padisharfrobozz

Dramatically cooler over the past 12 months...

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 03:04:00 GMT

A couple of articles (one the source for the other talking about a large downward turn of global temperatures.

http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Worldwide+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm

Twelve-month long drop in world temperatures wipes out a century of warming

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out most of the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.

Let's hope those factors stop fast. Cold is more damaging than heat. The mean temperature of the planet is about 54 degrees. Humans -- and most of the crops and animals we depend on -- prefer a temperature closer to 70.

Historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum were beneficial for civilization. Corresponding cooling events such as the Little Ice Age, though, were uniformly bad news.

Update 2/27: Anthony Watts, who kindly provided the graphics herein, otherwise has no connection with the column. The views and comments are those of the author only.

http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/january-2008-4-sources-say-globally-cooler-in-the-past-12-months/

January 2008 - 4 sources say “globally cooler” in the past 12 months

19 02 2008

January 2008 was an exceptional month for our planet, with a significant cooling. January 2007 started out well above normal.

January 2008 capped a 12 month period of global temperature drops on all of the major well respected indicators. I have reported in the past two weeks that HadCRUT, RSS, UAH, and GISS global temperature sets all show sharp drops in the last year.

Here are the 4 major temperature metrics compared top to bottom, with the most recently released at the top:

UK’s Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature anomaly (HadCRUT) Dr. Phil Jones:
Reference: above data is HadCRUT3 column 2 which can be found here
description of the HadCRUT3 data file columns is here

NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Dr. James Hansen:
Reference: GISS dataset temperature index data

University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH) Dr. John Christy:
Reference: UAH lower troposphere data

Remote Sensing Systems of Santa Rosa, CA (RSS):
Reference: RSS data here (RSS Data Version 3.1)

The purpose of this summary is to make it easy for everyone to compare the last 4 postings I’ve made on this subject.

I realize that not all the graphs are of the same scale, so my next task will be to run a combined graphic of all the data-sets on identical amplitude and time scales to show the agreements or differences such a graph would illustrate.

UPDATE: that comparison has been done here

Here is a quick comparison and average of ∆T for all metrics shown above:

Source:	Global ∆T °C
HadCRUT	- 0.595
GISS	- 0.750
UAH	- 0.588
RSS	- 0.629
Average:	- 0.6405°C

For all four metrics the global average ∆T for January 2007 to January 2008 is: - 0.6405°C

This represents an average between the two lower troposphere satellite metrics (RSS and UAH) and the two land-ocean metrics (GISS and HadCRUT). While some may argue that they are not compatible data-sets, since they are derived by different methods (Satellite -Microwave Sounder Unit and direct surface temperature measurements) I would argue that the average of these four metrics is a measure of temperature, nearest where we live, the surface and near surface atmosphere.

UPDATE AND CAVEAT:

The website DailyTech has an article citing this blog entry as a reference, and their story got picked up by the Drudge report, resulting in a wide distribution. In the DailyTech article there is a paragraph:

“Anthony Watts compiled the results of all the sources. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year time. For all sources, it’s the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.”

I wish to state for the record, that this statement is not mine: “–a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years”

There has been no “erasure”. This is an anomaly with a large magnitude, and it coincides with other anecdotal weather evidence. It is curious, it is unusual, it is large, it is unexpected, but it does not “erase” anything. I suggested a correction to DailyTech and they have graciously complied.

Maybe the sky's not falling after all...

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 18:11:56 GMT

Y2K strikes at global warming conclusions in US

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=8383

Blogger Finds Y2K Bug in NASA Climate Data
Michael Asher (Blog) - August 9, 2007 11:49 AM

Years of bad data corrected; 1998 no longer the warmest year on record

My earlier column this week detailed the work of a volunteer team to assess problems with US temperature data used for climate modeling. One of these people is Steve McIntyre, who operates the site climateaudit.org. While inspecting historical temperature graphs, he noticed a strange discontinuity, or "jump" in many locations, all occurring around the time of January, 2000.

These graphs were created by NASA's Reto Ruedy and James Hansen (who shot to fame when he accused the administration of trying to censor his views on climate change). Hansen refused to provide McKintyre with the algorithm used to generate graph data, so McKintyre reverse-engineered it. The result appeared to be a Y2K bug in the handling of the raw data.

McKintyre notified the pair of the bug; Ruedy replied and acknowledged the problem as an "oversight" that would be fixed in the next data refresh.

NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II. Anthony Watts has put the new data in chart form, along with a more detailed summary of the events.

The effect of the correction on global temperatures is minor (some 1-2% less warming than originally thought), but the effect on the U.S. global warming propaganda machine could be huge.

Then again -- maybe not. I strongly suspect this story will receive little to no attention from the mainstream media.

my day so far...

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 17:48:59 GMT

When I got up this morning my Internet connection was down completely. Took me almost an hour of cajoling but I finally traced the problem back to Comcast. Even when it did come back up many websites were still unavailable to me. Soon after that the normal flow of support calls started coming in. One person needed to download the VPN software for her new laptop that I just replaced for her because the one she had stopped working. It looked like she fished it out of the garbage. It had food and all kind of grunge all over it and evidence that it had been dropped a couple of times. Anyway... I directed her to our ftp site to download the VPN software but she could not log on. I couldn't get there either. I figured it must be a problem still with Comcast. Oh well. I told her we'd try it again later. I then had to drive 45 miles to one of our satellite offices to replace a computer that had burned up the day prior because of a bad power supply. There is where I found that the listings page for the company (I work for a real estate brokerage) had been rerouted to this - http://drinkthegoodstuff.blogspot.com/.

I was going to say that it's just going to be one of those days... but it's already been one of those weeks. Oy.

Some things to ponder...

Tue, 07 Nov 2006 20:03:00 GMT

...when considering for whom you will cast your vote. If you're a Democrat yourself, or just fed up with Bush, et al then I implore you to read the following 2 articles

An excellent article by a Democrat, Orson Scott Card.

http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2006-10-29-1.html

The Only Issue This Election Day

There is only one issue in this election that will matter five or ten years from now, and that's the War on Terror.

And the success of the War on Terror now teeters on the fulcrum of this election.

If control of the House passes into Democratic hands, there are enough withdraw-on-a-timetable Democrats in positions of prominence that it will not only seem to be a victory for our enemies, it will be one.

Unfortunately, the opposite is not the case -- if the Republican Party remains in control of both houses of Congress there is no guarantee that the outcome of the present war will be favorable for us or anyone else.

But at least there will be a chance.

I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America's role as a light among nations.

But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war. And since the Democratic Party seems hellbent on losing it -- and in the most damaging possible way -- I have no choice but to advocate that my party be kept from getting its hands on the reins of national power, until it proves itself once again to be capable of recognizing our core national interests instead of its own temporary partisan advantages.

To all intents and purposes, when the Democratic Party jettisoned Joseph Lieberman over the issue of his support of this war, they kicked me out as well. The party of Harry Truman and Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- the party I joined back in the 1970s -- is dead. Of suicide.

The "War on Terror"

I recently read an opinion piece in which the author ridiculed the very concept of a "war on terror," saying that it makes as much sense as if, after Pearl Harbor, FDR had declared a "war on aviation."

Without belaboring the obvious shortcomings of the analogy, I will agree with the central premise. The name "war on terror" clearly conceals the fact that we are really at war with specific groups and specific nations; we can no more make war on a methodology than we can make war on nitrogen.

