Sometimes, people say things without thinking too much about it first. Often, these things will insult some group of people in a manner that they were never intended to, and that?s to be expected. Sure, whoever said it should take some heat for being inconsiderate, but when I say ?some heat,? I mean heat. I don?t mean catapulting Barack Obama into the corona of the sun.

I live in Pennsylvania. I?m perfectly fine with the economy here, I?m an atheist, and I?ve never owned a gun in my life. When applied to me, Obama?s statement about people here clinging to guns and religion is more than just inaccurate ? it?s about as far from the truth as possible, and yes, it does annoy me to be classified in such a way by the candidate I?m most fond of.

That?s it. That?s as far as it goes. It?s merely annoying, just as it would be if Hillary Clinton or John McCain had said it, and that?s with me ? the Pennsylvanian who is the exact opposite of Obama?s classifications. He?s already apologized; it?s time to move on.

It?s slightly absurd to me that we can discuss this idiotic statement with such scrutiny, but we can wave off political turmoil and assassinations in Pakistan, a nuclear state, without much trouble. It?s ridiculous that a nation that prides itself on its tolerance cannot forgive a man for a statement he made, even after he?s apologized multiple times for making it.

What makes it even more ridiculous? He?s not entirely wrong. I may not be clinging to religion or to guns, but there are unquestionably people in this state that do. Remember, about a year or two ago, some guy attacked a one-room Amish schoolhouse with a gun, in Pennsylvania. This isn?t a student gone mad, this was just some guy with a gun, probably bitter.

As for religion, this state elected Rick Santorum to office. He?s not there anymore, thankfully, but when he was there he was constantly one of the strongest voices for conservative family values. What are those values based on, I wonder? Dare it be that, maybe, just maybe, he was incredibly religious? And, if so, is it really so unreasonable to think that the people who elected him may have been the same way? Of course it?s not ? the only thing foolish here would be to think that they weren?t, at least in part.

Of course, nobody can say this without being labeled elitist. You see, the truth doesn?t matter so long as anyone can exploit it to take you down. We?re obviously, as Americans, much better off if the people who lead our country avoid the truth in order to get more votes. Why should truth matter when there are popular opinion polls?

So, you see, the mob has spoken. Obama is an elitist. Can?t you just tell by looking at him? He obviously fits the profile: a racist white Klan member descended from wealthy European noblemen. Of course he?s of the elite! The Clintons, on the other hand, they?re of the people, struggling to survive on the board of Wal-Mart.

In conclusion: Obama says people are bitter about a dying economy, Clinton says she?s got experience because she?s married to a former president who cheated on her and committed perjury, and McCain wants to bomb Iran and stay in Iraq for a full century, while lowering taxes and eliminating the deficit. Which seems most reasonable to you?

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If I asked around for hours, I doubt I could find anyone who reads the political opinion articles printed in The New York Times more religiously than my father. He reads them on the website, or printed out, literally every day. When he thinks one would be of interest to his oldest friend, who I've always known simply as Dr. Tom, or to me, he uses the built-in email service to send it to us, usually with a comment explaining what he thinks about the article and why we'd like it.He's about as Democratic as possible, so he's not a big fan of the current administration... but, for the most part, when he looks towards the future he generally is optimistic, even if it's fused with cynicism. I'll argue the side of multiple, fairly extreme fears I'd have for the continued development of humanity and our way of life, and he'd argue that, basically, I was wrong.

So, imagine my surprise when a few days ago, he sent me a Thomas Friedman article with the comment "Interesting piece, for several reasons[...] Secondly, it reinforces your doomsday forecast for energy."

Additionally, it really did. My father sent me that a day or two after we debated on the topic of new energy sources and the increasingly finite supply of oil left on Earth. I argued that the problem was immediate, and a solution that could easily replace oil would have to be selected and implemented remarkably soon. His stance was more traditionally liberal; he's all for finding another energy source, but only if it's clean and nearly unlimited, like wind or solar power. In the meantime, he argues in favor of conserving oil.

In my mind, there are more problems with that idea than I can think of off the top of my head. Leading the charge was simply the concept that we're Americans. The idea of Americans significantly conserving energy seems almost a contradiction. Our massive use of energy has worked its way into the core of everything we do. Also, the population of the United States continues to grow, fairly quickly. If we want to simply maintain even the amount energy our nation uses now, we have to conserve more per capita. To lower the aggregate consumption of oil, we'd have to cut it by far more. Somehow, I have a problem picturing most Americans lowering their energy consumption by even ten percent.

I'll also admit, I hate the idea of legislating it. In my mind, that's restricting the economy and freedoms. I don't think the government should ever control what a citizen of the US can buy, or how much of it they can buy, or even how much it should cost. However, I also recognize that in extreme situations, such laws can be necessary. Restrictions of that sort were imposed during World War II, and the concept of running out of energy is just as threatening to our way of life. I'd support energy legislation... if I thought it would work.

The thing is, it wouldn't. It might have worked in 1925, when most of our oil came from Texas and we lived in an isolationist environment, but not today. Say Americans surprised us all and did manage to lower usage by ten percent. Say they shocked the world and managed to lower it by twenty, or even thirty percent. That's great. So what?

