Happy Birthday, Judge!

I haven't seen it, but I think I know some one who has it.  I wasn't sure if I'd like it, but I'll give it a shot!

rofl, Demo.


Cat, I know what you're saying, but there's a difference between sleezy and the guy I met.  In anycase, what are you doing at a bar hanging out with sleezy men?

I think I could be lumped into that group, Vespertine.  I drink coffee all day long, no matter how hot it is.  In my defense though, they keep it extremely cold where I work at.

Visit the Mother/Baby Unit of your closest hospital.
Visit the ER while you're there.


It's there. We just all seem to label it differently; because we like it, we're comfortable with it. So we make those "good" things "normal".

12, that's not really magical.  We say it is, but every animal on the planet does the same thing in one form or another.  Something magical would be outside the natural order of things.  My dad once told me he'd seen another man heal a horse in a matter of days of something that should have killed the horse.  Easily explained as medical, but for two things.  One, my dad is an old horseman and if he says the horse will die, it'll die.  Two, they had no anti-venom, and there's not much else you can medically do for a snakebite that old.  Despite that, between one day and the next, an animal that should have been dead became fine.  Well, I guess we attributed that one to the power of prayer.  hmm, I wonder how many others were attributed to prayer that I've seen.

Does the belief in magic necessarily preclude faith in God, or visa versa?  I know it's an odd question, but I'm not accustomed to sitting
around like I have been the past week or so.  It's driving me a little nuts, so I guess I just started thinking.  Being a Christian, though not necessarily a devout nor a typical one, I believe strongly in my God.  The Church tells us that magic is the domain of Lucifer and simply charlatan tricks for the most part.  I'm willing to accept the likeliness of that, however I've been in the world for a number of years now. 

In my various trips here and there in the world, I've bumped into some pretty weird stuff.  I've seen dark things in corners that had nothing to do with any cast shadow, people that you could tell at first glance were darker than any mere absence of light, and I've also seen the flip-side in things like injured animals and people nursed back to health when there had been no hope before.

The good stuff can easily be explained by the grave of God, of course.  It's the darker stuff that has no explanation in doctrine.
So, that's the background to my thought, of which I truly have no firm opinion.

I believe that the Law of Conservation of Mass and Energy is veritas universalis in that the concept applies to all things.  So,
it doesn't make sense that dark magic would exist without light to balance it.  So does God grant certain people abilities that extend beyond the normal, or is that just the stuff of comic books and fantasy novels?

I was just curious what you folks thought.

As cool as I think BizB is, I'm a coffee-guy.  Of course, that doesn't rule out tea on a cold day...  that doesn't really answer the question, does it?  Oh well.  :p

I won't pretend to know much about cars.  The only experience I really had with them was back when I was a kid on the ranch, and even then it was diesels.  These days it's motorcycle or walk, but an engine's an engine, I guess.  Chris, it really sounds like you got a bum deal.  Did you know the guy you bought it from?  If one of my bikes started having those kinds of problems and I'd bought it from a dealer, I'd already be there in his office letting him know about it.

Howdy, Demo.  I see you're still hanging around.

Well, things wear out with use, you know?

Awesome, Detta!  You look happy in that pic, and I'm tickled for you.

Here's my contributions:

Me all gussied up...


Me with the wife...


Me at my farewell luncheon with several friends...

I'd like to quote the article in order to point a few things out, if I could:

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

True, but the article implies that it was citizens of the US monitored, which isn't true.  So if you're watching some one in Afganistan and they move to the US, in the past you had to stop monitoring them long enough to get a warrant, but not any more.  That pause as they entered the US was ample time for them to disappear.  Also, if they made any calls back to "base" those calls could not be tapped because they were coming from inside the US.  Neither of which violates the rights of actual citizens, and in the rare case of accidental targeting of citizens, anything gained from it was destroyed(to the best of my knowledge).

The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval represents a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.

Also true, but it implies that it's because agents are concerned these actions are illegal.  That's true to an extent, but NSA is very concerned with the idea that rights may accidentally be violated, so they work really hard to make sure it doesn't happen.  This includes a constant questioning if what they're doing is legal or not.  It's not specific to this debate, but simply something that's on-going in order to not cross a line that we(as citizens of the US) would not want some one crossing on us.

Mostly, the article wasn't bad.  At least it mentioned there was another side to the arguement.  My problems with it was the lack of actual evidence or anything concrete.  Most of their "evidence" was centered around some anonymous officials and several unnamed senior officials of some type or another.  Okay, so some folks believe there may be a problem, that makes sense.  Then when they ask the administration about it, or any one of several public figures, they all refuse to comment.   This is some how proof that there is a problem?  Okay, maybe, but it's also just as likely they don't want to discuss it because it's classified.

The article also minimized the role the FBI plays in stuff like this.  When NSA has proof that a US citizen has engaged in illegal activity, they hand it over to the FBI who then gets a court order to investigate before going after them.  Even with foreign elements inside the US, I'm pretty sure they always get handed off to the FBI once they've obtained the warrant to monitor.

That's about all I could find in your article, Crystalmonkey.  It was a decent read, but it was all opinion and unsubstantiated claims, and little fact.  I'm not dead set on my opinion in this specific matter, but I know the laws and regs that govern how NSA collects, and everything I've ever seen was perfectly legal and not in conflict with the Constitution.  I've also seen the pains folks go through in order to ensure the rights of US people are upheld.  I've yet to see any real evidence that any rights have been violated or stepped on.  All I've ever seen folks talk about is the fear it might happen, and then assume that because they fear it, it must be real.  In fact, the only really legitimate arguements I've ever seen against stuff like the Patriot Act, and such, wasn't even over the "warrantless wiretap" compaint but something completely unrelated.  I think it was made by Daria over at HN, in fact and I was really impressed by it.  I'll try to find it again and link it so you can see one of the times I've changed my opinion. 

Ah.  I knew it couldn't be real Karma...  Mine's in the positives.


btw, happy birthday, CrystalMonkey.