Saturday, September 17, 2005
feeling good...
my post op is going well: no swelling, little pain, and 48 hours of college and pro football coming up. the biggest struggle occurred when removing the lower left wisdom tooth. equipment i did not even know existed was brought in for the job. after a half hour of cutting, jabbing, and yanking it was removed in great glory.
Friday, September 16, 2005
35 minutes to go
i am leaving for the dentist office in a few minutes...wish me luck from cyberspace.
Thursday, September 15, 2005
blog spam (or one more thing...)
who would have thought of such a nasty thing as blog spam?
- are you ok buddy, you look like you are going to explode...no worries, just have a bad blog spam.
- something is coming out of your nose...sorry, how embarrassing, blog spam!
- the us military just announced that they will be shifting operations in iraq...code name: blog spam.
to combat these offers, i have changed my settings for word verification upon commentary post. not that this matters, seeing that no one writes comments. stay tuned this weekend for running commentary regarding the extraction of three wisdom teeth.
- are you ok buddy, you look like you are going to explode...no worries, just have a bad blog spam.
- something is coming out of your nose...sorry, how embarrassing, blog spam!
- the us military just announced that they will be shifting operations in iraq...code name: blog spam.
to combat these offers, i have changed my settings for word verification upon commentary post. not that this matters, seeing that no one writes comments. stay tuned this weekend for running commentary regarding the extraction of three wisdom teeth.
Monday, September 12, 2005
after the vikings terrible loss...
...i got a good laugh thanks to these video's reworked from old "knowing is half the battle" gi joe cartoons. check them all out, they were moved from the original website.
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Commentary...
Article published Sep 5, 2005
Assigning blame? Don't.
People must take responsibility for themselves
If my e-mail is any indicator, there will be a divisive windstorm of recriminations in the Monday-morning quarterbacking of Hurricane Katrina's devastation. A depressing amount will focus on two hot spots: America's so-called latent racism and the unrelenting loathing of President Bush by some.Not many people want to put the blame on an endangered concept in our "progressive" country: personal responsibility.So here is a suggested order of accountability.Let's stipulate that an alluvial delta that naturally floods is maybe the worst place on Earth to build a major city. However, as that was a result of centuries of development, no one can be blamed.The first people responsible, and this may seem hard-hearted, but bear with me, are the people who did not obey the mandatory evacuation order.With Katrina barreling straight at New Orleans with 175-mph winds, Mayor Ray Nagin rightly issued a mandatory evacuation. They sent out public service announcements on radio and television. Trucks with bull horns traveled through particularly poor neighborhoods with the evacuation order.The city provided free transportation to free shelters, so there was absolutely no financial excuse for staying in homes. Four hurricanes devastated Florida last year. It was in the news. And none of those was the size of Katrina.But in the face of all that, people chose to stay anyway.No level of government can be blamed for their personal decisions. We respond in mercy, but not ignorance. The outpouring of help has been truly heartening.Second, the head of New Orleans is Mayor Nagin, who has not covered himself in glory.In fact, for calm leadership in the face of tragedy, he has been the antithesis of New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani after 9/11.Third, the governor of Louisiana is in charge of the National Guard and state emergency response -- which also failed.Finally comes Bush, who is president of the entire country, not exactly responsible for planning disaster responses in New Orleans or any other city, or making people leave their homes.The New York Times reported that some of the people who stayed did so because they were short on cash and only three days from getting their monthly government welfare checks.Have we made an entire subculture so government-dependent, and have we so broken down the familial and community structure, that people may have risked a killer hurricane to get their handout? Very sobering.As to the crime, there is no one to blame but the criminals. Penalties should be tripled for those wicked people who took the opportunity of tragedy to steal, burn, kill and rape the vulnerable. Beastly. But the ACLU would object.Have there been mistakes made? Absolutely. Big ones and at all levels, including the frustratingly slow federal response.There is plenty of blame. An honest, painfully in-depth appraisal will educate us all for the next time. Katrina will not be the last.On Friday, I listed the positives that have come from this disaster. Permit me to add two more: Texas. The state that sometimes irritates us with its big-everything attitude, came through big time when the chips were down for its neighbors in Louisiana, taking in tens of thousands of refugees in major cities such as Houston, Dallas and San Antonio in a state of preparedness Louisiana could only dream of.Texas represented the best of so many states pulling together.Second, the U.S. military came through -- again -- creating a magnificent evacuation air bridge out for refugees.For everyone that feels the urge to complain, they might first want to thank God they are alive and have a generous giant for a neighbor, and then, just maybe, glance toward the mirror -- perhaps a lesson we can all learn from.Rod Thomson can be reached by e-mail at rod@rodthomson.com, or by writing to the Herald-Tribune.
