Crazy.... According to this story, Hezbollah will run to some area near civilians, launch rockets, watch Israel destroy the area from the air, and then refuse to let civilians leave the area, or rescuers come in, until after they have removed the evidence of rockets and militant action. That way Israel looks like it was indiscriminately bombing civilians.

I keep reading bloggers and reporters and letter writers over here saying Israel needs to stop and they are losing the war both physically and in public opinion. I'd have to say the first is definitely not true. This is sort of like the US going in to Iraq, the power to utterly crush the other side is there, there's a question of whether there's a will to do it or not. Israel's missles have shut down the Syria/Lebanon border, and they are massing tank units to drive into Hezbolloah territory. The Israelis are sayign they need 10 to 14 days to finish up their offensive, and since the Israeli press is much more supportive of recent military actions than the US press was regarding Iraq, Israel isn't going to shy away from doing what they need to do to stop the missile attacks.

As far as public opinion goes, more and more people seem to agree with the point I made yesterday, that this was inevitable when you consider the sheer volume of rockets that Hezbollah has stockpiled. Israel hasn't been at war with Lebanon in a long time, and they sure weren't buying all those rockets to hit Syria or anyone else in the area, they bought them to kill Jews, and only someone very biased or thoughtless would condemn Israel for this defensive offensive. Point in fact: Kofi Annan, head of the UN, is condemning Israel.

I'm listening to this interview, where a guy that I think is on the left in Israel is talking about the current war over there. He's saying that, while the initial reaction may have been that this was Israel's fault for going in after their kidnapped soldiers, the quantity and range of weapons that Hezbollah is using prove that this war was inevitable. It was only a matter of time until Hezbollah, a terrorist organization, decided to do something with those rockets.

Back to the Pakistani mass murderer in Seattle... If you don't think that, the war between Israel and Hezbollah, 9/11, and Iraq are all connected, you are crazy. I'm not saying there's some secret Muslim council somewhere pulling all the strings. The Seattle monster wasn't taking orders from anyone, but he certainly took his cues from the successful results of other acts of terror by Muslims.

People are complaining about the "disproportionality" of Israel's response. That's such BS. They say things like, "It's obviously not working, blah blah blah." It may not be working, but it should. If everyone subscribed to the policy of kicking the ass of any that messes with you, then people are going to stop messing with you. But not everyone follows that, and seeing people say Israel is responding too harshly only encourages more terrorist action, because they see how it turns public sentiment against Israel.

But seriously... Random homes in Israel are being hit by rockets. Children in civilian areas are being killed. You would be crazy not to hit back as hard as you can if that was happening to you. And yes, I know Lebanese children are being killed, too, but the difference is that Israel is targeting military venues, but Hezbollah cowardly uses civilians as shields, storing weapons in homes and such like that. They make it impossible for Israel to defend itself without killing innocents, and that's more evil to add to the crimes of Hezbollah.

At some point I wrote a rant about hate crime legislation and how it is really thought crime, because if I murder someone in cold blood, it shouldn't matter if I did it because that person was gay or if I did it because the victim just happened to walk by when I felt like killing. Either way I should go to jail and be punished the same. Plus, what if the victim was just walking by the wrong place at the wrong time, so I murder, and then the victim turns out to be gay, so everyone decides it's a hate crime, even though it was just random coincidence that the victim was gay.

Now we got that shooting at some Jewish center in Seattle. Of course the first reports I heard were that an American citizen from Pakistan who is Muslim did it, then I hear the knee jerk "We do not believe this was religiously motivated," which you hear everytime a Muslim does something bad in this country, and then I hear that the guy said something like, "I am killing you because I am angry over Israel," which pretty much makes it an open and shut religiously motivated slaughter. Now the question is, does this guy get charged with a hate crime? Doesn't it seem silly at this point? He killed several people, and should never see freedom again. Why waste our time adding on a few mroe years because he did it out of hatred for a minority group?

Is college the new high school?

It seems like most people are expected to go to college if they want a decent job. whereas that used to be true for high school. With the lowering of expectations, high schools have gotten easier, with higher GPAs despite no particular rise in SAT scores, causing a similar lowering of expectation in colleges. And now many kids get to college expecting a four year bacchanalia, almost as a right of passage.

If college is the new high school, is grad school the new undergrad?

I've read a few things by Randy Balko before, especially regarding the Corey Mayo case. Mayo was the guy who was sleeping at home with his daughter in a crib nearby when police knocked down his door. Of course it was the middle of the night, he was groggy, and had no reason to expect that someone knocking down his door was a peaceful officer of the law, so he pulled a gun and shot an intruder. Turns out it was a cop, and they busted down the wrong door, they had a warrant for the place next door or something like that. Anyway, look up Corey Mayo if you want to read more.