Largely as a result of our international reach and the expansion of our telecommunications networks in the 1990s, as well as our initial advocation of oil as fuel, elements of the formerly-third world have begun to develop into miniature versions of us. Why wouldn't they? Once Texas ran out, we started sending tons of money to third world areas for their oil. Once we invented the internet, we spent billions of dollars networking not just the US, but the entire world, opening the door for global business cooperation and outsourcing. Second and third world countries could suddenly connect and work for American corporations for what seemed great wealth to them and a pittance to us.

This is what that Friedman article covered too. While his was talking primarily about energy emission standards, those emissions generally come from oil, so it's easily applied here too. Elements of the Middle East that were once small villages without electricity have suddenly become hubs of a multi-billion dollar industry. Can you blame them for wanting to own light bulbs and a microwave? Or, perhaps one of the cars that we pay them so much to power?

That's not all of it; it's not even close. Through our technology, many nations are now sharing in what was once the economy of a select few nations. People who once lived on a salary of $3,000 a year or lower in India and China now have the ability to work for American, European, and Japanese megacorporations, or even their own new corporations, for far more. Live in China? Go work for Lenovo, the laptop manufacturer that bought IBM. You'll probably get $15,000 a year, or more. India? Become a telemarketer or tech support representative and make the same.

Obviously, this is the reason so many American companies have embraced outsourcing. Those salaries might seem near our poverty levels, but they represent large amounts of money in other parts of the world. I don't mean to say any of this is wrong. Like Friedman, I think it's wonderful that they've managed to join the world economy, and that families in these countries can now make more than a high school student working part time. However, it does come at a cost.

All the Middle Eastern countries have moderate-to-low populations. When they get money, it makes an impact, but not a tremendously enormous one. However, the biggest industrial and economic growth are now occurring in the only two nations that have a population greater than the United States, China and India. When I say greater, I mean much, much greater. Alone, the United States account for less than five percent of the population of Earth. Together, China and India account for around forty percent. That's a lot, and as their economies grow, they're all moving from low and no energy lifestyles to lifestyles that mimic ours.

We could cut our energy use by fifty percent in an attempt to conserve, and it wouldn't help us much. We could cut all power to the entire nation. We could outlaw cars, transportation, and effectively live like the original colonists 400 years ago, or the Amish. It wouldn't matter. We'd temporarily lower global use of energy, but only to the levels of a decade or two ago, and it'd only last for a few years as the rest of the world continues to develop. Additionally, cutting it to those levels would somewhat kill the point of conserving while trying to find a new source... and good luck coming up with one without modern computers, telephones, and electronic scientific labs.

The fact is, the thing that's causing the increased use of oil products, something people like my father want to conserve, is also what's bringing millions of people out of poverty, something people like my father strongly endorse. It's providing them with money, and in turn, better living standards... generally the living standards we created for ourselves over the past century.

Energy conservation is a global problem, and it's not one that global legislation can help. These people generally aren't Americans, and they likely never will be in terms of oil. The problem is too finite. After all, they do still get salaries that we consider to be really low. They're not driving around massive SUVs or buying the latest and biggest plasma television and stereo sets for their homes. Many Americans don't even do that due to the monetary cost.

They're evolving out of poverty-stricken, third world nations into second and first world nations. At a personal level, they're far more energy efficient than you or I. The problem presents because, a national level, they're just so massive that it doesn't matter. China alone has nearly six times the population of the United States. If they all used two light bulbs to light a room where we'd use twelve, they match the United States in energy consumption. They could all drive super-light, super-efficient miniature Smart cars, and they'd still consume more oil than if everyone in the United States drove a Hummer.

And that's just China. Let's not forget India, with a population around five times the size of ours, or the entire Middle East and their oil revenues. Right now, the United States still leads the world in oil consumption, but as those nations continue to industrialize, that will eventually change. Additionally, while I'm reluctant to legislate how much oil people in America can buy, I'd be totally against trying to legislate how much any of those nations can buy in any manner that'd stop increasing oil consumption. We cannot tell people that, because they simply didn't advance as quickly as their neighbors, they won't be permitted access to oil-based energy. We might be able to, with international support, try and tell them how much they could use per-capita, but it'd be pretty absurd of us to impose limits lower than we consume ourselves... not to mention, it wouldn't help. Millions of people would still work their way up from nothing to the limit, increasing oil consumption significantly.

Not surprisingly, an average population growth rate in many of these places will be higher than the United States average of 2.17 people per two parents, and even at 2.05 per two parents, the massive populations of India and China would outpace the growth of our own. They too would have to significantly lower their per-capita oil use to maintain their current quota, and they generally already use a much smaller per-capita amount.

Based on predictions by those in the field, we could run out of oil in under a century at current consumption. If that consumption continues to increase, it could happen sooner... depending on how much that consumption increases, a lot sooner. It doesn't really matter how much the five percent of the world that lives in America consumes, it's a problem that's shared by nations accounting for more like eighty percent of the world, or more. Cutting our use would barely make a dent, and would almost certainly have greater negative effects on our economy than positive effects on our oil supply.

