Bush--Fort Bragg Speech 06/28/05

Last minute, last night I went with a friend to Fayetteville, NC to join others in a Vigil against the war in Iraq.

My attendance shovelled up memories of days past and shook my core. While Bush was doing damage control on the war and the 'liberation' of Iraqis, I was seeing children holding up signs saying, "Toddlers for Peace"...one even said to me that he was, "..waiting for daddy to come." Now he was just talking about his dad filming the president's speech down the road, but it totally threw my heart at the wall.

Waiting for my father to call, write, and come home was probably one of the toughest times in my life while he served in Desert Shield and Storm. Sure, it was cool when he came in my 5th grade class in full chemical warfare gear showing my classmates some of the things they wore, but whenever we had to hang out in the hanger and watch him get on that monsterous plane with all the other families, I would cry for days. I guess I was a little more mature when I was younger, realizing he could die any moment. He never sugar coated things.

Coming home after Desert Shield and then almost immediately leaving again for Desert Storm left a permanent scar and resentment for war...why did he leave? will he come back? how will my little sisters and mom survive?

At the Quaker house in Fayetteville there were names of all the dead US soldiers in this 'war on terror'...I read some of those names, trying my best to pronounce and say them as if their families were right in front of me. I started to feel like that 5th grader again. I have a few friends in Iraq right now and started to think about what they were doing and if one of the names would come up on the list I was reading.

At the demonstration, I met a man named Stan Goff, who's writings I am just now noticing. His insight and experience truely give me hope that there are more people who have 'awakened' from the dogmatic 'loyalty' I've seen in some soldiers, my father included. My dad is a great man, but it seems he still follows Bush...and sometimes this pulls the carpet from my feet.

Here is an excerpt from Stan's speech:

Yet, tonight the President of the United States is going to come here to Fort Bragg and tell everyone in the country that this war is making people safer. In fact, since the Bush administration opportunistically used the terrible shock of 9-11 to advance what we now know to have been a pre-determined agenda, the number of terror attacks in the world has dramatically increased.
Let me say this very clearly, because the empirical evidence is very clear. Bush’s war has not made anyone safer. It has, however, destroyed the lives of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and according to international polls, the United States is now held in lower public esteem in the world than China.
The United States is already suffering higher casualties than we were at the same stage of the Vietnam War. So, okay, Iraq is NOT Vietnam. It could, in fact, get
worse. Rumsfeld is now telling us that the war could last for 12 more years.

This trip was an experience and I am very glad I went.

Rock'n roll, tigers, and drag queens!

What a great week!

Not only did I come face to face with tigers leopards and panthers, see a good live free concert, and see drag queens perform, but I got to share it with great people!!!!!

Thursday night I went to the annual 'Live after Five' concert in Raleigh..leading to Friday spending all day at Carrboro's 'Carnivore Preservation Trust', then heading off to 'Drag Bingo'!

Release or Re-leash

Monday, Monday....MONDAY!

Coming off yet another great weekend, Mondays are like a brick wall, especially posed with what needs to be done for the rest of the week. But after fishing with my nephew, basking at the beach and enjoying the water, catching up with old friends, and appreciating my father, this week will be amazing.

I still cannot believe how lucky I am to be doing what I am doing! It's just hard, taxing, and incredibly thought draining, but man, if I can at least accomplish some of my duties, I think I can contribute a great deal.

So, coming off a wonderful weekend and facing a week of challenges, do I feel release or like I am re-leashed? I feel both!!! Refreshed, relaxed, but strapped in and ready to go!!!

I'm not really sure the purpose of this post, but I guess I am just a little overwhelmed...not to be taken by challenges, but to take them on.

Hope everyone else had a great weekend!!

Disturbing News about blogging censorship in China!

I feel like spreading this news because, if you are new to blogging or don't realize how much freedom you have in posting, its very shocking to know that in China they are making everyone with a blog register with the government!!!!

'Big Brother is watching'!!!

[Net-Gold] China orders bloggers to register with governmentChina orders bloggers to register with government
Associated Press
Tuesday June 7, 2005
The Chinese authorities have ordered all weblogs andwebsites in the country to register with thegovernment or face closure in Beijing's latest attempt to control online dissent. Commercial publishers and advertisers could be finedup to 1m yuan (へ6,000) for failing to register, according to documents on the Chinese information industry ministry's website. Private bloggers or websites must register the complete identity of the person responsible for the site, and the ministry - which has set a June 30 deadline for compliance - said 74% of all sites had already registered.

