I just read something that makes me sick. The International Olympic Committee has had reports going back to 1984 about Uday Hussein, Saddam's son and the leader of the Iraqi Olympic Committee. These reports tell of torture and beatings inflicted time and time again on Iraqi athletes, torture as an incentive to win. Yet the IOC did nothing all this time, until now. Now they are investigating. A little late, don't you think? Makes me glad ol' Juan Antonio dissed Atlanta after '96. Any man that ignores horrific crimes like those committed by Uday is not a man I want to recieve praise from. I now no longer have respect for the IOC. They're lumped in with the UN for international organizations that have shown time and time again that their real agendas have little to do with their stated goals.

Another letter to the AJC, more in protest against racist bastards that also ahve written in, than against Cynthia Tucker...

As a Jewish man, I would be offended, to say the least, if Germany, much less my own home state, decided to start flying a swastika as an official flag. Thus, I completely understand why the black citizens of Georgia don't want a confederate flag waving over their heads. I also understand part of the reason that 13% of our population contributes 46% of our jail inmates. It's very simple; unreasonable and immoral drugs laws which unfairly prey upon certain segments of society. For instance, I know a lawyer who smokes marijuana all day long, but has never even been approached by the authorities about it, because the authorities aren't cruising his neighborhood, already suspicious. They are, however, cruising lower income neighborhoods, already predisposed to be suspicious. Young black males are much more likely to be caught for a "crime" that rich white males won't even be suspected of. Get rid of these draconian drug laws, and watch prison populations begin a slow shift towards proportional representation by race.

I just read an admittedly biased article on how some doctors decide whether or not a child has ADD or ADHD (and what's the difference, no one, even doctors, seem to give a real answer on that). At least one doctor put a two year old kid on the floor with some blocks to play with. When the kid immediately got bored and turned to do something else, the doctor decided an ADD diagnosis was in order. Does that make sense to you?

I also read about another parent whose child was diagnosed with ADHD and put on ritalin. After a few months, the parent took the kid off ritalin, citing personality changes. Once off the drug the parent worked closely with her child, helping with schoolwork, instilling confidence, and just trying to be a caring and attentive parent. Next thing you know, the kid is making a 4.0 and as happy as he's ever been in his life. Moral of the story, doctors aren't always right, but being a good parent is ALWAYS right.

That was my least favorite entry yet. That's what happens when work is slow and, in the middle of writing, all hell breaks out and you have to stop writing before you even get a chance to edit. On the other hand, I get paid to work, not to write, so I don't mind getting interrupted.

What do we do now? 60% of Iraqis identify themselves as Shi'ite Muslims. Many of these people are now calling for the immediate removal of American forces because basic services have yet to be restored. In addition, after two days of protest, an Imam was released from US custody and made a statement saying the US methods of toture and humiliation were worse than Saddam's. I find that hard to believe, as he was released alive and strong enough to incite hatred against his people's saviors. Unfortunately you know those 60% will believe anything he tells them. If we withdraw now, then they'll be happy for about five minute, until they realize that the Iraqi infrastructure really needed the work we were trying to give it. Then they call us evil for sabatoging their country. If we stay, we'll be evil for not fixing all their problems right away, and for opressing them. There is no way to make the religious fanatics happy.

The Patriot Act, or Why I Will Never Vote the Party Line.

