Kicking Hamass...

In case you've been under a rock the last couple of days, Israel has come down on the Palestinian Authority like a million pound shit-hammer...and about damn time too. The poor downtrodden Palestinian refugees are their own worst enemies and have been ever since this bag of crap opened in 1947-48.

Even now we're listening to the reports of the brave Palestinian freedom-fighters who are resisting the Zionist oppressors. Syria has (ahem) chased away a flight of Isreali planes that overflew the Syrian president's house and there are calls from all over the Arab world for the Isreali's to stop and negotiate.

My advice for Isreal: Stomp 'em flat; the pig-fucking cowards kidnapped your soldier inside your borders. Instead of negotiating with the terrorists the Palestinian Authority should have bent over backwards assisting you with recovering your lost sons.

My advice for the Palestinians: Change your tune real quick. If you want to be a nation then act like a nation and not spoiled children. Civilized countries do not support terrorists and uncivilized countries have no basis for complaint when they are bitch-slapped.

The cost of housing in Brownsville

Tomorrow night, Texas is scheduled to execute it's thirteenth inmate this year. There probably won't be any large-scale media outcry for this one as there was for Tookie Williams, although I'm sure the usual anti-capital punishment crowd will show up; but the subject is not one to arouse sympathies. He hasn't been writing books in prison or getting Nobel Prize nominations.

The proposed main-event for tonight is Angel Maturino Resendiz; famous as The Railway Killer. Convicted and sentenced to death in May of 2000 for the grisly murder of Texas doctor Claudia Benton, he has since been linked to a total of sixteen murders. He's not the innocent poster-victim that the anti-death penalty crowd loves. I rather expect that they really wish he'd just have a heart attack or something and die so they don't have to face the embarrassing task of crying realistic tears of sympathy during their television interviews.

So why am I talking about this sick fuck? I could mention he's an illegal alien (that's illegal alien, not undocumented immigrant, guest worker or other sappy phrase... make of that what you will), or I could talk about how he could be tortured to death by the unreliable lethal injection process, I might even blather about a justice system that is swift in exactly the same way as glaciers (if Resendiz dies tonight it will be an exceptionally swift execution).

Nope...tonight I'm gonna jump on the big bull and see if I can hold on...we're going to talk about the death penalty:

For the record, I'm against the death penalty. Not because it's wrong (even though it is), not because it's cruel (even though it is), not because it's unfair (even though it is), but because the death penalty is too damned expensive.

I guess I just don't place an extremely high value on human life except for those directly involved in mine. Maybe it's years of studying history or the desensitization caused by killing countless thousands in video games (I've killed all sorts of virtual people, but the most intensely satisfying is dismembering hordes of faceless stormtroopers in Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast), but mostly it's because I'm a practical person who believes that the value of human life is not infinite. Once you reach that point then the issue can be compared to the old joke:

Man: "Will you have sex with me for a million dollars?"
Woman: "For a million dollars? You bet I will!"
Man: "Will you have sex with me for twenty dollars?"
Woman: "Of course not! What kind of a woman do you think I am?"
Man: "We've already established that, we're just haggling over the price."

Resendiz's life isn't worth squat to me. I would only pay for the bullet that kills him if it keeps me from having to pay for his food. Unfortunately our justice system has somehow made bullets (or needles in this case) more expensive than all the food, clothing, medical care, security and housing that is needed to keep Resendiz off the streets until he kicks the bucket all by himself.

Most of the cost is incurred by the trial and the endless reviews, appeals and legal wranglings that happen before there's a chance the inmate can lose the lethal injection lottery. It isn't really likely...only about 10% of all people sentenced to death since 1976 have actually been executed...but it still costs 3-5 times more to get that sentence than it does to get life and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Am I concerned that an innocent may be murdered by my government? Yeah; but I'm also concerned about global warming, Iraq, Somalia, Darfur, traffic accidents, police brutality, street gangs, desertification, AIDS and terrorism. Innocent people die every day and each of them is no more or less a tragedy than if it had been done via a court of law. Catch a district attorney or a cop fabricating evidence that kills someone and I'm all for poetic justice...but accidents happen. That doesn't make it right, but right's got nothing to do with it.

