What the hell!? Are there really so many American deaths in Iraq that it isn’t worth Donald Rumsfeld’s while to personally sign letters of condolence himself?. Ceremonial Burial is one of the first developed aspects of human civilization. Apparently the most primitive cultures understand the needs of humanity better than our executive branch. If Rumsfeld is willing take more soldiers to their death by sending an inadequately sized force to Iraq, he should be willing to take personal responsibility for each death. He should apologize personally every time one of our soldiers dies because of the decisions he forced on our country. It disgusts me that a child murderer has higher moral standards than the leadership of the greatest country in the world.

In 1997 there was a brutal story of a boy who beheaded a 10 and an 11 year old. He has since “been declared normal” by the government and is sending part of all his paychecks to the family to atone for his sins. His lawyer also quoted him saying, “I’d like to keep asking forgiveness for the rest of my life, not just once.” However fake or true his feelings may or may not be, I still wish that more people in America would take responsibility for their actions. One cannot go to confession and be released from the guilt of murdering someone. Nor is someone free of that guilt after having served his prison sentence. A murderer has forever altered the life in a final, catastrophic way of not only his victim(s), but their friends, family and relatives as well. While one should learn to live with his guilt, he should never “get over it.”

As a side note, Japanese have a lot of difficulty using prepositions because they do not exist in the Japanese language. I like to try to get them to think of the different picture “getting over someone” creates than “get out of my life”. For me, I think of the idea of a rock in your road of life.

Uniqlo is easily the best clothing store in Japan. It reminds me of a Japanese Gap, only with Old Navy pricing. You can get shirts, shoes, pants, etc all for between 10 and 20 bucks (1000-2000 yen). Fleece seems to be the current trent, so it is cool to get a new hat, pair of gloves and warm night pants for $25!

From the Nova Monitor (from somewhere else):

Two men walk into the bar and each order a vodka tonic on the rocks. One slams down his drink immediately, much to the shock of the barkeeper and the other man. The other man takes his time with his drink, but before he can finish it, he falls over dead. The man who drank his drink quickly was fine. Why caused the one man’s death, and why didn’t the other die as well?

I think I should write more about the daily happenings of my life.

Earlier this week (Tuesday was it?) we went to Shidax. Shidax is a karaoke bar, and karaoke is the best thing about Japan (and nothing like it is in the states). Where else can you get pissed as and sing your lungs out for $20?
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The map of Davis on the Davis wikipedia is awesome! I can find my house and all the places I went to back when I lived there. The farms are all pretty dizzying though. I thought the map was still downloading.

Davisites, past and present: I direct you to daviswiki. I have contributed a couple of pages and edited a few others, and it’s a lot of fun. Editing wiki pages is a little ‘techy’ but the markup language for this one is pretty basic. If nothing else, it’s a nice set of thoughts about Davis (from mostly twentysomethings, it appears) and the quirky little things that go on here. There’s also a boatload of info there about all the local shops, restaurants, etc. and a killer Flash-based map. It’s rad.

We need hard liberals. Democrats will forever be the minority party until they are willing to defend American values as better than others. As long as Michael Moore equates beheading an American as morally equivalent to taking compromising pictures of Iraqis, and as long as these soft liberals control the Democrats, the United States’ rivers will run forever red.

Microsoft has created their own blog system. It seems pretty decent. I toyed around with it for five minutes and you can view my results here.

Perhaps I need to do more work on my website…but that takes effort. It is much easier to just type like this.

Side note: I finally fixed the mouse button on my laptop! The button had been clicking funny ever since my roommate Kieran started using it–though whether there is any correlation is unproven. I finally found a small screwdriver and was able to rectify the problem. Hurray!!

Ask and ye shall receive. The Slate God provides for us all.

Dawkins sounds like an interesting fellow. I like the idea that we are hairless for sexual and lice reasons. I would love to read a book of his should it fall onto my doorstep at christmas. It all sounds very reasonable and informative except the last bit:

“You’ve called religion a ‘dangerous collective delusion’ and a ‘malignant infection,’ ” I said. “Don’t you think you’re underplaying it a bit?”

Dawkins turned, smiled a small fox smile, and said, “Yes!”

Why should we repeat the mistakes of slavish devotion to Aristotelian philosophy with Darwinism?

Christianity did not begin the scourge of science. However, over the centuries, Aristotelian philosophy was so seemingly powerful and complete in its conclusions that the church adopted them as near gospel. Of course the four elements were fire, earth, air and water. And of course earth is the heaviest, which falls the fastest and thus is at the center of the universe. Only a fool would suggest something besides Earth was at the center of the universe. Just look up at all the stars and sun today: Who revolves around who?

I imagine it was ancient philosophers like Dawkins who displayed such an intolerance of others’ views (because he was so certain of his own) that instilled the same manner on the church. We always knew the Earth was a sphere (not just Columbus), and over 2,000 years ago we had Greeks proposing a Solar-centric world-view. It was rejected because of the ludicrous distances between the Earth, sun and planets it required. When it finally became apparent that the Church’s conclusions were wrong (and those ludicrous distances true), the church was unable to correct what it had so forcefully asserted.

In my mind, far better to allow religion into science, and leave all theories acceptable to religion. A smart investor diversifies his funds. I see no reason priests shouldn’t as well. Also, scientists shouldn’t be so damn insistent that God does not exist when we do not know the first thing about anything. Anything that answers more whys than it creates is an incomplete answer indeed.