As you may have noticed, I've spent much effort defending the Republicans and Bush in the war. But. I still have some major problems with them. Namely the Patriot Act, which ought to be retitled the "Anti-Constitution Act." Have you ever seen a bill that takes away so many our our "inalienable" rights? There hasn't been one that passed, to my knowledge. After September 11 we were scared, and so evil politicians like John Ashcroft (I believe him to be one of the most evil public personages in the news today) were able to pull the wool over our eyes and push through laws that, in a normal atmosphere, would not have had a chance of passing. In fact, I find it hard to believe that the Suprme Court hasn't called it unconstitutional. I suppose there is nothing in the Patriot Act that directly infringes on our rights, but indirectly it is a time bomb, just waiting for an overzealous government agent to push someone too far and blow this thing wide open. I completely support the towns and states that are passing anti-Patriot Act ordinances, and I think the librarians that are destroying borrower records should be awarded medals. Did you know that the Patriot Act had a sunset clause? In other words it was supposed to automatically end at a certain time. I don't remember when that time is, but I do know that several of our elected officials in congress have been pushing to have it extended. There's also the possibility of Patriot Act II, which will expand the federal government's power to spy on us for no reason other than that they feel like it. Write your congressman and tell him, "Stay the hell out of my private life." We pay these people a huge percentage of our income, and they spend the money spying on us. Someone should sponsor "The True Patriot Act," which safeguards our right to privacy by making it illegal for he government to collect information on US citizens without notifying the citizen what is being collected and why.

If I haven't already bugged you about it, make sure to go to buddyzoo.com and upload your buddy list. It's a fascinating program begun by some guy at CalTech which takes someone's buddy list and connects it to other peoples, giving you a popularity rating, a list of cliques (a group where everyone has everyone else on their buddy lists), and even a 3-d graph of you and your connections. The more people that sign up, the cooler the whole thing will be. In fact when I first signed up there were about 600,000 people on it. Now, just about a week later, it's up to almost 2 million. My sister won't sign up, probably because I told her about it instead of one of her tech-elite San Francisco friends.

This article is written with the inspiration of Richard Smiley; roommate, friend, wierdo.
I was listening to Sean Hannity debate ADHD and various drugs like ritalin, and I found that both sides of the issue seemed to be missing the point. Hannity feels that ritalin and aderol are over-prescribed and that ADHD is not a real disease. That many of these ADHD people have no problem concentrating on projects they enjoy is, to Hannity, proof of his point. The other side feels it is a legitimate disorder, but I ahve not heard their retort to Hannity's argument. I take a middle of the road stance. While there are surely some people that have trouble concentrating on anything, the people that merely have trouble concentrating on onerous tasks are not ADHD sufferers, they are merely like many of us. Do I enjoy working all day every day, doing boring work? No, and I have trouble concentrating on it, but I also realize that I can read a good book for hours and hours straight. What ritalin does is allow people to live more happily while doing things they don't like. Ritalin and aderol, at their most philisophical level, are merely analogs for soma, the happy drug in Huxley's Brave New World. In that masterpiece, the citizenry is almost always under the influence of soma, a drug that creates a feeling of satisfaction and contentment, yet does not adversly influence the ability to perform tasks, as drugs like marijuana and cocaine are wont to do. With soma, the society is under control, even janitors are happy with their lot in life. Without soma, surely society would have revolted against the control those in power exert over their lives. I am not trying to say that ritalin is a plan by the government to increase control over individuals. What I am saying that ADHD has become an excuse to use drugs to create more docile humans. ADHD prescribees, in many cases, just simply have not found their niche in society, and ritalin helps a square peg fit in a round hole.

I just read an interesting article in the Technique (Georgia Tech's student newspaper, which is online if you want to see it) about a student that figured out some very easy ways to hack in to the BuzzCard system they use. It's basically a combination ID card and debit card, and a competent hacker can use the holes in security this student found to reap great rewards of information. It's a situation only a hacker or a criminal could love (notice how I distinguish between hackers and criminals). Anyway, it seems that after the student published his findings, with the hope that Tech would do something to solve the problems, the administration instead accused him of embarassing the school, of hurting the company that created the system, and basically of being an evil, disrespectful child that needs a stern talking to. This is typical of the establishment when faced with ideas that threaten their systems. Instead of thanking him for pointing out problems, they try to make him the problem, while ignoring the real issue. Instead of attacking him, they should ask the company why they made a device that is so easy to hack in to. They should get their own IT people to work on solutions. Instead, they allow the security holes to continue. The company that made the devices, Blackboard, Inc, put a gag order on the student so that he could not present his findings at a conference. This is simply ridiculous! Georgia Tech, of all institutions, should realize that if one benign hacker finds a hole, ten malicious hackers will exploit it for their own gain. Of course Tech's response to that would be, "The malicious hackers wouldn't have gotten in the system if so-and-so hadn't told them how." My response to that is that if this one guy found these holes, smarter people could find them on their own and probably already have. Fix the system, don't kill the messenger. And don't wait until 2000 students have had their BuzzCard funds stolen before you do anything about it.

