me the greatest idea of a gift for that crazy Canuck...

Protect our troops - from the womb to the war. What if the fetus you were going to abort would grow up to be a soldier bringing democracy to a godless dictatorship?

Plastic replica of an 11-12 week old fetus, 3" long, holding a firearm in its precious little hand, with an assortment of other military paraphernalia, encased in a translucent plastic ornament, with a patriotic yellow ribbon on top. Includes a metal ornament hanger. If only a womb were this safe, attractive and reasonably priced!

Show that you support the "culture of life" by buying and proudly displaying one of these patriotic unborn Americans.

Also available in a "Brown" model

This is a real product, from a real site, selling real products. This is NOT a parody. This is a real store.

It's amazing, someone else actually sees the world just like Adam Yoshida does!

Red State Priorities...

South Carolina is well on its way to making cock fighting a felony punishable up to 5 years in prison but has tabled a domestic violence bill that would do the same thing for a man who abuses his wife. Both Domestic abuse and cockfighting are currently misdemeanors and thanks to boneheads like state Rep. John Graham Altman (R. Dist. 119-Charleston) domestic violence will remain so for at least another year.

Just to recap: The South Carolina legislature thinks that the lives of chickens are more important than the lives of women. And to think, Beth and I could possibly be moving there after this. Great.

And now the at ease wierd Google search of the day!

Any site that is indexed on google and is linked from other pages gets some odd search engine hits from time to time. I thought this one was pretty funny. If you search the following in Google:

experimenting childs plants for school (grass) to see what one will grow stronger or faster with trash

You get at ease as the 23rd result. Good luck to the student in Bensalem Pennsylvania who is apparently trying to do some research on trash consuming plants (specifically grass). I'm sorry my site was no help to you.

This is kind of fun...

Your Linguistic Profile:

70% General American English

10% Dixie

10% Yankee

5% Midwestern

5% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

This test asks questions like what do you call a sugary carbonated beverage Pop or Soda? I'm a soda man myself. There were some things I'd never heard before in that test. Pretty cool.

More problems for the US Air Force Academy

The academy has had its share of problems for a long time. Ever since that female cadet did the 60 minutes interview, they've been looked at as a place for sexual predators. I give all the USAFA guys I know crap about them all being rapists. Then it was the drugs. Let's face it, there are an awful lot of cheaters there too.

I guess it figures that since the place is located right smack dab in cuckoo christian country that this was inevitable...

Less than two years after it was plunged into a rape scandal, the Air Force Academy is scrambling to address complaints that evangelical Christians wield so much influence at the school that anti-Semitism and other forms of religious harassment have become pervasive.

There have been 55 complaints of religious discrimination at the academy in the past four years, including cases in which a Jewish cadet was told the Holocaust was revenge for the death of Jesus and another was called a Christ killer by a fellow cadet.

Wow, what a fantastic learning institution!

I've got an Academy story of my own. You meet a lot of people in the USAF. One guy I met was an AMLO (which is my job) who was a former English teacher at the Academy. He had assigned a final paper that was worth a lot of points. One of his students who was on the football team turned in a clearly substandard paper, I mean something that was absolutely worthless trash. The teacher (the guy I knew) gave the kid 10 mercy points for including his name.

Not but a couple of days later the coach came to the teacher and asked him to change the grade so the kid could pass his class. The teacher said no way, that the paper deserved fewer points than he gave him if anything. The coach proceeded to tell him how it was difficult to be a football player and how he should just let him slide. The teacher said forget it. The coach went to the Commandant who ordered the teacher to change the grade.

So much for the integrity and honor they supposedly cherish. If I had college aged kids, I would do everything I could to steer them away from the USAFA (especially if they were anything other than WASP males).

My advice to all you soon to be high school graduates out there, forget about the USAFA, go get a real education that you can look back upon fondly. Go to school somewhere warm, by a beach, or mountains, or a city, or whatever. Make friends with people, skip a class or two, stay up late, stay out late, have fun. Mosey to class, hell saunter if you want to. In fact, you may even want to rollerblade sometimes. Take 5 years to graduate and do summer school. Take classes that sound interesting, take liberal arts classes, take art or music classes, join a club, start a club. Enjoy your 5 year window because let me tell you something, once it passes, it isn't ever going to come back. Once you're done with your degree you go to work. If you want another degree, you do it while you work and that isn't nearly as fun (trust me). For pete's sake, don't spend your 4 years getting pissed on or just doing what you can to try to make it through. Don't go somewhere where you have to break the rules to go out at night and where you have to walk in stupid straight lines and squared corners. Don't go somewhere where people that have been there for 2 years will give you hell just because they're allowed to.

If you want to go into the military (hey, that may be what you want to do) do it through ROTC. Put your uniform on once a week. Forget the hype about the Academy being prestigious. There are a ton of ROTC and OTS guys and gals that are Colonels and higher. There are plenty of ROTC and OTS pilots (even fighter pilots if that floats your boat). You don't need to be a "ring knocker" to be successful. So why in the world would you want to put yourself through all of that BS?

When it rains it pours...

Adam Yoshida (my favorite nutcase) is at it again. Mr. loser waxes all poetic on what he sees as the grand delusions of the liberals. You know, there's nothing quite as close to the truth as an Adam Yoshida disertation on the merits (or lack thereof) of liberalism.