I just discovered Balko's actual blog, The Agitator. Lots of stuff on how local police are becoming more and more paramilitary, and also falling more and more under the influence of the Federal government. Not good. And at the very bottom was an entry about a kid who had gone through chemo and the tumor came back bad the next year so his parents decided not to put him through chemo and instead tried a homeopathic treatment. The state decided to take the child away from them. Balko and I agree that in this case the parents had every right to make this choice. As Balko states, it's not quite like a Christian Scientist kid dying of an untreated ear infection. The chemo obviously wasn't working, all it was doing was destroying the kid faster.

So I read something that I have not confirmed in any way yet, that some Iranian troops are in Lebanon and helped the Hizbollah fire the missle that hit the Israeli warship. I hope that's not the case, because if it turns out to be true, Israel is going to have a much wider war on its hands. They would win, but a lot of people would die first.

I've never really been the guy who has slick lines and such like that, but boy did I use a great one last night. I've been workng a few hours a week for a valet company for a little extra cash since I don't get financial aid during summer semester and want to avoid dipping in to my meager savings. So Saturday night I'm a parking lot attendent for the pay lot across the street from Johnny's Hideaway. The valets that work there were telling me about this really hot waitress named Amber, cuz one of them wanted to ask her out. So I working my lot, and see this really hot blonde park, and I start going over to collect $5. SHe gets out and I notice that she's wearing all black and carrying a tray, so I say "Oh, you work here." And she says, "Yeah, I don't normally carry trays around for fun." So she's walking and turning her head towards me, and I say "You must be Amber, right?" She says, still walking, "Yes. How did you know?" "The other guys told me the prettiest girl at Johnny's was Amber." She stopped dead in her tracks and turned to me, "Oh my god, that's so sweet!" I'm never sure how to respond to that, so I just smiled, she asked my name, I told her, and then said to have a good night, and walked backed towards my station (a MARTA bus stop bench). When I finally looked back, I realized she must have kept looking at me for a few seconds before she resumed her walk to Johnny's, because she'd only moved like 5ft in that time. So I guess I've made her intrigued/interested. Plus it felt great for a line to actually work!

Now I'm up 13.7% on my portfolio, over basically a week of trading. I decided to start liquidating some of my riskier assets to buy low risk bonds since I think I may already have enough gain to win the competition. There's still a month left, but the next guy is only up 7%, and now the pressure is on him. What really sucks is that if I could take back my initial mistake where I sold gold futures short instead of buying them, I wouldn't have lost $48k, I would have gained $48k for a swing of +$96k, which would have put me over 30% up.

For one of my finance classes, we have to participate in a faux-portfolio contest at StockTrak.com, and invest in a diverse range of securities like options, futures, future options (still getting the hang of how those work), and such like that. We're competing against our classmates, and have to justify every trade we make. If I lose all the money there is no penalty, but if I win, I get satisfaction. This creates a situation where I have an infinite risk tolerance. So far it's working, as I have a return of 7% and am in 2nd place in the class. Mostly on hog future options, and gold and silver futures. Barely even hedged. Who needs hedging when I don't care about risk?

This has been a productive night. Not only did I study a good bit, but I played some poker and won... a bit. $2,966.40. Minus $26 for the entry. That's 3rd place out of 1200 entrants. I rarely buy in to a tourney with such a large buy-in (for me). Normally I would try to satelite in, but on a lark, I decided to try. Turns out that not only did I play some great poker, with some awesome folds and fatastic reads, but I got lucky enough not to get sucked out on. At least till my final hand, which was also one of the best calls I ever made. Lady luck rivered me out of the tourney. Here's how it went down:

I've got about 300k, the other two guys have 750k or so. On the button I get AKo (no clubs), and raise 4BBs. SB folds, BB calls. Flops is 9T2, all clubs. He goes all-in. I think for a while, decide he's on a draw at best, and call. He turns over J3, with one club. Turn is a blank, river is a 3, game over. 2nd was another $1000, and 1st would have been $6.3k. But this is still pretty nice.

Compliments of boingboing, comes this recording of what happens when some calls a Chinese food restaurant and makes an order, then calls another and makes an order, asks for them to repeat it, and then connects the two restaurants together.

I trained for the Peachtree more than I do in most years and really hoped for a good time. Unfortunately, I was in one of the last groups to start, and it got so much hotter in the 45 minutes I waited before the start line. What really killed me, however, was the cramp I got about halfway up the big hill in mile 4. Ended up having to walk most of the rest of the race.

Still, it was a beautiful day, tons of people there running or cheering, and I had just as good a time as I do every year.

I saw Superman Returns on an IMAX screen with some scenes selected by the director in 3D. This is the new technology, you still have glasses, but they aren't red and blue, they are polarized at 90 degree angles. The effects in 3D were spectacular, and I thought the entire movie was great. Maybe the novelty of the IMAX 3D experience left me liking the movie more than I would have in a standard theatre, but I think I really liked it.