Once again an incident occurs which shows how the internet is changing the world. After the tsunami, news reports streamed in to websites and blogs the world over. That is expected, but then the really cool stuff started to happen. Amazon.com, among others, set up easy ways for people to donate money to the cause. Before the internet, if something like this happened, more people would not donate because of the trouble inherent in finding a valid charity to give to than would go through the trouble of finding one. Now it's as easy as checking your email to give to whichever group you want to. Another cool thing are various "missing" websites. In the past in a situation like it may have taken months to find information on your lost loved ones. With the web the process becomes sped up enormously.

Amazon has set up a donation link to the American Red Cross (not to be mistaken for the America-hating, Palestinian loving International Red Cross) for tsunami help. I first heard about it Wednesday when it was up to about $1.5 million. Now it's at about $8 million! Go make your donation and do something good. I don't have a whole lot to give right now, but I'm going to send something....

I love this guy. Victor Davis Hanson is some I don't always agree with.... But I usually do.

Bush is starting what he calls a "coalition of the helping" to coordinate relief activities the wake of the tsunami. Good for him!

Now a U.K. cabinet minister is complaining, saying the U.N. is the only organization with the "moral authority" to coordinate such efforts. Whatever! They are the only organization WITHOUT the moral authority to run this thing. We're all well aware of what they did with the "Oil for Food" program, so handing them several hundred million more to distribute to various countries sounds like a great chance for graft and kickbacks to me. I think Bush, along with the other partners in Australia and Japan, feels the same way about the U.N. as I feel about this guy I knew in college; don't give 'em any money, they'll just waste it and come back for more.

We're stuck in an uncomfortable point with the U.N. Too much of the world still worships them, so we can't totally blow them off, but we don't have to trust them a bit.

Edit: Turns out she's a former UK cabinet minister.

I decided to go out for lunch today, so I was alone and read the paper a bit more comprehensively than I normally. This led to me reading the sort of articles I usually skip over, so I read about one particular custody battle that really bothers me.

So this woman gets knocked up by her boyfriend, and only realizes she's pregnant when she gets treated for wounds recieved when assualted by said boyfriend. They eventually break up and she decides to give up the baby for adoption when it is born. A nice couple adopt and live four years in happiness with their new son. Well for whatever reason, the biological mother, now married to another man with a 19 month old child that she kept, has decided she wants her firstborn back. Because the biological father was not involved with her when the baby was born, and was not supposed to be involved at all, or even pay child support, his signature was not legally needed to adopt the baby. Somehow he is now interested in the child and has gotten lawyers to say that his rights were taken away, etc. Several judges, lawyers, trials, and months (a year or more maybe?) later, the eternally intelligent government has decided to give the now four year old kid back to his biological mother and, after a transition period, not allow even visitation rights for the adoptive parents, but the biological father gets "liberal visitation rights." This is just ridiculous beyond belief! Did anyone besides the adoptive parents consider the welfare of the child? What must this do to the psyche of a kid who is very happy and well adjusted and loves his parents? The nerve of the biological mother to suddenly decide to rip the hearts out of the people that have cared for this kid all these years, and rip the kid away from everything he's ever known! And the biological father abused his girlfriend while she was pregnant, physically assaulted her, yet now he gets to be a father to the kid while the adoptive parents won't even get to see him anymore.

Something is very wrong here, both morally and legally.

And people tell me my room is messy?

Seriously, though, this is a picture from one of the places hit by the tsunami. The devestation is mind-boggling, and scary. My understanding is that a lot of the deaths may have been prevented if not for a misunderstanding in the information chain. Officials in, shoot, I forget which country, were told there was an earthquake in the ocean, but they heard it was an 8.0 on the richter scale, and since it was tourist season they didn't want all the resorts to lose business for a warning on a quake that probably wouldn't cause harm, as there had been an 8.4 a year or two ago and people barely noticed. By the time they found out it was a 9.6, it was too late.

I guess it's like snow days here in Atlanta. We used to always shut schools down when there was barely any snow, then they stopped being so careful for a couple of years after an instance where the schools were shut down, but no snow happened at all. Now they have gone back to shutting them down for any hint of snow. And of course there are the color alerts for terrorism. A lot of people make fun of them and says it's just the administration trying to scare us, but if there was a terrorist attack after the administration folded and stopped issuing alerts, they'd get the blame for that. Not the terrorists, because they are just freedom fighters, of course. It's all Bush's fault.

