Life is short

Maybe that's a good thing. None of us will live long enough to avenge all of the horrible atrocities that we have committed against each other. The cycle of violence dies with us and fortunately our children won't really remember what the fighting was all about.

I know from reading textbooks and from school what Vietnam, Korea, WWII, WWI were all (supposedly) all about. But I don't care about these conflicts the way previous generations cared about them.

If this trend continues, the generation of my children and their children will only have to read about "the war on terrorism" in books and learn about it in school. I hope they won't have to be participants.

They'll have enough battles of their own to fight. Unfortunately.

Rabbits from a hat

As a child, I loved magic. During the summer and on weekends, I would hop on my bike and ride halfway across town to a little magic shop on one of the busiest streets in Wichita.

Steven's Magic Emporium was a great store to spend hours in chatting with Joe or his employees, checking out the latest equipment and techniques. I was such a magic geek, that I took lessons from Steven's. I'm pretty sure I was the only child in the class.

~~~
Some of magic is sleight of hand, some of it is rigged equipment and some of it is redirection. Good magicians don't just use rigged equipment, many of them have mastered the art of redirection.
~~~
Nick Berg -- a tragic end, certainly. A timely redirection? Or a coincidence?

Where will the next redirection be and what real action might it mask?

Shame on my country

According to the International Committee of the Red Cross/Crescent, the abuse we've seen of Iraqi prisoners was "systematic". This contradicts what the four horsemen have been saying. Namely, that this is an aberration and that only a small group of people are involved.

The ICRC brought these issues to the U.S. government's attention more than a year ago. But everyone in our government denies that too.

I have not read the excerpts in the Wall Street Journal, but from what I heard on the radio today there were several incidents of soldiers in guard towers taking pot shots at unarmed Iraqi prisoners milling around the grounds. At least one such incident resulted in the death of a prisoner.

Rumsfeld met with members of the House and Senate today and said he was accountable for the abuses and that he would take "full responsibility." What the hell does that mean? Is he going to resign?

And how about these idiot's who posed for the pictures? How stupid can a person be? "Oh yeah, take my picture as I violate the Geneva Convention."

No matter how Bush and his apologists try and paint this, it's shameful. I was pleasantly surprised today at lunch when one of my in-laws who's husband retired after 20 years in the Army said that she thought Rumsfeld should resign or be fired and that her husband felt the same way.

Even sensible Republicans who support the invasion of Iraq are disgusted and feel that Rumsfeld really should be "held accountable." That's refreshing, but I'm afraid we're all going to be disappointed. Bush can't fire his bosses.

What kind of a world is this current administration creating for my children to inherit?

Up for a game?

I may regret doing this, but if you want to see thumbnails of the 276 pictures we took in NYC, click here. It's about 4.5MBs worth of thumbnail images so it may take sometime to download depending on your bandwidth.

Since seeing Searching for Bobby Fischer nearly 10 years ago, I'd always wanted to visit the place in Central Park where they play chess. That place is "The Chess and Checkers House" and on the day we were there this is what we saw:

Back from NYC

I returned from New York City late Monday afternoon. It was awesome and I'm looking forward to going again. I'll be posting more on my adventures in the coming days.

Yes, I saw the Royals lose to the Yankees and in the process I pissed off all the twelve-year-old boys sitting in the row in front of me. That was a hoot.