See, I've been
getting these cryptic emails for the last few months. Some have been entitled
"Opinion Exchange" and in the body contain my email address as a hyperlink,
nothing more. I click on the link, and my email app comes up to send myself an
email. Which you have to admit, is rather an odd spam method. What could the
software writer possibly hoped to
accomplish?
The others are on the
edge of ominous - here's the title and text:
From:
opinion.share@sharingopinions.org
Subject:
A submission has just been made about you at our
website.
**OPINION
SHARING
NOTIFICATION**
Someone
is trying to share Opinions and Experiences about you in our online community.
The purpose of this
email is to inform you that a submission has been made about you at our website.
This is email is not commercial in nature.
So admit it: You'd be curious too -
I clicked the provided link to meet this
window:
Wow.
All those folks looking for information or having information. About me.
Eh.
So I clicked on one of the links,
and found
this:
Hmm.
Someone who knows me very well, professionally, who is looking for information.
It's just a little strange.
So anyway,
I signed up for a "Bronze" membership, just to peel the onion back one level and
find out what this was all about. All that got me was a chance to anonymously
email the author of an opinion writer who wanted more information - to get the
actual opinion required an upgrade to a "gold" membership. Money involved there,
credit cards numbers, etc.
No thanks. I
deleted my account.
Anyone know what's
going on
here?
------------------
Heard
an interesting thing today on the ride home, NPR. As you might know, there's
this discussion going on in the activist set about exactly how activist they
should be at the RNC in New York, and whether the wrong kind of activism might
end up costing JFK the election. Because it's just that important to anarchists.
How many store windows, SUV's, skulls should one break before one has crossed
over the line?
And who draws that
line? The Man does, and they reject everything The Man
does!
The incisive NPR journalists
interviewed one of the anarchists, and found that rather than unenlightened
nihilism, there's actually a philosophy working there: "We believe there
shouldn't be a state, just people working
together."
That's a philosophy? No
state at all. No police officers, no laws or courts. No interstate highway
commissions. No agricultural policy. Just folks, working together.
After the first series of famines,
that should work out pretty well. Smaller numbers are easy to
manage.
Prediction: They're going to
get a lot more attention than they deserve.
(Warning: Not for the weak of
stomach)
Sorry if that was a shock.
It's just so stupid it's kind of
funny.
--------------------
Olympic
basketball - I'm glad. While I'm not the kind of guy who
routinely cheers for other countries to win against the US, I'm actually kind of
glad we lost our chance for an olympic gold in basketball. These guys didn't
take it seriously, and they didn't give their all to the team - they were
playing for themselves, and playing poorly. They didn't deserve to
win.
It's like they felt entitled to
win. They weren't.
You've got to earn
the gold.
Maybe four years from now,
they'll come back hungry. My vote would go to choosing that year's NCAA
champions - bring them out. College ball is so much more about the team, and
playing defense, and the ideal of sport. NBA basketball, no matter how athletic
and graceful, has fallen very far away from the olympic
idea.
--------------------
Tainted flu shots . I was almost pleased. But
then I reflected that there are so many folks who line up each year to get their
flu shots voluntarily, and I felt a little churlish.
You see, we're required to get flu
shots. Military medicine is socialized medicine, with the power of military
discipline to back it up. It all makes sense of course: We can scarcely afford
to have the entire crew of an aircraft carrier come down with the flu at more or
less the same time, while deployed. I've seen gastro bugs whip through the
crowded petri dish that a ship at sea can become and been amazed at how quickly
a smoothly running piece of machinery can degrade into a near-hulk. It happens
at some level at each and every port visit - someone will go ashore and catch
something, bring it back aboard the ship and share it with four or five thousand
of his closest friends. A week or two goes by while everyone has their symptoms,
and then we're all immune and healthy again. Until the next port visit.
Repeat.
But I don't get a choice which
needle goes into my arm, and I've never really enjoyed that. So every year I
grit my teeth, bare my arm, and take one for the team.