I'm all for renewable forms of energy. I love the concept of having anything in unlimited amounts. However, modern technology that produces renewable energy is inefficient and remarkably expensive, and it's also limited in it's uses when compared to oil - for example, oil is also used in the production of everyday materials like plastic. To replace oil with a single or multiple other renewable sources would take billions and billions of dollars, many years, and extensive research. We probably don't have any of that, and there will always be time later. For now, we need a quick replacement, regardless of the possibility of depletion.

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A couple days ago, I decided I needed to get myself a new bluetooth headset. I'd never really liked the one I had been using all that much, and I missed out on getting tickets to a Springsteen rehearsal show. What better time to spend my money?

Most of you don't know me too well, if you know me at all, so you should know.. this would not be my second bluetooth headset, or even my third. I believe it's my sixth, with the first one being purchased in August 2005. I've also used a year or two old Plantronics headset in a sort of testing manner... basically, I've had an odd amount of experience with these things for such a short span of time.

I had reasons for all of them, of course. My first, at the time Motorola's best headset, 'died' when the cable running down the flip-closed microphone broke. The next one, an almost identical Motorola without the boom, still works... but the ear clip broke. The third, Motorola's AAA-battery powered one, disappeared without a trace in New Hampshire. The fourth, a cheap Motorola I bought in New Hampshire to replace the other, is the one I've been using. The fifth was a Jabra behind-the-ear model, it was awesome, and I'm pretty sure someone at a movie theater stole it.

The thing I don't like about all those Motorola models is that the only thing holding them to your ear is a clip. They're not secure. They can slide forward, backwards, sorta flap off your ear, and basically just move around all the time. It's remarkably annoying. The Jabra and the Plantronics ones didn't have that problem, so I figured I'd just get one of those. The newer version of the Jabra seems reputed to be worse than the model I loved, so Plantronics it was.

I bought a nice Plantronics Discovery 655, or 665, something like that. It's similar to the 640 I'd used in the past, incredibly lightweight, rather small, and comes with this awesome mobile charging unit that uses a AAA battery, just in case you need power and you don't have the AC adapter.

I'm sure I'll love it... it's not here yet, and it has nothing to do with why I am now in love with Plantronics.

Now, you all think my affection for bluetooth devices is absurd by now, but you've not heard everything. I also have had very, very many pairs of almost only noise canceling headphones. I got my first pair of these around January 2003... and I've had quite a few. On the lower end, when it comes to traditional, over the head noise canceling headphones, I've owned one Coby pair, two Targus pairs, and two Maxell pairs. In the mid-range area, I've had two Sony and two Philips pairs. High-end, I owned a $200 Sony noise-canceling set and non-noise-cancelling Triport headphones fby Bose.

I've also had 4 pairs of these amazing mid-range Philips earbud noise cancelling headphones that are kinda built into a necklace and have their own volume control, and one of the newer, lower-end cheap offshoot of them that Philips put out.

I used them a lot, and a bunch of them broke from overuse or other stuff like that. Not all of them - 4 'Mid-range' and 2 low range sets work, as do the Bose set. I did have a reason for each purchase, but I'm not putting them here... that'd be too far off the main point, don't you think?

Anyway, now you're either wondering what any of this has to do with the bluetooth headset and Plantronics, or you've cleverly deduced exactly what it is... You see, while I was browsing around trying to pick which one I wanted, I came across the Plantronics Pulsar 590 bluetooth "headset" model. I know what you're probably thinking, and the answer is yes. I did buy two new bluetooth headsets on the same day. The Pulsar was too cool not to.

It's like a higher-end bluetooth headset in that it has an extendable microphone boom, call and volume buttons, and can bond to your phone. You can take calls on it, just as on any other headset. It's also surprisingly light - if you looked at it and then wore it, you'd probably expect it to be at least a bit heavier.

The similarities pretty much end there. If you do look at the Pulsar 590, you won't see a bluetooth headset - you'll see what looks almost like mid-to-high range stereo headphones. The other two buttons on the unit are "Play/Pause" and "Next," and it can be bonded to any bluetooth supporting audio device.

Don't have a musical phone, or an absurdly advanced laptop? No problem! If you buy the Pulsar 590A package, it includes a bunch of stuff - a charging cradle and dual-ported charging wire, carrying case, headphone wires in case you want to use the set like normal wired headphones, and this amazing miniature hockey puck shaped device.

It's an audio-to-bluetooth bridge of sorts. You can plug it into any standard headphones-audio jacks, be they on an MP3 player or computer. You turn it on, and it bonds with the headset just as a phone would. It's battery powered and rechargable (with that second port on the wire), so it can be put in your pocket connected to an iPod or Zune if you want. It's fantastic.

Best part? The headphones can bond to two bluetooth devices at a time, and they generally know what to do with them. You know those commercials for those 'awesome' phones that can play your music and will instantly shut it off and switch to a call? These work the same way... and because they work with anything, you could connect it to a massive 120 GB media player in place of an expensive phone that holds 512 MB, and still use the phone of your choice.