However, there are several excellent reasons why "War on Terror" is the only possible name for this war.

1. This is not a war that can be named for any particular nation or region. To call it "The Iraq War" or the "Afghanistan War" would lead to the horrible mistake of thinking that victory would consist of toppling certain governments and then going home.

In fact, it is precisely the name "War in Iraq" that is leading to the deep misconceptions that drive the Democratic position on the war. If this were in fact a war on Iraq, then in one sense we won precisely when President Bush declared victory right after we occupied Baghdad. And in another sense, we might not see victory for another five years, or even a decade -- a decade in which Americans will be dying alongside Iraqis. For a "War in Iraq" to linger this way is almost too painful to contemplate.

But we are not waging a "War in Iraq." We are waging a world war, in which the campaigns to topple the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan were brilliantly successful, and the current "lukewarm" war demands great patience and determination from the American people as we ready ourselves for the next phase.

2. We cannot name this war for our actual enemies, either, because there is no way to name them accurately without including some form of the word "Islam" or "Muslim."

It is our enemies who want to identify this as a war between Islam and the West. If we allow this to happen, we run the risk of achieving the worst of all possible outcomes: The unification of one or both of the great factions of worldwide Islam under a single banner.

President Bush and his administration have shown their grasp of our present danger by stoutly resisting all attempts to rename this war. We call it a "War on Terror" because that allows us to cast it, not as a war against the Muslim people, with all their frustrations and hopes, but a war in which most Muslims are not our enemies at all.

That can be galling for many Americans. When, after the fall of the towers on 9/11, Palestinians and others poured into the streets, rejoicing, it was tempting to say, A plague on all of them!

But it is precisely those people -- the common people of the Muslim world, most of whom hate us (or claim to hate us, when asked by pollsters in police states) -- whom we must treat as if they were not our enemies. They are the ones we must win over for us to have any hope of victory without a bloodbath poured out on most of the nations of the world.

Nation Building

Another charge against the Bush administration's conduct of the war is that they are engaged in the hopeless task of "nation-building." And this is true -- except for the word "hopeless."

But what is the alternative? I've heard several, each more disastrous and impossible and even shameful than the one before.

In the New Testament, Jesus once used the analogy of a person who was possessed by a devil. When you cast out the devil, don't you leave an empty house, swept clean, to which seven devils will now come to live, making things worse than ever?

No matter which miserable dictatorship we moved against after the Taliban -- and we had no choice but to keep moving on if we were to eradicate the grave danger we faced (and face) -- we would have faced the same problem in Syria or Iraq or Sudan that we had in Afghanistan: We had to establish order in a nation that had never actually become a nation.

The boundaries on the ground in the Middle East were not formed in the traditional way -- by compromise or war. Instead, European powers drew lines that pleased their fancy. The lines did not create the hatreds that plague the region, but they guaranteed that traditional enemies would have to face each other within these boundaries.

It is in part because of the resulting chaos and oppression that groups like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and the Shiite fundamentalists of Iran have been given an opportunity to offer the solution of returning to the core values of Islam -- as defined, of course, to their private advantage.

If we topple one government and then walk away, the result in any Middle Eastern nation would be civil war, and the probable winner would be the well-funded international terrorist groups that do not shrink from wholesale murder in pursuing their cause.

Just as Kerensky's attempt at a liberal government in revolutionary Russia was almost instantly snuffed out by Lenin's Bolshevik thugs in 1917, so also would any attempt at unified democratic government in Iraq, Iran, Syria, or Afghanistan be quickly converted into Islamo-fascism of one stripe or another.

And if that happened, Islamicist puritanism would be seen in every nation as the "wave of the future." Just as, when Nazi Germany was in the ascendant, the nations of southeastern Europe quickly made their accommodation with Hitler, since the alternative was to be swept away like Poland, France, or Yugoslavia, so also would nominally democratic nations adopt the trappings of Islamicism -- if they weren't already toppled by puritan revolutions from within.

Democracy -- the Other Hope

Wherever Islamicism has been tried, the result has been identical to Communism's miserable track record. The people are oppressed; the worst sort of vigilantes and thugs terrorize the population; the new power elite, regardless of their supposed piety and dedication to a holy cause, is quickly corrupted and comes to love the wealth and privileges of power.

When there is no hope of deliverance, the people have no choice but to bow under the tyrant's lash, pretending to be true believers while yearning for relief. In Russia it came ... after more than seventy years. China and Cuba are still waiting -- but then, they started later.

So it would be in the Muslim world -- if Islamicism were ever able to come to seem inevitable and irresistible.

You know: If America withdrew from Iraq and Afghanistan and exposed everyone who had cooperated with us to reprisals.

As happened in South Vietnam. The negotiated peace was more or less holding after American withdrawal. But then a Democratic Congress refused to authorize any further support for the South Vietnamese government. No more armaments. No more budget.

In other words, we forcibly disarmed our allies, while their enemies continued to be supplied by the great Communist powers. The message was clear: Those who rely on America are fools. We didn't even have the decency to arrange for the evacuation of the people who had trusted us and risked the most in supporting what they thought was our mutual cause.

We did it again, this time in the Muslim world, in 1991, when Bush Senior encouraged a revolt against Saddam. He meant for the senior military officers to get rid of him in a coup; instead, the common people in the Shiite south rose up against Saddam.

Bush Senior did nothing as Saddam moved in and slaughtered them. The tragedy is that all it would have taken is a show of force on our part in support of the rebels, and Saddam's officers would have toppled him. Only when it became clear that we would do nothing did it become impossible for any high-ranking officials to take action. For the price of the relatively easy military action that would have made Saddam turn his troops around and leave the Shiite south, we could have gotten rid of him then -- and had grateful friends, perhaps, in the Shiite south.

That is part of our track record: Two times we persuaded people to commit themselves to action against oppressive enemies, only to abandon them. Do you think that would-be rebels in Iran and Syria and North Korea don't remember those lessons?

Fortunately, there are other lessons as well: West Germany and Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, where liberated nations were protected. In the first two, we took on the task of nation building and transformed both political cultures into democracies. In the latter two, we tolerated strongman dictatorships for many years, but eventually we made it clear that it was time for democracy, and under our protective umbrella, the governments were transformed and oppression ended.

So ... which America is operating now in the Muslim world?

In Iraq and Afghanistan -- but especially Iraq -- President Bush is behaving according to America's best and most honorable tradition. We did not come to destroy, we came to liberate and rescue, he says -- by word and deed. We bring freedom and opportunity. Our money will help rebuild your devastated (or never built-up) economies; our expertise will help train your most talented people to be ready for prosperity and self-government; and our military will keep enemies from overwhelming you as you reinvent yourselves.

Instead of leaving an empty house, swept clean but unprotected, waiting for the devils of Islamic puritanism to come take over, President Bush has sworn that America will bring democracy, and that American soldiers will do their best to protect the decent, ordinary people until they are able to protect themselves.

The Competing Stories

Here's the story the Islamic puritans are telling: The West is full of terrible evils -- atheism, sexual filth of all kinds -- in defiance of God's will. So seductive are the wiles of Shaitan that many Muslims aspire to dress, act, and live like westerners. Only by turning to full enforcement of ancient Muslim law can Islam purify itself and resist the blandishments of the west. It's evil on one side, God on the other.

