The pull out method (maybe its time to cum on Iraqs ass)

YEEEE HAW

So, you may or may not have heard about the debate in the House Of Representatives last week about whether we should pull out of Iraq or not. Basically, rep. Murtha from Pennsylvania, a hawkish Vietnam veteran democrat, who is well respected by many republicans, called for a withdrawl of troops from Iraq starting immediately and completing in 6 months or so, but being sure to do it in a safe and responsible manner. He said that we had become the enemies to the Iraqi people and that they needed to continue to build and strengthen their democracy themselves. Then, House republicans introduced a bill that would make it the "Sense of the house" that we should pull out immediately (without makign any provisions for safety of our troops during the pull out). Basically, it was a bastardized version of Murtha's statements made essentially to put democrats in the uncomfortable position of having to vote against it. I listened to teh debates over this on CSPAN radio, and man, I never knew the House of Representatives could acually be exciting... they were all yelling at each other, and one representative even got stripped of speaking rights for the day for calling Murtha a coward... exciting stuff. Anyway, I think it got voted down nearly unanimously, but I think it was made pretty clear that it was all a stunt to make democrats look bad and really was a travesty to what should be a real serious debate, and not a political stunt.

Well, apparently, the Iraqi provisional government has also decided that we should leave. They had a conference and issued a statement that called for a pullout timetable, and condemned terrorism, but defined it only as acts against civilians or infastrucure, acknowledging the right of resistance against American troops. Now, there were representatives from all the major groups in Iraq, so this is a compromise between the radical groups and the ones who are more open to our prescence, but still, we have done what we can, and set up a democratic government.... They have the right to kick us out, and we have to listen to them, otherwise we appear to not recognize the sovreignty and legitimacy of a government that we created, which kinda defeats teh purpose of what we were doing there in the first place. And really, at some point the government has to stand on its own legs and do its own thing, not be our bastard stepchild. In addition, Colin Powell and Paul Bremer have both said that if the Iraqis want us out, we'll leave. Well, it sounds like they do.

You can say all you want that we need to "stay the course" or that pulling out now lets the terrorists win, but thats not really our problem. We've done our job. We've created a decent government, and restored the country to a reasonable level of peace. But they need to finish building their democracy on their own. They need their own hand in this if they are going to respect their own government, and have faith in it. There might even need to be blood spilt by Iraqis against Iraqis. The path of our country from its founding to where it is today was not easy, but we did it ourselves. We certainly know better than the Iraqis how to run a democracy... we live in one (or so they tell us). But its better for them to make their own mistakes and decide on the best way to govern themselves than for us to tell them what to do... even if in the end it comes out the same. We certainly should stick around in some capacity (assuming they want us to) to help train their military and offer addvice, but we should be in a supporting role, and not running the show. If for no other reason than that they are a sovreign nation, and once their army is strong enough, they have every right in the world to kick us out by force (of course we'd kick their asses, so it would be pointless). I dont think this is about whether we should be there in the firstplace any more, or whether the prewar intelligence was build on lies and mistakes, Its about what is best to do right now given where we find ourselves, and the current state of things indicates strongly that at the very least, there should be serious discussion about this and we shouldnt shy away from it saying that any such discussion emboldens the enemy or is unpatriotic, cuz that complete BS.

I certainly dont know what the situation is like over there, and maybe I'm full of crap, But I think we could pull out soon and claim victory. We've instated a government, and the whole terrorism reason for being there is debatable at least, but lets at least discuss it, and figure out how we can make Iraq a better place, bring our soldiers back home and save them from more blood shed, and keep us safe at home as well. God knows we didnt debate this openly enough before going in... but its better late than never.

