Congress passed and the President signed a law which makes it illegal to send email or post messages on a website with intent to “annoy,” if you hide your real identity. (link)

*cough* unconstitutional *cough*

In Colorado, you can get a ticket if you have a child riding in the car and you don’t have seat belt or child seat that is approved for a child of that age by the federal government. However, it is entirely legal to let that kid ride unrestrained in the bed of a pickup truck (if the child is five or older), or on the back of a motorcycle without a helmet.

Way to earn those paychecks, law-makers.

I was trying to think of something funny to write, but I’m stuck.

All humor makes fun of someone, something, or some group. All jokes have a victim. The problem is that so many victims are now off-limits, it’s difficult to write something funny without getting into trouble.

For example, it is not ok to make jokes about black people, or being black. Ever, ever, ever ever ever. There are only two exceptions to this rule: (1) You yourself are black (I am not); or (2) You are making a joke about Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, or Michael Jackson.

(Personally, I think this is a very good rule, because black people have suffered enough indignity from white people in America, and also because they are almost all bigger and stronger than me.)

I’ve come to believe that there’s a list, maintained by a secret committee, which determines who can make fun of whome whom. A member of one group can get away with making fun of any group farther down on the list, but not a higher one:

1. Blacks
2. Latinos
3. People with Disabilities
4. Homosexuals
5. Jews
6. Asians
7. Whites
8. Rednecks
9. Midgets “Little People”
10. Vegetarians
11. Michael Jackson

(To be honest, I’m not sure about #9, because they are surprisingly quick and I’ve never been able to catch one. Same for #11.)

Since I’m a white person, I could make a joke about “Little People” and as long as there weren’t any “Little People” present, everyone would have a good laugh. On the other hand, if I made a joke about black people - which I never would, I swear to God - nobody would laugh and I might get my ass kicked. Possibly by a group of “Little People.”

I personally do not like this list. I don’t like being so far down on it, and I think that the “Little People” deserve to be several notches higher, too. In fact, I don’t see why there should be a list at all. Can’t we all enjoy a little good-natured ribbing, then link arms, and celebrate our common humanity by making fun of Michael Jackson?

“Elsewhere, a new report shows that China now has the fourth largest economy in the world, after the United States, Japan, and Vice President Dick Cheney.” — Borowitz Report.

Today’s Borowitz Report (link) is good. I love this quote:

Scientists reported that mice who were injected with human brain cells stopped running on a wheel and sat down to watch the wheel instead.

Yes, that is how long I’ve been out of the womb.

I don’t really have anything to say. That seems to be my problem lately. I had such great plans for this blog, but somewhere along the way I got interested in a new video game or two, a couple new career ideas (no, I didn’t switch), the plot for a novel, and well, now it’s nearly Christmas. I have nothing to show for my time but a couple high scores, a great first chapter, and a wife who thinks I’m inconsistent.

So I guess I’ll just blather about what’s on my mind, and see what happens.

The tension between idealism and realism - it’s been on my mind since Amnesty International ripped the US a hole for Guantanamo. I wrote a couple bitter posts about that. In short, I wonder how we can justify abusing one group-of-people’s inalienable human rights in order to protect our own; to put it another way: if America is supposedly about values, rather than mere survival, why are we compromising those values in order to survive? (1) (2)

And recently, as you no doubt know, it has been reported that the CIA operates clandestine prisons around the world to help us in our attempt to forstall future terrorist attacks. And it’s probably true.

But I’m also a realist. A friend of mine, after reading one of those posts, asked, So, how are we supposed to get information out of these people? Ask them nicely?

Half of me wants to suggest that if we believe there are certain inalienable rights - which logically would apply to all humans everywhere - then we should be willing to suffer and die rather than compromise the rights of other people to survive. The other part of me remembers that we fought the Revolutionary War - which probably involved many rights abuses on both sides - in the name of those values. And surely every war since that one has been the same? What does that mean? I’m not sure.

It’s like the whole debate over Truman’s decision to drop the A-Bomb. Or rather, what’s missing from the debate. The significance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not the massive loss of life, but rather the fact that each required a single bomb, rather than thousands. We had been intentionally bombing civilian population centers in Japan and Europe for a while, killing hundreds of thousands at a time, before those two. We were the good guys: we did it because we hoped that the catastrophic loss of human life - innocent civilian men, women and children - would break our enemies’ will to fight.

Maybe, then, you can justify using torture to extract information via the same logic?

