Because I'm vain enough to think you should all give a shit about what I think you should read:

Reading List:

Stranger In A Strange Land - Robert Heinlein
Starship Troopers - Robert Heinlein
Farnham's Freehold - Robert Heinlein
The Ugly American - Eugene Burdick and William Lederer
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Johnny Got His Gun - Dalton Trumbo
Crash - J. G. Ballard
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
The Manchurian Candidate - Richard Condon
The Dogs Of War - Frederick Forsyth
Day Of The Jackal - Frederick Forsyth
No Comebacks - Frederick Forsyth
Steppenwolf - Herman Hesse
The Stranger - Albert Camus
Human, All Too Human - Freidrich Nietzche
Twilight of the Idols/The Antichrist - Freidrich Nietzsche
Thus Spake Zarathustra - Freidrich Nietzsche
Snow Crash - Neil Stephenson
The Diamond Age - Neil Stephenson
Ulysses - James Joyce
Rabbit Run - John Updike
Rabbit Redux - John Updike
Rabbit is Rich - John Updike
Rabbit is Dead - John Updike
Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
Player Piano - Kurt Vonnegut
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
Sometimes A Great Notion - Ken Kesey
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
My Side of the Mountain - Jean Craighead George
For Whom The Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli
The Art of War - Sun Tzu
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

Films:

Movie versions of most of the above where applicable
Billy Jack
Darkman
Falling Down
Walking Tall

I decided to google my name, as I've heard employers do that with applicants. Just on a lark, I wanted to see what comes up. I pity the employer that tries such to gain info about me. Apparently I'm a lawyer, an Oxford professor, a professional football player, I was wounded in combat in Iraq in 2005 and decorated for my heroism. I have a successful music career, but I did 5 for grand theft auto in my 20s.

Dropkick Murphys - Kiss Me, I'm Shitfaced comes to mind.

"I designed the Sears Tower, I make two grand an hour, I cook the world's best duck flambe!"

You know, people ask me why I chose Ag Engineering as my major, and the answer is pretty simple: As a child, I always wanted to grow up to be a wizard. Like Gandalf, or Raistlin. A mysterious figure with the arcane secrets to accomplish wonderous things. And that is exactly what engineering is to me.

The first time I really felt this way was a little over a year ago in my first Calculus class. One of our "practical application labs" was finding the optimum diameter for a rotar in a Wankel rotary engine. I was amazed that such could be accomplished with about a half page of higher mathematics. And it occured to me then that for 4-sided, 5-sided, 6-sided, ANY-sided rotary engines, I could *trivially* design the optimum one. Not only can I figure out how to create the best possible form of a non-existant engine, but it is a frankly simple matter with the calculus in hand. That is outright sorcery. There is magic in the world, still. The Calculus is the surest proof of such.

Elementary logic for an American political issue.

Abortion. The whole issue pisses me off to no end, because every single position I've heard on the issue sucks. No one seems capable of forming a coherent position that stands up to even basic logic.

So here we go, folks. Time to educate some people. There really is only one decision to make regarding this issue, and everything else falls into place. Ask yourself, "When does a human's life begin?" There's ultimately three options:

1. Life begins at conception. In this view, a whatever-euphemism-you like becomes a human being at the moment of conception. The thing that amazes me most is how many people claim this reason to justify pro-life views, and then turn around and endorse what, by their own professed moral framework, is murder. For example, the idea that "Abortion should be banned except in cases of rape or incest." So human lives conceived of rape or incest have no value? I know people who were conceived of rape, is it legal to simply kill them now that they're outside a woman's womb? Because I don't see the distinction there. Same goes for incest. Likewise for "health of the mother" arguments; We're supposed to murder one human being due to an (as yet hypothetical) threat to another?

Another constant bit of cognitive dissonance is the unwillingness of people to address the consequences of such a decision. Let's consider a few here: Women who miscarry could be tried for, at the very least, neglect, child abuse, negligence or depraved indifference. Car accidents that cause a woman to miscarry become vehicular homicide/manslaughter cases. Obviously, abortion would have to be outlawed entirely, and with that, a drastic increase in unwanted children the various state DFACS agencies would have to absorb. Furthermore, a larger-than-normal percentage of such children would be at risk of FAS or similar disorders relatedness to the general unfitness of that mother to carry a child to term anyway. Sure, she can be tried for harming the child thus, but that doesn't change the fact that state DFACS agencies (which are already woefully inadequate) will have to handle a drastic increase not only in unwanted children, but in unhealthy ones at that. It's easy to insist on a federal-level abortion ban, and considerably harder to accept that the states won't be able to handle the obvious consequences, and we'll need a federal orphanage program.

2. Life begins at birth. If life doesn't begin until birth, then an unborn child/fetus/whatever you'd like to call it, has no rights at all, it is a total non-entity under the law. Thus there can be no ban on late-term abortions, partial-birth abortions, and so forth. The fetus has no legal standing at all and can be aborted up until labor begins. A woman would have absolute power to abort at will. If a woman is attacked and miscarries as a result, it is no greater a crime than if she hadn't been pregnant. No criminal penalties could be sought against women who abuse drugs or alcohol while pregnant.

