House of the rising Moonglum

CNN (and everyone) has an article on the political fights on the floor of the senate and congress yesterday. Have we really devolved to this? We can’t have different views. We couch bills with caustic language like “the bill to preserve unity, save freedom, love our troops, and not ever have a specific timetable for leaving Iraq” four months before an election. This is just insane. So anyone who votes against the bill hates our troops?

I mean we’ve always known that you are either with us or against us, but putting up a bill stating things like: “Whereas the United States and Coalition servicemembers and civilians and the members of the Iraqi security forces and those assisting them who have made the ultimate sacrifice or been wounded in Iraq have done so nobly, in the cause of freedom;” simply ignores the issues and gives a platform to say that those that oppose the bill are on record voting against freedom and the troops.

In case you don’t feel like reading the bill, it resolves 7 things, 3 congrats and honorings, one declaration to not set a date for leaving iraq, one commitment to staying in iraq until it is “free” whatever that means (and united, even though that will never happen), a call to the world to join in, and a declaration that we will prevail. Now there is a good use of congress’ time for you.

I don’t really read the slactivist, but maybe I should. Apparently he is going through the Left Behind books, and putting up commentary on different sections as he goes. One of his commentaries I found particularly interesting because it hit one of my peeves about many evangelistic branches of Christianity. That is the salvation as reward, salvation as something that you can control, aspect of many Christian beliefs. He points out the main problem with the book, which is that there are those who get saved, and those who don’t and if you are one of the ones who wasn’t saved, you had better do everything in your power to save yourself and to hell with everyone else. I also love the section of Huckleberry Finn that he quotes. Here is a piece to get you enticed:

“Oh Me H. Tapdancing Me!” Jesus says. “It’s not always about you, you know. Think about somebody else for a change.”

That’s a paraphrase, but it’s not like this was an isolated case. Jesus was always saying this kind of thing: You want to live? Die to yourself. You want to be first? Be last. Want to come out on top? Head for the bottom. Want to win? Surrender.

Now go read the rest for yourself.

I had two interesting things to blog about, but they have been driven completely from my mind. Why you ask? Well because there is an aphid walking around between my back light and my LCD screen. It is really interesting to watch walk around, there is quite a bit of distance between it and the LCD, so it looks like everything is floating above it. But man do I hope that it finds its way out before it dies. That would be like the lamest dead pixel ever.

Well it looks like they actually got him this time. This was very important, and while it happened before an election, I think it was not planned that way, because if it were it would need to be much closer to the election for the short term memory of the voting populace to remember it. I still have a couple questions though. Why did they let him walk way back at the beginning of the war. Especially since he was one of the reasons we went to war in the first place. (Saddam’s link to al-Queda, remember?) And second, why did they bomb him instead of trucking in and picking him up? I would think he would be much more useful alive. Or do we have so little control of the country that we can’t cordon off a single house?

Oh well, the more important thing is that he is no longer leading the resistance. It will still exist of course, but hopefully his lack will slow them up enough to allow some law and order to kick in. I’m afraid that a more likely scenario is a reduction in violence, enough to allow the US to declare victory and leave gracefully, followed by a long term low level of kidnappings and violence like Colombia experience during la Violencia. (or wikipedia) Only time will tell.

Edit: Also, am I the only one disturbed by the pic of the dead guy and the actual bombing? All I can say is dude, I feel real bad for the neighbors.

The trib posted an interesting story by one of the first doctors to recognized AIDS in the United States. His story quickly traces the history and spread of AIDS in this country, and comments on hope for the future. It is an interesting read if you know little about the topic, and has the human angle that I love in news stories.

Well this is a step in the right direction for a company that claims to think differently. Apple appears to finally have a free trade in recycling program. Anyone who reads this blog knows that the lack of computer recycling is a serious environmental hazard. It is exacerbated by the fact that when you do go to the effort to find a place that recycles computers they are really expensive. Some computer companies, like Dell, have been taking old computers to recycle when you buy a new one. But generally you would need to shell out some serious cash to get your recycled, and this used to include Apple.

One interesting idea that I have heard for making companies think more about the environmental impact of their products is to make them responsible for the entire life-cycle of the product. If they were responsible for recycling/reusing/disposing of the product and packaging, that would give them incentive to worry about the recyclability etc, of the product and the overuse of flashy packaging. (Think cd-s when they first came out. Remember those annoying long boxes that you just had to throw away?) In my opinion, this is a good example of that kind of mentality in action. It encourages people to buy your product, and helps remove old product from the waste stream. If they gave a small rebate for people who brought in old computers that would help even more from both the environmental perspective and the incentive to buy from them perspective.

I only hope that they are using proper recyclers and not just shipping them off to China to be part of a different problem.