If all we had to answer them was Hollywood movies, politically correct anti-religious dogmas, and the other trappings of a West that is almost as decadent as the Islamicists claim, then we would only prove their point.

Instead, President Bush has offered something quite different. We don't want to turn you into mini-Americas, he says. We offer you, instead, democracy, in which you can choose for yourselves what parts of western culture to adopt. You will govern yourselves. It isn't a choice between wickedness and righteousness, it's a choice between freedom and oppression.

In other words, through nation-building, through the promise of democracy, Bush has created a rallying point with far stronger resonance than anything the Islamic puritans have to offer.

What is their program, after all? We'll take your sons and get them to blow themselves up in order to murder westerners! Forget the rhetoric -- Muslim parents are human beings, and there is nothing more devastating than to lose a child. The only consolation is when it seems to be in a noble cause. But because of President Bush's promise of democracy, the Muslim puritan cause does not seem noble to more and more Muslims.

Even if they live in countries (or neighborhoods) where they dare not speak up -- yet -- they do not want any of their children to die just so that the rest of them can live and suffer in slavery to a privileged, selfish class of elitist tyrants.

President Bush's story offers the common people hope of living decent lives and seeing their children live to adulthood, to grow old surrounded by grandchildren.

The Al-Qaeda, Ayatollah story promises them dead children and the lash.

There are, of course, fanatics who will embrace Islamic terrorism because they choose to blind themselves to the truth and embrace the noble-seeming lies of the tyrants. Al-Qaeda does not lack for recruits.

But it also does not lack for people who fear and hate them. There are few pro-Al-Qaeda demonstrations on the Arab street. The people remember the images of liberated Iraqis tearing down the images of Saddam. And they know -- because they have relatives and friends, they hear from merchants and travelers -- that in most of Iraq, there is freedom and prosperity like never before.

They're getting the story, at the level of gossip and personal anecdote, that the anti-American media -- you know, Al-Jazirah and the New York Times -- never report: The Americans really mean to give the Iraqis self-government.

You hear about the power outages in Iraq and it's always somehow Bush's fault. What nobody points out is that these outages come in places where Saddam barely offered electricity at all. The reason the new power systems can't cope is because the newly prosperous Iraqi people are buying -- and plugging in -- vast quantities of electrical appliances they could never afford to buy before! When a town that used to have two dozen refrigerators and washing machines now has two thousand of each, the old power supply is never going to do the job.

"Americans Won't Stay"

How do the Islamicist tyrants answer the obvious success and growing appeal of Bush's democracy program?

They kill people, of course.

But they also tell the story, over and over: "America will never stick it out. We'll keep killing Americans till they give up and go away, and then you will answer to us!"

Until they believe that the Islamofascists are never coming into power, many people will remain afraid to commit themselves to democracy.

Under those circumstances, the remarkable thing is how courageously the Shiites of the south have embraced democracy, and how many of them are beginning to trust that we mean what they say.

But against Bush's promises and the actions of our brave and decent soldiers, the tyrants can set the behavior of Bush's political opponents, who are doing their best to promote the propaganda of the tyrants. Every Congressman who says "We must set a timetable for departure" is providing ammunition to the tyrants in their campaign of terror.

Because even more than they fear terrorist bombs, the pro-democracy forces within Iraq and Afghanistan fear American withdrawal. Every speech threatening withdrawal is a bomb going off in Baghdad, killing, not people, but the will to resist the tyrants.

Bin Laden predicted it. The Democratic Party in America is following his script exactly.

Can We Win?

That is certainly not what most who call for withdrawal intend. They see Americans dying and they have no hope of victory. The Iraq War (as they call it) is costing lives and shows no sign of ending. Meanwhile, Iran is getting nuclear weapons, North Korea already has them, Syria and Iran are sponsoring continuing and escalating attacks on Israel -- how can we possibly "win" a war that threatens constantly to widen? Let's cut our losses, retire to our shores, and ...

And will you please stop and think for a moment?

There is no withdrawal to our shores. American prosperity requires free trade throughout most of the world. Free trade has depended for decades on American might. If we withdraw now, we announce to the world that if you just kill enough Americans, the big boys will go home and let you do whatever you want.

Every American in the world then becomes a target. And, because we have announced that we will do nothing to protect them, we will soon be trading only with nations that have enough strength to protect their own shores and borders.

Only ... what nations are those? Not Taiwan. If they saw us abandon Iraq, what conclusion could they reach except this one: They'd better accommodate with China now, when they can still get decent terms, than wait for America to walk away from them the way we walked away from Vietnam and Iraq.

We cannot win by going home. In a short time, "home" would become a very different place, as our own prosperity and safety steadily diminished. Isolationism is a dead end. If we lose our will to protect the things that support our own prosperity, then what can we expect but the end of that prosperity -- and of any vestige of safety, as well?

The frustrating thing is that if people would just look, honestly, at the readily available data from the Muslim world, they would realize that we are winning and that the course President Bush is pursuing is, in fact, the wisest one.

Mistakes

Critics of Bush love to cite the many "mistakes" his administration has made. Most of these "mistakes" are arguable -- are they mistakes at all? -- and when you sum up the others, with any kind of rational understanding of military history, the only possible conclusion is that this is the best-run war in history, with the fewest mistakes. And most of the mistakes we've made are the kind that become clear to morning-after quarterbacks but were difficult to avoid in the fog of war.

Worse yet, Bush's opponents invariably depict these mistakes as being the result of deliberately chosen policies -- a ludicrous charge, but one that is taken seriously by an astonishing number of people who should know better. The game, you see, is blame. It's not enough to say, Bush made a mistake. You have to say, Bush deliberately did it wrong for evil purposes and he must be punished.

But let's accept the fairy tale that this war has been badly run. That still does not change the fact that on all of the biggest points, Bush has made exactly the right choice -- and he has been the only one who has even seen the need to make those choices!

Take North Korea, for instance. Bush recognized instantly that North Korea, with China as its sponsor and protector, is simply beyond the reach of American power at this time. This will not always be true, but his administration is pursuing a careful, quiet, firm policy of diplomatic pressure on China to do what must be done to curb North Korean insanity.

What about Iran? The idea of a ground war in Iran -- especially when we're still fighting in Iraq -- seems impossible.

But it is also probably unnecessary. Because Iran's present government is not just hated, it is also losing its grip on power.

Not on the trappings of power -- they control the "elections" to such a point that nobody can be nominated without the approval of the ayatollahs.

But government power -- even in democracies -- depends absolutely on the will of the people to obey. And when you rule by tyranny and oppression, the obedience of the people comes from the credibility of the threat of violence from the government.

The obvious examples are Red Square in Moscow and Tiananmen Square in Beijing. In Moscow, when Yeltsin and the pro-democracy demonstrators defied the tanks, the Russian Army did not open fire. Why not? Either they refused to obey the order to shoot, or the order was not given -- but if it was not given, it was almost certainly because the tyrants knew that it would not be obeyed.

In other words, the government had lost the ability to inflict deadly force on its own population.

In Tiananmen Square, however, the government gave the order and the troops did fire. As a result, the tyranny continued -- and continues to this day.

Tyrannies only continue in power when they can give the order to kill their own people and be obeyed.

In Iran, there have been several incidents in the past months and years where troops refused to fire on demonstrators. This is huge news (virtually unreported in the West, of course), because of what it means: The ayatollahs' days are numbered.

