God's Gift
Really not much to say today. The weather is getting nice again which is good. Here is a picture for your viewing pleasure. This is a friends second child. If you look closely he seems to be preparing to give us the finger. Rock on.

JAZZ HANDS!

Who do you love?
Okay, I have an interesting poll for you people out there. Where do you rate this guy on a scale of 1 to 10? I'd like to hear your rationale for your score.

Want some fun? Check out the stuff that Srini has to offer. He's an interesting guy. I've bought a lot of stuff from him over the years.

I have learned a few things today. The first is that the -stan in the Stan countries stands for country belonging to. For example, Afghanistan is the country of the Afghans. Kind of cool right. I'm declaring the USA to now be called Idiotstan.

I also found this cool quote "Quelques arpents de neige" which is alleged to be made by Voltaire. The truth is that it is from Candide and is a comment on the war with the British over French Canada. I think that it is generally thought of as an insult because the implication was that the War wasn't worth the "few acres of snow".

Middle East Hotties
Well today I plan to deviate a bit from complaining. Today I'd like to make notice of the fact that Osama Bin Laden has a hot niece named Wafah living in NY.

She evidently went to Columbia Law and then left the country right before 9/11. Must be a very weird life. Evidently she was trying to maneuver into a music career at some point a la Paris Hilton. Must be nice to be born pretty and rich. I really wonder how crazy her life has changed since her Uncle became famous.

Terrorism
Well, I've been trying to figure out what is happening in Iraq. Things must be nuts over there. We get a small picture with a biased perspective that can't possibly be accurate. Now, we have another kidnapping and video of a hostage begging for his life. This is crazy. Bombs are still going off. Bush now thinks that the fall of Baghdad is similar to the fall of the Berlin wall. What a crock of shit. No one died in the fall of the Berlin wall. He is really crazy. And Rumsfeld now admits ?We don't have an exit strategy, we have a victory strategy." (Source Al Jazeera) Which is great, just great. No point in the US ever planning to leave. I've really had enough of this. I'm running in the next election.


Okay, new quiz. Who is this asshole?

Today he said "I'm not here to discuss the Democrats' agenda." This has got to stop. Friends, Americans, Countrymen! Lend me your ears! We have to stop them from stealing our country. Don't tolerate whitewashing of issues and blatant coverups. They will try to deflect us from the issues but we have to stand up to it. This man inparticular has got to go!

NY Piggies
Okay, this is some chilling stuff.

Jim Dwyer - NY Times

The police in NY deliberately fabricated testimony to implicate peaceful citizens. What a great country 'W' has created. Check out the full article. I'll post more later.

Monday, Tiger and science
Well a beautiful weekend has come and gone. I enjoyed part of it. I missed a large part of Sunday because I couldn't bother cleaning up after my party and left the job to my wife. Real nice I know. I eventually got up but then I got caught by the Master's tourney and Tiger's mastery. I can now say that this Blog has some amazing powers. Only days after being chastised for his slow start Mr. Woods came out victorious. I happily take responsiblity for this. He should pay me something.

Okay, now I've got a vision for my blog. I think that I'll post advice/info about my future job and how I'm preparing. Not that it will be extremely useful but it can't hurt. Here is my first help. This site will allow you to search through the NIH funded research to see what other people are getting grant money to do. Great for thinking out your future plans.

New quote "Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?" Good luck. This one is worth 5 points.

Party Day
Well today is beautiful. Boston is bringing out it's best. Charles and slut..., sorry, Camilla got married. It is a great day as spring is arriving. Protests in Iraq however make for some somber reading. I guess the world isn't perfect yet. Go get 'em Bushy.

For some entertainment I provided a permanent link to a funny video of some chickens being loved as only we know how.


Finally, I think I have some clones but I didn't do the obvious control. That was stupid. It also reminds me of an interesting quote "This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper." Something tells me my career is headed that way. 20 points for getting who and where that quote is from. No partial credit.

My first blog
Okay, I have been inspired by the biggest geek I know to enter the fray. View Galifianakis' blog at Link. I don't know why but somehow he makes me think of another guy. I am just getting started in this blogosphere but I figure I can come up with something interesting to say on a regular basis. We'll see....

Tiger Woods is once again not doing well in the Master's. It is getting to be quite disappointing. What happened, when did he jump the shark? He's still crushing Fuzzy Z but he is in the mid 30s behind by 7 strokes. That is crazy. Maybe it is the whole marriage thing, I don't know, the timing seems to coincide. Maybe having someone else in his life has caused a bit of distraction. I hope he get's his game back. He made golf fun.

It is friday. I'm planning a party tomorrow so hopefully the weather will hold out so that I can do some grilling. One can never tell with this New England spring. I can't wait for California...

China executed a total of 3400 people last year. That is more than the number of people who died on 9/11. It is kind of crazy. I think the US only clocked in at around 60. I wonder what the minority break down in China is like. In the US African Americans rank around 12% of the population but over 40% of death row inmates, a sobering number. For some statistics (although a bit old). There also are a number of inmates with web pages including Mario Flores. He seems to have a typical story if you look at the number of overturned criminal cases. If you can believe it there are actually people out there still in support of the death penalty.

Looking a little deeper the US ranks around 5th in the execution category. This is probably because we have fewer crimes (in general on a national scale) that warrant the death penalty. We also prefer to put people in prison rather than execute them and when we decide to execute it takes forever. If you look at the statistics over 3000 people here in the US on death row.

The real statistic I think has to do with the numbers of people in prison. The numbers are shocking. Nearly half of a percent of our population is in prison. That is 5 for every 1000 people in the US is in prison right now. I wonder what else in our country gives a statistic like that for occupation. The number for African Americans is 3.4% and 1.2% for Hispanics. That is crazy.

Internationally we are way behind in these issues. Only Russia approaches our percentages. China and Saudi Arabia are only at 0.1% while Iran comes in at 0.2%, well below our numbers even though they beat us in executions.

We need to wake up and fix our country!

Our tax dollars at work.