Obviously giving no special consideration at all to those who harm expectant mothers is a hard pill for some to swallow, as our general moral consensus (and biological/evolutionary imperatives) drive us to wish to protect pregnant females, particularly those of our own tribe. But if an unborn child is not alive, there is no crime in killing it (beyond the necessary trauma to the mother.)

3. Life begins at some other (usually ill-defined) point. Various other benchmarks for life have been proposed such as: quickening, the beginning of some manner of heart or brain function, or simple arbitrary points into the pregnancy. The problem with most of these standards is that they can only be determined post-mortem, making it impossible for people to know ahead of time if their actions would face criminal (or increased criminal) penalties.

Admittedly, some of those standards are possible to determine through other means. While various such standards would ameliorate the negative legal/societal problems with defining life as rigidly beginning at life or conception, the two main sides in the abortion debate in America both would be unsatisfied by such. Those who honestly believe life begins at conception would consider such an option truly no better than accepting that life begins at birth. Meanwhile those who (while often dodging actually making a moral judgement on the matter) believe a woman's right to an abortion is absolute would also be unwilling to accept such limitations. As well, such a compromise view appears wishy-washy to both sides as it makes no clear judgement.

Conclusion: I'm not even going to get into which of these I believe because ultimately I'm not complaining about any particular side, so much as the stupidity of all sides. This is just another case where logic is completely absent in the social discourse.

Obligatory plug for Kushiel's Mux: http://kushiel.wikispaces.com/

Also, my application for graduation went through. Initially the insane computer-degree-evaluation thing insisted I could not graduate because I had not taken freshman orientation. Nevermind I have a degree already, I should take freshman orientation. Took a few hours to get the registrar to simply over-ride the computer. Gotta love bureaucracy.

As an aside, for some reason the local congressional election consists entirely of a DINO and a moderate Republican slandering each other over illegal immigration. The DINO goes so far as to blast his opponent for supporting the citizenship for illegals program, saying "That's AMNESTY, SENOR MAC!" Now, if we were in a border district in Texas, I could understand the focus being on illegal immigration, but c'mon, here in rural Georgia, if anything, illegal immigration is great. Politicians love to talk about doing things for the family farmer, well there you go, get him some illegal immigrants to work for less than minimum wage. And don't give me that "Taking jobs from hard-working Americans" crap, nobody here wants to go pick cabbage for $2/hour.

Shit I've learned in college:

1. Always pick the Asian kid or the middle-aged non-trad student as your lab partner. The vast majority of both will actually work and care about their grades.

2. Most professors of various composition/literature classes aren't as well read as an average member of my family.

3. All majors in the departments of Business, Education, Humanities and Social Science are complete and utter bullshit, except linguistics and philosophy.

4. Most of the people in any of the majors in #3 are too stupid to graduate even in those non-majors.

5. People who can't CLEP POLS 101 shouldn't be allowed to vote.

6. Around half of Americans are either illiterate, incapable of basic arithmetic, or both. Instead of admitting either and rectifying these problems, though, they will simply blame their instructors for "not teaching."

7. Most "engineering majors" are completely fucking deluding themselves. If you're struggling in calculus, you can forget about ever passing statics or dynamics.

8. Most Forestry/Wildlife Majors honestly believe they'll get to hunt and fish as a job when they graduate and/or that the Department of Natural Resources is grossly understaffed and will gladly hire them. Neither is true.

9. College sports are a giant waste of an institution's time and money, as well as the student body's. The faculty of every department (besides PE) on a campus understands this, but the administration never does.

10. Anytime the majority of a class fails a test, everyone, students, administrators and the instructor included, will irrationally blame the instructor. Nevermind that the students didn't learn the material by reading the chapter or showing up to class; It is somehow the instructor's fault.

Yeah, I know, I haven't really posted here much, but I've had a crunch for time since school started back and I've been diverting what writing energy I do have into a pair of short stories. Things should pick back up here once the second one is finished. At least until I have to start on my term paper on synthetic hormone pollution.

This is mostly in response to this Alternet article, so yeah, read it first:

http://www.alternet.org/story/40344/

Now see, I'm reading this, and it sounds to me like a good time. The author tries to paint it as a white supremacist festival but yet there's Jewish groups setting up shop, and by his own admission people of all races in the crowds? The biggest criticism anyone makes is that some of the knick-knacks and t-shirts are in poor taste? OH GOD NOES.

What really galls me are the comments people post in reply to the article. This one is a favorite:

"In fifteen states (most Southern Christian cracker poorly edcucated strongholds) it's legal to shoot and kill someone who threatens your property. One has to wonder how long it will take for a perosn to get killed for looking like he/she was threatening someones property. Sort of like, I could pre-emptively kill a guy because the guy was staring at my house and I felt threatened.
This is Christian American at your service."

