Jynnan Tonnyx

Every time I read another article or column about Republican schemes to cheat their way into the White House, I get steamed. This time, I was reading Bob Herbert’s pair of columns from the New York Times (Sept. 18, Sept. 22). What’s sad is that nobody even cares anymore - we all just shrug and say, “that’s what Republicans do.”

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Mark Helprin writes a rather disingenuous piece in the New York Times op-ed today, arguing that Congress needs to extend copyrights again, beyond the already-obscene author’s life plus 70 years.

What if, after you had paid the taxes on earnings with which you built a house, sales taxes on the materials, real estate taxes during your life, and inheritance taxes at your death, the government would eventually commandeer it entirely? This does not happen in our society … to houses. Or to businesses.

Once the state has dipped its enormous beak into the stream of your wealth and possessions they are allowed to flow from one generation to the next. Though they may be divided and diminished by inflation, imperfect investment, a proliferation of descendants and the government taking its share, they are not simply expropriated.

That is, unless you own a copyright.

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Being pro-war doesn’t make you patriotic, any more than being anti-war makes you unpatriotic. A century ago, we used the terms “hawk” and “dove” to describe those positions precisely because it is beyond insulting to use how you feel about a particular military conflict to pigeonhole you as patriotic or not.

While I’m on the subject, being against the war in Iraq, in particular, is about supporting our troops, in the sense that you don’t want to see soldiers’ lives wasted on a war that was fought based on a lie, in violation of international law, for no discernable purpose, to no clear end, and the results of which are likely to be worse for the security of America and the world than the foregoing regime.

Alright, I’ve been sitting on this for three or four days now, and I can’t stand it anymore.

Tom Cruise, take your Scientology and shove it up straight up your ass. (Oh, there I went and outed myself as an SP. Shoot.) Read more…

I’ve worked with a lot of people in the technology industry who think that technologists (engineers, scientists, IT workers) are, or at least should be, above politics. I’ve known lots of them who think they can engineer better lives for themselves and humanity without having to get their hands dirty. I think several things going on in the political landscape right now should convince anyone that’s not true. If anything, it’s time now, more than ever, to get involved in politics, especially if you’re a technologist. Read more…

I keep thinking I should write something about Pope John Paul’s passing, and I’m really at a loss for words. My feelings are somewhat a reflection of my deep ambivalence about my faith these days. On the one hand, I feel very proud of being a Catholic, and I am very passionate about the Pope’s message of creating a “culture of life.” On the other, I find myself in disagreement with the Church on several matters of politics, including the Church’s role in politics. Read more…

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Alexander Pope

You know what’s funny? Our invasion of Iraq would have worked better in 1990, when the Bush who was then President, and the Cheney who was then Secretary of Defense, were afraid to do it. Read more…

As the rhetoric gets louder and louder, with less and less connection to reality, I feel a responsibility to say - I was wrong to support the Bush administration in invading Iraq. It seems clear to me that the President was willing to claim whatever was necessary to justify our invasion, willfully misinterpreting (or flat-out fabricating) evidence to do so. If the President was a Democrat (or the Congress was), I have no doubt he would be impeached by now because of his lies. I am even more disappointed that the man who made the case for me, British PM Tony Blair, went along with the charade.
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