Cowbell III: Requiem for a bad joke

Last nogth I went to yet another concert, the final in the fall of many concerts. I went to see Bright Eyes at Constitution hall. Since I'm pretty sure that no one who would read this gives a damn about bright eyes, I will try to be brief. Bright eyes, for those who do not know, is kinda indy-folk-alternative-ish music, that has been descibed as kinda like Bob Dylan, but I dont really think the association is that great. Its basically a lot of stream of conscious lyrics, and good, mostly acoustic, but also some electronic music. I think its really good, but I guess thats just me. Anyway I got there afetr the first opening band (The Magic Numbers), and before the second (Feist). Feist was OK... they're like a chick from Canada with a really good voice who can play pretty good guitar, and then a backing band. Good, but I'm not rushing out to buy the CD... She reminded me of a mix between Bjork (where the hells the umlout key?) and PJ Harvey(at least the one song by her I know). Bright eyes was awesome.. they had like 7 people on stage, playing everything from an orchestral harp, to a Dobro guitar, to Timpanis, to synthesizers.... definately an eclectic mix. Since they had already come to town after their last release (actually two albums released at the same time), they played stuff from all their albums instead of mostly the recent ones, which was cool. They played a lot of old stuff, a brand new song, and only a few off the new CDs. The singer, and songwriter, Conner Oberst, kept saying that we were in the buildign where the constitution was signed, which was patently false... Im not sure if he was joking or serious, but at one point he said, "we're going to Philly tomorrow... maybe it was signed there... Or in New York. I know it was near New York, or a few hundred miles from there", so I think he was fucking around.... The girls next to me apparently didnt realize this and were like "Oh my God, was it really signed here? Thats awesome". Stupid bitches. The crowd was largly college kids, with their emo haircuts and copious piercings, which made me feel old and unpierced. Of course I was there alone, so I felt like a loser. The worst is when its not a sold out show and you have an assigned seat, so it obvious that you are alone, cuz there is noone next to you. Dumbass friends not liking the same music I do and making me go alone.... There unfortunately was no cowbell, so the title of this post is pretty pointless, but I figured I have a theme going, I might as well keep it. Im not going to list all the good songs, cuz no one cares, but they did play "When The President Talks to God" which is a pretty harsh critisism of President bush and got a huge reaction. He was like "I Havent played this for a while so I might mess it up, but Ill play it tonite and hopefull the asshole sleeping across the street will have some bad dreams". They also played a few other politically driven songs, the reactions to which made it pretty clear what the general political tendencies of the audience were... All in all a very good concert. I give it a 5 out of 5 for awesometude. and a 0 out of 5 for cowbellosity. However, it does receive a 5 out of 5 for timpaniness, harposity, dobroness, and politicalness, all of which make up for the lacking cowbell.

Many of you have complained about my "Now Playing" dealie. I tried putting it in teh header at first, but it looked bad if the title was short. With a short title, it looks really good in teh left column. With a long title it does not. probabaly with a long title it would look great in the header. I just cant win. Also, I think there is somethign up with it since I am not currently listening to Bach. I think the daemon that updates it must not have been started automatically when I rebooted... I'll have to look at that, but i'm not at my computer now.

intelligent decline

Last week there were two important battles regarding the issue of Intelligent Design versus evolution. In Kansas, the school board voted 6-4 to include Intelligent Design in public school science classes. In Dover PA however, the proponents of Intelligent Design were voted out of the school board. Since I have thought about and discussed this issue a lot, it seems like a good time to discuss it where the same few people who I have already talked to can read it again and get no new information.

First, I have no problem with the idea of intelligent design per se. I have often wondered( escpecially in my delusional, more religious years, but also to this day), why life exists, and how it came to exist out of non-living components way back when. This is a very valid question that spans metaphysics, philosophy, and religion, among other areas, but it is not science. You see, Science attempts to explain how things happen, and what laws explain the physical phenomenom that we see in the universe. We have laws of physics, which probabaly are not perfect, and in some cases we know to be innacurate, but in most cases they accurately explain what we can observe so we consider them to be true. Science is a dynamic field. As we learn more, we ammend or overrule previous theories and then move on. Is Evolution a perfect theory? Of course not. But all the evidence that we have collected indicates that it is the most viable one that has yet been proposed. We have even seen evolution occur over very short periods of time, and have been able to create some of the building blocks of life from the basic components of the primordial stew. There is no other empirical theory of how life came to exist that has all that going for it.