Assigning blame? Don't.
People must take responsibility for themselves
If my e-mail is any indicator, there will be a divisive windstorm of recriminations in the Monday-morning quarterbacking of Hurricane Katrina's devastation. A depressing amount will focus on two hot spots: America's so-called latent racism and the unrelenting loathing of President Bush by some.Not many people want to put the blame on an endangered concept in our "progressive" country: personal responsibility.So here is a suggested order of accountability.Let's stipulate that an alluvial delta that naturally floods is maybe the worst place on Earth to build a major city. However, as that was a result of centuries of development, no one can be blamed.The first people responsible, and this may seem hard-hearted, but bear with me, are the people who did not obey the mandatory evacuation order.With Katrina barreling straight at New Orleans with 175-mph winds, Mayor Ray Nagin rightly issued a mandatory evacuation. They sent out public service announcements on radio and television. Trucks with bull horns traveled through particularly poor neighborhoods with the evacuation order.The city provided free transportation to free shelters, so there was absolutely no financial excuse for staying in homes. Four hurricanes devastated Florida last year. It was in the news. And none of those was the size of Katrina.But in the face of all that, people chose to stay anyway.No level of government can be blamed for their personal decisions. We respond in mercy, but not ignorance. The outpouring of help has been truly heartening.Second, the head of New Orleans is Mayor Nagin, who has not covered himself in glory.In fact, for calm leadership in the face of tragedy, he has been the antithesis of New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani after 9/11.Third, the governor of Louisiana is in charge of the National Guard and state emergency response -- which also failed.Finally comes Bush, who is president of the entire country, not exactly responsible for planning disaster responses in New Orleans or any other city, or making people leave their homes.The New York Times reported that some of the people who stayed did so because they were short on cash and only three days from getting their monthly government welfare checks.Have we made an entire subculture so government-dependent, and have we so broken down the familial and community structure, that people may have risked a killer hurricane to get their handout? Very sobering.As to the crime, there is no one to blame but the criminals. Penalties should be tripled for those wicked people who took the opportunity of tragedy to steal, burn, kill and rape the vulnerable. Beastly. But the ACLU would object.Have there been mistakes made? Absolutely. Big ones and at all levels, including the frustratingly slow federal response.There is plenty of blame. An honest, painfully in-depth appraisal will educate us all for the next time. Katrina will not be the last.On Friday, I listed the positives that have come from this disaster. Permit me to add two more: Texas. The state that sometimes irritates us with its big-everything attitude, came through big time when the chips were down for its neighbors in Louisiana, taking in tens of thousands of refugees in major cities such as Houston, Dallas and San Antonio in a state of preparedness Louisiana could only dream of.Texas represented the best of so many states pulling together.Second, the U.S. military came through -- again -- creating a magnificent evacuation air bridge out for refugees.For everyone that feels the urge to complain, they might first want to thank God they are alive and have a generous giant for a neighbor, and then, just maybe, glance toward the mirror -- perhaps a lesson we can all learn from.Rod Thomson can be reached by e-mail at rod@rodthomson.com, or by writing to the Herald-Tribune.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
is it just me?
or is the reaction to the flooding in new orleans starting to look like the next George A. Romero movie. terrible stuff, i guess humanity is really pretty awful.
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