I think Julian has it right on his two big points. First, the D.C. police are frightening in their incompetence and facism, and are a prime example why a self-armed citizenry should be our preferred crime deterrent. Here in Virginia, the citizens are armed and the police are both competent and reasonable for the most part. In D.C.? Well, Chandra Levy's bones still cry out for justice and every six months the city has a multi-million dollar slugfest in which addle-headed anti-capitalists wearing mass-produced Birkenstocks get their non-functional brains beaten in.
Julian's second major point is akin to the broken clock being right twice a day. On occasion, the lefties get some ideas that actually make sense, but for the most part, they don't understand why outside a "we're all connected" sensibility that arises from the desire to squelch serious discussion rather than foster it. God forbid anyone actually question their beliefs or the supposed facts those beliefs are based on.
And BTW, I haven't been able to update Wasylik.net for over a week because Blogger is down. Makes a girl wanna learn html. And Moveable Type.
I just read that Rep. Patsy Mink passed away. I knew her tangentially -- three of my very good friends used to work for her. She came to my house for Mel's bridal shower. I watched her go a little crazy with the one armed bandit in Las Vegas. She will be missed.
I recently upgraded to Mac OS X Jaguar - which is mostly a pretty nifty and worthwhile upgrade. Much to my dismay, however, the Brother MFC-8500 printer I rely on for my legal practice had "compatibility issues" - meaning the computer couldn't even see it.
I wasn't able to print anything for two days. Paper is to a lawyer what a hammer is to a carpenter - no work happens without them. I panicked.
Then I found Gimp-Print. Based on OS X's Unix underpinnings, Gimp-Print works with just about any printer that anyone's ever tried to use on a Unix, BSD or Linux machine - close to everything ever made. Even, supposedly, printers which wouldn't normally work with OS X.
Gimp-Print cost me nothing, installed in under five minutes, and had me back online right away. If you've got a printing issue with OS X, check out the Gimp-Print driver package.
Here's a video clip of our esteemed President. Skip to the 11:00 minute mark. (Real media player required.)
Sigh.
Thanks to Quare, I now have a response to self-righteous vegetarians who think meat is murder:
Cornflakes are murder, too.
Millions of animals are killed every year, Davis says, to prepare land for growing crops, "like corn, soybean, wheat and barley, the staples of a vegan diet."
But here's the delicious irony of the matter. Like solar power plants that get spiked by conservations looking to preserve the viewshed, the solution to this problem will drive a wedge right down the center of the environmental movement. Farms that produce more in smaller space using high-yield technology will have a smaller footrpint on the land, and ultimately, have a lesser environmental impact. What are these high-yield technologies? Tractors. Fertilizer. Pesticides. Genetically modified crops. All the things that eco-activists love to hate. But if they mean that we can use less land to feed the people we already have, then ultimately these high-yield technologies give the envirnmental movement exactly what they have said all along they want - less disruption of natural ecosystems.
Be careful what you ask for - you just might get it.
What's wrong with this opening sentence?
The first private Moon landing has finally been given the green light by the US Government.
Yeah, maybe we were the first only country to get to the Moon, but who the hell gave us the right to play gatekeeper?
Actually, this reminds me a bit of my first year in law school, where one of the property professors - not mine - gave atake home exam with a single question: "Who owns the Moon?" I never learned the "correct" answer.
Happy Friday the 13th, everyone. Break a leg. Little known fact: I was born on a Friday the 13th.
The Chicago Sun Times reports that my alma mater Northwestern has climbed into the top ten of universities ranked by the U.S. News and World Report, just a short time after the Princeton Review ranked NU as the Best Overall Academic Experience For Undergraduates.
I'm still looking for Cornell on either list.
In other NU news, I found out that Richard Klein, who played Larry from Three's Company, is a fellow Northwestern alum. Who knew?
Jason has arrived, and will be staying with us for a week or so. Good times will be had by all.
Glenn captures exactly how I feel about today - we need not wallowing, but action, so that we may never again see what happened one year ago.
While I will never forget, I'm spending today trying not to remember.
I remember spending almost two months last fall engrossed in the stories of those that perished and those who survived. I went to a funeral, read the papers, watched TV. After a short time, I knew I was overloading. Today I'm not watching the news, I'm not listening to the radio, I'm in my office working hard for my clients because if I dip a toe in, I think it would pull me in over my head.
In the last year, I've lived my life. I opened my own law practice, bought a house, traveled to places I had never been, lost forty pounds, spent time with friends and family, and just went on. My life over the last year was not meant to be a repudiation of any kind, but as I look back today, that's what it became. I expect the next year will be filled with milestones much like the last. They say that living well is the best revenge, and I'm making plans to live it to the hilt. Those who left us a year ago would expect nothing less.