ferrets doing ferret things

Here we have Chaos hanging out in a pant leg, and Loki washing his face.

For better or for worse, Ahmadinejad is right.

Here's a clip from a BBC article:

Iran defiant over sanction threat

Iran's leader has called the UN report an historic victory

Iran's leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says that no amount of UN sanctions will deter Tehran from its nuclear path.

"If they want to continue with that path of sanctions, we will not be harmed. They can issue resolutions for 100 years," he said in a TV interview.

His remarks came after a UN report said Iran was being more transparent - but had not given "credible assurances" that it was not building a bomb.

Tehran insists its programme is aimed purely at generating electricity.

He's right. UN resolutions don't really do anything.

Dinner in the comfort of your own crinkly-tube

James decided that rather than taking Chaos out of the tunnel to feed him, it would be easier to just transport the whole tunnel to the food dish.

An Epiphany

I just realized something! It's not that Chaos won't eat dry food. It's just that he won't eat the dry food that I'm offering him. He was more than willing to steal the dog's food, so that shows that "there's nothing wrong with the machine", to quote a previous veterinarian.

So, what I will do the next time that I get the chance, is to take Chaos to the pet store, where they have ferret food and kitten food in bulk bins and see if there are any that he'll eat.

All broadcast to be HDTV

So, the government has mandated that all TV broadcasts be in HDTV by February 17, 2009.

So, not knowing anything about these things, I can't help but wonder if it's easier to jam digital than analog. Anyone know?

Bush does something right and shows that he just might be human afterall

Apparently Bush put enough pressure on the Saudi king to get a rape victim pardoned.

(CBS/AP) A gang-rape victim who was sentenced to six months in prison and 200 lashes for being alone with a man not related to her was pardoned by the Saudi king after the case sparked rare criticism from the United States, the kingdom's top ally.
...
Earlier this month, Mr. Bush expressed his anger over the sentencing.

"My first thoughts were these," Mr. Bush said. "What happens if this happens to my daughter? How would I react? And I would have been - I'd of been very emotional, of course. I'd have been angry at those who committed the crime. And I'd be angry at a state that didn't support the victim."
...

So, maybe he could apply a bit more pressure to get his friends to treat women equally with men. *sighs*

On Obama per Shelby Steele

Here is an interesting take on Obama. You'll need to follow the link to hear what he has to say.

Word for Word from American Public Media
Race vs. presidential politics

February 1, 2008
Conservative intellectual, researcher and author Shelby Steele of Stanford University's Hoover Institution has written widely on race relations in American society. Now, Steele weighs in on presidential politics. In a Jan. 23 speech at the Commonwealth Club of California, Shelby Steele discussed his new book, "A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited about Obama and Why He Can't Win."

This is the book description posted at Amazon.com:

Book Description
In Shelby Steele's beautifully wrought and thoughtprovoking new book, A Bound Man, the award-winning and bestselling author of The Content of Our Character attests that Senator Barack Obama's groundbreaking quest for the highest office in the land is fast becoming a galvanizing occasion beyond mere presidential politics, one that is forcing a national dialogue on the current state of race relations in America. Says Steele, poverty and inequality usually are the focus of such dialogues, but Obama's bid for so high an office pushes the conversation to a more abstract level where race is a politics of guilt and innocence generated by our painful racial history -- a kind of morality play between (and within) the races in which innocence is power and guilt is impotence.

Steele writes of how Obama is caught between the two classic postures that blacks have always used to make their way in the white American mainstream: bargaining and challenging. Bargainers strike a "bargain" with white America in which they say, I will not rub America's ugly history of racism in your face if you will not hold my race against me. Challengers do the opposite of bargainers. They charge whites with inherent racism and then demand that they prove themselves innocent by supporting black-friendly policies like affirmative action and diversity.

Steele maintains that Senator Obama is too constrained by these elaborate politics to find his own true political voice. Obama has the temperament, intelligence, and background -- an interracial family, a sterling education -- to guide America beyond the exhausted racial politics that now prevail. And yet he is a Promethean figure, a bound man.

Says Steele, Americans are constrained by a racial correctness so totalitarian that we are afraid even to privately ask ourselves what we think about racial matters. Like Obama, most of us find it easier to program ourselves for correctness rather than risk knowing and expressing what we truly feel. Obama emerges as a kind of Everyman in whom we can see our own struggle to accept and honor what we honestly feel about race. In A Bound Man, Steele makes clear the precise constellation of forces that bind Senator Obama, and proposes a way for him to break these bonds and find his own voice.The courage to trust in one's own careful judgment is the new racial progress, the "way out" from the forces that now bind us all.

New "The Princess Bride" cover

So, I saw this new cover and thought that it was annoying that they'd changed the font.



And then I turned the case upside down - and it blew my mind for a few minutes anyway! ;) I was kinda annoyed that the "princess" face looks nothing like the face of the actress. Just thought I'd share. Now I should get back to something more serious.

ferret update

I took the ferrets to the pet store and Chaos picked out a new toy, so I got it for them. Chaos also had surgery yesterday to remove a growth from his paw; some sort of cyst or something. Now he has three little stitches that will come out February 10th. His blood-sugar level also came in somewhere in the 20s...(70ish is low).