But back to the topic at hand. The more I see, the more amazing it seems. In a bad way of course. I hope the US doesn't get any tsunamis anytime soon.

I bought some groceries today, so in return one of my roommates let me use his account to play a $5 buy-in poker (Texas Hold 'Em) tourney. I finished 2nd, which pays $13.50, so I played another, and finished 3rd for another $9. I decided one more, a two table tourney, to take me up to bedtime. I've got about 1600 chips, and get A-Q in the pocket. Some guy goes all-in with about 500 chips, so I call. Another guy also calls. Flop comes A-7-Q, so I'm feeling pretty good and go all-in. The other guy calls, everyone shows. Me and the other all-in guy both have A-Q. The third guy has K-J for a straight draw. Of course the 10 comes in on the last card, he gets his straight, and I say bye bye.

Poker, while lots of fun, can be very frustrating. But hey, I'm still up like $12 for the day.

Now there's talk all over the place about how the US isn't helping tsunami victims enough, and how we're stingy and such. What do these people want? We sent $15 million immediately, and upped it to $35 million a day later. What else were we supposed to do in two days? What would they do with more money, use it to soak up water? Or we could just start sending supplies over there willy-nilly. I mean if you're a tsunami victim, wouldn't you be glad to receive a box of kleenex? The US is the primary giver of foreign aid in the world, and we are setting up means to send much more help, but this stuff takes time. It's not like there are warehouses full of "In case of disaster in East Asia" supplies. It's just so frustrating to listen to people trashing the United States like we never do anything for anyone else. Ever heard of the Marshall Plan? Or the $2.4 billion in foreign aid we sent out to places all over the world just last year? Not to mention the fact that the sheer wealth of this country, unimaginable in previous eras of history, spreads money all over the world. Because we are rich, every other country in the world has more wealth. The United States is the greatest creator of wealth, freedom, hope that the world has ever seen.

Just read a funny joke:
Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, and a Marine bodyguard are travelling in Iraq when they are captured by insurgent forces. They are tied up and told they are going to be killed. Each of them is allowed a fianl wish.

Dan Rather says, "I'm from Texas, so I want a big bowl of hot chili." He gets his chili.

Peter Jennings asks to hear "Oh Canada" one more time, so they get some musicians and play it.

The Marine says, "I want you to kick me in the ass." They kick him in the ass, he rolls over, pulls out a gun shoots all the captors.

Rather exclaims, "Why didn't you shoot him the first place?"

The Marine responds, "Are you crazy? I didn't want you to think I was the agressor."

Elizabeth Kolbert wrote a review of Michael Crichton's new book, State of Fear, in The New Yorker. She spends maybe a third of the review talking about the book, and the rest talking about the Kyoto Treaty and how Crichton is obviously having a hard time defending the stance of our country. Not at a single point does she even start to acknowledge that Crichton has a background in science and just might have some arguments against current othodox thought on global warming that are different, true, and make his novel much more compelling. But instead she's so stuck in her "evil corporations destroying the world and causing global warming" mindset that she can't comprehend that it may have nothing to do with anything humanity has done, and, IF (that's a big if) global warming is actually occuring (these people never seem to want to mention that from 1940-70 or so the world was getting colder), it may simply be part of the Earth's lifecycle, like ice ages. I would have thought someone who writes for The New Yorker would be more agile of thought.

Still not sure that blogging is changing the world as much as its proselytizers say? Check out boing boing or instapundit or any number of other blogs today for links to various items regarding the recent tsunami that hit India, Sri Lanka, and assorted other eastern countries. We've got live SMS blogging, pictures from cell phones, eyewitness acounts in numbers that boggle the mind. For events like this, blogs have already changed the world. Anyone who wants info on any huge event doesn't know what they're doing if they go to the mainstream media before looking at blogs.

Just spent a few minutes reading about Legos. Actually part of what I read is a discussion about how you should say Lego or Lego building bricks, but never the word Legos, as it's not proper method of pluralization. Supposedly the company wanted to protect their trademark and that's easier to do with an adjective, so the proper wording should always be Lego something, be it building bricks, kits, whatever.

Anyway, now I miss my Legos and want to get one of the big sets so I can spend an afternoon playing.

