By now everybody knows how annoying and generally crappy Microsoft products are. What too few people know is that there are absolutely free alternatives out there. Microsoft-free lifestyle. After that, if you still think it’s too expensive to buy a Mac, where you can use a world of free open-source software, then you might want to think about switching to Linux. My personal favorite flavor of the moment is Suse. It’s really nice to look at, and it’s got impressive hardware support.

Now, here’s the problem with traditional Linux. It’s hard to use. It’s so configurable, most people will get lost in it. The most successful Unix-based operating system going is Mac OS X. Anybody know why?

No hands? Okay, Mac OS X has taken the best features of Linux, such as its raw power and the security and openness of the open source movement, and used them as the raw material to make the best operating system yet devised. What has allowed OS X to be the best is the guiding hand of a central vision.

The lack of such a central vision is what has kept any of the Linux distributions from achieving usability for the average user. The simple fact is that anybody who’s a hard-core enough geek to use Linux, likes being “elite.” They don’t really want to share their toys with the rest of us. If Linux became useable by the masses, they’d lose a little of their niche.

The good news is that Apple, in the creation of OS X has paved the way for the rest of the computer industry once again. If a “niche” player like Apple can do it, why not Dell, or Gateway, or HP? Any of these companies could hire a stable of programmers, and someone to harness their energy to create a semi-proprietary operating system. This is neither harmful, nor contrary to the Open Source movement.

The trick for a company interested in such a strategy would be to balance proprietary elements with a secure Open-Source foundation, as Apple has done. The benefit for users would be enormous. With such a move toward openness and away from monopoly, companies would have no reason to adhere to proprietary file formats. Open standards would flourish, while ridiculous closed systems like Real and Windows Media would swiftly shrivel and disappear.

Returning to our little experiment with OpenOffice.org, how many of you are aware that the changes in the file format between versions of MS Office are entirely arbitrary? The only reason your copy of Office ’98 can’t open the newest Office files is because Microsoft wants you to upgrade. It’s the same story as their plan to make licensing fees a yearly cost. They want the keys to your bank account, and they will fight hard to get them. So they change the structure of their files with every revision so you’ll have to upgrade, and so other software makers won’t be able to interoperate with them.

Is that the kind of business practice you should support? No. Support open standards. If I get any kind of response from this, perhaps we can start a petition to send to the big computer makers. They have nothing to lose and a great deal to gain by abandoning Microsoft, as to the rest of us.

This is why I resisted making a blog for so long. I knew there was an attention whore hidden inside of me. Anyway, now he’s out, and he’s reveling in the whopping six people who have commented on his existence.

And for Lucresha, the banner is the little bit in the upper right corner where my head bounces around in colors accompanies by the gentle urging to read my site. I just took a look at it in my secondary browser, and it was indeed a little smooshed into the text. I think I got it all taken care of. If you still can’t see it, drop me another line. Happy linking.

So I just created my first completely original graphic. At least it’s the only one in recent memory. I’m all happy and proud of myself here at nearly four in the morning. Just in case anybody should want to link to me, I now have a banner. I’m so happy. If you do, drop me a line so I know what’s up.

This is a disturbing comment on the crumbling foundation of American justice. We were never meant to be a nation of secrecy or of darkness. America was born as a nation whose deepest heart thrives in the light of day. What happened to that nation? How can we claim to so dearly cherish freedom, yet be willing under any circumstances to rob it from others? How can we deny them the basic human rights of due process?

Once we held self-evident the truth that all men are “created equal”, meaning deserving of the same basic rights. Now, when it is most important for us to cling to our core beliefs and to defend the rights of all human beings, we abandon them, proving we have learned nothing.

Once again, I am ashamed.

The United States of America is passing through a rough adolescence. We need to remind ourselves that nations fall. Even large powerful nations fall. Even large powerful nations with representative governments fall.

We have come to rest assured that our birthright is to always be the most powerful nation on Earth. This is a hard case to make for a nation that has yet to reach the two and a half century mark. Yes indeed, we are unquestionably the strongest, wealthiest nation in the world. . . for now. This has never been a permanent state before, and I don’t see how we can assume it will be permanent for us. Egypt, Rome, and England have all laid claim to the place of lone world superpower at one time or another, and that place has always fallen to another nation.

If anyone’s taking bets, I’ll lay my money on China as the world’s next lone Superpower. Of course, that will only come after significant upheaval, of which the United States has been the principal contributor in recent years. If we fall from grace at this point, we will have no one to blame but ourselves.

As I said, we are a nation in our adolescence. Like all adolescents, we are assured of the righteousness of our decisions and our feelings, and we are desperate to show our elders our power and our worth. We are convinced that we have earned our place among the mature and respected nations around us.

And, again like adolescents, we are entranced by the rapid rise in our power and capability. We cannot conceive of a world in which our power will wane or dim. What we need now, more than anything, is to regain our perspective.