That might be the best feature... but the most surprising is the quality of the device. I said before it's really light. That's not all. I'm using it right now to play music, with the audio source about 8 feet away from me, and this audio is comparable to at least all of the mid-range headphones I've owned, and I honestly think they come close to rivaling the high end Sony pair as well. I'm seriously, seriously impressed by that, and the range - I was able to get high quality audio around 40 feet away with a wall between me and the source. It's amazing.

It's amazing... at a cost, that is. Plantronics lists the Pulsar 590A package as $250, though you can probably find a new one from some other retailer that's $100 less. It's still a lot to pay for a pair of headphones, but in my opinion, these things are amazing. They're more than worth it.

These are awesome.

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For some time now, several aspects of computing have been watched over by a large corporation. This company has made alterations and imposed restrictions in it's own software and hardware with a single, understandable business goal - keep as many customers as possible using their software; make it difficult to impossible to switch off to a competitor. Once this is done, charge for all sorts of things that normally might convince customers to leave.

You might assume I'm talking about Microsoft. I'm not. The company I have in mind is none other than their traditional rival, Apple. Sound ridiculous? Well, it shouldn't! With the release of the iPod, Apple has been becoming increasingly prominent over the past few years... and (not so) surprisingly, they've begun to release items that have such monopololistic power they'd make even Microsoft, AT&T, and Standard Oil jealous.

Not too surprisingly, the greatest evidence of this is based around their relatively new flagship products, iTunes and the iPod. Anyone who isn't blind has seen the enormous market share these two products have taken control of in the music industry - iPods are, by far, the most prolific music player on the market... and iTunes, the music player-music store hybrid, rides on the success of the iPod to reach it's current position at the lead of digital media sales.

When I say it rides on the success of the iPod, I'm not kidding. Those who buy an iPod literally don't have a choice, they must use iTunes to bring their iPod and their song/video library in sync. iTunes is an enormous application intended for use both as a media player - much like Windows Media Player or WinAMP - as well as a digital music store, in this manner similar to huge websites like Amazon.com or other media stores, like Napster. Add to that the syncing capabilities for iPods, similar in a way to Microsoft Outlook or ActiveSync for PDAs, and you come out with a rather large program. Usually, massive programs aren't the first choice for everyone... unless they're the only choice. In this case, iTunes is indeed the only choice.

Continue reading The ‘Evil’ Technology Monopoly...

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The popularity of our administration, especially the man at the top, has been falling precipitously over the past few months... actually, it's been falling almost constantly since Bush took office, or at least since September 11th. Nearly everything he does has become unpopular... to the point that people have actually started to prefer, instead of looking to the current President, watching the political activities of the many, many people who might, just maybe, be taking his job away from him... well over a year from now.

Of course, scary as it might be, Bush is still the Decider, and the eyes of the world will always end up resting on him, waiting for him to do something right. Of course, most people will never meet the President, or even any of the people he works with. Almost the entire world has an opinion when it comes to our President, and almost all of them get their opinions based on what they've seen through the media.

Generally, the media is able to present enough of an unbiased view for people to make their own decisions. It's impossible for them to be totally unbiased as people sometimes expect them to be - they are, after all, people, with the same rights to having an opinion as anyone else. In this case, I don't think anything they've said has been too overwhelmingly influential - the public has the perception that George Bush is an idiot, a perception easily gained after watching him speak for less than a minute. The media doesn't need to do a thing to enhance that image.

Unbiased news, or attempting to be unbiased news, is not the only branch of the media that helps shape public opinion. Opinion articles, or comedy such as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, also play a part. For the most part, the media will attempt to give the viewers what they want... so when 70% of the country thinks the President is an idiot, the media will run with it - having over 200 million viewers and readers is a lot better than 50,000,000.

Eventually, the number of things you can do or say about a person run dry. Looking to the President for new news and opinions is probably the best place to look - politics are constantly changing and are broad enough to always have something new going on... for example, the release of those questionable Iraq statistics recently, leaving people wondering. Can that testimony be trusted? Are these statistics absolutely bogus? Should this play as something that encourages us to stay in Iraq, or should we just leave as fast as we can?

I won't presume to tell anyone what they should think about leaving Iraq or not... sure, I think you should all agree with me on the issue, but clearly that's not going to happen. However, I do feel absolutely safe in saying this - the statistics the Pentagon have collected on Iraq are absolutely ridiculous. They make no logical sense.� Whoever came up with their method of collecting statistics could probably look at Vioxx, the painkiller that raises the likelihood of heart attacks and death, and decide that it's actually a good thing. After all, with fewer old people around, there's more air for the rest of us, right?

In cases like this, the media is helpful... with emphasis placed on those opinion articles. Because they're written with an agenda, intended to be persuasive from the start, these people will put together things that might not have been seen together otherwise, allowing other people to see them, getting multiple points of view out to the masses. This is an important step. Without this, our system would work in a very, very different manner.

It's when these opinion articles start to mold and modify history that they begin to step away from being useful. Obviously, they're intended to give an opinion and they're written, almost always, in favor of the writer's position, much like everything I write here is written in mine. However, if they contain faulty information... they really don't help us.

