zen.org Communal Weblog

More times than I can count, I’ve seen (mostly) ladies sitting in their airplane seat, relaxing not with a book or music or a movie, but instead a nice bit of knitting. To run through the rules: no Swiss Cards, no scissors, no pocket knives, but knitting needles are okay? For the paranoid, they’d be able to get through your eye and into your brain even easier than the now-plastic knives they give you for your safety while dining. But at least our in-bred fear of every object that exists in an airplane cabin hasn’t reached too much hysteria just yet. Umm…it hasn’t, right?

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee has a great description of this sort of thing from the perspective of the needle-weilding terrorist and their 14″ aluminum weapons of minimal destruction. My favorite part of her story is towards the end, where you see that if she’d wanted to, she could seemingly have socially engineered herself right into the damn cockpit. 🙂

A recent patent issued by the US Patent Office is for—get ready—the design and creation of a warp drive (the file’s a PDF). Yes, the one on Star Trek.

A really great op-ed piece written by President Jimmy Carter explains how he believes this isn’t the real America any more. He describes horrible transformations taking place in the government, evidenced by a variety of steps the United States has taken that are in sharp contrast to its past views on how to do things. One particular part of what he wrote really struck me:

Members of Congress have increased their own pay by $30,000 per year since freezing the minimum wage at $5.15 per hour (the lowest among industrialized nations).

Yesterday’s local elections ousted the school board members that required intelligent-design in Dover, Pennsylvania school’s biology classes. Intelligent-design is not science and should not be tought in any science class, it was almost like passing a law that says π is exactly 3.

Social studies, sure.

U.S. severs most contacts with Syria, officials say / Washington debate reported over idea of ‘regime change’

Dammit. I mean….dammit.

How about *finishing* ONE war before you start more.

And jeez. The article mentions that Syria hasn’t amended their banking laws “to block terrorist financing”. I guess they still are allowed to still finance US stuff tho. At this point, how can the US *not* be considered a terrorist organization?

If this doesn’t make you think that the US gov’t is causing a lot of harm in the world, I don’t know what would…

John W. Dean has put together a great article with the blunt subtitle, “Had he been a Democrat, he’d probably be hiring a criminal attorney.” You’ll really enjoy the rest of it; he starts with:

On Monday, August 22, the Chairman of the Christian Broadcast Network, Marion “Pat” Robertson, proclaimed, on his 700 Club television show, that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez should be murdered.

“We have the ability to take him out,” Robertson continued, “and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don’t need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It’s a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.”

What, Mr Robertson can say this and there’s no outcry, no political storm? Think the reaction would be the same—i.e., none at all—if “Pat Robertson” changed to any name from the Middle East, and “Chavez” was “Blair” ?

Sometimes a little honesty makes people blush.

I cannot believe the disgust I have for the US Government right now.

Magda wants to come to the states, and we’d love for her to visit us. So she’s coming in late summer. We jumped through the hoops to get the forms she needed and photos and the 80 euros for the tourist visa (80 FREAKING EUROS!?). She got an appointment at the embassy. And I went with her, cause if she’s gonna be staying with us, I thought I should be there.

Now, I’ve heard stories about the embassy, but I thought they’d be decent to someone who wanted to come, spend their hard-earned money, and experience the land of milk and honey, then go home and not suck up valuable tax dollars by trying to claim welfare. Apparently, I was wrong.

The clerk who helped us (after we waited 45 minutes after our ‘appointment’) was one of the rudest men I think I have ever come across. He actually said that they needed to assume that everyone who is coming to the states is trying to sneak in and live there. No, he really said that. Basically, since Magda is a student and is young and from Poland (and living in Ireland), he thinks she doesn’t have good enough family ties (FFS, she lives with her dad and brother and boyfriend) and if she was married it would be better. He didn’t talk loud enough to hear him all the time through the bulletproof glass of the counter (after having to go through a security checkpoint to even get into the ‘complex’, including no keys or mobiles, and the security guard checking my travel mug of tea), which was a problem for both Magda and I. Things he didn’t like about Magda:

She was young
She was Polish
Her family situation (ie dad is a carpenter not “someone who works at IBM”)
Unmarried
Student (not working)

I can see how that would be an issue. No, really. But the rudeness, and the attitude, MAN. I just can’t get how ANYONE would want to go to the states after that fun. And then we still have to deal with immigration in Shannon (or whereever she flies from). Argh.

I am embarassed that the US would treat someone that way. No matter who they were. I can now understand why people do what they do. I read recently that the US is like a drunk waving a gun around in a bar. No one’s going to mess with him, but once he passes out or drops the gun, his ass will be handed to him on a platter.

Never before had I thought about revoking my US citizenship. Now, I wonder. I’m disgusted by the comments the man made, and the assumptions.

I got a spam about a training kit (DVD, guide, and audio tape) for how to teach kids in cultures of poverty. Then in big letters in the middle of the message it told me if I ordered it soon it would save me $40, at only $355.00!

A 5-hour expert training session on learning to teach kids in impoverished nations is probably worth the money, but the paradox of spending nearly $400 to figure out how to help those in need cracked me up. Put on top of this how under-funded many schools are, regardless of the country they’re in, and you wonder where the money could come from. Certainly not most teachers’ salaries.