And about Israel, no less.
I'm a bit late in seeing it, but whatever. I'm reconsidering going on Birthright. I've met many a reasonable Zionist, but it's sad that so many of these people exist too. (I have independent confirmation that there's much more where this came from.)
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Midnight Hunger
I find myself, at this moment, sitting at my friend's computer in San Francisco a little after midnight with nothing to do. I've checked my email. I've checked my Facebook. I've spent three or four hours playing Assassin's Creed, which, by the way, is hell for a completionist.
I'M HUNGRY.
I've already eaten a package of turkey bologna as a late snack. I ate dinner. I ate a full breakfast. I was snacking all day. Why am I hungry? It's not fun. I'm thinking about going to sleep, maybe with another couple of hours of gaming before I finally succumb to the Sandman's wiles.
Stupid stomach. I should just learn to digest things more slowly.
Or I could go to sleep at a reasonable hour, but I like the dumb idea better. I'm gonna try that. I'll get back to you when I manage it.
I'M HUNGRY.
I've already eaten a package of turkey bologna as a late snack. I ate dinner. I ate a full breakfast. I was snacking all day. Why am I hungry? It's not fun. I'm thinking about going to sleep, maybe with another couple of hours of gaming before I finally succumb to the Sandman's wiles.
Stupid stomach. I should just learn to digest things more slowly.
Or I could go to sleep at a reasonable hour, but I like the dumb idea better. I'm gonna try that. I'll get back to you when I manage it.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Numbers
In the New York Times' most recent article regarding the situation in Gaza, I found the following quote: "The three-day death toll surpassed 350, some 60 of them civilians, according to United Nations officials."
I'd actually been wondering how many of the hundreds of people killed were a result of collateral damage. I was shocked to find that it was only about 17% percent. One would think, based on dozens of pictures of smoking buildings, people running around, and fat Arab women crying around dead bodies that Israel, in it's OBVIOUSLY murderous intent, had sent in super-massive new bombs that only target children and puppies and teddy bears.
Yes, teddy bears. Jews HATE teddy bears. It's even in the Protocols. Didn't you know?
By saying "only" 17%, I am absolutely discounting the 60 dead Palestinian civilians. Not that they deserve to die, or that more ought to, rather, that I assumed the ratio to be more like 50 or 60%, based on other articles calling this attack the most ferocious and deadly against Palestinians in decades (though not necessarily in those words). Why is an operation which is successful at avoiding civilian deaths over 80% of the time being criticized so heavily? Someone should point out that something more like, umm, 100% of successful suicide bombings kill civilians.
Numbers are fun.
I'd actually been wondering how many of the hundreds of people killed were a result of collateral damage. I was shocked to find that it was only about 17% percent. One would think, based on dozens of pictures of smoking buildings, people running around, and fat Arab women crying around dead bodies that Israel, in it's OBVIOUSLY murderous intent, had sent in super-massive new bombs that only target children and puppies and teddy bears.
Yes, teddy bears. Jews HATE teddy bears. It's even in the Protocols. Didn't you know?
By saying "only" 17%, I am absolutely discounting the 60 dead Palestinian civilians. Not that they deserve to die, or that more ought to, rather, that I assumed the ratio to be more like 50 or 60%, based on other articles calling this attack the most ferocious and deadly against Palestinians in decades (though not necessarily in those words). Why is an operation which is successful at avoiding civilian deaths over 80% of the time being criticized so heavily? Someone should point out that something more like, umm, 100% of successful suicide bombings kill civilians.
Numbers are fun.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Response to 'It Ends Not With a Bang"
The following is something I originally intended to publish as a comment on the Mirvish Chronicles most recent post, and realized would do better as a full blog post.
Something I have learnt from my involvement in "ethnically" related discussion (if you can call protesting a discussion, which I most certainly intend to do), is that one must ALWAYS have a cameraman around if one intends to become involved in "conflicts" with "political activists" of the same kind as Mr. Zakharia.