If President Bush invaded Iran on the ground, bombing Iranian cities and killing Iranian soldiers, he would accomplish only what Hitler did by invading Russia -- uniting an oppressed people in support of a hated tyrant.

But, as was pointed out in a pair of excellent analytical pieces in the most recent Commentary magazine, we don't have to do anything of the kind.

Oil Is Our Weapon, Too

Iran's ace-in-the-hole is not its nuclear weapon -- in their rational moments, even the most rabid of the ayatollahs must understand that if they ever used (or allowed someone else to use) a nuclear weapon, we would destroy them, period. That nuke is meant only as a deterrent -- it can't be used any other way -- and while there's a remote chance that Iran might allow their nukes to be put into the hands of some terrorist group, it would have to be a group they control absolutely. In other words, it would not be Al-Qaeda. (Though Hezbollah would be bad enough.)

The real threat from Iran is their ability to shut down the Persian Gulf and cut off the world's supply of oil from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, and the Gulf nations.

That would not really bother the United States -- gas prices would shoot up on the open market, of course, but we can get by on oil provided by non-Gulf sources.

Not so for the rest of the world, though. And Iran is poised, with small boats and thousands of missiles, to shut down all oil production and transportation in the Persian Gulf.

What few seem to realize (according to the article in Commentary) is that Iran is far more dependent on oil revenues than we are on getting their oil. When President Bush determines that he has given the Iranians ample chance to demonstrate to the few rational statesmen left in Europe that there is no possibility of meaningful negotiations with the tyrants of Tehran, his obvious course of action is to shut down Iranian power in the gulf and seize their oil assets.

If we strike first, we can eliminate their ability to do mischief in the gulf quite readily. Their forces, however numerous, are pathetically vulnerable. Unlike their dispersed and shielded nuclear development capability, their military forces in the gulf are in obvious and accessible positions.

So are their own oil assets. They are as dependent on the Gulf to reach the world oil market as any of their neighbors. If we seize their oil platforms, destroy their shipping, and impose an absolute blockade on Iranian shipping in the Gulf -- while eliminating their ability to damage anybody else's shipping -- how long do you think the tyranny would remain in power?

Here's a hint: They'd run out of money very, very quickly.

Here's another hint: Their military is already refusing to obey their most outrageous orders. When the military finds themselves saddled with a government that has brought the destruction of most of their oil revenues, all because of their insane determination to take on the United States, how long before the ayatollahs are arrested and sent home? Or else made irrelevant by placing a "committee of public safety" above them, to veto their decisions and make peace with the West?

Maybe it wouldn't turn out that way. But it's our best chance -- and that's the chance that Bush is obviously preparing for. He has made no attempt to prepare the American people for an invasion of Iran. But he has made it crystal clear that Iranian misbehavior will not be tolerated -- and that regime change is the desired outcome.

If Iran's ayatollahs were toppled, how long would Syria continue to misbehave? Answer: About fifteen minutes. Syria is a poor country. They are only able to make trouble because they have Iran's support.

Shiites and Sunnis

Here's the other asset we have that no one seems to take into account when judging Bush's conduct of the War on Terror: We are really caught up in an ancient civil war between Shiites and Sunnis.

Al-Qaeda on the Sunni side and Iran's ayatollahs on the Shiite side have both been playing the same game all along. They don't seriously think that they can conquer the United States (yet) -- so why have they been provoking us?

Because they're belling the cat. Or poking the bull with sticks. Why? Because they are performing on the stage of world Islam, putting on rival plays. Both plays have the same message: Look, we're the heroes who have God on our side, because we're the ones who have provoked the great Shaitan and gotten away with it!

Iran's Shiites had the upper hand for quite a while, bringing down one U.S. President (Carter) and getting another -- tough-guy Reagan -- to withdraw the Marines from Lebanon and then come begging to Iran's door in his stupid, cowardly arms-for-hostages deal.

Then Al-Qaeda had the upper hand in their play, showing the Muslim world that it was the Sunnis who were blowing up American boats and embassies and, finally, the twin towers in New York City itself.

It's all theatre. It's all an effort by Bin Laden to restore the Caliphate with himself, of course, as Caliph -- spiritual dictator of the Muslim world. The goal? Not just to unite Sunni Islam under a Caliph again, but to then make war on and crush Shiite resistance. That is the prize. Only when it is won would a united Islam be ready to conquer the rest of the world, finishing the task that was left unfinished by previous waves of Muslim conquest.

Meanwhile, Iran's ayatollahs are trying to show the Muslim world that it is they, the Shiite leaders, who have God on their side. That was what the recent campaign in Lebanon was all about -- to steal the glory back from Al-Qaeda.

But wait. It's even more complicated than that. Because there are other divisions within the Muslim world. Iraqi Shiites have no love for, and do not accept the authority of, the Persian clerics. Arabic-speaking Shiites have no desire to have Farsi-speaking Shiites rule over them.

So we have an amazingly convoluted situation in the middle east. Iran and its puppet, Syria, are cooperating support of the Sunni resistance in Iraq. Why? It's not because Syria's rulers are nominally Baathist as Saddam was -- Baathism is dead. Instead, it's the ancient tribalism that is at the fore. Syria's rulers are members of a tiny religious minority that is an offshoot of Shia, and thus they help Iran maintain access to its Shiite allies in Lebanon partly in order to shore up their own position vis-a-vis their own mostly-Sunni population.

So why are these Shiites and crypto-Shiites supporting the Sunnis in Baghdad?

Because anything that keeps America distracted is good for them. And if the Americans do pack up and go home, then the Shiites can claim the victory -- even though it's mostly Sunnis who are blowing themselves up in Israel and Baghdad.

Besides, the Sunni insurgents in Iraq are keeping the Iraqi Shiites off balance. The last thing the Iranian ayatollahs want is for Iraq to become a democratic nation with a Shiite majority, because at that moment it will be the Iraqi Shiite leaders who will have the most credibility as leaders of the Shiite wing of Islam.

So the leadership of the Iraqi Shiites are perceived as rivals by the ayatollahs of Iran. Thus the Iranians support the Iraqi Shiites' enemies -- providing the weapons that are used to murder Shiites in Iraq.

It's an astonishingly twisted game -- and as long as we don't do anything really, really stupid, like withdrawing from Iraq, all these various treacheries will inevitably lead to the fall of the tyrants in Iran, and therefore in Syria, and therefore the taming of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Bush's game is to keep from letting any of these faction unite, while preparing to deliver strategic blows that can bring down the ayatollahs at relatively little cost.

Every action has repercussions. Just as our withdrawal from Iraq would terrify and silence our allies everywhere, and embolden our enemies, so also would the fall of the ayatollahs -- particularly if it is as the result of an American intervention in the Gulf -- make waves everywhere. Democracy would be perceived as the wave of the future. Our friends in many countries would feel free to speak up for democracy and pro-American policies -- and their enemies would be afraid to silence them.

North Korea might go through a paroxysm of defiance -- but they would still understand the lesson. America will not be bullied by tyrants. We will stand for democracy, destroying our enemies at the "time and place of our choosing." Negotiations with North Korea would instantly take on a very different tone; and China's attitude, too, would become considerably more cooperative with us.

This is the victory that awaits us -- and it remains possible for two reasons only:

1. America's brilliant, brave, and well-trained military, which projects not just power but decency and compassion wherever our soldiers go, and

2. President George W. Bush, who, regardless of his critics and detractors, has steadfastly pursued the only course that holds the hope of victory without plunging us into a worldwide war with a united Islam or isolating America in a world torn by chaos.