During the war someone was worried
about bio-terrorism, so of course we all had anthrax shots and smallpox
vaccinations. The first anthrax shot isn't so bad. The second one is kind of a
son of a... gun. You get more than two.
Lots.
And smallpox (which I thought had
been eradicated) vaccinations, are no fun either. Turns out most of the young
Sailors had never had the vaccine, and even those of us who had were required to
go through it again. The corpsman takes the needle at taps it into your shoulder
six or seven times in quick succession. The first sting is not so bad, but by
the seventh stroke you want nothing more than to punch him in the
mouth.
----------------------
Daniel
Henninger, who writes the "Wonder Land" Column for the WSJ had another of his
routinely excellent articles out today, wondering why
Kerry had to go and re-open all the old wounds from the Vietnam War. Not that he
did it on purpose, but that his team should have known that doing so was a
distinct (and distinctly unpleasant) possibility. It's a great
read:
How can this be
happening? Why didn't John Kerry months back--if not years--find some gracious
way to make peace with the John O'Neills of the world? Why didn't one wise head
among the Democrats point out the obvious difficulties of the Kerry candidacy
once past the party's primary voters? This is a man who would be running as both
a hero of Vietnam and a famous accuser of the war's heroes. This is an election,
not a Shakespearean tragedy. How come John Kerry never worked out, before the
final leg of his long odyssey, a let-bygones statement, admitting the hyperbole
(at the least) of his accusations of atrocity before Congress in 1971, honoring
the service of colleagues who never felt obliged to apologize for Vietnam, but
reserving his right to oppose that troubled
war?
...The country
paid a high price for those years. During Vietnam, politics became a destructive
force and tore the country badly. It unleashed a wave of pessimism that rolled
on and on as the Vietnam Syndrome. A bitter fight was waged over a memorial to
Vietnam in Washington, but in time that wall became a place of peace and
consolation.
Historians and intellectuals still argue over the events of those years, but
along Main Street no one was particularly interested in revisiting them. Now the
Democratic primaries have delivered to us a candidate who embodies nearly all
the period's social and political division. Choosing to place Vietnam at the
center of his candidacy, Mr. Kerry--an odd man from an odd time--has loosed the
dogs of politics and war again. Surprise, the old dogs of Vietnam still bark and
bite.
I remember those times - the
arguments at the family table, the arguments in the street. People of that time
have drawn very different lessons from that clash, core, fundamental,
rest-of-their-lives lessons. Cities were burned, college children - shot! By our
own national guardsmen. It was awful.
But we gradually let it go, and went
back to trying to craft that more perfect union, as difficult as it sometimes
was.
Now it's all back on the table
again, and nothing seems to have changed. Many of the blogs I've read are full
of the old passions, the old certainty. Even the right is now engaged in the
kind of poisonous hatred that some on the left have nurtured to their bosoms
since Florida.
It's just not healthy.
We shouldn't contribute to it.
Maybe
that's not my fight. But it does make my blood run
cold.
First they came
for the communists, and I did not speak
out--
because I was not a
communist; Then they came
for the socialists, and I did not speak
out--
because I was not a
socialist; Then they came
for the trade unionists, and I did not speak
out--
because I was not a trade
unionist; Then they came for
the Jews, and I did not speak
out--
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me--
and there was no one left to speak out for
me. -
Martin
Niemoeller
--------------------------
Every
once in a while I wonder whether 9/11 wasn't just a lucky punch. A sucker shot,
that got in under our guard. Maybe we've over-reacted. It would be so nice to
believe that we're not engaged in some endless
war.
Meh.
This has been a down-head entry, and I apologize. I've had a real slice-of-life
week, and some of it's bleeding over,
sorry.
But we're a nuclear family
again (until SNO moves out tomorrow for college), and we're having ribs tonight,
and they smell
really
good. So I'll sign off for now, begging your
indulgence.
Here's to better days,
and pints of Guinness (for
strength!).
Have a great
weekend!
Posted @
07:31 PM
|
Posted in
""
|
Sendit
|
Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." - John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Ceasar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friederich Nietzsche