A camera, though, will not deter violence; in many cases it will in fact provoke it. I mentioned an incident to the author of the above cited post where I followed an "activist" (read:Paul LaRudee) whom I disagreed with to his car with my camera, and was confronted later with intimidation, jeers and rude hand symbols from his friends and supporters. Not of course, that the original "activist" noticed me, the piano-tuning scum-of-the-earth. But other people who saw I was not wearing the appropriate hyper-liberal black dress (in fact I was wearing my yarmulke) did jeer, intimidate, and gesture rudely at me. The incidents I refer to occurred at Israel in the Gardens in San Francisco earlier this year. One particular "activist" shouted at me that I needed to "unlearn my Zionism." I politely replied "no thanks," and returned to the friendlier faces across the street.
On the other hand, I have found that quite often members of my own rather wide ideological community (read: Zionists) who have the courage to show up on the streets of the Bay Area often hurt our shared cause by escalating or even beginning conflicts with differently-minded "activists" (In case you haven't figured it out, these activists are in the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-Semitic camp that includes the particularly violent Mr. Zakharia).
At least, if one does have the camera, one can selectively capture the violent goings-on intiated by the opposing side and ignore the unkindness of one's own allies.
To sum up, stupid & angry people suck.
Something I have learnt from my involvement in "ethnically" related discussion (if you can call protesting a discussion, which I most certainly intend to do), is that one must ALWAYS have a cameraman around if one intends to become involved in "conflicts" with "political activists" of the same kind as Mr. Zakharia.
A camera, though, will not deter violence; in many cases it will in fact provoke it. I mentioned an incident to the author of the above cited post where I followed an "activist" (read:Paul LaRudee) whom I disagreed with to his car with my camera, and was confronted later with intimidation, jeers and rude hand symbols from his friends and supporters. Not of course, that the original "activist" noticed me, the piano-tuning scum-of-the-earth. But other people who saw I was not wearing the appropriate hyper-liberal black dress (in fact I was wearing my yarmulke) did jeer, intimidate, and gesture rudely at me. The incidents I refer to occurred at Israel in the Gardens in San Francisco earlier this year. One particular "activist" shouted at me that I needed to "unlearn my Zionism." I politely replied "no thanks," and returned to the friendlier faces across the street.
On the other hand, I have found that quite often members of my own rather wide ideological community (read: Zionists) who have the courage to show up on the streets of the Bay Area often hurt our shared cause by escalating or even beginning conflicts with differently-minded "activists" (In case you haven't figured it out, these activists are in the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-Semitic camp that includes the particularly violent Mr. Zakharia).
At least, if one does have the camera, one can selectively capture the violent goings-on intiated by the opposing side and ignore the unkindness of one's own allies.
To sum up, stupid & angry people suck.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
A Villanelle
Of written forms the sonnet's clearly king
Amongst the others it always stands most tall
No other poetry take words on wings.
Sonnets have a classic beat that rings
That holds the listener in enchanted thrall
Of written forms the sonnet's clearly king.
To every single sonnet's line a ying
Exists to answer in rhyme its yang's call
No other poetry takes words on wings.
Only in iambics do sonnets sing
If not in pentameter then not at all
Of written forms the sonnet's clearly king.
To fourteen lines the sonnet's form does cling
Another size is much too big or small
No other poetry takes words on wings.
Have I said all virtues of the form ruling
In poetry over the villanelle?
Of written forms the sonnet's clearly king,
No other poetry takes words on wings.
Amongst the others it always stands most tall
No other poetry take words on wings.
Sonnets have a classic beat that rings
That holds the listener in enchanted thrall
Of written forms the sonnet's clearly king.
To every single sonnet's line a ying
Exists to answer in rhyme its yang's call
No other poetry takes words on wings.
Only in iambics do sonnets sing
If not in pentameter then not at all
Of written forms the sonnet's clearly king.
To fourteen lines the sonnet's form does cling
Another size is much too big or small
No other poetry takes words on wings.
Have I said all virtues of the form ruling
In poetry over the villanelle?
Of written forms the sonnet's clearly king,
No other poetry takes words on wings.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Big news!