Yes, because no one should have a right to defend themselves or their property! Obviously it's only ignorant crackers who would support such laws! I'd also note that in his example, someone staring into your house is in your yard, and I'd like to hear some kind of rational explaination for staring into my fucking windows. The idea that Christianity has anything to do with it is hilarious. I'm Wiccan and pack an assault shotgun, and Rede or not, I'm blowing someone the fuck away if they're in my house.

Then we've got this assclown:

" Look what the Bushies have created: thousands of completely bonkers super-weapons nut cases."

Sorry, chump, Bush and where the US government have been heading with the Patriot Act and illegal NSA spying, etc, etc, are a big part of why I decided not just to get a gun, but to purchase one based on its ability to take down people in police-style bodyarmor.

As usual, there's some quality replies as well, but I'm always aghast at some of the people who read Altnernet. The whole thing strikes me as a divide-and-conquer strategy against the left. Let's paint liberals as gun-grabbers (some of them rightfully) and alienate the white lower class from leftism at the same time! I wonder why the Democrats keep losing?

Ok, so I have a firearms permit, a CDL with hazmat and just applied for a passport, so now's a good time for a rant about government just plain being stupid.

Applying for the firearms permit:

I had to do that at the Lowndes County Courthouse and wasn't aware there were metal detectors and armed guards in courthouses nowadays, so I didn't think to leave the 3 rather sizeable knives I usually carry behind in the car. I got to the metal detector and just put them in the bowl with my keys, figuring at worst they'd make me take the knives back to the car, or would hold them there until I left. Instead, the guard handed them back to me with everything else! This is security? What would they have actually stopped me from carrying in? A pistol?

Part of getting that was paying minor fees to a variety of law enforcement agencies and courts for the hassle of them running background checks/fingerprints on me, etc, to verify I wasn't wanted anywhere, a felon, or a person of interest in an ongoing investigation. I can understand that, but of course, every single little agency had to be paid their fee seperately. So instead of being able to hand the clerk $100 or so, I had to spread that out among 5 different agencies, some of whom took only cash, some of whom took only money orders, and others that were willing to take checks. I will note that the local sheriff was quite happy to take a personal check from a law-abiding registered voter, especially since he already knew me from when I was arrested for aggravated assault (but never charged.) The FBI and GBI, however, would not take a check. Why, exactly? Is there normally a problem with people writing bad checks to the FBI? Even if so, one would think the check bouncing would kinda save them the trouble of the background check I was paying for anyway, yeah?

Then we get to the time factor. Local police, sheriff, and superior court approved me on the spot. The FBI took around 2 weeks to run me through their computers. The GBI however actually had human beings study my fingerprints and compare them to fingerprints in open investigations. Welcome to the 1950s. This took something on the order of 3 months.

CDL/Hazmat idiocy:

Since 9/11, issuance of hazmat permits somehow now involves the Department of Homeland Security. I suppose that makes sense in a way, making sure terrorists aren't applying for hazmat permits and all. However, while every other agency (Dept. of Transporation, GA Department of Public Safety, etc) cleared me on the spot with a simple computer search, Homeland Security took around 2 weeks to figure out if I was a terrorist or not. Course, if I was, I'd have simply stolen a truck in that time and blown something up.

Passport stupidity:

To get a passport now, you've gotta mail the State Department your original birth certificate. They won't take copies, they won't let the county clerk or federal building employee handling the application simply look at the thing, or at a state ID. Nor can they look me up in a database of drivers' licenses (which I had to have an original birth certificate to get.)

Can we buy one less bomber next year and spend those $2 billion actually making any of this shit remotely customer-friendly? I'd storm out of a bank for any such acts of blatant idiocy, why do we expect less of a business we're required to use?

Well, Molly of Molly Saves The Day has been after me to do a blog myself for a while, so here we go, and for our inaugural edition: Code Red!

That's right, the terror alert system is at the highest state of readiness and alarm! *AFTER* the recent airline plot was uncovered. Seriously, people, is this "terror warning" system any value at all if it only responds to things in the newspapers? What happens to the billions we spend on intelligence, anyway? Or is this what the Republicans mean about how government should be reactive and not proactive?

Aside from exposing how generally ineffectual our government is (British police handled the crisis) this non-crisis will of course be the central campaign point for almost all of the GOP this year. Already, Homeland Security is trying to claim they had some influence, "pushing" the Brits to go ahead and make arrests. If they had the information to do such a thing, why wasn't the terror warning raised to Red BEFORE the story hit papers? But no reporter will ask such a thing, and instead the news (like CBS news last night) will run scare-monger stories about airplanes and pretty much play into the hands of the Republican re-election campaigns.

The funniest thing here is that since 9/11, Al-Qaeda hasn't actually accomplished anything. This is a terrorist organization so inept they sent a guy out to blow up an airplane who couldn't figure out to light his shoe-bombs on fire in the bathroom. And they're still making America look dumb on a regular basis.

Anyway, I don't expect this blog to always be political, I just saw the terror alert was Red a wee bit late to do anyone any good and figured I'd get in a chuckle at the morons running this country into the ground.