We must remember that the growth in our power comes with more, rather than less responsibility. Instead of inspiring the envy and resentment of our peer nations by throwing temper tantrums and shouting our justifications at the top of our voice, we must demonstrate growing wisdom to temper the edge of our power. We were justified in our anger after 9/11. We were injured, and we were angry, and we were given the support of our peers. Again, in typical adolescent fashion, we lashed out, afraid to appear weak by accepting the goodwill of our friends. This is forgivable, but it is time to stop lashing out. It is time to reach out to our friends, take their support, and thank them.

If we are unable to reach out, we will lose our friends, and it will be too late. We will have become a bully-nation, and we our friends will no longer be willing to take our reaching hand. A bully has a tendency to isolate himself, and to hide his fears and weakness in the folds of intimidation and unreasoning violence. A bully will begin to satisfy his basest urges at the expense of those he bullies. This is not the America in which I want to live.

On the world scale, it is inevitable that this bully-nation will be brought to account for its behavior. Though we have the single most powerful military in the world, even we cannot be so blinded by pride as to think we could stand against the combined might of the nations we have offended. Should we continue to intimidate them, and continue to threaten them, all the while asserting our right to attack any perceived threat, we will find ourselves put down for our hubris.

To dismiss this scenario as a simple flight of fancy could be a fatal mistake. America has inspired anger in many nations, and we among the world should know what an angry nation will do. If we push the world to the point of broken national tempers, we will fall. And a fallen America could become a pitiful thing indeed. We could find ourselves broken apart and portioned out, as we once did to Germany and Eastern Europe. We could find ourselves stripped of our language and our shared heritage by the creation of arbitrary new borders. We could find ourselves stripped of the right, which we so prize, to defend those borders, as we ourselves did to Japan after the second world war.

Worse yet, a fallen America could once again foster competition among the powers of the world for it’s remarkable natural resources. We could find foreign nations warring on our soil, fighting for supremacy on this remarkable continent. This scenario seems unlikely from our current position in history, but do not think that it’s impossible. The sundering of the United States and the way in which it gets portioned out could throw the entire power structure of the world into another century of upheaval. Peace among nations, which to my mind has been tantalizingly close since the end of the cold war, could once again slip from the collective grasp of humanity.

So, what must we do? How can we mend our relationships with our neighbors and our friends? First, it is my sincere belief that we need a new president and a new administration. The Bush administration has offended, insulted, and angered the world on a personal level. Members of the Bush administration are feared and hated by name around the world, and we as a nation, must signal our willingness to grow by changing the face we show to the world. Secondly, we must make a good-faith apology. We must send our new face before the world, admit our mistakes, and apologize for them. Third, we must commit ourselves on a fundamental level to bringing the nations of the world closer together. We must rebuild our broken economy, so that it can continue to be a cornerstone to the world economy, then we must dedicate our resources to bringing the lesser-developed nations of the world onto a par with ourselves and our peers.

This is not merely a rose-colored desire to make the world a happy place. It is a simple economic necessity. Though I see the ultimate futility of an economy that relies of growth for stability, that need for growth provides an economic motivation for assisting the poor nations of the world. Emerging markets are the cornerstone of economic growth, and in order for new markets to emerge, we need to invest in building infrastructure. Before a nation can become a major consumer of cars, televisions and computers, they need reliable energy supplies and communication networks. This is where the wealth and goodwill of the United States can come into play. If we were to help developing nations to develop power grids, data networks and industry, they would be be in a position to grow their own economies, increase their wealth, and become consumers.

When America is willing to take these steps, not only will we have contributed to our ongoing place of respect in the world, we will have demonstrated maturity and generosity commensurate with our extreme level of privilege and wealth. Let us grow up to be the greatest nation on Earth in all ways, rather than merely in wealth and military might.

Yes, this and other top-quality quotes, quips, slogans, witticisms and one-liners will now be brought to you through a cool script I lifted from www.catschwartz.com. So that it doesn’t get like a bloated signature file, I’ll keep it down to quotes that originate with me. The love quote is just about my favorite ever, so feel free to use it. Be sure to quote me though. Thanks to Cat, for not kicking my ass for lifting her code, (hopefully).

Just in case somebody is holding their breath, I am mulling over another serious entry, which I should have whipped into shape in a day or so. Meanwhile, keep hitting that reload button and collect all three fabulous nuggets of truth.

The link between comedy and anger has been well explored, but to my knowledge, no one has heretofore identified stand-up comedy as the world’s most fascist artform. That means I get to be the first. Booyah!

Think about it. A stand-up comic, like George Carlin, packs in an audience mostly on reputation, and proceeds to make sweeping inflamatory social and political statements with or without a basis in logical examination of the relevant world events. Through the magic of peer pressure, at the end of two hours, he had indoctrinated an auditorium full of people to his way of thinking. Conform, conform, conform. Conform to the funny rebel-man.

