House of the rising Moonglum

It is very odd to read a blog that someone posted while sitting in the same room as you. IMing someone from across the room is one thing, e-mail a bit odder, but blogging? That is just odd.

There is a great April Fool’s editorial on scientific american next month. This is one reprint, but there are a bunch of others out there.

Item!* 2 miles 18 minuets. Nuff said.

Item! The gym is much less crowded at 7:30 AM than at 6:30 AM

Item! Back down to 185! Woohoo! 180 here we come!

Item! There is a mouse in our house.

Item! It is difficult to telecommute when your company’s network is down.

Item! It bodes ill for said company when it is an internet company and this is the second day the network is down.

Item! Vacation starts this weekend!

* Item! concept stolen from welcomerain

So that same number called me again. The automated message says they will take me off their list if I hit 2 and hit 1 to get a 1% mortage. I hit 2 and they (automatedly) talked about respecting my privacy and that they won’t call me again. OTOH, I may have just let them know that it is an active number. Interestingly their number is 206-415-8614. Looking that number up on Google give som interesting hits. It looks like there are a number of scams now that call cell phones. Why do only the scams call cell phones? Why aren’t they in jail?

Apparently that number is also used by USPACS:

“Telemarketer asks for your zipcode and tells you there are sex offenders in your area. Gives you web address www.uspacs.org Website says: By submitting this information you agree to a one time charge of $19.95 for a USPACS subscription which includes: a full year’s protection of E-mail ALERT updates; and access to registered sex offender profiles. Unlimited Access to sex offender profiles.”

People actually give these guys money? Apparently they are related somehow to Girls Gone Wild, and engage in scams where repeating charges show up on your credit card, and then make it hard to remove them. *sigh*

From Pam, apparently I am a spiteful villain:

What Type of Villain are You?
mutedfaith.com.

Oh man, I got a telemarketer phone call on my cell phone today. It made me so mad!

A quick web search makes me think that it is legal though. I guess I’ll have to put that number on the do not call list as well, but I have this odd feeling that the reason I haven’t had any yet is that it isn’t posted anywhere. But I’m afraid that once it is posted there I will actually get more calls. We’ll see.

An interesting article from the CSM on New Trier High School and what working too hard can do to you.

So it looks like the state of Illinois has finally gotten the gumption up to actually puch this law through the state legislature. I had a fairly heated discussion about it yesterday, but had a hard time coming up with a good argument on why I dislike it so much. I have been pointed to a Tribune article which I think clearly states most of my feeling on the subject, plus a few I hadn’t thought of. Normally I just point to articles, but this one really summed up a lot of my thoughts about this, so here are the basic points of the article are:

• It’s unconstitutional, so why are we wasting government resources pushing it through? “debate that reached its high point when one member said, ‘I am going to vote for this bill knowing it’s unconstitutional.’”
• It won’t stop the kids from getting the games. “The Entertainment Software Association says the average player is 29 years old and the average buyer is 36.”
• The law is inconsistent in what it bans teenagers from buying/renting. “By that standard, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue would be off-limits to high-schoolers.”
• There is no link between playing video games and violence.
• This is just the last in a long line of industries causing kids to be violent. “Video games are just the latest form of entertainment accused of warping young people beyond repair–such as rap music lyrics in the 1980s, and bloody movies and TV shows in the 1960s and 1970s.”

And in the vein of that last point, this is the same sort of thing they tried to do to Dungeons and Dragons back in the day. I just hate to see the same mistakes repeated over and over, and this feels like the same mistake to me.

So, I finally had some time to play some more Xenosaga. I just got to the part where it turns out that Jesus is a female android who was tied to the crucifix with computer cables.

My brain hurts. And since this is part 1 of 6 I guess it won’t stop anytime soon.

Sort of fits in with the movie theme this week as well. Just saw Consantine last week, which I loved. Lots of cool biblical imagry and at least for the first and last scene, actually has him using his brain to complete the exorcisms rather than just duking it out.

Continuing with the series of really odd add locations, the department of homeland security seems to also be funding keenspot. And entire banner ad with just the words: “Everyone should have a plan.”

Duuuuuuude.

Like, I thought I did.

A new study shows that teens who commit to abstinence pledges are more likely to participate in risky behavior than those who do not. This comes on the tail of another study which showed that abstinence pledgers were just as likely to have STDs as non-pledging teens.

Teach abstinence if you want, but please teach kids about the risks of other behaviors as well.

I posted about Zarqawi back in January wondering wether or not he was actually captured. Well now it is looking more and more like he may actually have been captured. In that spirit, and because I was just talking about it to someone the other day, I give you one of my three big complaints about Bush.

Back when this whole war began, which was started because of national security, did Bush let Zarqawi walk. We knew where he was, we knew that he was linked to al Queda, in fact if memory serves correctly I think that his presence in Iraq was one of the big reasons for invading. Of all the problems in Iraq he was one of the few that could have posed a direct threat to the US. We knew where he was, and we didn’t go in and get him.

