apple juice

What Is it Good For?

The blatant war-mongering followed immediately by profiteering inevitably raise questions about the real reasons American men and women have been fighting and dying in Iraq. President Bush told us the war was about weapons of mass destruction and the need to get rid of the degenerate Saddam. There was also talk about democracy taking root in Iraq and spreading like spring flowers throughout the Arab world.

The two things that were never openly discussed, that never became part of the national conversation, were oil and money. Those crucial topics were left to the major behind-the-scenes operators, many of whom are now cashing in.

Editorial: Bush should lean on Israel

This oped piece in the Star Tribune today pretty much nails it:

But the greatest opportunity lies not in changing the behavior of potential foes but forcefully nudging friends, namely Israel, to do what needs to be done — and that’s to restart a constructive process that will bring peace to Jewish and Palestinian states. No single event would better protect American shores from terrorist threats in the long run.

I’m convinced that the large majority of our problems in the middle east stem from our support of Israel and it’s actions (through our failure to criticize Israel for anything it does). If we can force Israel and Palestine to establish a sustainable peace, it would go a long way towards stability in the world.

A Prayer For George Dubya / What might the universe have to say to Shrub right now? Hint: It ain’t exactly fan mail

Problem is, Jesus is a little piqued. He’s right here with me, right now, and he’s drumming his fingers on the table, eyes aflame. He has a question: “Just what in the heck do you think you’re doing in my dad’s name? Did you miss the part about ‘Thou shalt not kill?’ You dare invoke me and my father and call yourself a forgiving Christian and yet you stomp around the globe like you own it?” Christ, he is not happy.

Way to go Doug! Reports from Doug on his latest races:

Podium Time! – I am stoked to report I landed my first podium of my pro career last Friday at the Sea Otter Classic! It was the second stage of the race, the fatboy crit, and I sprinted to third. My other results were good as well, until the final stage, where I bonked worse than ever. I was also 6th at the Tour of the Canyonlands, after a crash set me back a bunch. So here’s the story…

Detailed reports on doug’s page… go have a look!

Continuing on my friends and roommates thread from yesterday two days ago, I got an email from my friend Justin Modroo yesterday saying I should tune in to Fox Sports Net May 7th, he was going to be on TV!

Justin finished up the competition in second place, after taking the top spot on the first day:

MT. CRESTED BUTTE, CO (March 28, 2003) Freeskiing “part-timer” Justin Modroo and top World Tour star Ingrid Backstrom took the top positions today at the 12th Annual SAAB U.S. Extreme Freeskiing Championships. They both impressed judges with near-perfect form, aggression, speed and control on the challenging Staircase run in Crested Butte’s Extreme Limits area. Staircase is a narrow, technical gladed run with rocks, cliff bands, 600 feet of vertical and an average 40 degree pitch. The venue required precision technique through thick trees and difficult springtime snow pack and powder conditions. Heated competition shaved the field to thirty men, fifteen women and ten juniors including two girls.

Congratulations Justin! I’ll be watching!

Sonja and I watched a movie last week, recommended by my sister, called The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat).

I knew nothing about the movie as we were settling in to watch, but it turned out to be one of those movies you’ll want to learn everything about:

Igloolik is a community of 1200 people located on a small island in the north Baffin region of the Canadian Arctic with archeological evidence of 4000 years of continuous habitation. Throughout these millennia, with no written language, untold numbers of nomadic Inuit renewed their culture and traditional knowledge for every generation entirely through storytelling.

Our film Atanarjuat is part of this continuous stream of oral history carried forward into the new millennium through a marriage of Inuit storytelling skills and new technology.

The movie tells the story of an Inuit legend. It written and directed by Inuit people, and all the actors were Inuit. Obviously they aren’t speaking english, but luckily there are subtitles.

I think that’s all I’m going to say. Oh, and I’m such a geek, that about 30 seconds into it, I proclaimed.. “This was shot digitally!” I received the quizzical look from Sonja, but my internet research later proved me correct. The digital ‘film’ works wonderfully in this case and gives a feel of being right there, seeing it all happen in front of you.

A topic that just blows my mind: Parallel Universes

Observers living in Level I parallel universes experience the same laws of physics as we do but with different initial conditions. According to current theories, processes early in the big bang spread matter around with a degree of randomness, generating all possible arrangements with nonzero probability. Cosmologists assume that our universe, with an almost uniform distribution of matter and initial density fluctuations of one part in 100,000, is a fairly typical one (at least among those that contain observers). That assumption underlies the estimate that your closest identical copy is 10 to the 10²⁸ meters away. About 10 to the 10⁹² meters away, there should be a sphere of radius 100 light-years identical to the one centered here, so all perceptions that we have during the next century will be identical to those of our counterparts over there. About 10 to the 10¹¹⁸ meters away should be an entire Hubble volume identical to ours.

Way too long to read at work, I’m going to print it out tonight, and pretend I understand it.