apparently we need to be protected from being able to see symbols, because, obviously, being able to use a swastika in a font will make us evil. It never ceases to amaze me that people can get so worked up about things like this. Make sure you also purge fonts of hammers and sickles, crescents, crosses (and plus signs, while you’re at it. And perhaps the letter t), and any other symbol that might draw people into evil.

Yes, the swastika symbolized a great evil. However, it’s very orwellian to think that its presence in a font is to be avoided. I can’t even begin to get my mind around why someone would think that this is necessary.

Compare, if you will, HammerSickleStuff.com and Swastika.com. If one of them makes you angry and the other does not, you might want to read a few more history books. By all means, read Night, by Elie Weisel, but also read Abyss of Despair by Yeven Metzulah.

And to the folks that get so wrapped up in hating a symbol like the swastika, I can only ask what they are doing about the ethnic killing in central Africa, which does not even pretend to be for a nobler reason, but is unabashedly about one people hating another. By all means, fight your harmless, insignifigant, symbolic battles, but try to recall why it was important to defeat the power behind the swastika, and that the swastika itself was not the enemy.

As you may be aware (but are probably not, since the US media doesn’t think it’s particularly important) a rebel uprising in Haiti is starting to look pretty serious.

Ah, but get this. The US government, in its infinite wisdom, has stepped in and put the whole thing in perspective. Ready for this? The infiinitely sagacious Richard Boucher says that, by resisting the uprising, the Hatian government is contributing to the violence.

Um. Yeah. That’s what governments tend to do when there are uprisings. They resist them. Did you skip history class in school? You know, all the bits where the USA supports nations in suppressing their rebel uprisings?

What alarms me is that this sounds like the US government giving their polite excuses for not joining this particular party, even though they invited the guest of honor, who, surprise, suddenly nobody likes. (Where “suddenly” means since around 2000 when Mr Aristide rose to power.)

No, I don’t expect the US to rush down there and bail them out. But it would be nice if they didn’t feel the need to disparage the government’s attempts to put down the uprising.

Each year, for some time now, I have read “A Christmas Carol”, some time near Christmas.

For various reasons, I didn’t read it last year, and I’m reading it now, taking rather more time going through it than I have in the past, noticing things that I have missed before.

In 2002, I wrote that I was more in tune with Scrooge in Stave One than with the final stave. This time through, however, I’m finding Stave Two to resonate with me.

For those not familiar with the book, in Stave One, we have the “bah, humbug” Scrooge, the “out upon Christmas, what good has it ever done me” Scrooge, the Scrooge that sees Christmas as a time when you look back on 12 years of unpaid bills and accrue more bills.

In Stave Two, Scrooge is faced with the regrets of his past – decisions he wished he had not made, and the consequences of those decisions. Stave Two is bittersweet. He sees the joys of his apprenticeship, but realizes that he didn’t learn a lot from it. He sees the joys of his childhood, which he had not thought of for decades. And he sees the missed opportunity to have a beautiful young thing that might have called him Father, and been his joy in the Autumn of his life.

Late last year I read “One more for the road”, a collection of short stories by Ray Bradbury. A theme through that book is regrets for life misspent. I found this book to be a shocking contract to “Dandelion Wine”, which is probably my favorite book, and which talks about the joy of youth, the awareness of life, and the wonder of being young enough to feel immortal, but old enough to know that you’re not.

Dickens captures this sentiment in Scrooge peering in the window at the children that will never be his, as he thinks “I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest license of a child, and yet been man enough to know its value.”

Stave Two is joyful, and yet deeply sad. It revels in the past, and yet mourns the passage of the past, and, with it, the chance to change the future. And even though you know Stave Five is coming, there’s still a sense of mourning here which cannot be simply brushed off. Because even though Scrooge redeems himself, he still cannot recover opportunities lost.

“A Christmas Carol” is a deeply moving book, and the many many people who have experienced the story solely through the various movies adapted from the book are missing the larger part of the impact of the story. And it is Stave Two, more than any other, which moves me almost to tears every time I read it.

If you haven’t read the book – I mean, really read the entire thing – you should do so. It’s a lot more than Scrooge McDuck throwing Daisy out for not paying her mortgage, and then giving a teddy bear to Tiny Tim.

I had an interesting insight this morning. I don’t claim that this is in any way original or profound. However, I am still, in many ways, an African in my thinking, and so things like this tend to take a little while to sink in.

Americans (meaning USA’ians) have this conviction that they have the inalienable, God-given (ironically, even those that don’t believe in God) right to be happy. And this is interpreted in the narrowest possible terms, meaning “ME” and “NOW”. Now, clearly, not everyone is stupid, but these ideas seem to be so deeply installed in the psyche of people who have been raised steeped in this mindset that many folks don’t even question them.