Take, for example, an opinion article written by Paul Krugman at the New York Times, "Where's My Trickle?" It focuses entirely on changes to the economy by Bush & Co, finding all the many ways in which his tax cuts are a failure. For the most part, he's right... our economy has grown over the past few years, just as Bush says. However, the salary of the average American worker, once you account for inflation, has remained the same. The salary of the executives, on the other hand, has grown tremendously.

Krugman uses this as proof that the money isn't trickling down from the top levels of the corporate world to the average worker... the tax cuts that Bush put in place for the wealthy are only helping the wealthy. He goes on to say that the disconnect between economic growth and conditions for the average workers over the past 4 years is greater than the disconnect has ever been in the history of the United States.

In his defense, he doesn't mean the disconnect between the manner in which an average worker lives and the manner in which the executives live. He openly admits that there has always been a big gap there. His point is that, in the past, conditions have gotten better for the workers as they got better for the executives... that it was never one or the other. He gives three examples to prove his point.

Two are somewhat recent - he shows that things really did get better for the average worker during the economic growth seen under Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. He recognizes that inequality grew, but the average working conditions didn't stagnate, they got better... even if the conditions for the executives got better faster.

Then there's� the third example - conditions for American workers during the Gilded Age. He admits that there was a gigantic gap between the wealthy and the workers, which almost anyone who has taken a history class is well aware of. Then he proceeds to point out that, while things were horrible for the average worker in America at the time, conditions generally got better as the wealth of the industry and the nation improved.

That's certainly true... if you consider the Gilded Age to be the 60 years between the Civil War and the Great Depression, and average the conditions workers experienced throughout the entire era. That's 60 years... we're talking about the 4 years since Bush introduced his tax cuts. I'm not saying that Bush has a spectacular economic plan, or that things wouldn't continue to go poorly were this plan given another few decades... but there's a serious difference. If you look closely at those 60 years, you will be able to find years in which things didn't improve for the workers in America at all... even if the industry was expanding and the financial barons of the age were becoming wealthier.

As stated in that article, when comparing changes in the economy to any other year or economic plan, you need to account for inflation. Without doing this, it'd appear today that the average worker is in fact doing better than he was 4� years ago, even though he's not. In the modern world, Bill Gates is the richest man alive. He's the co-founder and largest owner of one of the most powerful corporations the world has ever seen. The value of the charity foundation he's founded is higher than the value of nearly every African nation.

In modern US dollars, Bill Gates is worth around 50 billion dollars. That's nothing on Andrew Carnegie, who would be worth about 100 billion dollars today... and he wasn't even on the top during his time. That honor goes to John D. Rockefeller, who's net worth in modern US dollars would be approaching 300 billion dollars.� That's an enormous disconnect, especially considering that, accounting for inflation, the average American worker back then made less money than the average Chinese worker makes today.

Change between the classes back then just didn't happen often... and many workers never saw improving conditions. As an example, coal miners were given something similar to housing by the companies they worked for. They were houses, sort of, if you're willing to consider poorly built, rotting sheds as houses. The catch was - these houses were owned by the company, and technically rented to the miners, who were not paid enough to actually afford them. Because they had no money saved, they couldn't move their families away, and because they couldn't afford the house, they just fell deeper and deeper into debt to the mining corporation... basically ensuring that the wealthy owners had a slave labor force after slavery had been outlawed.

Their conditions continually got worse - the company wouldn't pay for supplies to repair those houses, for new houses as the mining villages became more and more overcrowded, or for new technology and ventilation as the mines got deeper. They didn't have to - these families couldn't afford to leave, so they only paid for new additions that'd get them their coal quicker. This was the same age in which we'd first truly harnessed the power of steam engines and electricity... there were no four years in which demand for coal went down, but nearly every year demand for energy, and therefore coal, went up. There's a span of well over a decade in which a much bigger disconnect between conditions for the wealthy and conditions for the average and poor can be seen.

I don't mind people targeting the idiotic policies of our imbecilic leader, and I do recognize that opinion articles are usually meant to be persuasive, not informational. For the most part, I agree with this article... but I see little difference between rewriting history, even through implication, and presenting bogus statistics on Iraq, even if rewriting history can make the Supreme Moron appear more moronic.

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It's pretty clear to anyone who's been to this page that I've somewhat disappeared again. I realize that's kinda annoying, sorry about that.

As some readers might be able to guess, a lot of my recent absence was spurred by the announcement Columbia made about a new Bruce Springsteen album and the subsequent tour. Ticket sales for the first part of that tour, starting this fall in the United States, started to go on sale yesterday for Hartford, Albany, Chicago, and Philadelphia. As I like in the Philadelphia area, I was of course partaking in the ticket-rush madness. As far as I know, all of those shows went on sale at 10:00 AM Eastern Time, and were sold out before 10:30. I luckily managed to secure tickets to both Philadelphia shows.

Ticket sales continue - tomorrow, all the tickets for the New York City and East Rutherford, NJ shows go on sale. A couple days later, they'll be followed by ticket sales for other US cities, such as Washington DC, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. I'll probably be partaking in some of those rushes for tickets as well.

