SwimFinsSF

Mixed feelings

So first – the bad news:

Suspect Planned Priest’s Killing, DA Says

I’ve got truly mixed feelings about this. I don’t believe vigilante justice is acceptable in any way shape or form… Our system, while not perfect, is pretty damn good and everyone should be presumed innocent until PROVEN guilty. There was a lot of allegations against him but the system needs to determine the validity of the allegations. On top of this it was clearly a hate crime issue (and probably had less to do with justice than it had to do with hate)…

However I have a hard time getting outraged about this hate crime in particular cuz in my book there is a special deep dark place in hell for people who commit crimes of any form against children and for someone who is supposed to be a trusted figure in a sacred institution to do such a thing just makes it that much worse… Children are the most precious and important part of this world and the thought of someone harming them in any way makes my blood boil.

My point? Not sure really… Wouldn’t wish this kind of end on anyone and the homophobe should have book thrown at him for not letting our system determine IF this guy was guilty of his crimes and IF he was THEN choose an appropriate punishment for the crimes… But IF he truly was guilty then I don’t have much sympathy…

( actually wasn’t sure I was even going to post about it cuz I’m not sure I could defend my position either way – but decided to just to put it on the table… Feel a little guilty and weird for not being outraged for the way he died and for the system not protecting him… but I guess thats just how I feel… Maybe this is just a test post on a personal subject rather than a subject I’m looking to debate )

Friday Five

1. When was the last time you laughed? This morning over Breakfast

2. Who was the last person you had an argument with? With Kevin this evening over how we were going to deal with re-finishing the flippin floors… How come household projects turn so dramatic? Or maybe its just us..

3. Who was the last person you emailed? Her this evening… Talking in codes to bait John Ashcroft (and to fix bugs in the changes I made to my blog earlier)…

4. When was the last time you bathed? Took a shower this morning… And every morning.. And after the gym… I’m kinda fussy about that… Now a regular Bath in the bath tub with rubber duckies and bubbles? That I don’t remember

5. What was the last thing you ate? Whiskey Flank Steak, Green Beans, and Au Gratin Potatoes for Dinner.. Woo hoo! 🙂

House keeping

True to form for a Saturday morning I’ve done some housekeeping… Most of it not visible but the result is that my side bars are consistant between the archive pages and the main page (thanks to server side includes!)…. I’ve also tidied up whats in the side bars – left one is all Blog navigation stuff (Archives, search, etc) and the right one is stuff more specific to me… I’ve moved my links to other folks’ blogs off onto another page so I can add more stuff and not clutter the main page..

Anyway – point being if anything doesn’t work or is confusing let me know..

And that Poem

And here was the poem I was thinking about earlier… If you speak german and are interested read on…
› Continue reading

In the dark…

This image sparked a great deal of debate on one of our humor lists here at work:

And it was determined by looking at Snopes that the picture was a hoax. If you go to the actual satellite images can be found here. However the funniest picture part of it was this picture:

God I love Fox news. Ya gotta love sloppy use of archive images…

UPDATE: The folks at work picked apart the Fox image and this is what the conclusion was:

There are a couple of problems with this photo. For those to be the world trade center at sunrise, the photo would have to have been shot from the Jersey shore. Since the WTC was effectively on the shore– the world financial center being the only buildings between the shore and the WTC site– that can’t possibly be from Jersey. If that really is the WTC towers, that photo would have to have been taken at Sunset from Brooklyn. But that can’t be either because there is no angle with which you could actually take a photo of Manhattan from Brooklyn with that many buildings to the south.

Furthermore, the two towers completely dominated the south Manhattan skyline. Nothing came close to to the magnitude of the two towers. Notice that the tower on the right has a bulge that ends 3/4s of the way from the top — that makes me think that it is not of the WTC at all. Also, one of the WTC towers had one bloody gigantic antenna on the top. Huge antenna. But not in that photo.

Update 2: Snopes on the Blackout

A Little Bit of History

On my way to work this morning I listened to a CD of Grimm Fairy Tales read in German to brush up. As I was listening my mind wanderred to random things and sparked some surfing when I first got to work this morning…

I stumbled on a bunch of sites that I’ve been facinated with for years related to a group called ‘Die Weiße Rose’ and I figured I’d share.. This group was a small collection of German College Students in Munich during World War II that had the balls to speak out against the regeme in power and paid for it with their life… I’ve always found them inspirational and every time I read more I find more that amazes me…

If you’ve got some time and want a little history check out these sites… Well worth exploring:

• The White Rose
• White Rose International

and for the German speakers among you:

• Die Weiße Rose – – eine Ausstellung der “Weißen Rose-Stiftung”, München (don’t mind the ‘name’ dialog – they’re just being clever and plugging your name into a welcome dialog)