The tricky bit is that you can also justify terrorism by the same logic. What is terrorism, after all, but killing innocent people in order to win a war? If a terrorist’s cause is just, then his suicide bombing is certainly no worse than, say, our fire-bombing of Dresden or Tokyo. The terrorists certainly believe their cause to be just.

In the end, the only thing that seperates us from our terrorist enemies is the rightness of our cause, and the wrongness of theirs. I know their cause is evil. I’m pretty sure ours is mostly good. But I think that at very least we need to be constantly examining what we are fighting and why. There is nothing pretty or nice about the things we are doing - so we better be doing them for the right reasons.

Please, dear reader, tell me what you think. The floor is open. All comments are welcome.

Ah, the Christmas Season. That happy time each year when, in addition to all the normal things I have to do to keep everyone from being angry at me, I am culturally required to make a list of the persons who will probably give me gifts, guess the cost of each person’s gift, and then guess what that person might want for him or herself of the same value.

Once the list is complete, I must then spend the equivalent of a forty-hour work week in at least three different malls locating and purchasing these items. Finally, our culture dictates that I must wrap each of these items in colored paper to obscure its identity and insure that there is a delay of several seconds between my giving the gift and the recipient’s attempt to conceal his or her disappointment. What a fantastic holiday. Wouldn’t it be simpler if we all bought ourselves something we don’t want? Or just set some money on fire?

That’s why it’s usually about December 29, when the thrill of my brand new socks has worn off, that I get around to thinking about the meaning of Christmas. And how our society has transformed it from a celebration of God’s mercy into a wallowing in materialism.

What confuses me, though, is that our economy is requires materialism. This is the time of year when economists worry about whether consumers will spend enough money to keep the economy growing and generating jobs. Sure, I could give some money to a homeless shelter, but it seems like the most charitable thing to do would be to buy the biggest freakin’ plasma TV on the market and then figure out a way to install it in my new Mercedes. Hey - I’m doing it for you, Mr. Homeless Guy. You can have a ride in the Benz as long as you shower first.

So anyway, what I wanted to say is that I understand how stressful this time of year can be and I hope that you won’t feel any pressure to go out into the cold looking for the perfect gift for me. Cash will be fine.

- - - - - IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER - Thursday, 12-2-05 - - - - - -

I re-read the above post today, and I’m concerned that it might seem a bit … um… cynical. So I’m posting this little addendum primarily for the benifit of those of you who actually know me in person.

5. I prefer high-denomination U.S. Dollars or Treasury Bonds. Euros are also acceptable.

According to the 700 Club website, cbn.com, 75-year-old Pat Robertson can leg press 2000 lbs (link). (For comparison, I can leg press 400 lbs and have a hernia at the same time.)

If only he could keep his mouth shut.

I wandered smack-dab into another good blog: Less Idiots. I take my hat off to him for his latest post: In a nutshell, he eschews labels like “liberal” and “conservative” and judges each issue individually. I couldn’t agree more. The primary reason I stopped working for the Leadership Institute in DC (and sold out to Corporate America) was that I found myself surrounded by people whose only goals in life were (a) to be ideologically-correct Conservatives, (b) to beat the Liberals, and (c) to find other ideologically-correct Conservatives and sleep with them.

Most everyone (including me) acted like we were engaged in a massive spectator sport between Good and Evil. Everything “Right” was good, and the “Left” was assumed to be a cross between the Oakland Raiders, the Communist Party, and The Empire.

Never mind that Right and Left had far more in common than, say, Left and Commie, or that most of the people we were fighting were people just like us who wanted the best for America.

At least I hope that’s what we wanted. Nobody actually “discussed” what was good for America. That had already been established. Conservative was Good. All that was left to be determined was the correct Conservative stance on any particular issue, so that we could make sure we agreed and know who our enemies were.

I have no doubt that it was the same for the other side. People are people, and this appears to be what we do.

I wish that our politics really were about figuring out the best way to solve our shared problems. Until then, I’m grateful to live under a system of government that allows us to go about fighting our ideological wars without killing each other.

Just when you think Pat Robertson can’t say anything dumber and less Jesus-like, he outdoes himself. If you haven’t heard, here’s a recap. The school board of Dover, PA, has been attempting to include “Intelligent Design” in the science curriculum. The voters responded by electing a new school board this week. Pat Robertson, speaking on his TV show, The 700 Club, had this to say:

I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city…. And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His help because he might not be there.

Pat. Please. You’re not helping. Do you really think God speaks to you because you have a TV show? (Do you really think that God cares more about the school curriculum in Dover than he does about the rampant greed and materialism in the whole country?)

Somebody help Pat find the nursing home, please.