I've actually started a new blog focused around Springsteen news and such - Highway Nine. Every domain name I could think of relating to Springsteen was seemingly already taken, so this is located at http://www.highwaynine.info/ .  If any of you are fans of Bruce and want to join in as authors over there, just send me an email, it'd be awesome to have you!

Springsteen is the primary reason I disappeared, but I've also started a couple other projects. I've started working on designing a new web game with one group of people, and also looking at starting a multi-author political blog with another.

The first one there is a pretty simple and yet deceptively complex process. We'll probably be working on that for a while. A friend and I co-founded the group doing it, Tempest Games, and we've set up development forums at http://www.alderis.info/ If you'd like to join there and throw a few ideas at us, you're welcome to do it. If you're sitting there wondering what could possibly have led us to use that domain name... I have a bunch of random .info domains that I purchased while they were seriously discounted and I was in Europe... so we might as well use them for stuff like this!

The other project, a multi-author political blog, is actually an older idea than either of the others I mentioned here. It would have started some time ago were it not for the fact that, basically, we don't have a good name for it. We have everything but a name... but we can't get a domain name until we have a name, and therefore we can't actually start doing it quite yet. If you have a name idea we could use, email me, write a comment, anything! We'll all love you forever. If you think you might want to join in as an author, send me an email - no guarantees you'll get in, we've already got a fair number of people, but you never know. Could be fun!

That's most of what I can think of off the top of my head. I know the last two "I'm Back!" messages didn't actually stick for various reasons, and they both mentioned a bunch of old articles I'd written and never published. Some of those are still valid, I might post them with some editing... the rest of them, I'm probably going to simply delete. Many of the events they were based on have long since passed.

Check out the other blog(S)!

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Earlier, I posted a thing detailing rumors on Bruce Springsteen and E Street Band.

They're not rumors anymore.

From brucespringsteen.net:

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If and when they attack, we will lose... unless we harness a superior weapon. Without it, our race will be overrun. Hundreds of years of history, lost.

That's a slightly modified quote from Farscape, a science fiction television show that ran until 2002. It's almost identical to the original line, I've merely removed a reference to fictional futuristic wormhole technology. That line is told from the perspective of Scorpius and Lieutenant Braca, both officers in the Peacekeeper military.

If you've never seen Farscape, you might not have a clue what I'm talking about. In the show, an American astronaut is accidentally sent through a wormhole to a distant part of the galaxy through a wormhole. He arrives in a region of space that is inhabited by many spacefaring, advanced races. The specific region he's in is ruled over by the Peacekeepers, effectively an entirely mobile race that serves as police and military when requested... and often, even when not requested. They have a stranglehold on that part of the galaxy.

The American arrives and quickly gets himself labeled as a criminal by the Peacekeepers, forcing him to run away with a crew of escaped prisoners while searching for a way to get back to Earth. Eventually, an ancient race puts equasions on how to form wormholes in his subconscious mind, intended to help guide him in his research. However, they didn't make him aware of it - they strongly believed that if the person didn't have the ability to discover and master wormholes for themselves, they were not ready for the responsibility that came with the knowledge.

Unfortunately, he was captured by Scorpius, a Peacekeeper officer researching the use of wormholes as weapons or a strategic advantage. He discovers the wormhole knowledge in his mind and becomes an enemy. Meanwhile, we discover that the reason he so wants this advantage is because another race, the Scarrans, are considering invading the Peacekeeper sector and the Peacekeepers know they don't have the military might to repel them.

Scarran Warriors outnumber Peacekeeper Soldiers ten to one. If and when they attack, we will lose... unless we harness a superior weapon. Wormhole technology.

That statement is nothing new. It's hardly as though it was created for this show - if you remove the references to fictional races and military forces, it can be applied to quite a few major wars in our own history. Superior technology has always been a very, very important factor in wars. We used the same logic in World War II, when we forged forward with our development of nuclear technology and proceeded to use it as a weapon against our enemies. Had we developed it second, after Germany or Japan, we would probably not be here today.

It is incredibly easy to place our own nation in the place of the Farscape Peacekeepers during such a war. When we entered that war, we may not have been outnumbered but we were certainly outgunned. We developed seriously deadly weapons as a means of survival, and we justified it with the argument that without them, we would cease to exist. That logic continues to be questioned today to some extent, but it's always easy to question the means by which we won after such a victory is secured.

Actually, back then, even the very name of the Peacekeepers might have applied to our nation. We'd only entered World War I and II as a last resort, after it seemed very likely that we wouldn't be able to survive the defeat of our then-allies. After World War I, Woodrow Wilson tried as hard as he could to secure a lasting peace in Europe and throughout the world... and he might have succeeded to some extent had the United States not withdrawn from all foreign affairs in an attempt to isolate the country from the rest of the world. After the end of World War II, we helped to rebuild those nations that we'd devastated, attempting to form governments that would work and reconstruct the cities that both sides had decimated... now, the nations we had then bombed have become economic powerhouses and seriously powerful modern nations.

It's very easy to look at the Germans of both World Wars, as well as the Japanese, Italians, etc, and see a group of warring nations that could easily fill the role of the Scarrans - powerful entities starting wars to increase their empires. Today... there's only one nation that could fill the role of the Scarrans, and sadly enough, it's the United States.