They put pictures from the Bagel Bash up online at kosherchameleon.com Somehow I never even saw a person with a camera, but it looks like they stayed upstairs most of the party, while I was downstairs. I almost (and wish I had) talked to a certain girl of whom there are several pictures of. If you go the site, go to the second page of pictures, she's on the first row, second column, wearing a white top (they keep changing where the pics are, so I guess this may not be right anymore). If anyone can identify her, they'll win a prize! The girl on the same page second row, second column, is also very cute and looks extremely familiar, like someone I've seen a lot but never knew. Maybe from Hebrew school? There were several ladies I recognized from Hebrew school 15-20 years ago, but I don't remember names.

I had a busy, busy weekend! I got off work at 2:30 on Friday (yes, I had to work Christmas Eve, and will be working on New Year's Eve, too), and went home to do some laundry, then I went to meet a party at a Bangladeshi restaurant for a wedding rehearsal dinner. I actually liked the food!!! Then it was back to the hotel to rehearse the ceremony, and then they had a little pool party.

I'll take this moment to express my amazement at the bride this weekend. This wedding was the union of my friends Tanah and Alison, and Alison planned the entire thing by herself, organized everything with little help from others, and pulled off an incredible weekend, and held herself together the whole time. Go Ali! Or is it Alie? I'm not sure....

After the pool party I booked it home to shower and change for the annual Bagel Bash, which is one of the big Christmas Eve Jew parties that are thrown each year. And everytime I go, I'm amazed at the number of beautiful Jewish women that live in Atlanta.

I got up early the next morning (Christmas Day) and met my parents at Waffle House. I had my tux with me as I was going to the hotel right after, and five minutes after I left my house, I realized hadn't brought black socks, so I asked my parents to bring a pair to Waffle House. I got to the hotel, did a few duties (Alie made us lists of what we were supposed to do and when), then remembered that I didn't have any cufflinks. So I drove to my parents' house to borrow my Dad's cufflinks. Then I got back to the hotel to change into my tux and prepare for pictures, and realized that my bow tie was missing. Luckily another groomsman called his fiance and had her borrow her Uncle's and bring it, so I got it in time for pics. I later found my bow tie on the floor of my closet.

After pictures several of my friends started arriving, so we went up to someone's hotel room and had a few beers and some tequila! The groom came up for a shot, and then the bride heard about it, comes storming in with, "I hear there's beer and tequila up here and you gave Tanah some."

We looked at her with worry, terrified she was angry, but the next thing she said was, "I want some!" So Alie had some tequila.

Next the Ketuba signing. I got there, got a good spot, then was asked to track down the witness. When I got back with him, I was stuck in the doorway and couldn't see a thing. :(

The ceremony was fine, maybe a little long winded, but both Tanah and Alie looked great, though Alie cried basically from the moment she walked in the room until she left.

The reception was lots of fun. We had been told beforehand that we all had to drink $29 of alcohol per person, and it was all paid in advance. I more than made up my share, especially as I was very nervous about the toast I had been asked to give.

Finally my big moment came and the toast was about as follows:
"When I was asked to give a toast, I started out with funny and clever, but it jsut didn't seem appropriate. I could tell funny stories about Tanah from college all day long, but that has nothing to do with who Tanah and Alie are now, and there's nothing glib about the love they share for each other. Then I tried to be serious, and when I looked at what I had written it was all full of cliches. Then I started thinking, 'Are cliches so bad?' Everyone wants, "And they lived happily ever after" at the end of their biography. So Tanah and Alison will 'bring home the bacon,' 'put food on the table,' and 'be fruitful and multiply.' Tanah and Alison, may you live happily ever after, Mazol Tov!"

At this point I was very nervous, so I lifted up the mic for the end instead of the glass of champagne.

That's about it for the wedding. Hope you enjoyed reading about it as much I enjoyed attending.

Though I haven't really looked in to it myself, I understand that Pixar's stock has taken a hit since the coming end of their relationship with Disney dawned upon the market. Seems like it would be a good time to buy, at bargain prices. Just because their distribution deal ends after their next release, Cars, in fall 2005 (or is it summer 2006?) doesn't mean the movies are going to suddenly suck. If anything I would think the movies would be better. I don't know how much input Disney got in Pixar's films, but I would think that none at all would be the best thing for a Pixar film.

Wish I had some liquid assets to invest (besides that bottle of tequila at home).

I have a wedding to go to this weekend. In fact I'm a groomsman, and I need to think of a toast!!!!

Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrate, and Happy Chrismukkah to the rest.

One man's quest to eat that which does not look like it should be eaten, so that we do not have to. He's saving us from ourselves, and we should thank him for it.

Cool story about a couple of programmers who wanted to finish the job, even if it meant sneaking in to the building where they no longer officially work, and doing for free what some might have paid millions for.