Witness Adam's first hypothesis. When asked why he thought people were social liberals by a liberal friend of his (a female which presumably means she is cute enough not to be caught up in the imaginary Yoshida liberal kill fest), he had this to say:

They’re under the sway of the illusion of the permanence of all things.

What does that mean you ask? Well good question. Leading linguists, scientists, and astrologers are hard at work this very minute trying to deduce any meaning from that statement. Preliminary findings leaked to at ease are that it is pseudo intellectual drivel from a particularly awkward guy with little or no social skills intended to attract a mate. That is science-speak for he's trying to get a little liberal tail by making them think he's smart.

Adam proceeds to go into a rant about declining fertility rates and fuel shortages that his imaginary friend told him won't actually happen. These arguments would certainly bring modern liberalism to its knees if anyone could figure out why we were supposed to care about fertility rates or what he thinks the future of the fuel supply was going to be.

This is all just fun banter leading up to Adam's primary conjectures. First that we can't allow homosexual marriage because that will affect the security of our country and second that we can't allow abortion because that means we are literally killing future soldiers before they are born. Have a look!

I view moral issues as national security issues. I’m not simply opposed to gay marriage because I believe that it’s an abomination against God, I’m against it because I believe that it’s a threat to our future security. The advance of homosexuality and other ideologies of personal indulgence threaten our security because they will surely weaken our resolve to resist future threats.

Similarly, I’m against abortion for national security reasons. More abortions means fewer people, which means a smaller economy and fewer potential soldiers (or, alternately, more immigrants, which is also not a sustainable solution).

So let's follow the logic chain on these shall we?

1. Homosexuals are allowed to get married
2. ???
3. The US gets overthrown by China!!!!

Wow, scary stuff. What about the abortion thing?

1. The government isn't allowed to tell a woman what to do with her body
2. ???
3. The US gets overthrown by North Korea!!!!

My goodness! Run for the hills!!!

The relatively astitute among you may be saying to yourself, "That's silly, Mr. Yoshida is simply trying to reinforce his arguments by making us afraid of the consequences." The really smart cookies out there will say to yourself, "That Adam is trying to get away with a red herring again." For the uninformed a red herring is a logical fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue.

No wonder this guy is such a loser.

Cat blogging...(Sorry Karlo!)

So it appears that Stevens is all better now. For the uninformed he is our cat that had the runs ever since we got him. He used to be very small for his age with thin hair and now he's much bigger with a great coat and has the run of the house along with Sierra. He's hella cute and very fun to be around ... I no longer feel the need to drop kick him off the Tacoma Narrows bridge.

Very cool!

Friday's Random 10

I personally prefer my Rio Karma to the iPod...

Time for this Friday's random 10!

Artist - Title
1. Tool - Stinkfist
2. Alice in Chains - I Can't Remember
3. John Hartford - Indian War Whoop [Instrumental]
4. Frank Sinatra - Luck Be a Lady
5. Prince - U Got the Look
6. David Byrne - Wicked Little Doll
7. The Clash - Brand New Cadillac
8. Nine Inch Nails - Ruiner
9. Cream - Mother's Lament
10. Alice in Chains - Would?

Marching towards a brave new world...

The way I see it, Senator Frist is using the "religious card" for one of two reasons. First, and least disturbing to me personally, is that he (as a dirty whore politician) is trying to wring every last ounce of power out of the fanatical religious right as he possibly can. That is to say that he is fundamentally unconcerned with the ideals and goals of the fanatical Christians but is more than willing to use them to achieve any and all of his goals. Assuming this to be the case (and it may be, after all others in his party - like Bush - haven't found it necessary to pay back the fanatical fundies for their votes this past election), one has to wonder what it feels like to get so used and abused.

Second, and particularly disturbing to me, is that this is Frist's strategy to change this country into a theocracy. This seems to be a possibility because the right wingers are embracing the fanatical fundies like never before. Seriously, just listen in for a while to Laura Ingraham, Michael Medved, Sean Hannity, and others. You'll start to see what I mean. This could well be a concerted effort on a part of the right to force religion into the Constitution - and could very well be payback to and the cementing of support of the fanatical fundies. If it truly was the religious zealots of this country that elected Bush and his conservative counterparts, what better way to ensure that support doesn't go away than to insert it into the Constitution?

The idea of a Constitutional Theocracy should make everyone nervous. What is Frist up to?

My New Business Card...

In case it isn't clear my site is Mike Lane Photography. I have photography for sale. You can go there. I'll be here when you get back:)

So here is my new business card. Let me know what you think.

Do you know what I need? The perfect cheer!

Ready? Okay.

Who's that guy with an MS degree? It's me! It's me! I said who's that guy with an MS degree? It's me! It's me! Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh uh huh uh huh.

MS DEGREE WOO!

Okay well so it isn't official but I am just now officially 100% complete with my final class. The paper and presentation submitted and it's time to bask in the light of having completed graduate school. I am totally going to start marking the box next to "completed graduate school" instead of just "completed college" or "completed some graduate school" from now on!

I'll be walking on July 30th in Phoenix in case you're wondering.

Last week's Tom the Dancing Bug comic

Lucky Ducky comes out ahead yet again!

Ruben Bolling is a genius.