In this decade alone, we have started two wars... neither of which had a universal, strong set of reasons. Yes, we had been attacked by radical Islamic groups, nobody can argue that... but nobody can argue that radical groups are under the control of any nation either. The very nature of these groups is based on their faith and their belief that we have interfered too much in their ways. Religion and opinion far extend beyond any political border we have ever drawn

In the case of Afghanistan, it can be argued that they were harboring terrorist training camps. It can be said that the government in power at the time, the Taliban, hadn't dealt with them and was perhaps even funding them. Does that make them our enemy? That depends... we all agree that at the time, the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan were one. We generally accept that the government makes and enforces the law in any nation... therefore, if the Taliban stated that terrorist training camps were acceptable and the Taliban were the government, those camps were legal in Afghanistan, regardless of how illegal they may have been in the United States.

Still, there were terrorist training camps in the country, potentially the very same camps that trained the terrorists that lost their lives attacking us. There is no question that those terrorists are our enemy... but are they our responsibility if they're training in a foreign, sovereign nation? Probably not. Consider again that these terrorists are not bound to any single nation - there are training camps all over the world, most likely if not certainly including the United States of America. If Japan had been attacked and they took it upon themselves to bomb what they believed were training camps in New York, I imagine we would not be very pleased. We'd probably embargo them and screw over their economy... that is, if we didn't declare war on them and expose them to our nuclear arsenal yet again.

Finally, there's the joint argument that is probably most commonly heard today - the terrorists attacked us, and the Taliban government had been shielding them in Afghanistan. If we asked the Taliban to take action against our enemies, they would not. While the terrorists are an international organization and not the military of Afghanistan, it's probable that they did get funding from the Taliban, therefore making the Taliban our enemies in addition to the terrorists they harbored, clearing the way for our invasion of their nation and toppling of their government. After all, if the enemy of my enemy is my friend, why shouldn't the friend of my enemy be my enemy?

Of course, that logic makes enemies of pretty much the entire world... which, really, we've been doing pretty well at recently. Actually, if it's okay to attack the nation because it funds terrorists... attacks against us are totally justified. We've funded terrorism in nations we didn't like since the dawn of time; a sort-of simplistic way to go after our enemies without polarizing the American public or losing American lives. We're sponsoring terrorism in Iran to this day. Therefore, even if the Taliban were funding the terrorists to attack America... they were doing nothing that we hadn't already done to them. The terrorists they funded attacking us simply made it more 'acceptable' when we decided to decimate them.

...and that's the more reasonable of the two wars. The Iraq War, currently costing much, much more than Afghanistan in terms of money and lives has even cloudier reasoning and is far harder to justify. Saddam Hussein had no proven ties to any terrorist organization, and it seems today that the terrorists we see as having attacked us actually had fewer recruitment camps and training centers there than they had in the United States. Obviously, Hussein maintained a military... but he didn't attack the United States with it, or do anything at all outside of his borders, at least since around the end of his war with Iran - a war we supported.

So here we have a nation that didn't attack us directly or attack us via funding terrorism. Basically... they didn't attack us... so why did we declare war? Of course. Phantom WMDs. To the credit of our administration, most of the politicians in service at the time also believed the intelligence that Saddam Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction - without them the initial attacks would never have been authorized. Regardless though... the fact is, even if he had been building weapons of mass destruction, the missiles that were available to the Republican Guard could barely reach Israel, another country that geographically is in the Middle East, or southwestern Asia. I don't know if Bush actually passed geography, but for those who are a bit fuzzy when it comes to the shape of the planet, America isn't in southwestern Asia. America isn't even in Asia... or even the Eastern Hemisphere. There's not a chance in hell that any weaponry from Iraq would have been able to reach us. It would have a hard time reaching us even if he'd managed to set up missile sites in Canada.

Also important to notice... most politicians agreed with the intelligence on weapons production. That clearly means that not everybody did, or that not everybody saw it as cause for war. Most foreign nations were on their side, arguing that Iraq should get more time to prove they were not producing illegal weaponry; such was the stance of the United Nations and the UN Security Council, making it remarkably odd that we declared war on Iraq citing subversion of United Nations regulations. In fact... it was the US war that broke the UN's international law, not Iraq... and Iraq shouldn't have had to do anything anyway. In our own legal system, the one we trumpet as an ingenious and amazingly good way to regulate ourselves, a person is innocent until proven guilty - the burden of proof lays on those who accuse the defendant. It's absolutely ridiculous that the burden of proof before this war was placed on Iraq - how do you prove something that never existed doesn't exist? Blank receipts? It's simply not possible. The burden of proof should have been on the United States, and the proof presented should have put it beyond "reasonable doubt." Considering the weapons didn't actually exist, I'd say our proof was somewhat reasonably doubtable.

In Farscape, tens of thousands of years before the events we see, a race called Eidelons roamed the galaxy. They'd shown they had a remarkable ability to mediate disagreements and bring peace to warring races and nations, but sometimes found that there was a need for a small force to maintain the peace once the accords and treaties had been signed. They needed a neutral race, one that had never been seen before, so they roamed the edges of the galaxy until they found primitive humanity. They artificially accelerated the evolution of the species into a race called Sebaceans, and these Sebaceans became the Peacekeepers. Under the command of the Eidelons, they enforced the treaties and kept the negotiated peace agreements from breaking down... as a neutral force, they were uniquely suited to do so.

