My government make me sick when it condones waterboarding. Waterboarding is torture plain and simple. You may wonder what exactly is waterboarding. Here is a definition taken from wikipedia:
“Waterboarding is a torture technique that simulates drowning in a controlled environment. It consists of immobilizing an individual on his or her back, with the head inclined downward, and pouring water over the face to force the inhalation of water into the lungs.”
What waterboarding does is make an individual believe he is dying from a drowning sensation. Many people have stated that waterboarding does not damage an individual so it is not torture, I disagree, waterboarding can cause lung damage, and brain damage due to lack of oxygen. It also takes a mental toll on individuals, usally staying with them for the rest of there life.
I am also not okay with the fact that we as a nation have condemned water boarding when its convenient, even prosecuted people for it. But we then turn around and do it when its convenient. I think its a moral issue for our country and we should take the high road. I won’t go any more into this subject other than to say, if a presidential candidate refuses to say waterboarding is torture and they will not allow it, then they will not get my vote.
Well I’m a little late in writing about this, but Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the UN International Panel on Climate Change. And I think this is a wonderful, Al Gore has done a tremendous amount to raise awareness about Global warming. Now don’t get me wrong I wrote a whole post about how we are too focused on global warming itself and how reducing our waste and CO2 outputs and other nonsense is a waste of time and money. While I do agree that we are a increasing the rate at which our planet is warming, I think our current focus on how to fix the problem is all wrong. What we need to do is change our technology, you will not get everyone on their plane to change their life style, but if you can change the technology that runs that life style you will be on a much better road to improving our enviroment.
So anyway back to Al, If there is one one man who has done a lot for this country I think it is Al Gore, he seems to be a true visionary in many fields ands seems to truly care about the future of mankind and our planet. Believe it or not while Al Gore did not personally invent the Internet (A claim he never made), he did push for, fight for the funding for the DARPA project that eventually became the internet, he also pushed for many government acts that brought the Internet to its current form.
My Congratulations to you Mr. Gore, you deserve it. I just wish more of us were like you.
I’ve been meaning to type this up for awhile, it originally stemmed from an commment I made on another blog so I figured I would blog it and expand on my views so here it goes:
There is a time and a place for everything, do I think excessive force was used on Andrew Meyer, yes I do. Do I think he acted in a manor deserving of some force yes I do. When you go to an event like that, there are rules, just like there are in everyday life, you bend or break those rules and you have consequences. I’m not saying you shouldn’t break or bend rules when you deem its necessary to get your point across. What I am saying is you have consequences and you have to accept them, good or bad.
Andrew Meyer got his consequences and now the police have to accept there consequences, and if you think there are none for them, your wrong. But I think we will see more of this type of pushing of the limits as more and more people wake up to teh reality that the latest American regime has put us in. Its not one of protector and liberator. We are now being oppressed ourselves, we are being spyied on by our own government, illegally, and we do nothing. And when someone finally stands up and says hey! Thats illegal! What does our government do, it changes the laws to make it legal? how does this make sense?
If Americans do not do like Andrew Meyer and stand up for what they believe, how will we change? We are all afraid of consequences, and if you do stand up like Mr. Meyer you will most certainly have consequencs. but when you get older don’t you want to be able to say, I stood up…I did something when I saw injustice.
I have no problem admitting I am a Democrat, not out of loyalty to a particular political party or any overt interest in politics, I vote Democrat mainly because their views more closely match my own rather than the Republicans.
There is only one republican I would consider voting for and that is Ron Paul. Ron aligns closely with traditional American values, small government, reigned in by the Constitution of the United States. And he votes that way, he is not one of todays modern politician who talks the talk but rarely walks the walk. Ron votes his stance, he believes the constitution is not a hinderer to legislate around. He is also in favor of talking first, not blustering and threatening.
America has lost much of its shine in world opinion, is this a big factor to me, no, not really…but it used to be a source of pride, and with our latest America Regime, we destroyed our reputation on the hope that MAYBE they, the regime, could maybe keep us safe. How are we supposed to keep our country safe when we can’t even talk to our enemies, this makes no sense to me. We are trying to keep ourself safe from Iran and the possible radical fundementalist it harbors, yet we won’t even talk to them at a decent diplomatic level? in my eyes all that can do is increase the tension, the mistrust and the likelyhood we will send more of our American youth to die in a war that could be adverted by talking.
Anyway, back to the subject, if by some miracle Ron makes the Republican ticket, The Democrats will be hard pressed to get me to vote for someone else, the Democrats would have to do a better job than they are now to keep me out of Ron’s camp come presidential elections.
Well I made the move to Windows Vista Ultimate, and aside from the sidebar I was totally unimpressed, on top of that my gaming fps went down!!! So needless to say I was not happy, I upgraded to Vista to play Halo 2, which you can not play on XP I might add. I mean the interface is slick and the sidebar widgets are nice. But once you get past that its just windows with a new look. Didn’t really run better or do anything more nifty than my old reliable (FASTER FPS) windows XP.
So I was playing Halo 2, which again I was not all that impressed with, aside from being able to play as an alien and getting to duel wield, it was the Original Halo with new maps. Again not that impressed, had fun playing it tho, so I guess it was worth the cash.
So anyway, once I beat Halo 2 I decided to downgrade back to XP, I will go to Vista again in the future when they get more stable, when the drivers are there and when it doesn’t hurt my FPS!!!
Should we really be so worried about global warming? is it something that will doom us all and make our future generations hate us? I am no scientist so I can not give you a scientific answer to this question, hell I can’t even give you an educated guess on the subject. What I can tell you is that the earth is cyclical in nature, What that means the earth is always going through these shifts in climate, its is accepted theory that the earth has had ice ages, and times of relatively little ice. So you ask where am I going with this? right?
Well this is where I get to my opinion, should we try and stop global warming? No, Global warming and cooling has happened long before we came and will happen long after we are gone, unless the planet explodes, then there will be no climate to change. Before you get all up in arms saying there is proof that we are changing the environment, I do not dispute that fact. What I am saying is we need to take all things in moderation, we need to improve our technologies and roll with the environment. Yes we are putting out Co2 and causing the earth’s temperature to rise.
But should we try and stop global warming? No, we should try and minimize out impact on the environment. If that slows Global warming, great! But we should take a look at what we can do to make our environment a cleaner, better place. We should begin by making technology a key focus, why? Because advances in technology allow us to understand ourselves, our environment and our planet better. Better information and understanding allow for better use. It seems in live that a measure of a persons success is the measure of their wealth. Wealth, while useful, should not be the standard we strive for as a society, we should strive for knowledge. Knowledge is the key to our future. Yet we are content to move forward with a society bent on gaining and holding on to wealth and power. Can you imagine all the things we could accomplish if everything that was worth studying could be studied without worrying about where the money was coming from, our how you were going to pay your bills?
Could you imagine if people who came up with the life saving advances or the great scientific breakthroughs were the rockstars of our age? Can you really imagine that? Can you imagine what our world would be like? And do you think I would be writing about Global warming if we lived in that world?
I mean the interface is slick and the sidebar widgets are nice. But once you get past that its just windows with a new look. Didn’t really run better or do anything more nifty than my old reliable (FASTER FPS) windows XP.