It reminds me of a story I read the other day about a girl who dropped out of high school, started playing with microchips as a hobby, and ended up inventing the joystick TV plug-in that plays games from several older systems at once.

This sort of can-do engineering spirit is what has driven American technology for so long. Forget all this new-age teamwork junk, the greatest inventions in history were one or two people working their butts off to fulfill their dreams.

This just in: J.K. Rowling has completed work on book 6 of the Harry Potter series, and it will be released in July 2005. I can't wait!

Ever thought about how Christianity became the dominant religion in the western world? From a historian's perspective, it was a political decision made by an Emperor of Rome. The Christians were an increasingly popular oppressed group, and the Emperor decided it would be easier to take up Christianity, use it to absorb some of the more popular "pagan" rites, and have everyone following Jesus, than to continue to have several warring groups within the Empire.

Some of the stuff I read these days makes me wonder if some parts of the world are headed down that same road with Islam. In Italy recently, the Pope has had to defend Christian tradition against a town that took the world "Jesus" out of nativity scenes so as not to offend Muslims. Before you know it, they'll be saying thanks to Allah so as not to offend Muslims.

It is almost a certainty that the world would be more peaceful if we all just decided to go Muslim. We might lose our freedoms, and begin a spiral down in to a new dark age, but at least the wars would stop.

One of the primary reasons why the world is changing for the better. Sometimes it goes slow, but it's going no matter what. Communication technology, mostly invented by the United States, is making it nearly impossible for tyrannical and despotic governments to maintain the opaquity of previous eras.

The United States may not be pre-eminent in 100 years, but democracy will, and it will be a legacy of the United States. Someday historians will look back on the late 20th and early 21st century as the period when the US transformed the world with a speed never before imagined.

How about that deal with Bernie Kerik? I must admit, it makes the administration look a little silly. I can imagine they didn't think they needed to check the immigration status of his nanny, but the allegations of him using apartments set aside for the use of Ground Zero clean up and rescue crews to rest on breaks for his won personal "affair" have apparantely been around for a while, and are not the sort of thing they would typically want on the resume of a cabinet member. They made a big mistake on this one, but got saved by him quitting before he began. No harm, no foul, as far as I'm concerned. And hey, no one lied under oath.

I noticed something interesting today. Apparantely, after all the uproar over the flu vaccines and how it was all Bush's fault that the United States was short on them, it turns out that almost every place offering the vaccine has plenty of extra leftover. Will we hear an apology from all the people who were saying people were going to die because of Bush in this situation? Nope.

I did more hair loss research tonight. Turns out Procerin is bunk. The key item that convinced me is that the site that was lauding Procerin said that Propecia is like $170 for a month's supply. Turns out it's really only about $50/month. Still not cheap, but not much more expensive than Rogaine, and I just can't handle the itching from Rogaine. Plus the instructions say to stop if you experience continued itching. So now it's time to do more in depth research on Propecia.

If anyone reading has experience with hair loss products, feel free to advise me.

I'm listening to the Paul Hewitt call-in show right now. Hewitt, as you should know, is coach of the Georgia Tech basketball team. My Dad and I went to the game last night, being big fans and all, and had a great time. The team did not play all that well, but still won by 25. Ismail Muhammed, one of the seniors, is an incredible defensive presence, but he gets the most press by being the best dunker in college basketball. Last night he made a gloriously spectacular dunk, the kind that was probably in the top 10 on Sportscenter. Wes Durham, the play by play guy, said that he asked the team manager, "What was that?" The answer:

"That's just to let you know that he's still in the dunking business."

I love that team!!!!! Go Jackets!

So I'm thinning on top. I took Rogaine for a few months, and I think I did notice some slight regrowth, and definite slowing of hair loss, but it started itching to the point that it was driving me nuts! And the instructions say to discontinue use if you itch all the time. So I stopped. I was looking up other solutions online today. Avacor, which I saw a commercial for, seems to be complete bunk. Propecia
seems to do ok, but has a lot of possible side effects, and is expensive as hell! There's something called Procerin that isn't nearly as expensive, seems to have less reported side effects, and about 80% of the people that tried it and responded to this independent website I was looking at (they looked at all the different
products out there, the guy that started it is going bald and is a doctor and wanted to see what works best without all the bias in company sponsored studies) seemed to feel Procerin was really helping. Almost all reported slowing, and about half said they noticed regrowth. So I guess I'm gonna try it. Wish me luck! I don't want
to lose my hair!

