Izzy and Chaos are playing!

They're playing! Yay! Chaos isn't afraid to play anymore!

WTF??? When you're done bleeding , we want that money back.

The Pentagon is apparently demanding back signing bonuses from injured soldiers, because they didn't serve out their tour, even though they were wounded in battle.

I'm sorry, but if someone gets shot because they're fighting in the military, then the military shouldn't be able to take back any money. It would be different if the guys had just up and left, but they were wounded! What more could they have done to fulfill their obligation???

I've also heard that widow(er)s don't receive nearly enough money.

If you're going to ask someone to go to war, then you should provide for their orphans and widow(er)s!

Uncannily like Fuzzball.

Izzy likes carrying around balls of cotton string just like Fuzzball, and sleeping in the blankets by the litter box (though Fuzzball concentrated on the ones by the fridge and Izzy prefers the front hall)

Unlike Fuzzball, Izzy took the stringball into the cage and up a level.

Success!

When I got out of the shower this morning, Chaos and Izzy were wrestling! Yay!

You're in America! Speak English!

Señora Gomez* hobbled into the social security office in Arecebo, Puerto Rico, supporting herself on her grandson's arm.

She is an elderly middle-class woman, born and raised on the island. She's done her best to do right by everyone and has slowly sold off her land to cover her daughter's expenses and to pay for her grandson's education in the continental United States.

Upon approaching the window, she was informed by Juan Gonzales*, speaking in heavily accented English, that all official business of the United States Social Security Administration will be conducted in English.

Is there really any good reason for a Spanish speaker to demand that a Spanish speaker speak English, in order to get her Social Security check, which she's contributed to all her working life?

Puerto Ricans are often informed that they are in America and should speak English. However, what the Anglophones tend to ignore, is that the Puerto Rican's were speaking Spanish before the island was obtained by the United States and that most generations since then have been born, raised, and died with their native Spanish language. Why should they have to change?

Bilingualism is a tool for success. Ideally, everyone would be bilingual, but this is not possible, at least not at this time. Even if all of the children in school are taught, and learn, sufficient English, the older people would not be able to change, due to age related issues. Using the language as a barrier to services is reminiscent of the literacy tests imposed in the Deep South after the Civil War.

Also, if we take an example from Russian education in the Eastern Bloc countries, we can see that although all of the school children were required to take Russian, most hated it because of it being the language of the colonizer and never learned it well. Who are we to impose our language on others?

English Only is a bad idea.

*These are not really their names.

USA not founded on Christianity

This just in at Northern Sun:


If you can't see the picture, it's a portrait of George Washington on a T-shirt, with a quote:

"The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine." George Washington

That's pretty definitive; he would know.

If you are in Minneapolis, you could swing by their store on Lake to pick it up, or just order it online. http://www.northernsun.com/n/s/8122.html

More on the Writer's Guild strike

Let's all support the Writer's Guild. It sounds like a good cause. Here's a page on how: http://www.wga.org/subpage_member.aspx?id=2544

Reminiscent of Kafka's The Trial

This experience of a Minnesota woman reminded me of Kafka's The Trial (Der Prozeß).

Is anyone regulating the TSA?

For more info on proposed rules requiring having to ask the TSA for permission to fly ANYWHERE to, from, through, or over the United States, read here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/12/flying_into_data_hell/

And here is a link to the Justia Regulation Tracker.

Robert F. Kennedy (November 20, 1925 – June 6, 1968)

I haven't heard this message from any of the front-runners lately.

On the Mindless Menace of Violence

City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio April 5, 1968

Mr Chairmen,Ladies And Gentlemen

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.

Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lost their cause and pay the costs."

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.

I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.

- Robert F. Kennedy (November 20, 1925 – June 6, 1968)

Gratuitous Ferret Photos

Screenwriters going on strike

Screenwriters are scheduled to be on strike starting on Monday.

Per NPR:

All Things Considered, November 2, 2007 · Unless Hollywood writers and studios reach a deal over the weekend, the Writers Guild of America will strike just after midnight next Monday. That could mean many TV shows will have to revert to re-runs.