Those are the scylla and charybdis that threaten us on either hand. If we do not win this containable war now, following the plan President Bush has set forth, we will surely end up fighting far bloodier wars for the next generation.

And the rhetoric of this election proves that we have precious few politicians in either party who have the brains, will, or courage to be taken seriously as alternatives to George W. Bush in the guidance of our nation through this dangerous, complicated world.

If we, the American people, are stupid enough to give control of either or both houses of Congress to the Democratic Party in this election, we will deserve the world we find ourselves in five years from now.

But Bush, being the wise and moderate politician that he is, may actually be able to continue his foreign policy despite the opposition of a Democratic Congress.

What really scares me is the 2008 election. The Democratic Party is hopeless -- only clowns seem to be able to rise to prominence there these days, while they boot out the only Democrats serious about keeping America's future safe. But the Republicans are almost equally foolish, trying to find somebody who is farther right than Bush -- somebody who will follow the conservative line far better than the moderate Bush has ever attempted -- and somebody who will "kick butt" in foreign policy.

So if we get one of the leading Democrats as our new President in 2009, we'll be on the road to pusillanimous withdrawal and the resulting chaos in the world.

While if we elect any of the Republicans who are extremist enough to please the Hannity wing of the party, our resulting belligerence will likely provoke Islam into unifying behind one of the tyrants, which is every bit as terrifying an outcome.

I hope somebody emerges in one of the parties, at least, who commits himself or herself to continuing Bush's careful, wise, moderate, and so-far-successful policies in the War on Terror.

Meanwhile, we have this election. You have your vote. For the sake of our children's future -- and for the sake of all good people in the world who don't get to vote in the only election that matters to their future, too -- vote for no Congressional candidate who even hints at withdrawing from Iraq or opposing Bush's leadership in the war. And vote for no candidate who will hand control of the House of Representatives to those who are sworn to undo Bush's restrained but steadfast foreign policy in this time of war.

And another one by the left leaning Michael Kinsley.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/06/AR2006110601121.html

Pelosi's Platform

What would a Democratic House of Representatives under Speaker Nancy Pelosi be like? The Republicans have been painting an unattractive portrait of Democrats roasting young children on a spit in the Capitol Rotunda and whatnot. Hoping for a more encouraging view, I picked up "A New Direction for America," a 31-page manifesto released to little acclaim by House Democrats in June. By all means read it. But do me a favor and vote first.

The document is full of bromides, of course, and like all good bromides, they come in threes. The Democrats promise "security, prosperity, and opportunity" in "diverse, safe, and vibrant communities." Not to mention "integrity, civility and fiscal discipline." They will "protect Americans, secure our borders, and restore our country's position of international leadership" through "homeland, energy, and diplomatic strategies." And we're only up to Page 3.

The two favorite words of Democrats on the cusp of power seem to be "tax credit." They promise to "modernize" the tax credit for research and development; to "expand and improve" the already ludicrously complex system of tax-deductible retirement accounts such as IRAs and 401(k) plans (and match "dollar-for-dollar" the first $1,000 a person puts in); and to provide a "100% tax credit for tuition up to $3,000." They want a "broadband tax credit" for Internet access in "rural and underserved" areas.

They call for a 50 percent tax credit for employee health insurance paid for by small businesses, as their solution to the health-care crisis. Needless to say, they love the tax credit for ethanol production and want to expand it for local ethanol producers. And -- my favorite -- they want a tax credit to cover the administrative costs of encouraging employers "to offer their employees the option to convert their retirement plan into an annuity when they retire." I don't know what that last one is about, but I smell an interested party. It's just not the kind of thing thought up by anyone who doesn't have some skin in the game.

Democrats call for ending the "Disabled Veterans' Tax" and the "Military Families' Tax." The what? There cannot be any such thing as a Disabled Veterans' Tax. It is a label dreamed up by people wanting special treatment, like the Republicans' brilliant "death tax" for the estate tax. Maybe they deserve it, maybe they don't. But why can't we leave this bullying-by-terminology to Newt Gingrich?

The problem with tax credits in general is that they never appear in the budget, so they never get the same scrutiny as direct spending, although their impact on the deficit is exactly the same. By definition, they cost more than whatever benefit they are intended to achieve, since no one is going to be induced to spend an extra dollar on, say, dance lessons (because some member of Congress has decided that it would be good for the country if more people knew how to dance) unless the subsidy is worth more than a dollar.

Tax subsidies often go to person X to help person Y (e.g., to a corporation to help its employees), and person X gets a slice of the benefit -- often a big slice. And the distributional consequences are rarely examined. For example, tax credits constitute only one of several subsidies the Democrats propose for college education. Why should a young person who is out working and paying taxes subsidize someone in college who will soon be better off, if he or she isn't already?

Fairness is one of the three qualities that need to be restored to American public life after six years of George W. Bush and 12 years of French-Revolution-turned-French-farce on Capitol Hill. The other two are honesty and competence.

Honesty is not just therapeutic. Fiscal honesty is a practical necessity. "New Direction" quite rightly denounces the staggering fiscal irresponsibility of Republican leaders and duly promises "Pay As You Go" spending. But in the entire document there is not one explicit revenue-raiser to balance the many specific and enormous new spending programs and tax credits.

Competence, of course, brings us back to Iraq. Apparently and unfortunately, President Bush is right that the Democrats have no "plan for victory." (Neither does he, of course. Nor, for that matter, do I. But I don't claim to have one. And I didn't start it.) For national security in general, the Democrats' plan is so according-to-type that you cringe with embarrassment: It's mostly about new cash benefits for veterans. Regarding Iraq specifically, the Democrats' plan has two parts. First, they want Iraqis to take on "primary responsibility for securing and governing their country." Then they want "responsible redeployment" (great euphemism) of American forces.

Older readers may recognize this formula. It's Vietnamization -- the Nixon-Kissinger plan for extracting us from a previous mistake. But Vietnamization was not a plan for victory. It was a plan for what was called "peace with honor" and is now known as "defeat."

Maybe "A New Direction for America" is just a campaign document -- although it seems to have had no effect at all on the campaign. My fear is that the House Democrats might try to use it as a basis for governing.

TGIF... where are you?

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 15:46:09 GMT

I have never wished for a Friday so hard in all my life.

another personality meme...

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 18:06:54 GMT

My Personality


Neuroticism	27
Extraversion	70
Openness To Experience	42
Agreeableness	23
Conscientiousness	98

Test Yourself Compare Yourself View Full Report

MySpace Surveys, Bebo and MySpace Codes by Pulseware Survey Software

Mostly hits... a few misses.

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 15:55:00 GMT

If there is one or more people (or one person who's) on your friends list (under multiple handles ;) who makes your world a better place just because they exist and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the Internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.

Holy Schmoly... this is the understatement of the year.

yeah, that's about right, I think

Wed, 30 Aug 2006 13:19:57 GMT

Your Brain is 47% Female, 53% Male

Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female

You are both sensitive and savvy

Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed

But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve

What Gender Is Your Brain?

kinda creepy how right this was...

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 20:38:58 GMT

Stolen from fenix_harbinger who dinked from...

Just look at the 2nd cartoon at the bottom to know how right this is for me.

the Perfectionist

Thanks for taking the test !

you chose CZ - your Enneagram type is ONE.

