8 Hours of Knots

Sorry, ApocalypseCow , for sending so many "whats my password" emails to your email account. I'm a semi-retard sometimes, and it can often take me several attempts to realize that I am in fact making the mistake, and not whatever I'm working on. So instead of realizing that I should be logging in as BrewCow, I logged in as ApocalypseCow, a name I've been using on the net for more than 10 years. I'd like to think I was the original Internet Apocalypse Cow, but I'm probably wrong.

My stubbornness knows no bounds, and when I get latched on to a problem, I will work on it until a workaround is figured out or the problem is solved. Some say thats a good thing, but others, including myself, see it as a curse of sorts. I often give up actually thinking about how to better solve a problem, and just resort to brute force. Oh yes, I'm a terribly lazy man, and as I always say, "Laziness is the father of innovation". However, I can sometimes be lazy about my laziness, and end up back in brute force land.

All that being said, sometimes tenacity can be a good thing. I once spent over 8 hours unknotting a skein of yarn for my wife. About 3 or 4 hours in, she told me to stop, that it was just one skein, and it wasn't worth it. I wasn't having any of it though. It was going to get untangled, dammit, I was not going to let it beat me. Think about that. I spent 1/3 of a day untieing knots. How bloody rediculous.

I'm sure that ties in with my work ethic, I'll beat my brain against a problem until its bloody and raw, and I have a hard time backing away. I've mentioned this in job interviews, as both a strength and a weakness, and interviewers, if they've got a lick of sense, see this honesty, and appreciate it. At least I damn well hope they appreciate it, because underlying the stubbornness is a willingness to get the job done.

I think I've always been this stubborn, and the idea of anything being possible, given enough time, has been around for a while. In "The Phantom Tollbooth", Milo and Tock are given the task of moving a pile of sand one grain at a time with tweezers. I believe this was done to illustrate the concept of infinity, but at the time, I remember myself saying "Well yes, that would take a lot of time, but certainly not an infinite amount of time."

The geeky part of me will probably now go into a mathematecal equation to figure out exactly how much time it would take them to move a 10 ft high conical pile of sand.

But I'll let you have that fun yourself.

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Isrealite?

I heard an interesting report this morning on NPR from the middle east. It basically stated that Iran is getting uppity because of the wars that the US has waged in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US, in taking out two of Iran's major rivals, has allowed Iran to take up the political space, reinforcing their power in the middle east. The fact that Iran is a theocratic republic ruled by Islamofascists is just gravy on their pilaf at this point, adding fuel to their growing geopolitical power in the region, and thusly fuelling their nuclear program.

The US comes along, with the UN, and says "No nukes for you!"
and big GWB wants to of course "bomb the shit out of em". No, he didn't say that in public, but I'm willing to drop odds 4-1 that he did say it in private . Iran knows they can't retaliate directly against the US, so they do the next best thing, they pick on the US's little cousin/nephew/life partner/whatever, Israel, knowing that the US is so concerned with the Israeli plight that getting Hezbollah to toss a few bombs might take the US back a few steps.

Now, none of this is news, or it shouldn't be, if you're paying more attention to the world at large than to which Hollywood psychopath is pregnant. What I'm here to complain about is the fact that the US cares SO much about Israel, and is willing to go to war, if not several of them, to protect its little buddy. Take a look, people. Israel is FAR from defenseless. Its army is just as powerful as any in the middle east, if not moreso, and it has a powerful nuclear force, more powerful than Pakistan, India, and even the UK.

So, why continue protecting them? Take a look from an outside point of view at the middle east mess, and hopefully you'll see that there are MANY countries involved in the conflict, and its most definitely not an "everyone vs. Israel" conflict. Hell, even if it was, why does the US have to get involved? Israel's a big boy now, they can fight for themselves, and they can win or lose their wars on their own. Let the whole mess go down, and stop giving the islamofascists reasons to hate the US. Or at least give them one less excuse to hate us.

Before I get any comments that I'm anti-semitic, I'm not. I'm treating Israel like it SHOULD be treated, as a country, not a religion. Just because our leader wants us to believe that every country should be identified by their religion doesn't make it so. Israel is, last time I checked, a democracy, and while it has very strong roots to Judaism, maybe they'd be a bit better served by telling Shlomo to ease off the gas on the fanatacism bus. Or better yet, stop looking to the US to get your back when you go wading into the donnybrook of a bar fight that is the middle east right now.

BlogCow

Well, here I am, in the blogosphere. I feel a bit dirty. But, every once in a while, I need to get some random thoughts about stuff. I'm not going to apologize for my views, nor am I going to shove myself into a label such as "liberal" "democrat" "wacko" or anything else. So, come on in, enjoy your stay.