I feel I write better columns when I'm full of righteous indignation, which I was not yesterday. Yesterday I was reaching, just writing because I wanted to write something. Today, however, the coalition of the unwilling has angered me, and so I shall roast them to the best of my ability.

Remember the period just before Gulf War II began, when France and Russia, among others, were clamoring for the lifting of economic sanctions against Iraq, saying that it was only hurting innocent Iraqi citizens? Well now that Saddam is out of power, Bush has suggested that those sanctions should be lifted as soon as possible. Guess who feels that that would be premature? The French and Russian governments. What is up with these people? They said that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, they said that Saddam wasn't such a bad guy, they said a lot of crap. Now that the war is over and Saddam is gone, all of the sudden they want to continue policies that, by their own admission, hurt the innocent Iraqi civilians. I can only imagine that perhaps they are scared of the stories about their dealing with Saddam that might come out if these sactions are lifted, or perhaps they simply have not had a chance to sink their economic claws into Iraq, and realize that if the sanctions are lifted now they won't be able to make as much money off the innocent Iraqi civilians as they could if the sanctions are lifted after the UN gets more involved. Either way, I no longer trust either of those governments. I'm sure the average Russian citizen has no problem with the US, but Putin has shown more and more that he's just a thug grasping for power. The French I'm not so sure about. Mostly their hypocrisy and underhanded deals lead me to the belief that we should wash our hands of normal relations with this "ally." I'm not saying we should call them enemies, but I don't think we can call France a friend anymore.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/bs20030417.shtml

UCLA's academic senate has just passed a resolution condemning the United States for war against Iraq. Obviously this comes a little late, but they really seem to feel that, "the few academic senates in the country are the only organizations who should take a stand on human morals. It's more than our right, it's our obligation." This is a direct quote from Karoly Holczer, a physics professor.

Why? What power on Earth gives a physics professor and a bunch of students any credibility when it comes to human morals? I don't remember anything about oppression and tyranny versus the rule of law in my physics courses. People are paying this guy to teach their kids about physics, not to turn them in to left-wing morons who ignore history in an effort to blame America for everything. When discussing the rebuilding of Iraq, this guy even had the nerve to ask if the US has ever done a good job at anything. When the guy interviewing him mentioned Japan and Germany, Holczer said that those situations were very different. That's right, Truman was a Democrat, whereas the President in office during the rebuilding of Iraq is a Republican.

Holczer feels that the United Nations, "was not governed by self-interest of nations or a 'few number of people, elected or selected or put into power without any control.'" Somehow I find it hard to believe that an educated man could have come to that conclusion after watching the French try to save their butts (and arms deals) during the days leading up to Bush's 48 hour warning to Saddam. I don't undertstand why these people cannot open their eyes to reality. The UN, while a good idea in the beginning, has devolved to uselessness primarily because it is governed by the self-interest of nations.

I'd write more, but I'm starving, it's time to go to Quizno's.

Woo hoo! My most recent letter to the editor (see my 4/16 blog entry) is supposedly going to be published. The last time they told me a letter would be published, it wasn't, so I'll keep my fingers crossed.

This is my response to a Cynthia Tucker editorial in the April 16 edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

"Of course, research shows that black Americans use drugs at a lesser rate than white Americans." That may very well be true, yet ask a random person on the street in which community more drug use will be found, and, like it or not, we all know what answer you will get most of the time. That is an unfair and, apparantely untrue, stereotype, just the point that Barbara Cubin tried to make before she was rudely cut off by a left-winger, a democrat that probably spent most of the last month whining with Tim Robbins about the lack of free-speech rights in this country. If you don't let someone finish making a point, it is unfair to condemn them for it. "But bigotry never did depend on research." Left-wing attacks never did depend on what anyone else actually meant, just on what the best spin is.