Plain and simple: Under our current system it costs way too much money to kill the subhuman dregs like Angel Resendiz. This murderous asshole deserves to be broken on the wheel or crucified...not put down gently. I'd be able to sleep at night if I lived in a society that did so. Frankly, I wouldn't care how they killed him, if they didn't have to spend an average of 2.16 million dollars per executed thug.

It's simple economics...I'd rather Resendiz and his ilk were yanked right out of this world by a just and efficient legal system...but if it costs less to let them rot in Brownsville then I'll forgo my thirst for bloody vengeance.

They just don't kill people like they used to...

For those of you who don't know; I study sword-based martial arts. Specifically I study Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu Iaido, Italian longsword and rapier. Well I've been nursing injured knees since January; managed to go through my test for 2nd Dan in Iaido at the beginning of March with much pain, but other than that I've been playing couch potato waiting for the knees to heel.

Quite a lot of MJER Iaido is done from a kneeling position; as for longsword and rapier, well the knees bend a lot there too. My knees feel a lot better now and I'm slowly getting back into my classes. Last Saturday I had my first class with Sensei back in the Dojo (he was off in Austin the week before). He asked about my knees and then started me right into some new standing techniques and then presented me with my 2nd Dan certificate after class (with the added bonus of Tirya being on-hand to watch). I know there's still more to learn than I can possibly fit in my lifetime, but I at least feel like I've made a start.


Tonight I went to my first longsword class since I injured my knees back in January. It was a short workout, but I was delighted that so many people came up and welcomed me back. I have a lot of work to do to catch up, but it's really kind of nice to realize that you were missed. There's some hope of starting up some Spanish rapier study in the near future which promises to be less stressful on the knees.

Tomorrow morning is going to tell me if I'm overdoing it or not. If I can walk faster than an eighty year-old with a wooden leg then I'm back in the sword swinging business until my next injury. I'm sure you'll hear a lot more about it in future posts, but for now I'm going to stick a link to Schola Saint George up on the page. If you're interested in learning authentic medieval combat techniques it's a great place to start.

Tell them Dan sent ya.

Jinkies!

Okay, this one has to come with a disclaimer...and I hate disclaimers...I have a lot of friends who have a wide variety of beliefs. I respect their beliefs and generally have a high tolerance for the religious activities of other folks...but I'm about to come down hard on people who can't tell the difference between what they believe and what they know. So if you have a delicate belief structure then be warned...there be squalls ahead, and Davey Jones waiting for them what don't obey...


You ever watch Scooby Doo? I remember watching the first episodes when I was maybe six or seven years old. Every episode had the same format: the Scooby Gang stops their perpetual road trip at some tourist attraction that turns out to be haunted. They investigate, get chased by monsters, use some logic (or, failing that, a hidden plot device; Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera didn't have a Disney imagination) and eventually expose the monsters as some evil, money-hungry, con artist trying to get rid of the property owners so they can extract some hidden value from the place. Every episode ends with words to the effect of "And I would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for those kids and that dog!"

Well that's how it used to be...the Scoobys taught me that if I have a little intelligence and a little courage I can eventually learn what's really behind the haunting or the curse or whatever mystery I was facing. I had an example! Forget that I could never stand the sniggering, cowardly mooch-hound and his equally repulsive beatnik owner (already an anachronism in 1969)...in fact, I never liked any of them much...I thought Fred was gay before I knew what gay was (there's a lesson here: don't wear an ascot around me unless you're over 70 with a turkey neck to hide or want to be mentally catalogued into the same drawer as Truman Capote...not that there's anything wrong with that). Daphne and Velma...well...they're okay as cartoon chicks go, but I've seen better; I'm kind of partial to those anime girls in the sailor suits.