I’ve been hanging on to this post for a while, because I wanted to do something bigger with it, but since it may be moot soon, I just wanted to mention it. This makes me so mad, if you are going to make war, make it right. Give your troops the equipment they need, not the equipment they have, and fight the damn war. Letting Zarqawi go has probably cost hundreds of US lives (and thousands of Iraqi lives?) at this point. Which isn’t to say that nothing would have happened without him in the picture, but at the very least we wouldn’t be offering 25 million for him now.

I’ve been so busy lately I haven’t had any time to catch up on the Iraq news. Well the latest scoop is, after the elections they are still having a hard time coming up with a government. The two largest parties are trying to agree on some principles and both are being too hard headed to make any progress, the Kurds keep demanding too much autonomy and the Shia’s keep demanding too much centralized and religious power.

While they keep wrangling the old government keeps power, the populace loses trust in their newly elected government, and the insurgents become more emboldened. It is also becoming more and more clear that the bulk of the horrible terrorist acts are being carried out by arabs from other countries, when public parties are being held in jordan to celebrate the suicide bombers. This has mostly come out through live television broadcasts of captured terrorists confessing their crimes. The Iraqis are starting to get pissed.

And in totally unrelated news, I believe that this is the first Afghani blogger. Now that is cool.

I’ve had a number of discussions about feminist issues this past week. One thing in particular that came up a number of times was women in science. This has always been a problem, especially in computer science. (Which is especially sad given that all of the original computers and first programmers were women, not to mention Ada Lovelace.) Well it looks like after years of progress in the computer field, women are leaving IT jobs.

And in a different arena, I read the first feminist article in mainstream media that I have seen in a while. My favorite part? Taking about how we put in place a rule in Iraq that 25% of the reps must be women. Apparently we need 11 more female reps in the senate.

I have always found Lebanon an interesting country. They are mixed an modern, but like Baghdad used to be. The Daily Star is one of the best newspapers in the region, and certainly the most free. Unfortunately they have lived under occupation for decades. A few years back, Israel abandoned their occupation of southern Lebanon in part thanks to the efforts of the Syrian backed Shiite group Hezbollah. (This is where my brain hurts, since Syria is also backing the anti-shiite fighters in Iraq. The group that set of the huge bomb at the shiite mosque a few weeks back was found to be backed by Syria.) In any case their backing got the Shiites to not mind the concurrent occupation by Syria so much. So, where are we now?

The anti-syria government leader Hariri was killed a month ago, which led to a spontaneous demonstration of about 100,000, mostly Sunni’s and Christians, who wanted Syria out of Lebanon. They claim that Syria was responsible for the attaack. Last week the Hezbolla gathered a crowd of around 200,000 as a counter protest. And now it looks like on the one month anniversary of Hariri’s assassination more than 800,000 Lebanese gathered to protest the Syrian occupation. Remember that this is a country of only 3.5 million. Within the last week, almost half the country has taken to the streets.

No violence yet. I pray that that continues. I always thought that Lebanon made a better example for the mideast than Iraq anyway.

No more going out during the day for me. The last time I went out, I walked by the house where the Lefkows were being held. Today I decided to go and get some lunch instead of making it at home, and I walk by a bank robbery! Apparently I bring chaos when I walk outside.

Can someone please explain to me why the Illinois Department of Revenue bought all the ads on keenspot? It was really odd to be catching up on my comics and see a bunch of ads telling me to use e-file in Illinois. I assume that those are the ads for the entire country?

This day started and eneded with interesting happenings. See the other post today for the morning, in the evening I went to see Orson Scott Card give a talk and do a book signing. At this talk I learned the final aribter of what is Science Fiction(TM) and what is Fantasy(TM):

A Science Fiction book has rivets on the cover, whicle a Fantasy book has trees.

I have seldome seen such wisdom so concisely stated.

Today has been odd. I saw a five inch dog with a pink sweater and earmuffs and a diamond brooch.

Now the iPod has given me Justified and Ancient by KLM followed by Astronomy by Blue Oyster Cult.

Brain hurts.

There was a very moving day at church today. Lots of people there knew the Lefkows, baby sat for used as baby sitters, etc. I had also forgotten that they have even come to service there a couple times. One odd part though was a bit fire and brimstone. The gospel was John 9, the whole thing, and tha was used to point out that Jesus opens our eyes to our own sins. I hadn’t really thought of it like that before, but that works pretty well for me. The moment of oddness (for me) came when it was mentioned that the arrogance that we can build a place that is safe and free of the dangers of hate is a sin. I’ll have to think about that one for a bit, not sure what I think about that. Or even what it means for that matter.

FWIW, there will be a candlelight vigil on their street for people in the community at 7 tomorrow.