Saturday, July 19, 2008

Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog

Joss Whedon strikes again.

El-Oh-El funny.

Forgot to mention...

... that I interviewed to be a writer for the MMORPG Hero's Journey. Still waiting to hear the results of the interview.

http://www.play.net/hj/

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Religion

Somebody - you know who you are - brought this up in an IM conversation. Listen, DON'T ask for my opinion on something, and then proceed to tell me my opinion is wrong. Fuck. You.

As for my opinion, I'll say what I always say: I believe in God, Jesus, and the Bible. THAT'S IT!
Religion is something that is invented as a way to control people. What, the Romans all of the sudden decided "Hey, those people we've been persecuting for centuries, they're right!" No! The Caesars saw belief rising in the populace, and took it over so they could control it. End of story. Guess what? YOU'RE STILL BEING CONTROLLED!

And, just so that everyone hates me, the Bible is woefully mistranslated. Why? Probably many reasons. Let me just say that Hell is a tool used to control people by fear, so you tell me why the word grave all of the sudden becomes Hell. (And several other words as well, whenever it was convenient. Imagine that!)

In conclusion, most people are easily led sheep who will believe what they are told to believe, because it's easier to do what you're told, pay lip service, and sit back with a brew to watch TV than it is to think for yourself. Try actually doing some research, and then get back to me.

Life Update

I've been busy the past couple of weeks, so the blog has fallen behind the times. Here's the highlights:

  • Resigned from my job on Friday, July 11th. I felt that I had been mislead when I was hired, having been told that training was a month in Rockville, MD. They wanted me to go back for two more months. They also wanted me to do the team lead job without any authority to enforce it, without a pay raise, and being led by an employee who knows less than I do about the product and is leaving the company in less than a month. They also had an office manager second guessing me and sticking her nose in everywhere. All this basically led to people reporting to my boss that I wasn't doing my job. Basically a big political butramming designed to further someone else's career. If you know me at all, you know I'm pretty stubborn, and disinclined to put up with bullshit. Rather than sit meekly and take it, I resigned.
  • Had a tryout with a band. Or rather, had one scheduled, and they blew me off. I should not be surprised, considering the guitarist is someone that's done this to me before. Never again, I promise you.
  • Found another promising band, this one actually plays METAL! Nice, been looking for that for a long, long time.
  • I'm MCing my cousin's wedding in CO. Cool.
  • I'm trying out for the Customs and Border Protection officer positions that are open in Vermont. I'm sure I'll do fabulously until they check my credit. Story of my life. Credit does not make or break somebody's personality, but employers can't seem to understand that.

So, that's my story so far. I went to the Windmill craft place by Keuka lake with my mom and her 'roommate' last weekend, and this weekend we are all going to the Syracuse zoo and Dinosaur Barbecue. Mmmmmm, Dinosaur. Mmmmm, Barbecue.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

They Didn’t Attack Switzerland

LINK

They Didn’t Attack Switzerland
by Bill Walker


Switzerland has not been in a
foreign war of any kind since 1815. This would be astounding, even miraculous,
for any nation. But Switzerland borders Germany. And France. And Italy. And
Austria. And Liechtenstein. Now Liechtenstein has rarely lashed out in
Blitzkrieg in a desperate bid to reign über alles, but ALL of Switzerland's
other neighbors have spent their entire histories invading other countries.
In addition to the encircling foreign marauders, Switzerland itself is
composed of four different ethnic groups (German, French, Italian, Romansh) that
get along as well as, e.g., Germans and French. They don’t even speak the same
language.
Yet the Swiss peace prevails through the centuries. The Kaiser
didn’t attack the Swiss. Hitler didn’t attack the Swiss (though he thought about
it a lot). Stalin started to pursue some refugees into Liechtenstein at the end
of WWII, but retreated rather than face the Swiss-Liechtenstein alliance.
Terrorists don’t attack the Swiss.
Nobody attacks the Swiss. Not even the
Swiss attack the Swiss; their crime rate is minuscule.
The features of the
Swiss system for keeping the peace are simple. They have a president with no
power to declare war (of course ours can’t either, but no one has told HIM).
They have a very small professional army, even small per capita. And they have
very strict gun control. By which they mean that every Swiss male must have a
gun, except for those who also have to carry a missile launcher or a mortar.
Swiss women are not subject to compulsory military service, but many of them
frequent the rifle ranges anyway. In the event of any attack on Switzerland, the
whole Swiss population becomes the army.
As an additional deterrent against
megalomania, the Swiss have rigged the tunnel vaults of their banks for
demolition. Any dictator attacking Switzerland will find the gold in his
numbered bank account buried in rubble hundreds of meters under mountains
swarming with snipers and missile launchers. It is known that Hitler had a
numbered account... maybe that was in the back of his mind when he chickened
out.
Switzerland has also provided for defense of the lives of its civilian
population against nuclear terrorism. Realizing during the Cold War that nuclear
weapons in the hands of power-mad politicians posed a potential public health
threat, the Swiss started a nationwide shelter-building program in 1960. By
1991, there were enough shelter spaces in Switzerland to protect everyone in
their home or apartment, and also at their workplaces and schools. A Swiss
citizen is never more than a few minutes from a fallout shelter with an air
filter.
The entire Swiss shelter program was accomplished for somewhere on
the order of 35 dollars (1990 dollars) per year per capita. The US spends vastly
more every year to support a military capable only of intervening in Third World
nations that do not have WMDs.
The huge US war machine could not even
intercept civilian airliners on 9-11, let alone credibly stop nuclear-tipped
cruise and ballistic missiles from a major power. Nor are there bunkers with
filtered air supplies under our glass cities or particle-board suburbs. The only
civil defense in the US is for the President and the backup supply of
bureaucrats under Iron Mountain. Everyone else is nuclear fodder, except for
those provident few (such as the Mormons) who build their own shelters to
protect their families.
Switzerland does not send troops to intervene in
other nations. Switzerland does not spend tens of billions of dollars yearly to
fund dictators around the world, nor did Switzerland donate hundreds of billions
of dollars to the Warsaw Pact through bank "loans." Switzerland does not send
billions of dollars worth of weaponry every year to the warring tribes in the
Middle East. Switzerland has no enemies. Yet the Swiss are armed to the teeth
and dug into every hill and under every building.
The US intervenes
everywhere, spies on everyone, supports every faction in every fight. We have as
many enemies as there are hate-filled people in the world. We have a vastly
expensive conventional army (though the best units are marching back and forth
in Middle Eastern deserts, Afghanistan, Korea, and other "strategic" places). We
have vast numbers of offensive nuclear weapons for murdering the civilian
populations of cities (but against whom will we retaliate in the event of an
anonymous nuclear terrorist attack?).
But we have no civil defenses for our
children, no shelters, no thought-out plan for recovery from attack. In fact,
when we suffered a few thousand dead on 9-11, we panicked and did ten times more
economic damage to ourselves than the terrorists had. We also let ourselves be
suckered into joining a Middle Eastern tribal war without end, on transparently
fraudulent grounds.
Worse, our fears have destroyed much of our own
Constitutional freedom. Would we be braver now, if a few anonymous smuggled
nuclear bombs killed millions? Or would we just descend tamely into dictatorship
without a struggle?
Our Founding Fathers studied the Swiss when they
designed our system of government. Maybe it would pay us to study the long Swiss
peace again... before it's too late.
July 14, 2008
Bill Walker [send him mail] a research technologist.
He lives with his wife and four dogs in Grafton NH, where they are active in the
Free State Project.
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