"I do everything the right way"

Perfectionists are realistic, conscientious, and principled. They strive
to live up to their high ideals.

How to Get Along with Me

Take your share of the responsibility so I don't end up with all the
work.

Acknowledge my achievements.

I'm hard on myself. Reassure me that I'm fine the way I am.

Tell me that you value my advice.

Be fair and considerate, as I am.

Apologize if you have been unthoughtful. It will help me to forgive.

Gently encourage me to lighten up and to laugh at myself when I get
uptight, but hear my worries first.

What I Like About Being a One

being self-disciplined and able to accomplish a great deal

working hard to make the world a better place

having high standards and ethics; not compromising myself

being reasonable, responsible, and dedicated in everything I do

being able to put facts together, coming to good understandings, and
figuring out wise solutions

being the best I can be and bringing out the best in other people

What's Hard About Being a One

being disappointed with myself or others when my expectations are not
met

feeling burdened by too much responsibility

thinking that what I do is never good enough

not being appreciated for what I do for people

being upset because others aren't trying as hard as I am

obsessing about what I did or what I should do

being tense, anxious, and taking things too seriously

Ones as Children Often

criticize themselves in anticipation of criticism from others

refrain from doing things that they think might not come out perfect

focus on living up to the expectations of their parents and teachers

are very responsible; may assume the role of parent

hold back negative emotions ("good children aren't angry")

Ones as Parents

teach their children responsibility and strong moral values

are consistent and fair

discipline firmly

Renee Baron & Elizabeth Wagele

The Enneagram Made Easy

Discover the 9 Types of People

Harper
SanFrancisco, 1994, 161 pages

You liked the test? so please don't forget to RATE it...

but remember! it had only two questions!!! ;-)

you wanna know MORE?

so check out, what Wikipedia says about your type...

...even more you'll find in Google

or do you prefer to

You are not completely happy with the result?!

You chose CZ

Would you rather have chosen:

AZ (THREE)

BZ (FIVE)

CX (TWO)

CY (SIX)

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 99% on ABC
You scored higher than 99% on XYZ

Link: The Quick & Painless ENNEAGRAM Test written by felk on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

Geezer Meme - by Intarweb standards I unfortunately qualify

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 17:03:48 GMT

Geezer Meme.
Finally, a meme designed for old folks (like me). Do you remember when Cosby not only had a show, but it was named "I Spy"? Do you recall when only NASA had computers? Are you sick of questions like "Who do you have a crush on?" and "What is your favorite class?" Then this is the meme for you...

1. What bill do you hate paying the most?
2. What's the best place to eat a romantic dinner?
3. Last time you puked from drinking?
4. When is the last time you got drunk and danced on a bar?
5. Name of your first grade teacher?
6. What do you really want to be doing right now?
7. What did you want to be when you were growing up?
8. How many colleges did you attend?
9. Why did you wear the shirt that you have on right now?
10. GAS PRICES! First thought?
11. If you could move anywhere and take someone with you...
12. First thought when the alarm went off this morning?
13. Last thought before going to sleep last night?
14. Favorite style of underwear?
15. Favorite style of underwear for the opposite/same sex?
16. What errand/chore do you despise?
17. If you didn't have to work, would you volunteer at an art gallery?
18. Get up early or sleep in?
19. What is your favorite cartoon character?
20. Favorite NON sexual thing to do at night with a girl/guy?
21. A secret that you wouldn't mind everyone knowing?
There is no 22 or 23... hmmm... proving this was definitely written by an older (and more forgetful) person.
24. Your favorite lunch meat?
25. What do you get every time you go into Cosco?
26. Beach or lake?
27. Do you think marriage is an outdated ritual that was invented by people who died at 20?
28. Who do you stalk on MySpace?
29. Favorite guilty pleasure?
30. Favorite movie you wouldn't want anyone to find out about?
31. What's your drink?
32. Cowboys or Indians?
33. Cops or Robbers?
34. Do you cheer for the bad guy?
35. What Hollywood star do you think resembles you best?
36. If you had to pick one, which cast member of "Lost" would you be?
37. What do you want when you are sick?
38. Who from high school would you like to run into?
39. What radio station is your car radio tuned to right now?
42. Norm or Cliff?
43. The Cosby Show or the Simpsons?
44. Worst relationship mistake that you wish you could take back?
45. Do you like the person who sits directly across from you at work?
46. If you could get away with it, who would you kill?
47. What famous person would you like to have dinner with?
48. What famous person would you like to sleep with?
49. Have you ever had to use a fire extinguisher for its intended purpose?
50. Last book you read for real?
51. Do you have a teddy bear?
52. Strangest place you have ever brushed your teeth?
53. Somewhere in California you've never been and would like to go?
54. Number of texts in a day?
55. At this point in your life would you rather start a new career or relationship?
56. Do you go to church?
57. Pencil or pen?
58. bueller??? bueller??? bueller?
59. How many jobs have you had?
60. What do you want to achieve in life?

1. What bill do you hate paying the most?
Income tax - hands down.
2. What's the best place to eat a romantic dinner?
Seafood or Italian, dark secluded, candlelit.
3. Last time you puked from drinking?
nev-ah
4. When is the last time you got drunk and danced on a bar?
nev-ah
5. Name of your first grade teacher?
Mrs. Ross
6. What do you really want to be doing right now?
Flying to Chicago
7. What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Astronaut or a fighter pilot. Unfortunately my eyesight at the time did not cooperate with this ambition.
8. How many colleges did you attend?
1
9. Why did you wear the shirt that you have on right now?
It was clean and in easy reach.
10. GAS PRICES! First thought?
time to drill and how about a few new refineries?
11. If you could move anywhere and take someone with you...
Hawaii and oh yeah... I'd take someone with me.
12. First thought when the alarm went off this morning?
Gah! already?!
13. Last thought before going to sleep last night?
I love you...
14. Favorite style of underwear? for me?
boxer briefs
15. Favorite style of underwear for the opposite/same sex?
something lacey... boy cut mmm hmmmm
16. What errand/chore do you despise?
picking up after my children
17. If you didn't have to work, would you volunteer at an art gallery?
um... no
18. Get up early or sleep in?
sleeeeeep in
19. What is your favorite cartoon character?
Underdog
20. Favorite NON sexual thing to do at night with a girl/guy?
stargaze... watch for shooting stars
21. A secret that you wouldn't mind everyone knowing?
I am wicked good at table tennis
There is no 22 or 23... hmmm... proving this was definitely written by an older (and more forgetful) person.
24. Your favorite lunch meat?
Virginia baked ham
25. What do you get every time you go into Cosco?
never go in Cosco
26. Beach or lake?
beach (that's a tough one though)
27. Do you think marriage is an outdated ritual that was invented by people who died at 20?
more and more... or maybe shouldn't be allowed until you're 25
28. Who do you stalk on MySpace?
don't do MySpace
29. Favorite guilty pleasure?
SL
30. Favorite movie you wouldn't want anyone to find out about?
??? I don't watch that many movies
31. What's your drink?
a good red wine or a margherita
32. Cowboys or Indians?
probably cowboys... but it would depend on the Indians... you shouldn't paint all native americans with such a broad stroke... there were very many different tribes and some were a lot nicer than others.
33. Cops or Robbers?
cops... hate thieves
34. Do you cheer for the bad guy?
nah
35. What Hollywood star do you think resembles you best?
I am SO over hollywood
36. If you had to pick one, which cast member of "Lost" would you be?
don't watch it
37. What do you want when you are sick?
a good bowl of soup and be left alone to sleep it off
38. Who from high school would you like to run into?
My old lab partner - one of the nicest persons I have evey known
39. What radio station is your car radio tuned to right now?
106.7 WYAY - country
42. Norm or Cliff?
Cliff
43. The Cosby Show or the Simpsons?
Cosby Show
44. Worst relationship mistake that you wish you could take back?
certainly made my share... but to take one or several back would probably have the effect of undoing what I have now... so I would not take any of them back. God blessed the broken road...
45. Do you like the person who sits directly across from you at work?
I have my own office
46. If you could get away with it, who would you kill?
anyone that caused real harm to someone I love
47. What famous person would you like to have dinner with?
W
48. What famous person would you like to sleep with?
feh... she's not exactly famous
49. Have you ever had to use a fire extinguisher for its intended purpose?
no
50. Last book you read for real?
The Problem of Pain - C.S. Lewis
51. Do you have a teddy bear?
i gave him away years ago :-( Wish I had him back now to give him to someone that would have really cared
52. Strangest place you have ever brushed your teeth?
out in the woods
53. Somewhere in California you've never been and would like to go?
San Franciso
54. Number of texts in a day?
0
55. At this point in your life would you rather start a new career or relationship?
career
56. Do you go to church?
yes
57. Pencil or pen?
pen... pencil tends to smear all over my hand being lefthanded
58. bueller??? bueller??? bueller?
::snicker::
59. How many jobs have you had?
6
60. What do you want to achieve in life?
a good name, contentment, to be surrounded by those I love and who love me