Biology, as with all sciences, is a study of the HOW, not the WHY of the physical universe. It studies the interactions and rules that lead to a particular outcome and allows us to explain what we can observe, and predict what we will observe. It does not attempt to apply motives to the rules it proposes and simply says that they exist. Intelligent Design seems at least on the surface to simply ask people "Why?". All of this evolution is fine and dandy, but its too complicated to occur by chance. Therefore, let's propose a reason why this all came to exist. Who/what is driving evolution? All of these are fine things to ask, and even in a biology class, I have no problem with a teacher saying:

"Evolution is a theory that has a lot of empirical evidence and is backed up by the vast majority of scientists, but no one know why evolution works the way it does. Each individual is free to come up with their own personal opinions on why life has evolved as it has, or whether they believe that evolution is a sound theory that reconciles with their own religious beliefs. After all, that is what science is about, not simply accepting an explanation, but studying it and proving to yourself that it is true. If you do not believe the theories that we will discuss in this class, then perhaps you would enjoy taking a philosophy or comparitive religion class. But this is a science class and we will only discuss science."

But the talk of Intelligent Design should end there. Science is science, and religion is a different animal. People talk about "Hearing both sides". Well the other side of science is not religion. it would be like discussing string theory in sunday school. They are different topics. An athiest can go to church and learn all about God and Jesus and not really believe it, but at least accept it as a possible reality or entertaining story. Why can't a religious kid do the same in a biology class? To accept the literal biblical explanation is to throw out science all together, and therefore it makes no sense to try and mix the two. That is not to say that religion and science are mutually exclusive. They are not if you are willing to interpret religion in a scientific context. If you can read "7 days" as Billions of years. I have to talked people who believe strongly in both christianity and evolution and have no problem reconciling the two.

It is pretty clear that intelligent design is just an in to put Christian creationism in the biology classroom, and not just to propose another scientific explanation. Oposing scientific explanations are good for progress as they drive people to disprove each other and have friendly, accademic, battles over them. But it is dangerous to sell something that is decidly not a scientific theory (and in fact under its layers of spin tries ot discredit the idea of science all together) as an oposing theory.

This is all pretty incoherent babbling, especially since I wrote most of it a week ago and just now got around to finishing it. But this is important. We are the richest, most poserful country in the world, and yet our children are being out smarted by those in countries with much less resources. Instead of giving kids the best education we can, we are underpayign teachers and arguing over whether or not we should teach the scientific standards that they will need to compete with, and work beside, those who are schooled in other countries.

Alright, honestly, I've lost the motivation I had when I started this and dont feel like trying to work in the other points I had.

attack of the yak

A few technological breakthroughs to mention. First, if you look to the left margin of this blog, you will see a image showing what the currently playing (or last played) song on my computer is, as well as a link to my current playlist. I could also put up a link to a page to contorl the music on my computer, but I dont want to make it TOO easy for someone to play Hootie and the Blowfish on my computer at inopportune times. It needs to be a challenge. I doubt anyone really cares what I am listening to at any particular time, but it seemed like a cool feature of the music player I use (Amarok), so I dont care that you dont care.

Also, I have finally bought an internet domain www.fivepercentyak.com . It is hosted on my machine at home, so it may sporatically go down, or be slowed down by my copious porno viewing hogging all the bandwidth, but it is better than having to use an IP address to get to my pictures. Currently it is just links to peoples blogs and my picture site on the homepage, but I plan to hone my web site development skills on making something cooler.

Finally, we have figured out how to open up a beer keg so that we can refill it. So once we brew more homebrewed beer, we can put it in a keg and people will think we are cool. I also bought new equipment and supplies and a book on brewing (there is a cool homebrew supply shop in Columbia), so we can now brew larger quantities of better beer than we could with the crappy Mr. Beer kit. Eventually, we can hopefully brew more interesting craft beers and sell them. Then we can take over the world. MWaaaaaa hahahaha. ahem... ..... .... The next step is to actually make beer and eventually to get/make/steal a kegerator. a kegerator is a refridgerator that you can put a keg in and has a tap on the top. It also generally contains a CO2 tank so that you dont have to pump it to pressurize the beer. you can buy one for a few hundred bucks or buy a kit to convert a normal mini fridge. Oh, I found out when opening the kegs, that it hurts to get stabbed with a screw driver and that six month old skunky keg beer tastes like vinegar.... who knew?

cowbell redux: part II (the sequel)

So, wednesday Ducore, Kevin, Laurel, and I all went to see Nine Inch Nails and Queens Of The Stone Age at MCI center. The concert was freaking awesome. But I know the question on everyones mind is: "was there enough cowbell?" . I will get to that all in good time.