I am so tired of hearing people lament the hatred they says the rest of the world has for America, and how we should look in the mirror and see what everyone else sees. Hate is not a rational emotion, there's no way for us to make fanatic Muslims turn the other cheek. There's no way for us to get the French to suddenly love us. We've already saved their country, but that did not engender any love. The only way that the rest of the world will stop hating us is if we say to them "You are right, we are wrong, here's our sovereignty, have fun with it." I'm not willing to do that. I'm not willing to let anyone else's irrational feelings of hate have an influence on what I feel is right and wrong. The Palestinians don't hate the Jews because of disagreements over territory, they hate because the Jews are Jewish. Suicide bombing is not rational, but the Israelis defending their people to the best of their military ability is rational. Flying airplanes into buildings is not rational, but attacking the people that supported such incidents is. Oppressing the people you rule over and killing citizens for no particular reason is not rational, but taking out a dictator who cares nothing about his people except regarding what they can do to enrich him is rational. The rest of the world needs to look in the mirror and see that they are the ones allowing dissension and death, and letting evils like Saddam to continue.

I felt there were many very good reasons for invading Iraw. Now that it's over, I hear rumblings from the government and int he press about warnings given to Syria. Of course, the typically liberal media has jumped on this as another condemnation of the Bush regime. Like anything heard or read, the context has to be taken in to account. Rumsfeld's warnings to Syria seemed to me to be more of the "Don't fuck with us anymore, or we'll come after you type." That's fine. If they fuck with us, then I'll be all for going after them. The press write-ups I saw, however, seemed to indicate that this warning was more than slightly menacing. I don't think that Rumsfeld meant anything more than "We'll be keeping our eye on you." I would be 100% against a war with Syria until and unless they give us as compelling a list of reasons as Saddam did.

At this point, with the war pretty much won, I have to wonder at the agenda of those who are still protesting. I realize that some are genuinely all about peace at any costs (I have to wonder how they think that Saddam is a symbol of peace, he's the major reason why the people of Iraq have not had peace in their own country in 20 some odd years), and I realize that some people feel the United States overstepped it's bounds by ignoring the UN (um... the US simply paid attention to what the UN said 12 years ago regarding Iraq, whereas the UN has forgotten their own statements and resolutions). The people that really leave me disturbed are the ones that seem to hate anything America does, despite the fact that they live here and reap the benefits of our society every day. If the US followed the ideas and policies many of these people tout, then the US would slowly be destroyed as an entity. We would eventually lose our soveriegnty to the UN or whatever other liberal ideal international government that gets formed. The Bill of Rights would become subordinated to whatever that government feels should happen. Then these same people will look back on the heyday of the US as a golden age.

The other group that disturbs me are the Democrats in our government. Based on previous rhetoric, they seem to have no problem with war and with military action. It's only when Republicans spearfront things that the Democrats get upset. Basically I have come to the belief that the Democratic party in the United States would have rejected the Constituition if they'd been around then and if the Republicans had suggested it. And as soon as the Constitution bill failed, they would have submitted their own Constitution with virtually everything the same. They don't hate the United States, nor do they believe in peace at all costs. What they really, truly believe in is winning elections and destroying the Republicans. This is yet another reason why I agree with George Washington, who thought that the two-party system was a bad idea. Elections and congressional sessions and anything else should be decided by the issue at hand, not by which party submitted it.

This is not too well written column by me while at work. I hope you don't like it, because I don't.

Sorry I haven't written in a while. Got a new job, been busy first slacking off after I quit my old job but before the new one, and now I'm busy working. But I like my new job so far. I'm looking forward to learning everything so my hand doesn't need to be held when I do stuff. If anyone needs a mortgage in GA or CO, call me.