Wed, 09 Aug 2006 13:22:11 GMT

A good, hearty round of laughter can be to the soul like a cleansing bath, removing accumulated dirt and crud leaving you feeling clean inside and out. I had one of those last night at the Oceanside Bar following a round of Acrophilia (hosted by firefly_pilot.) As I was discussing last night with my partner (and she agreed), there is just no way to adequately explain what was so funny... you really had to be there. I could tell you that it involved a 6 story tall chicken and an AV egg with legs sporting rhythmic gymnastic ribbons but that does nothing to convey the peals of laughter evoked. I was literally in tears... and wasn't the only one... and had people on the webcam who can vouch for that.

The Oceanside is my inworld home away from home. It's really starting to take on a character all its own. It's a lot more than just a DJ spinning tunes. Some of the best inworld live music is there on Friday evenings. And now twice during the week there's Acrophilia, a game which usually has everyone howling with laughter.

Hope to see you there...

A Primmingly Good Day

Wed, 12 Jul 2006 13:37:40 GMT

You know it's going to be a good day when you wake up with an idea of how to save 2 prim on yours and your partner's already prim crowded parcel. W00t!

Landowner...

Thu, 06 Jul 2006 05:32:49 GMT

Well, tonight I became a landowner. One more step of immersion in this world. Til now I've only been a rover or a renter. But now there's some group owned dirt with my group as the owner. Cool. I'm glad I get to share this experience with my SL partner. Watching her decorate is watching an artist at work.

High School Senior meme thingy...

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 19:00:14 GMT

Dinked from fenixinthedark dinked from etcet's crib

Senior Year Meme

Fill this out about your SENIOR year of high school! The longer ago it was, the more fun the answers will be.

1. Who was your best friend?
2. What sports did you play?
3. What kind of car did you drive?
4. It's Friday night, where were you at?
5. Were you a party animal?
6. Were you considered a flirt?
7. Ever skip school?
9. Were you a nerd?
10. Did you get suspended/expelled?
11. Can you sing the Alma Mater?
12. Who was your favorite teacher?
13. Favorite class?
14. What was your school's full name?
15. School mascot?
16. Did you go to Prom?
17. If you could go back and do it over, would you?
18. What do you remember most about graduation?
19. Favorite memory of your Senior Year?
20. Were you ever posted up on the senior wall?
21. Did you have a job your senior year?
22. Who did you date?
23. Where did you go most often for lunch?
24. Have you gained weight since then?
25. What did you do after graduation?
26. When did you graduate?

1. Who was your best friend?
Tracie Ravita. Why I never dated this girl I'll never know. Stupid stupid stupid.

2. What sports did you play?
as a Senior... nada - prior to that Baseball - first base

3. What kind of car did you drive?
1967 Mustang Coupe - 289 V8... sweet

4. It's Friday night, where were you at?
A football game (was in the band)

5. Were you a party animal?
Hardly.

6. Were you considered a flirt?
In a clumsy sorta way I suppose.

7. Ever skip school?
Nope.

9. Were you a nerd?
Uber. Captian of the Science Team, President of National Honor Society, Star Student, Band Captain, etc...

10. Did you get suspended/expelled?
Yes. Some asshat came into the parking lot one morning cutting doughnuts and slung gravel all up the side of the above mentioned Mustang. My wrath was poured out on his head. The resulting discussion with the principal caused me to miss the Senior group picture so I had to draw myself in the picture in everyones' yearbooks. The really funny part of the story is when I told the prinipal what happened he agreed with me that this schmuck's ass did need a whipping. Still got 3 days suspension. I went fishing. I was technically still on suspension that weekend when they had the photos for the Senior superlatives... I was "most intellectual".

11. Can you sing the Alma Mater?
Did we have one?

12. Who was your favorite teacher?
hmmm, a tough one... Mr. Cheney... the band director. Probably learned more about real life from him than any other teacher I had.

13. Favorite class?
Band. er... yeah... Band class. We had a ball in there.

14. What was your school's full name?
Lithonia High School

15. School mascot?
The Bulldogs

16. Did you go to Prom?
Yes, 3 of them. My junior and senior and the next year to another girl's senior prom. That one was kinda weird.

17. If you could go back and do it over, would you?
Ohhhhh, heck yeah. Knowing what I know now? Oooooohhhhhh yessssss.

18. What do you remember most about graduation?
Holding hands with my best friend (the above mentioned Tracie) before we walked into the gymnasium.

19. Favorite memory of your Senior Year?
Lots of em... Playing a trumpet solo in the marching band. Had the lead role in the Senior musical too. That was good.

20. Were you ever posted up on the senior wall?
What's that?

21. Did you have a job your senior year?
Only worked in the summers. Landscaping (also known as slave labor).

22. Who did you date?
A Krista, a Shelley, a Sara, a Susie, and a Connie. Stupid stupid stupid... shoulda dated Tracie.

23. Where did you go most often for lunch?
The cafeteria.

24. Have you gained weight since then?
Yup, finished growing up. Put on my freshman 15 in college (Hardee's cinnamin and rasin biscuits or biscuits and gravy every morning.)

25. What did you do after graduation?
Had a party at my house for my friends. We weren't cool enough to go to the "big" party down the road and my parent's had already gotten wind of the alcohol that was there. Unfortunately one of my guest's overprotective parents demanded that she be home by 10:00... and since all of but one of the rest of my guests all rode over together that pretty much ended the party. I sat out on my driveway, alone, watching the stars.

26. When did you graduate?
1987

A potent reminder...

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 14:50:50 GMT

I'll be attending an SL memorial this evening for the RL passing of an SL resident who was a friend of many of my SL friends. I didn't know her all that well, but memorial services really aren't for the one who has died now are they? I want to stand with my friends and acknowledge their loss.