The Eidelons themselves did not maintain a military. They were an entirely peaceful race, and they attempted to spread that peace to the stars. For their trouble, they were destroyed... but the Peacekeepers lived on. They attempted to continue the work of the Eidelons, to maintain the peace in their region of space. For many millennia, they accomplished this goal. They'd never interfered with internal politics, or with space controlled by different governments unless contracted to do so. They continued to serve as a somewhat neutral force in wars, holding the peace in place.

Eventually, they fell out of their neutral position. They expanded their influence throughout the part of space they once assisted, becoming a feared and powerful galactic power. They used their military forces to declare wars on rival powers and force other governments into submission. They became more and more obsessed with only allowing their own race to serve, keeping the bloodlines pure. They banned that which they deemed unnecessary, drafted anyone they so desired, and had no competition or resistance from the space they eventually dominated.

In Farscape and in history, we see the corruption of many ideals over time. Over a hundred years ago, a British historian by the name of Lord Acton said, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." In history, this can be seen in the fate of Rome - a Republic for centuries, finally an Empire fighting constantly to increase its influence throughout the known world, slowly but surely eliminating the advantage to being a citizen of Rome.

It's happened in the past with Rome, and in the theoretical future with the Peacekeepers... and it continues to happen today, with us. We once used our military to secure freedom throughout the Americas. We'd go to war with oppressive colonial powers. Once we'd won, we'd grant those colonies independence and assist them in becoming modern, democratic nations. There was indeed a time when we had a positive effect on the world, channeling our ideals through our military and through our economy. That time is over.

Today, we still go to war with other nations... but the age in which we targeted imperialist empires is long over. We still go to war with nations that don't agree with us... but these nations no longer pose any form of threat to our existence. We continue to topple regimes that oppress their people, only to replace their oppressive regime with our own rule. Gone is the age in which we did such things for their people... we now do it only for ourselves. We've invaded the Middle East, and like imperialist Europe before us, we now refuse to leave.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is true in physics, as well as humanity. Should we continue to sow destruction throughout the world, forcing our rule on those who would resist, we will eventually face destruction; we will eventually be forced to recognize the rule of another world power. If we continue down this corrupted road, we will see ourselves in the same position as the Peacekeepers - outnumbered by the enemy we created.

There may be two paths we can go by, but in the long run... we'd better hope we can change the road we're on.

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Before I actually say anything, I feel it necessary to say that anything I post here is not 100% confirmed... the only official sources have yet to say a word. Usually, I'd ignore stuff like that, but in some unique situations like these I feel the need to watch the rumors and such just because... it's necessary. In this case, the rumors have been going on nearly all year and have recently taken on a much more authoritative, consistent theme to the extent that I am rather certain of their truth and/or accuracy.

These rumors all come together in the following sentence:

Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band will be releasing an album within the next couple months, following up with a run of tours through the United States and Europe.

Supposedly, these tour dates will follow the basic format used during the tour for The Rising in 2002 and 2003. It will begin with a short run through major cities in the United States, one or two shows at each venue before moving on. Following this will be the run through Europe, followed by a more significant set of multiple shows at all the major cities in the United States. I'm somewhat less confident of these more specific rumors, but if true, they also state that this will be the last tour done by Bruce with the E-Street Band.

Essentially, this is the best news to be had, save the part about it being the last tour. That part is almost certainly true - Bruce is slowly but surely nearing his 60s and Clarence is at least 10 years older than him, it's not as if they'll be able to keep major tours up as the band reaches the age of the wheelchair and walker... which means I'll have to try to double my concert count during this tour, of course.

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Rudy Giuliani has received a large amount of recognition due to his current campaign for President of the United States. As a Republican with somewhat moderate or even liberal viewpoints, that recognition is not surprising, and perhaps even to be expected. He's fairly consistently held up his scores in the polls against his Republican opponents as well as performing fairly well against potential Democratic opponents, and it'd be foolish to rule him out as a serious contender.

It's fair to say that a lot of people will be voting for him. I will almost certainly not be among them, and there are a bunch of reasons I have for that decision. Rather recently, The Onion stated that Giuliani was running for "President if 9/11," using his personal legend to his own advantage in the election. Paul Krugman at the New York Times restated this, pointing out that anything to challenge this personal legend would be a significant problem for him, and he's obviously correct.

Think about it. What have we seen from Rudy Giuliani in the past that earns him the position of President? Other contenders have run for all sorts of federal positions, won them, and a bunch of them have continued to hold them. These contenders are and have been Senators and US Representatives and have had fair experience in that level of government. Others have been Governors of their states. Governor might not be a federal-level position, but it's just as similar to the role of President in that it's the top state-level executive branch position. That's a significant and likely good experience to have under your belt when attempting to prove yourself able to lead the most powerful nation in the world.

Continue reading Why we should avoid President Giulinai...

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