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Happy Thanksgiving

Find something to be thankful for and focus on it, at least for a while, today.

Arlington Cemetery

I live within walking distance of Arlington Cemetery, which is on Ft. Meyer in Arlington, Virginia, and I go there quite often. I thought it would be appropriate here to state how I feel about the place and the men and women who are buried there.

My dept of gratitude for these war dead is beyond words. Everything I have and everything I am I owe to them. And while I don't always agree on the reasons for going to war, it doesn't take one iota from the deep appreciation I feel for the sacrifice these men and women have made. There are no words strong enough to express that emotion.

So when you read my blog and you see statements that run counter to the present administration's stance on political issues, please keep this in mind.

Also keep this in mind the next time feel compelled to call someone unpatriotic because their political views differ from yours. The vast, vast majority of citizens of the United States of America, regardless of their political affiliation, feel the dept of gratitude I expressed above.

Thanks for reading this.

Right Wing Hypocrisy regarding a woman's right to choose.

Anti-choice conservatives in the US are claiming that they think abortion should be banned, yet they don't blink an eye when US soldiers, funded by their own tax money, go to Iraq based on blatant exagerations, twisted truth and out and out lies and end up killing 100s of pregnant women. This is just an estimate, there's no real count, but I'm basing in on the undisputed fact that between 3700 and 10000 innocent Iraque citizens have been killed in the conflict so far. Yet to say anything about this fact is somehow considered unpatriotic. Well, their viewpoint is worse than unpatriotic, worse than just immoral. It's evil.

Cicada Porn

I actually took this shot at the end of May at a place called Wolf Trap Farm outside of Washington DC.

Nothing More Than Feelings

Haven't posted in a while. It's Saturday morning and I took my interferon shot last night, so I'm feeling a little brought down. I take it for Hepatitis C, which I've had for at least 23 years. I've been taking it for 19 weeks and will for a total of 48. It's working well. My liver functions are back to normal and my viral load is extremely low. Yes!

Anyway for entertainment value (and because there are no pictures yet in this blog) here's a picture I took in Georgetown in Washington DC USA.

Aw crap. I just took a look at the results of this post in Mozilla Firefox and the formatting is all screwy, while it looks right in Microsoft Internet Explorer.

For those of you who don't know, Firefox is a great new free web browser. It's all over the news as a threat to Microsoft Internet Explorer.

This may be a good time to mention that I am a proponent of Free/Open Source software, and have strong feelings about it that transcend the technical. It scares me to death that proprietary software, i.e. software whose inner workings are kept secret by their creators, like Microsoft and Diebold for example, are used in the Pentagon, the CIA and in voting machines. This software could be doing absolutely anything and we wouldn't know. And as everyone probably knows, if abuse is possible, it will happen eventually.

Anyway, this additional text will hopefully push the image low enough so it won't display over my profile. What a kludge. Sigh.

Later gators.



Ta da. A new day dawns.

Some Blogs I'm Enjoying

The Accidental Blogist

Lawn Greengrass Rides Again

Holy Crapolla

Chick Lit

The Lucky Spinster

What Is Advertising

What is advertising?

Advertising is huge corporations lying to you to get your money and crush their competition. I understand that the word "lying" is strong and that technically they're merely exagerating, spinning, misrepresenting, or whatever. But what it boils down to is that they're trying their best to give a false impression about the superiority of their particular product, and that is a lie, whatever their lawyers may claim.

Helping children formulate a critical eye with which to observe advertising should be a basic aim in public school education, along with the more traditional subjects. Otherwise we will (have?) become a population of mindless drones manipulated through our appetities by mega corporations.