... And not from Slashdot, this time!
It seems a cease-fire has been declared between Israel and Hamas around the Gaza Strip, and Islamic Jihad is willing tor respect it as well. Ironically, each group has the same qualms -- they expect the other side to break it.
In other news, I saw some crazy Zionists at Sather Gate the other day: They had a gratuitous number of people holding Israeli flags and were handing out literature purporting, among other things, that wearing a keffiyeh is tantamount to displaying a Confederate flag. I only wish I had kept some of their literature so I could remember their name, but the literature-handing-out guy was such an ass that I wasn't exactly thinking clearly at the time. Still, though: hilarious.
Oh, and speaking of protests, I stopped by to watch a Critical Mass protest in Berkeley last Friday, and it ended with someone lighting a gas fire in the middle of the street, which seems to me to be not only a fucktarded thing to do, but also a hypocritical one. The rest of the protest was fairly peaceful, but this just goes to show how one person, police provocateur or not, can ruin the image of a protest.
Tune in in some to-be -determined amount of time for my reflections on what it's like to go to school in Berkeley vs. San Francisco, especially Maybeck vs. JCHS.
It seems a cease-fire has been declared between Israel and Hamas around the Gaza Strip, and Islamic Jihad is willing tor respect it as well. Ironically, each group has the same qualms -- they expect the other side to break it.
In other news, I saw some crazy Zionists at Sather Gate the other day: They had a gratuitous number of people holding Israeli flags and were handing out literature purporting, among other things, that wearing a keffiyeh is tantamount to displaying a Confederate flag. I only wish I had kept some of their literature so I could remember their name, but the literature-handing-out guy was such an ass that I wasn't exactly thinking clearly at the time. Still, though: hilarious.
Oh, and speaking of protests, I stopped by to watch a Critical Mass protest in Berkeley last Friday, and it ended with someone lighting a gas fire in the middle of the street, which seems to me to be not only a fucktarded thing to do, but also a hypocritical one. The rest of the protest was fairly peaceful, but this just goes to show how one person, police provocateur or not, can ruin the image of a protest.
Tune in in some to-be -determined amount of time for my reflections on what it's like to go to school in Berkeley vs. San Francisco, especially Maybeck vs. JCHS.
Monday, September 01, 2008
Terrible Jew, Bipartisanship (That's totally a word, guys.)
As you may have noticed, I'm not nearly as pro-Israel as Avi. I fact, as far as I'm concerned, if neither side can start acting mature, the rest of the world should give the entire swath of land to refugees from Darfur, etc.
Anyway, the point is this: How is it that Israel is more important to the stability of the world than any other country? Why do presidential candidates have to do Swiftian tricks on string for lobbyists representing Israel, but not for lobbyists representing, say, Iraq? What about Georgia? Sealand, even? Why, in fact, does no country other than Israel have a major lobby in the US? Earlier last century Ireland was in a similar, though obviously not identical, position to Israel. Why didn't American politicians try so hard to impress their lobby? Did they even have a lobby?
Incidentally, it isn't Berkeley that's doing this to me. I was like this at my old school, too.
That, and I'm no more pro-Palestinian than I am pro-Israel. Incidentally, both sides say that they would support a two-state solution, but that the other group is totally against any such idea. Lolwhut?
Just sayin'
Anyway, the point is this: How is it that Israel is more important to the stability of the world than any other country? Why do presidential candidates have to do Swiftian tricks on string for lobbyists representing Israel, but not for lobbyists representing, say, Iraq? What about Georgia? Sealand, even? Why, in fact, does no country other than Israel have a major lobby in the US? Earlier last century Ireland was in a similar, though obviously not identical, position to Israel. Why didn't American politicians try so hard to impress their lobby? Did they even have a lobby?
Incidentally, it isn't Berkeley that's doing this to me. I was like this at my old school, too.
That, and I'm no more pro-Palestinian than I am pro-Israel. Incidentally, both sides say that they would support a two-state solution, but that the other group is totally against any such idea. Lolwhut?
Just sayin'
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