More at http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,1501184,00.html

Phil Shapiro's explanation of 'Wink' w/example

as quoted by Phil Shapiro on the Digital Divide Listserve:

"hi everyone -
last month i mentioned to you about the neat free software named Wink for creating screencasts on Windows and GNU/Linux computers.

a screencast is a narrated explanatory movie with accompanying mouse movements on the screen. although Wink doesn't have audio capabilities yet, that shouldn't stop folks from creating compelling screencasts with a separate mp3 audio file. such audio files can be played concurrently in a separate tab within firefox or safari.

check out this short screencast i created explaining about the freeInkscape vector drawingprogram. http://www.writersforliteracy.org/canyoumakethis.htm

the accompanying audio for this is athttp://www.writersforliteracy.org/inkscapeaudio1.mp3

note -- the appropriate time to start the audio playing is when my mouse chooses the rectangular drawing tool -- about 20 seconds into the screencast. (i'm still learning how to do this kind of stuff.)

Wink is available at http://www.debugmode.com/wink/if you'd like to give it a try.

use shift-pause to start and stop your screen capture. onwindows computers you'll see a small animated box with 4 squaresin it in your system tray (bottom right of screen) when you arerecording your screen capture. right click on that box to finishyour screen capture.

you could fit several hours of home-made computer tutorials on acd-rom in this way.although created on Windows computers, these tutorials are in Flash format, and play fine on Mac and GNU/Linux computers. (there is also aversion of Wink for creating tutorials on GNU/Linux computers.)

surprise us with what you make. there's a lot of stuff out therethat needs explaining.

- philbtw, if you'd like to download all the files associated with the abovescreencast, i've zipped them into an archive athttp://www.writersforliteracy.org/inkscapetutorial.zip the 3 fileswithin this archive are: a very small html file, a shockwave format file showing the screen activity and an mp3 audio file containing thenarration.

click on the html file to start the shockwave file playing.the mp3 audio file can play in any of several different programs alreadyon your computer -- itunes, quicktime, and other mp3 playing software.thanks for telling others you know about Wink."

Using 'Wink' to create screencasts!!

Hello everyone,

I found some really cool new software via Phil Shapiro on the Digital Divide listserve!

It's called Wink, and you can download it free at http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

I played a little bit with it as well HERE

The potential for this software is unlimited! And Free! Personally, I have a lot of training that I do in my job, so this will be awesome to do a bunch of tutorials and burn them on a disc, but this technology is so portable because it is a shockwave file and most browsers support it!! If you can't play it, you can download the plug-in from Macromedia's website!!

Alcohol!

This is just a random rant.

I still subscribe to a listserve of plant geneticists and found this particular thread pretty funny.

As qtd by Dr. Arditti, " some orchids seemed to like a little alcohol... hmmm? Maybe Arrack is their preference. I'f I'm not mistaken, even people seem to multiply at a greater rate when
alcohol is present ;)"

It may not be funny without some background, but the bane of many plant geneticists' work lies in their ability to grow plants after they have inserted genes in them, thus propagating a clone for cultivation. Alcohol in small amounts seems to do this...although, like humans, overdosing or an excess can lead to death.

Humans = ethanol = propagation
Plants = ethanol = propagation

Humans = ethanol[unbounded] = death
Plants = ethanol [unbounded] = death

Dude! Killer bee!

This is just a silly realization about my phobia of bugs!

The other day I was getting into my truck and a bumble bee flew in. Not knowing what to do, I tried my hardest to get him from trying to go through the back window, which has no opening, but he kept buzzing and trying to dig through the sealing...so i used some mail to try and pry him away and let him fly away. Just a little background on me and bugs; I never have liked them...to look at hear or know are around...i get really really scared when a bug is near me...so you can imagine how scared I was. After trying to get him away several times, he fell between the seat and the back of the truck....so I popped the seat to see if i could help him further...but after about an hour of trying, he was just sitting in one place....i thought he died....so i didnt want to mess with him. This morning I forgot about him, but after I did a little grocery shopping, he flew right by my face out of my truck. I didnt believe it was him, so i popped the seat again, and he was gone!!!!

Silly bees....then as I was driving away, I realized that there was a lady bug on my driver-side window...not wanting to roll it alll the way down, i put it partially down with hope that my driving will blow him off. That little sucker stayed on until i arrived at my destination. How wierd!

Bugs....