I know it would be great if I would actually research this stuff, but that’s not going to happen any time soon. Just take a listen to George’s album “Complaints and Grievances”. A lot of it is good, but once in a while, he’ll delve a little too far into left field, but everybody laughs, because that’s what’s expected.

Not that the effects are likely to cause much damage after a single show, but if you went back every day for a couple of weeks, I bet you’d find yourself pretty effectively brainwashed. So the next time you see a stand-up comedian spout of with somthing that’s superficially funny, but completely wrong, or ill-thought-out, come back here and drop me a comment, so I have some back-up for my little rant here. Be sure to notice the reaction of the audience.

For my roughly two and a half hour stay at Twin Cities Community Hospital, the grand total (so far) comes to $4096.00

Summary of Charges Amount
Clinical Lab………………………………………………….1,661.00
Pharmacy Narcotics…………………………………………452.00
IV Solutions…………………………………………………..399.00
IV Materials…………………………………………………..304.00
Emergency Room…………………………………………1,272.00
Dressing/Bandages…………………………………………….8.00

Total……………4,096.00

This means that two hours in a hospital bed is worth $1,272.00, blood tests came to $1,661.00, two shots of morphine are $452.00, a bag of saline solution runs $399.00, some plastic tubes and clips cost $304.00, and a cotton ball and a piece of tape together are worth $8.00.

Anybody else think I got raped while I was semi-concious at the hospital? Think they’d discount my bill if I bought them some cotton balls and some tape and some IV Materials?

Look folks, marriage as an institution was not created as some holy union of male and female souls, so get over it. Marriage has always been, from its humble beginnings, primarily a financial arrangement. It predates law, but when law was invented, it created conventions to recognize the financial arrangement of marriage.

Marriage was intended as a way of uniting property with procreation, thus keeping wealth and land within a bloodline. This tradition, sadly, led to financially motivated inbreeding, and eventually both law and religion stepped in to prevent that. The primary effect religion has had upon marriage is to enhance genetic diversity. (How often has that happened?)

So religious groups should be happy that they’ve gained purview over the ceremonial aspect of marriage and keep it at that. Meanwhile, government should stick to its role in providing laws guiding the distribution and protection of property and tax issues. The government has no legal right to mediate a couple’s moral contract with God, or the lack thereof. Its only role is that of providing legal context.

When two consenting adults have agreed to live their lives so closely together as to count their money and property together they have every right under the law to marry, regardless of their religion, color, sexuality or disability. And any church that choses not to recognize any of those various combinations has that right. But a government attempt to codify those religious objections is inherently unconstitutional in that it violates the separation of church and state.

For example if a Jew and an atheist wanted to marry, and the members of her temple refused to acknowledge the marriage, that would be their right. However in the United States of America, government is expressly forbidden from enacting legislation in support of such an objection. The same holds true for same-sex marriage. Should a specific legal standing be required, one should examine medical studies linking homosexuality to genetic predisposition, which would seem to support the legal standing of homosexuals as a separate ethnicity, thus guaranteeing them protection from discrimination.

Just in case anybody wonders, I’m not a lawyer, that’s just my opinion based on my own knowledge. I haven’t done any specific research for this post.

As for an amendment to the Constitution defining marriage, I hope I never see the day when the United States of America has so far devolved as to reinstitute legalized systemic discrimination. As it is, I’m ashamed of my nation’s “leadership”, and many of the irresponsible trends I see around me. Watching my nation return to the institutional subjugation of one group of people would mortify me. And don’t tell me I’m being alarmist by using the term subjugation. The moment gays are made inferior under the constitution, by denying them the right to marry, their legal attackers would rally to illegalize “sodomy,” and any sexual practice they find questionable. And as soon as they’ve codified the legality of sexual practice, they’ll move to forbid gays to assemble or to publish gay-themed books or periodicals, on the grounds that the exchange of gay-related information is likely to spread immoral ideas which may very well spread the practice of newly illegalized behavior. Lo and behold, gays will have been denied the entire first amendment.

Make no mistake, any person who will sacrifice the one freedom of one person to satisfy their “moral comfort” will not stop at one freedom, nor at one person. So speak out, damn it, before John Ashcroft finds out you masturbate, or like to wear leather, or once performed oral sex, or whatever.

As you can tell, the preceding entry was brought to you by the wishful thinking network. And if anybody was offended by the rather angry nature of it, I’m not going to appologize, but I’ll acknowledge the validity of those feelings. I’ll tell you what, though, it was a very therapeutic thing to write, and I’ve never respected Dubya more than I did as I pictured him in my head resigning with (for once) some genuine dignity and sincerity.

I was originally going to post date it to July 4th. That would be a nice birthday present for the country. Wow. I’m in an uncommonly pessimistic mood today. ‘Soon as I perk up, I’ll write something a little brighter.