Atomictumor

I know everybody important’s already talked about it, and that I should keep my fool mouth shut, but how the hell is a report indicating that the war in Iraq is actually increasing terrorism a suprise?

Anybody suprised by this news, or even amazed by this news, needs to just stop paying attention. Thank you, your services are no longer required in this republic.  Take your consolatory purple kool aid and line up outside the door.
Its obvious that the war on terror involving Iraq is dumb.  Its not working.  If, as a 9 yr old boy, I grew up in a country overrun by another country for reasons unknown, hearing all the worst news possible about the situation, it wouldn’t take much for me to start thinking about picking up a gun too, and spend the next 20 years or so trying to kill as many people as possible.  Hell, its just like that movie Red Dawn, just without communists.  And a 500 yr old cultural history of warfare.

So whats next?  How do you get people who have nothing to lose to stop trying to kill you?

Well, there are two choices.  Appease them, or ethnically cleanse them.  You can’t sign a “Treaty of Versailles” with unorganized factions of guerrila fighters.

Historically speaking, these kinds of conflicts are resolved by smiting the town, killing the men, and selling the women into slavery.  At least that’s what Alexander found useful at Thebes, and they sure shut up.

Thing is, we’ve had an Enlightenment and about a century or two of humanistic learning that separates us from those people.  Doing that would be barbaric, and I think a large part of the population are not interested in murdering innocents, no matter how many of our innocents get murdered.

So, the logical answer, as I see it, is to appease them.  Convince that to the guys in power, tho…

An award-winning art teacher in Texas by the name of Sydney McGee was recently fired because some kids on a school-sponsored field trip saw a nekkid statue.

Ms. McGee had worked as an art teacher for 28 years. She was such an excellent art teacher at the Fisher Elementary School that parents moved there just so their children could be involved in her arts program.

In April she took 89 5th-graders to an art museum in Dallas, a field trip not only approved but encouraged by the school’s principal.

Apparently when the kids got home, some of them told their parents about the statue and feathers got ruffled.  Even though parents had to give written consent for their children to attend the field trip, even though the principal approved it, it’s the teacher’s fault that the children are too fragile to see some boobs or a penis.

It’s a damn shame.

“I don’t see how this happened” - David Bradshaw, immediately after the vote 

The hotel development in Woodland was voted down last night in 4-3, with Bradshaw, Dunlap, and Miller voting in favor of the development in a crowded meeting chock full of Woodland denizens itching to give the council a piece of their mind, or something.

We, as usual, covered a lot of the thing live in the shoutbox at the ‘Tumor, (I say we, but I was in class, so…), and I’m not interested in running through a play by play, but just to drop a few thoughts.  The play by play, I’m sure, will appear in the usual places, as well as a large amount of commentary.

I didn’t have a pony in the Woodland thing.  I don’t live in Woodland, and I don’t drive through Woodland, and I’m sure that while its a fine neighborhood, if a hotels going up, it has to go somewhere, and that place made as much sense as any to me.  Except that it was wedged next to a cemetery, which would have provided somewhat of a interesting view (”Come to Oak Ridge, and see our lovely cemeteries!”).  Anyway, I don’t doubt that Oak Ridge needs more hotel space, particularly ‘nicer’ hotel space for those big shots that head out to the labs and local businesses.  Furthermore, I think Patel was probably sincere in his intentions to make the thing as unobstrusive as possible while still making money.  The fact that he’s a resident carries a lot of water with me.

Bottom line is, its over, and I didn’t really care either way.

What gets me, tho, is that the council caved.  We saw two editorials written by council members (who, admittedly, were two of the three votes for the project), and as the council completely ignored citizen complaints in the spring over the school budget fiasco, I expected them to blaze ahead with this project.

The swing votes here, Mosby and Abbatello, are what I wonder about… what changed their minds?

He is not a number!  He is a free man!

The assignment: To change something’s texture; to make it out of something it shouldn’t be made out of.

The finished product:

A gingerbread house made out of cardboard, extra coarse sandpaper, caulk (for icing), wire caps for gumdrops, a hinge for a door, biscuit shims for shingles and vent filters for snow. If there had been more than two (event-filled) days to work on it, the craftsmanship would have been better.
Yum!