I just found out that UPS has replaced their classic, Paul Rand-designed logo with this.

Damn.

Good war debate summary from The Onion.

Ralph Nader on the situation.

I’ve struggled for a long time to come up with something to say about the probable war on Iraq. I think I’m happier with having said next to nothing than if I had posted everything that I’ve thought about posting. No doubt much of it was unsubstantiated or not well representative of the situation. This debate doesn’t need any more arguments like that.

I don’t hold an extremely strong opinion; many seem to see this as a sign of weakness or unprincipledness, but I consider it to be an intelligent viewpoint to have, based on my admission that I am not an expert in global politics. And that’s something else this debate doesn’t need any more of: armchair foreign policy analysts.

Nevertheless, as you might have feared, I’m going to share with you my current thoughts on the Iraq situation.

My leaning is currently against a preemptive US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, simply because I haven’t been convinced of why war, especially without the UN’s support, is necessary or helpful. The argument for a war has seemed to constantly shift:

“We must immediately invade Iraq because they won’t let in inspectors.”

Then, when they let in inspectors,

“We must immediately invade Iraq because, despite allowing inspectors, they aren’t disarming.”

The UN Security Council and most of the rest of the world believes that progress is being made toward disarmament.

“But think of what happened on September 11. Do you want another of those, this time with a mushroom cloud over New York City?”

Still no evidence whatsoever (and, in fact, just the opposite) has come forth in support of an al Qaeda-Iraq connection. (Regardless, over half of the United States population believes that Saddam Hussein was behind the September 11 hijackings or that at least one of the hijackers was an Iraqi. It’s difficult to blame them too much, though, when our leaders seem to constantly implicitly link Iraq to September 11.)

“Okay, well, then we must invade Iraq because of the millions of citizens that Saddam has killed.”

I find odd the amount of overlap between the set of people seemingly supporting war because of Saddam’s brutality to his own people and the set that howled in protest that we “need to not be the world’s police force” during previous administrations. I don’t hear many of those that support war for this reason currently advocating, or having advocated in the past, action against other states for humanitarian reasons.

“They hate us and burn our flag in their streets.”

This is a ridiculous argument for war that should probably just be ignored (fortunately, most intelligent war supporters are not trying to base much of their argument around this), but I mention it because it’s all the more repulsive when it comes from the same people that currently are in a self-pitying rage, unbecoming to a frat boy whose team has been slighted, over France’s disagreements with us. The jokes about “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” who have rifles that “were never fired, dropped once” are not only historically inaccurate, they are inappropriate, unseemly, and quite frankly, make the jokers seem like obnoxious jingoistic children.

If people in other countries were making fun of our hallowed war dead, I assure you, we would not find it humorous. We’d probably want to go nuke them.

And that’s the root of the problem, for me: besides the weakness of the arguments I hear, I can’t help but be immediately nervous about going to war when the drive for it seems so single-minded, even though Iraq hardly seems to be our most imminent threat or likely to become that in the future. I have to think back to the months after September 11, 2001, when one couldn’t turn on a talk radio station or walk past the company break room without hearing someone proclaiming that we need to just nuke all those “dirty A-rabs” until the entirety of the Middle East is a “glass parking lot”. “Nuke ’em all and let Allah sort it out.” Somehow, this makes me uneasy.

I’m leery of supporting preemptive action that doesn’t seem likely to reduce any imminent threat toward us and for which our push is doing an excellent job of turning international post-9/11 sympathy into fear and mistrust.

I am not a pacifist, even if it makes some feel better to call me that; I will support action that is right and that will have a net positive effect in the war on terrorism. I, and many others (like Jimmy Carter), are as of yet unconvinced.

Bunch of liberal pinko commie Berkeleyites. What about the 3,000 families who lost loved ones in the dreadful attacks on our freedoms of September 11, 2001?

Wait, what?

This is one of the coolest ideas I’ve seen in a long time.

Art-o-mat.

I wish there was one in Fort Worth.

The Onion recaptures past glory.

I had to watch that ad a couple of times before I realized they weren’t gonna tell me how I can teach my children an interesting science lesson that they’ll never forget using only a stove burner and perhaps some macaroni and cheese.

I spent a lot of time during my high school years listening to music. And I still listen to a lot of music, all through the day — but I mean really listening to music.

I would take the time to sit down and just listen to an album. Just sit alone, sometimes open up a lyric sheet (it helps me to see the lyrics and the progression and structure of things… I don’t know if I’m weird or if everyone is like that) and listen, just focusing on that.

I’ve missed doing that. I often find myself with music on, treating it as sort-of-but-not-entirely-background music, when I will focus on it for a few moments and think, “Wow, that sounds really, really great. I need to really listen to that sometime.”

(You know how occasionally, you can just tell that that recording/film/painting/article/newspaper comic/computer program/whatever that you’re only moderately aware of is a masterpiece, even when you haven’t really given it the attention it demands? Sometimes, on further inspection, you realize you were wrong; but it seems that, on average, one’s sub-conscious does a decent job of quality discernment.)

Anyway, I’ve got more than a handful of albums to which I’ve thought before that I owed an actual “serious listen”. I’ll be doing that more over the next few weeks: I started tonight with Radiohead’s Amnesiac. And listening — really listening — is just as enjoyable as it ever was.

Nude De Force, November 15, 2002
Reviewer: Ryan (see more about me) from Westerville
My wife and I have been trying to learn yoga for quite some time, but neither of us have had any luck…until her grandmother lended us this DVD. It was great! We stretched our muscles while watching nude women bend back and forth. My wife loved it more than I did, and we never get sick of it. Yoga has finally done to us, as freedom has done to America.

— Amazon.com review of Nude Yoga & Tai Chi

I always feel like I should apologize when I go more than a week without posting any new content… I try not to do that, but I’ve had issues.

The computer that usually serves wordparts up to you is in for service so I’ve had to start running wordparts off my PowerBook that normally goes with me nearly everywhere.

Not to mention the multi-day power outages my apartment complex has had, both before and during the recent snowstorms in the DFW area.

Oh, and the power surge that killed my 200 gig backup hard drive.

There will be new content in the next few days, though there may also be some necessary outages. Such is the price of serving your website out of your apartment. Perhaps it’s time to move it to an outside hosting facility.

Regardless, stay tuned. I’ll try to have something up soon that you’ll enjoy. But I have no idea when I’ll get things posted or even when the site will be available for the next week or two. Your user fees for this period will be refunded on a pro rata basis.