Ducore and I got to the MCI center at about 7 (which is when the concert supposedly started). We had Kevin's extra tucket with us and we were supposed to sell it for him since he was getting there later. So, being the good little law-abiding citizens that Ducore and I are, we approached the police officers standign on the corner with drug/bomb sniffing dogs and asked how we could legally go about selling a ticket. They said that there was no legal way to do it. I said that we were goign to sell it for teh face value, so it wouldnt really be scalping, and they said, basically "Go away", with a smirk on his face. Ducore maintains that the cop was just annoyed with us, but I'm pretty sure he was just saying "why the hell would you tell us that you are about to break the law? Everyone else is doing it, just get the hell away from us so we cant do anything about it". Gotta love cops who turn the other cheek. Anyway, we ended up selling the $50 ticket to some guy for $20, and I'm pretty sure he resold it for a lot more.

We finally found the right door to go into for floor seats and got in in time to see the end of the opening band, Death From Above 1979. They were kind of interesting, with only a drummer and bassist. I wouldnt buy their CD, but they were kinda cool to see live. I was impressed at the bass work as he managed to get a pretty high melody going. I dont know whether he was using special pickups, higher strings, an effects box, or I just under estimate the range of a four string bass. Anyway, the real selling point of their set was the fact that one of their songs featured a nice cowbell part. They actually used two tones of cowbell, so I think that is worth twice the credit.

Queens of the stone age was pretty good, although I have seen them twice before and therefore and was not incredibly excited to see them again. However, their new CD is pretty good, so seeing them play that stuff was cool. I especially liked "Burn the Witch" which is one of the more infectious songs on the album. Unfortunatly they did not play "Feel good hit of the Summer" which they have played every other time I've seen them and is a good crowd pleasing song. Any song thats about drugs is gonna get the audience's attention. They did play "Little Sister" which satiated my need for cowbell. It was a good set, but I kinda wanted them to hurry up so that Nine Inch Nails could come on.

Nine Inch Nails came on behind a sheer fabric curtain, which was actually pretty cool. They removed it and the brought it back throughout the show. The stage setup was probabaly the most intricate I have ever seen. They had these dealies that were like bundles of random height parallel columns protruding from the floor and ceiling like staligtites/mites which were covered with some sort of digital LED array or something, so that images and animations could displayed on them. They also displayed images on teh backdrop behind the band and on the sheer curtain when it was down. I dotn remember the setlist very well, but they played a lot from the new ablum as well as a pretty good mix of older stuff. They didnt play much from "The Fragile", which disapointed me a bit. I wished I had listened to their older stuff before teh concert, because some songs I recognized, but did not know the words to because I havent listened to them in a while. I think the highlight was "Right where it belongs" which was palyed with the curtain down and a nice nihilistic video projected on it complete with animals eating each other, flowers decaying, shit getting blown up, and a soldier with a gun to a girls head. There was a lot of war footage, and a shot of president Bush. Of course at this image, the growd erupted in a chorus of boos and "Fuck You"s. "Hurt" was of course awesome as well. The heavier songs like "Head like a hole" and "Sin" were great as well, and it caused the crowd to be proabbaly more energized than any other concert I've been to. It's pretty amazing that NIN can do both soft and heavy songs so well. And it wasnt like other concerts I've been to where everyone gets bored during the slow songs. Oh, another cool thing about the setup was that at one point Trent Reznor took his mike stand and swung it at the curtain in form of him just as an image of breaking class was displayed and the curtain was pulled up, like he had broken though it. That was cool. Throughout the concert I was tryign to figure out who Reznor reminded me of with his new buzzed haircut. The next day I realized it was Jack Johnson. I probabaly shouldnt tell taht to Trent if I meet him though, cuz that guy is built. Although if I were to get pummeled by anyone, he'd probabaly be on my list of people to do it. "what happened to your face Tim?" "Oh, Trent Reznor beat my face in with a pipe... isnt that awesome?". Anyway, thats about all I have. The concert was freaking awesome, and well worth my money. I would give it 3 cowbells out of 5 for cowbellosity, and 5 out of 5 for kickassitudeness.