Kids say the darndest things!

C, getting ready to go to school with Dad on a cold December day:

"Look, Daddy. You have gloves on. That means you have five fingers. I have mittens on. That means I have one thumb and a whole pack of fingers."

- C (age five)

The worm turns...

"Potentially, the techniques could one day be adapted for human use, with doctors perhaps being able to offer parents pre-natal tests to determine the likely sexuality of offspring or a hormonal treatment to change the orientation of a child.

Roselli has said he would be “uncomfortable” about parents choosing sexuality, but argues that it is up to policy makers to legislate on questions of ethics."

Article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2524408,00.html

It seems that the same guys for the "right" of people to have an abortion are against the idea of parents choosing the sexuality of their child. Looks like this one hit a little close to home.

Xan Shui,
Philosophic Phanthropist, Honest Man

Political Leanings

Got into a great discussion the other day on politics, so decided to just state what I believe about life, the universe, and everything:

- God exists and created the universe.
- All human beings are animals and we have all evolved from other life forms just like every other animal. And this has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not there is a God.
- Guns aren't evil. Machine guns, however, are overkill and should be illegal.
- Life is beautiful and we don't have the right to take it away (even from criminals or unborn babies) for any reason.
- Pregnancy is a CHOICE. If the mother's life is in danger because of a child she carries then we should allow it to get close enough to term to save it.
- Government in the U.S. is too big, costs too much and knows way too much about me.
- The greatest thing we can do for world peace is to create a strong middle class all over the world.
- People should be required to take responsibility for their lives. People should have to give something back to society (work in some way) for what they want and need.
- Once people have earned something it should remain theirs.
- We need to improve our educational system in order to compete with other countries.
- Wars are too expensive. Our military should only be used to take countries who threaten us down and not to rebuild them. The U.N.'s should own rebuilding them if needed.
- The left is demonizing President Bush as unfairly as the right demonized Bill Clinton.
- There are too many people in this world not to use birth control.
- People have the right to be gay but marriage is a religious tradition that we shouldn't alter to handle homosexuality any more than we should alter it to handle more than two partners.
- The health and tax benefits associated with married people should be available to any two adult people living together (whether they're fucking each other or not) and all their dependents living with them.
- The U.S. tax code is too complex and should be simplified. We should tax consumption not wealth.
- In a sexual relationship, in is unfair to require monogomy from your partner without taking responsibility for the sexual happiness of that partner.
- Americans are in for a very rude awakening when India and China get their economies moving. However, we're in a better position to recover from losing our dominate status in the world than Europe. Africa will be pulled out of the third-world by China and India.
- In 2050 radical Islam will have about as much influence as the KKK.
- Any given woman and man are not equal in terms of their capabilities - but neither are any two given men or any two women.
- Buffalo chicken wings from BW-3 are the single greatest cullinary achievement the world has ever known.

That's it for now!

Saddamned

So I understand that he was evil. And I understand he was a threat to not just his own people. I understand that he was convicted of killing about 150 people and i'm more than 150% sure that there was much more beyond that. His children were child-raping animals and he let it be that way. I understand that if we hadn't intervened he and his own would still be raping children and causing unrest in the region and I believe that we thought we needed to do what we did when we did it - not just because Bush says so, but because the legislature overwhelmingly supported it.

He wasn't human - he was an animal who truly deserved death. But, in the end, honestly, we became less human for giving it to him. Not only that, we gave him the honor his pathetic sons did not have.

But I guess such is our lot in the shadow of tyrants; victims too.

Xan Shui
Philosophic Philanthropist, Honest Man

Dead.

My Way News - Iraqi TV Says Saddam Hussein Executed: "It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader"

We're no better.

Xan Shui
Philosophic Philanthropist, Honest Man

In the news...

BREITBART.COM - Final Plans Made for Saddam's Execution: "'The Americans want him to be hanged respectfully,' al-Nueimi said. If Saddam is humiliated publicly or his corpse ill-treated 'that could cause an uprising and the Americans would be blamed,' he said."

So we'll execute someone for executing people...BRILLIANT!

Xan Shui,
Philosophic Philanthropist, Honst Man

Alembic

Main Entry: alem·bic
Pronunciation: &-'lem-bik
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French & Medieval Latin; Middle French alambic & Medieval Latin alembicum, from Arabic al-anbIq, from al the + anbIq still, from Late Greek ambik-, ambix alembic, from Greek, cap of a still
1 : an apparatus used in distillation
2 : something that refines or transmutes as if by distillation (philosophy...filtered through the alembic of Plato's mind -- B. T. Shropshire)

The mind's alembic...

Ideal Beauty

"Ideal beauty is not the mind's creation: it is real beauty, refined and purified in the mind's alembic, from the alloy which always more or less accompanies it in our mixed and imperfect nature. But still the gold exists in a very ample degree. To expect too much is a disease in the expectant, for which human nature is not responsible; and, in the common name of humanity, I protest against these false and mischievous ravings. To rail against humanity for not being abstract perfection, and against human love for not realising all the splendid visions of the poets of chivalry, is to rail at the summer for not being all sunshine, and at the rose for not being always in bloom." . . . .
"But to make ideal beauty the shadow in the water, and, like the dog in the fable, to throw away the substance in catching at the shadow, is scarcely the characteristic of wisdom, whatever it may be of genius."

---Mr Hilary, in Nightmare Abbey, Chap. XI.

Kids say the darndest things!

C, helping us decorate our Christmas tree, holding up a perfectly spherical ornament with a white ribbon tie hanging over its side:

"Daddy, can I help with the bombs?"

- C, age five

2nd highest victory margin in history...

Yes.

What was that huge sighing sound?

My Way - Sports News: "Southern California and Michigan will meet New Year's Day in the granddaddy of 'em all, with each playing in the game for the third time in four years."

Let the record show that Lloyd Carr's job was saved by one one-hundredth of a BCS point!

Xan Shui,
Philosophic Philanthropist, Honest Man