“In the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.” quipped the straight talking presidential hopeful John McCain referring to Russia’s recent aggressive move into Georgia. It sure sounded like stern talk coming from the guy who jokes about bombing Iran and suggests that we may be in Iraq for another hundred years but it was also pretty ridiculous given that the US is still occupying the two nations it invaded over 5 years ago. Of course we only “liberate” other nations in the 21st century (as Comedy Central pointed out). After 8 years of the current administration’s antics it’s really hard for us to take the high road on this one. I *want* to get up on my high horse about invading small economically important nations, but in the light of our own escapades I feel like maybe we owe them a pass on at least one

While many Americans still believe, against all the evidence to the contrary that the US move into Iraq was justified, I would wager that most Americans don’t have a clue why Russia felt it important to invade Georgia. Here’s what I think is going on: After the Soviet Union broke up, then president Clinton jumped on the opportunity to work with Georgia and to invest in that country to help make a pipeline possible from the oil rich Caspian Sea to the Black Sea (and thus, Europe) that would not pass through Russia. Russia (and Iran) would of course like to maintain as much of a strangle hold on the oil that reaches Europe from the east as possible, and this move into Georgia (which apparently has been planned for some time) is Russia’s way of saying to investors in the west that they had better rethink investment in this region. It puts the pipeline through Georgia in danger, and suggests that investors should take safer bets elsewhere (perhaps with Lukoil?)

You may have already seen this, but if not - Randy Pausch passed away yesterday so I thought it fitting to link to it today. Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch was diagnosed with terminal cancer and was given only a very short time to live. Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals. It’s definitely worth a listen beyond the simple draw of morbid fascination.

We were out at the LI Irish Fest which was held at the Abbess Farm in Calverton from about 2 until 11 on Saturday, and I had been having such a good time I had forgotten to take any pictures at all. All I have are some crappy shots from a cell phone, though I think Sport had a camera with him. There were 7 tents of various sizes, all very impressive. I quipped that we should find out how much it costs to have one of these put up, so we wouldn’t need to set up any tents at all when we camp; We could just partition the huge thing into rooms! In fact, the only thing that wasn’t impressive about the fest was the turn out. I don’t know if it was a lack of advertising or what, but there were some awesome bands playing to nearly empty tents which was a shame. The lack of crowds was very welcome to me personally, however - I just hope they broke even at least. Those tents were probably not cheap.
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So for a while in 2006 I had a myspace page. I saved a bunch of the stories about myspace that I had posted there. I’ve since deleted my account, and I only realize now that I never took a screen shot of it (I like to keep stuff like that) so I can’t post that here, which is too bad really because I did a nice hack job on my page and wrestled it into shape nicely I think - which was no small accomplishment, and I do mean “wrestled” - it was a bigger pain in the ass to code than practically any site I’ve ever messed with. I went back to Myspace to read something today and got slapped again by their idiot layout.
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Since High School it’s been suggested that a good rule of thumb answer for American men is about 1 in 10 are gay. A friend at work today suggested that although we’ve been told that for a long time, he heard that it wasn’t actually true. This of course spurred me on to do some quick internet research on the topic.

But first, some wisdom from People like Us in Singapore:
http://www.plu.sg/main/facts_05.htm

What is the purpose of asking how many people in a population is gay? Certainly, it is a minority, however one defines it, but does it matter whether it is x% or y%? Is respect for a minority, their liberties and rights, to be calibrated based on numbers? Do people become less equal in law and in our conscience, the fewer they are?

The most vocal denials that I could find of the 10% estimate for gay males in the US were on Christian right wing sites like family research council et al (I won’t provide any links to their site folks, sorry). I consider sources like these obviously biased.
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