Anyway, despite the fact that I was never what you might call a Scooby Doo fan, a few years ago I was surprisingly upset at the release of a new Scooby show where the monsters are real. It seemed like the new-agers and fundamentalists had won a victory over rational thought. See, real monsters can't be explained by science, you can't destroy them even if you have the help of the Harlem Globetrotters (the only approved method of zombie extermination (decapitation, preferably by shotgun) is denied to Saturday morning cartoon characters thanks to the same government meddling that took the word sugar off all the cereal boxes and pulled Johnny Eagle toy guns from the market. By god when I was a kid we had our own toy guns, we didn't need action-figure minions with micro-lasers...we did our own dirty work. GI-Joe was more of a practice target than an action-figure. But I digress...) and when you pull their masks off...well let's just say they don't have masks and leave it to the reader's imagination what it looks like.

The same thing is happening everywhere we turn...no, the monsters haven't become real; we've just stopped looking for the real cause. Even worse is a seemingly growing attitude that looking for explanations using rigorous scientific methods and natural explanations is somehow disrespectful to those who have faith-based explanations for the same phenomenon.

I'm not going to address the con-men...the people who use pseudo-science, rhetoric, bad logic and popular opinions to try and force their belief structure on others. The Kansas School Board, The Discovery Institute, Institute for Creation Research, Church of Scientology, Free Energy nut-jobs, conspiracy theorists and all the rest are receipted and filed for liars and frauds. Anyone that thinks there's a higher power authorizing them to do evil to other people... I'll probably rant about them at some point, but for right now I'll limit this to those of us that are not sociopaths.

I won't even ask you to challenge your beliefs; I'm just asking that you not treat your personal beliefs as if they are as practical as rational, evidence-based explanations that have survived empirical testing. You want to believe God built the whole shebang in six days...go right ahead. But don't tell me...and especially don't tell our children...that your explanation is scientific, sound or useful.

God may decide to heal everyone of cancer tomorrow...he hasn't done it yet, but there's nothing stopping him from doing it tomorrow. For some people it is enough to just keep asking God to do it, but for others we want to go out and see what's under the masks ourselves...we don't believe in monsters and we believe that we can solve the mysteries ourselves.

We've been pulling the masks off for a long time and we have yet to actually find a real zombie or vampire. We've ripped the mask off of diseases like smallpox and polio, we've looked at atoms and galaxies, calculated the speed of light, the volume of the sun and the nature of thought...all without resorting to powers we could not actually measure for ourselves. So far we have no reason to believe that there's anything we can't unmask...there are still lots of things out there to learn and I'm sure we'll find were some things we'd thought we'd learned are wrong, but even the Scooby Gang was known to make a few mistakes.

Don't let your beliefs blind you to what is really happening around you. Depending on your belief structure this may require challenging your beliefs or at least sticking them in a separate compartment that is safe from all this critical thinking activity. There's nothing in science that is in opposition to religion or philosophy as long as you can understand where one begins and the other ends. The Scooby Gang didn't include an exorcist, or a demonologist, witch doctor, faith healer, psychic or parapsychologist. Just a gang of kids who could think and reason; even if they did run away every time something said boo; they always came back and solved the mystery.

The universe is our mystery...one greater than our real ability to comprehend. We can never know the absolute truth behind it, but we can pull the masks off one at a time as long as we can...a belief that there are no masks to remove shows both a lack of intelligence and a lack of courage. We are brave enough to see as much truth as our intelligence can discover...there is nothing that man was not meant to know. That's a belief worth sharing with children again.

First Post From the Day Before the Last Day

It's probably not a good idea to spend time on 06/05/2006 starting up a blog. By this time tomorrow Satan will have commenced the final assault on humanity, shattering civilization with rogue comets, tsunamis and probably a New Kids on the Block reunion tour.

We're all doomed. If all that shit doesn't happen tomorrow then rest assured something is going to get you eventually. I suggest you learn to live with that factlet and get on with what's important.

So assuming that there is anyone left to read this after tomorrow's rapture and subsequent armageddon, I'd like to welcome you to my blog. I've never done this before and I may never do it again. You won't get to know me personally here, but you'll probably get to know a few of the things I enjoy as well as a number of things that piss me off. If you couldn't care less about my opinion then you're in the wrong place.