Procerin, by the way, is a DHT blocker. DHT is a side effect of some sort of genetic thing where men's bodies get rid of excess testosterone. Unfortunately the DHT causes hair follicles to shrink or something, and stop growing hair. I'm sure someday, probably in the next twenty years or so, they'll have some pill or topical solution that is a complete cure for baldness, but until then, I'll just have to try out these stop-gap measures. There's no way I'm ever going to be so caught up as to get hair plugs or something, so don't worry. If nothing works, then I guess I'll jsut have to live with it.

Skeletons of well known cartoon characters, including Charlie Brown.

The other theory for drug use in sports is that we make steroids and HGH and whatever else legal. I know steroids causes cancer, and led to the deaths of Lyle Alzado and Ken Caminiti, among others, but, taken properly under the care of a doctor, could such drugs enhance the body without causing massive long-term damage? Perhaps each team would have their own M.D. with expertise in the use of sports poeformace enhancing drugs making the players do it right, and working with team trainers to ensure that no one goes overboard. I don't know enough about it to say.

Interestingly enough, I was a skinny runt up until the end of my junior year of college when I started working out. Within a year I had gained about 45 pounds of muscle and gotten a pretty impressive body for a 5'8" guy who is incapable of tanning. I was accused by several people of taking steroids, but I can assure you I would NEVER do such a thing. I attribute my growth to good genes and the fact that I had never lifted a weight, nor participated in organized sports except a few eyars in little league when I was a very young child. An active kid who plays lots of sports might start working out for the first time at the same age and not gain nearly as much as I did because, even without having lifted before, they still probably had more developed muscles than my extremely sedentary self. Now I'm not so sedentary, and, after that huge initial jump, I find it harder to gain much unless I'm really dedicated, which means forcing myself to eat TONS of protein, work out every other day regularly, and various other little tools that helped me in my initial lifting days. These days I just don't really feel the need to get much bigger, I just enjoy working out a couple of times a week.

Stupid French... They've been hiding plastic explosives in random travellers' bags to train bomb sniffing dogs. Well one got through the system, made it on an airplane, and they have no idea what happened to it. Some unsuspecting traveller probably took a vacation to Bali, got caught with explosives in his bag, and is now being treated to a free lifetime stay in hell. Smart thinking, Frenchies!

Firrst Jason Giambi, and now Barry Bonds, have admitted to using steroids, though Bonds clims he didn't know he was taking steroids, he thought it was flaxseed oil. Personally, I think Bud Selig and the owners owe it to fans of the sport to take a hard-line stance. If the Players' Union isn't open to mandatory universal drug testing, then the owners ought to say, "Forget the collective bargaining agreement, you either take the test, or you don't play." Though I admit to not knowing anything about contracts and such, it seem that, with steroid use being illegal, it would also be illegal to hold true to a contract that allows, and, in fact, demands, illegal activity. There are plenty of non-steroid users out there that would love a chance to play in the big leagues, even if it means they get tested every week or month, or whatever. The game is supposed to be about the competition between teams, not individual stats anyway. Tell players they can either stick to the Players' Union, or leave it and play baseball.

I must say I'm glad I'ma Braves fan. I just don't see Bobby Cox or John Scherholz (did I spell that right?) allowing a player to stay if there's any sign of steroid use. Sure, they ahd Caminiti for a year, but he was such a bum byt hen, I doubt he was still on the roids, and he was only around one year anyway. And there was Sheffield, but, unlike Bonds, he didn't suddenly gain 50 lbs of muscle and huge jumps in stats. And he's gone now, too. Maybe I'm naive, but I don't think any of the current Braves roster is on anything illegal.

Let's just say that tomorrow we lose Manhatten Island to a nuclear bomb. What do we do? I don't think I have to skirt around the issue of who the bomber would be, it's fairly obvious it would be one Muslim Fundamentalist or another. The question is what do we do? I know, emotionally, that putting away the few in numbers that were actually directly involved would not ease my mind. I'd want something big and bad that kills a whole lot of people and says to the world, "If you kick us, we're going to cut your hearts out and eat them for breakfast." Much of America would agree with me, but that means a huge number of innocents in the Middle East would die. So in a manner of speaking, any further WMD attacks (with 9/11 as the first) on the US from Islamists will be tantamount to suicide for the heart of the Muslim world. I hope it doesn't happen, but I hear rumors that Al Queda and friends consider the reelection of Bush as a thumbs up to total war.