To some of them she will only be missed as another AV, just another SL resident. But from what little I know she also touched the RL hearts of some of these people and her loss will be felt quite severely. To you I offer my sincerest of condolences. It is my belief that this existence is not the end and that death is merely change into another form. Take comfort in that, that she who is your friend is not lost to you forever.

Tell those that you love how you feel about them as often and as lavishly as you can. None of us has the promise of tomorrow. All we have for sure is right now. Make the best use of "right now" that you can.

To all my SL friends... You have touched my RL life in ways that I did not imagine would happen when I first came into SL. You have filled in empty places with the life that you have shared with me. I love each of you. To my SL companion... I love you, grá mo chroí.

Gah! what a night...

Fri, 09 Jun 2006 14:06:49 GMT

I did lift mine eyes and found myself in utter torment. (wailing and gnashing of teeth) Whatever I have done to deserve this I repent in sackcloth and ashes...

My son (he's 4) comes into the bedroom this morning some time before 5:00 am. "I need some help. I need some help cleaning up a poopoo." Now, this usually means he's got it on himself and just needs someone to help wipe it off of him. No biggie. This time however he tells us, "it's in my bedroom, and the playroom, and the hall, but it's not in ******'s (his sister's) room." O... M... G... The thing is he's had a touch of diarrhea over the past few days. He must have loaded his drawers and then walked around with it running down his leg. It's all over his room, the hall and the bonus room, just as he said. He must have run around after it happened. You couldn't have done a better job of coverage if you'd filled up a broadcast spreader with poop and pushed it around upstairs. In his defence, he did an admirable job of cleaning himself up. And thank God he knew better than to try to clean up the stuff on the carpet. I'm gonna have to go buy several cans of spot shot. Poop has staining power stronger than blueberries.

Oy! what a night. Nothing really to do with SL but this needed some venting. I'm laughing about it now... but only because I've got a few hours distance worth of persepective on it.

Wed, 07 Jun 2006 18:18:37 GMT

Lyrics of the day (by Kenny Loggins)

In a lifetime
Made of memories
I believe
In destiny

Every moment returns again in time
When I've got the future on my mind
Know that you'll be the only one

Meet me halfway
Across the sky
Out where the world belongs
to only you and I

Meet me halfway
Across the sky
Make this a new beginning of another life.

In a lifetime
There is only love
Reaching for the lonely one

We are stronger when we are given love
When we put emotions on the line
Know that we are the timeless ones

Meet me halfway
Across the sky
Out where the world belongs
to only you and I

Meet me halfway
Across the sky
Make this a new beginning of another life.

Meet me halfway
Across the sky
Out where the world belongs
to only you and I

Meet me halfway
Across the sky
Make this a new beginning of another life.

Lyric of the day...

Thu, 25 May 2006 16:08:30 GMT

"Color My World" - Chicago

As time goes on
I realize
Just what you mean
To me
And now
Now that you’re near
Promise your love
That I’ve waited to share
And dreams
Of our moments together
Color my world with hope of loving you

Some things I've learned.

Wed, 24 May 2006 12:00:47 GMT

Sometimes, no matter how hard you may try you just can't always be right or always do the right thing. Given a blank slate it's theoretically possible I suppose. But my beliefs are such we don't come with a blank slate. And even if we did, we'd paint ourselves into a corner right off the bat anyway. For the first time in my life... I'm ok with that. Without knowing me you probably have no idea just how big of a realization that is or its ramifications. And that's okay too, because those of you who do know me well enough for that to make sense will grok.

Real intimacy is just as vital as air, food, and water. We can go without for longer than the other three but its absence leads to a death in the soul that is just as real as a physical death of the body. We're made for it. It's not optional.

Perfect love casts out fear.

Swiped from Fenix-Harbinger

Thu, 11 May 2006 16:21:48 GMT

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man		85%
The Flash		85%
Hulk		65%
Supergirl		60%
Robin		60%
Superman		60%
Green Lantern		55%
Iron Man		50%
Wonder Woman		35%
Catwoman		35%
Batman		30%

You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

What a shock... not really.

my SL haven

Thu, 11 May 2006 12:15:05 GMT

RL has been quite a stressful place as of late. Work demands are the main culprit. SL has continued to be a haven in the face of it. I've always been able to blow off steam online with Quake or Halo and the like but SL has provided a much richer experience than they ever could. Hawaii, Dublin and a couple of shorelines that only exist in SL as far as I know are particularly comforting. Check out the Oceanside bar inworld if you get a chance. There are good people there. I'll give ya a tp. Check out Hawaii too... just be prepared to get off my hammock.

Fri, 05 May 2006 20:05:36 GMT

You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational.

</td>

Cultural Creative

69%

Fundamentalist

56%

Postmodernist

44%

Romanticist

44%

Existentialist

31%

Idealist

25%

Modernist

19%

Materialist

13%

What is Your World View? (updated)
created with QuizFarm.com

I wonder if Cultural Creative is a euphemism for confused?

Some thoughts ...

Fri, 05 May 2006 19:02:35 GMT

Have you ever been so in love that you just know that there is not another woman (or man as the case may be) on the face of the planet that could turn your head? You should try it sometime. I highly recommend it.

The stars are very beautiful, but they vanish in the light of the ardent summer southern sun in it's glory.

who knew?

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 12:12:54 GMT

I had these grand plans to catch this journal up to date with everything that has happened since my "birth" in-world. Unfortunately (for the journal... not for me) I have been too busy living it to take the time to write about it. RL demands have also made sure of that.

My SL experience has proven to be far more rewarding than I could have ever imagined. Hawaii and it's music have become quite special and so I leave you for the moment with these words.

Ku'ualoha By Fiji

Ku'u Aloha
Noku Nau Nau Hani
Sae Iko Tautu Agau
Augauga Mua

Iko Na Eke
Ua Nim Pi Ti A'u
Pe Ona Kae Galili

Sae Iko Ku'u Aloha
Augauga Mauna
Kalo Kalo Se Rau
Talei Feau

Ku'u Sweet Aloha
You're Always On My Mind
Stay Right Beside Me
Lie Down And Hold Me Tight

Whisper (whisper softly) Softly
Say That You Need Me
I Will Always Be Here For You

Sae Iko Ku'u Aloha
Augauga Mauna
Kalo Kalo Se Rau
Talei Feau
Ku Ku'u Aloha
So Soft and gentle

I Love You My Darling
And (always)I'll (and always) Always Will

A helpful lot they are...

Fri, 07 Apr 2006 16:13:05 GMT

I'm really amazed at percentage of people here that are genuinely helpful - especially if they know you are a new arrival. Not just the kind of help that doesn't cost them anything but the kind that takes up a lot of their inworld time. I've had several encounters with people where I asked them a question and instead of simply answering they stop what they are doing and whisk you away somewhere to **show** you what you were asking about. I've had people take me shopping, go through tutorials with me, explain to me in detail how the scripts work on their latest creations (Cessee), show me the hidden gems of SL that they have found, etc... Still, even among all the helpful people I've encountered there are some that really stand out. Park, thanks for being my first real SL friend. Slopoly was a blast - especially when we won! w00t! Victoria, thanks for sharing out of your experience. You've been inworld for a while and your knowledge of how everything works and where to find the stuff you really need has proved invaluable. I hope I'll be as helpful as some of these that have enriched my time here.