Personally, I think that this idea that you have a right to be happy is hogwash. And I think that the idea that you have a right to *pursue* happiness (whatever that may end up meaning) is probably hogwash too, but I’ll have to think about that one a little more.

Anyways, this not-terribly-profound insight helped me understand, at least a little bit, why some folks can do certain things, and think that they are doing the “right” thing. In particular, it strikes me as being a significant contributor to the divorce rate in this country. Becase, after all, my personal happiness, and my being happy *right now*, is more important than any corporate happiness, any community stability, and more important than the fact that decisions will adversely affect people at least two generations in either direction, as well as a significant number of friends and acquaintances. This is how people can honestly believe that they have made a good decision, while doing things that are destructive, both to themselves, their family, and society as a whole, although, when observed with any degree of objectivity, can only be seen as being petty and selfish.

Further implications of this observation, in the context of our view of history, our reactions to the national security issue, and the way that we drive, for starters, are also very interesting, but I really need to get ready for work. Although, I suppose, my right to individual happiness suggests that I should just stay here and think deep thoughts.

But I’ll finish up with a quote from John Adams, which I think is very relevant. Adams said that the role of government is to “secure the maximum amount of happiness for the largest possible number of people.” Note that this is a very different thing from individual happiness, and that only 200 years of selfishness and misinterpretation can have turned it into that. Although, it’s moderately clear to me that if we work towards the happiness of everyone, the happiness of the individuals will unavoidably follow.

Hmm. Perhaps I’m a communist.

Today is Hogmanay! Kiss a complete stranger!

What is Hogmanay? Well, I’m glad you asked!

Today is Childermas, also known as Holy Innocents. Today we commemorate the killing of the 14,000 children under the age of 2 by King Herrod, in his attempt to kill the King of the Jews which he had been told about, but whose name he did not know.

By extension, today we also commemorate those innocents killed throughout the world, and througout history, for reasons beyond their understanding, and, often, beyond ours.

In recent years, it has also been a day when we commemorate those children who have been eliminated before their birth, for the convenience of their parents. I suppose that this day would be more greatly politicized if the people in question were aware of the Church calendar. For the most part, I suppose I’m grateful that they are not.

(Yeah, I know, politics and religion are supposed to be out of bounds here. Try to get over it.)

Oh, yeah, and today is considered to be a day of very bad luck in Scotland, and one would never travel today. In 1869, the Tay railroad bridge collapsed just as the Edinburgh train passed over it, killing all 200 people on board.

The department of homeland security tells me that I’m terrified.

And it’s a darned good thing that they’re there to tell me this, because otherwise, I wouldn’t know it.

I tell you what’s terrifying. Soldiers with machine guns in the airports. I’ve always found that terrifying.

And the idea that not only my suitcase, but also my hard drive without so much as a “please” or “by your leave.” I find that terrifying too. Of course, by expressing this opinion, that probably makes me a terror suspect.

So, now that we’ve been informed that we’re more terrified this week than we were last week, I strongly encourage you to tighten up your firewalls, and encrypt your email, to protect yourself from the terrorists.

Once again, I find myself thinking about the improbable notion of someone being “not guilty by reason of insanity” to a murder charge.

While I can see someone being not guilty by reason of being mentally incompetent, I cannot see a valid defence on the grounds of being “temporarily” insane. Why? Well, murder itself is insanity. So, if it is valid for someone to be not guilty by reason of insanity, then *every* murderer would be thus not guilty. For someone to kill another human being requires one of a very small set of conditions. (Yes, I’m hopelessly naive, but go with me for a moment.) Either one is defending one’s own (life, property, loved ones, etc), or one is in some fashion a soldier obeying orders, or one has lost one’s grip on reality and appropriate priorities, and kills in order to obtain something for one’s self (property, power, etc.). Yes, there are accidental killings, but that hardly qualifies as murder, IMHO.

So each time I hear that someone is attempting to get off of a murder charge on the basis if insanity, I’m inclined to agree halfway with them. They are guilty by reason of insanity. Yes, murder is insanity, and so folks that commit murder were indeed insane at the moment that they did it. They were required to suspend their normal sane reasoning processes in order to take the life of a fellow human. And, of course, that is often the case even when such acts are committed in the defence of life, liberty, property, or loved ones.

I’m also inclined to think that I’d make a pretty miserable soldier.

O come, desire of nations, bind in one the hearts of all mankind;
Bid thou our sad divisions cease, and be thyself our Prince of Peace.
Rejoice, rejoice, Emanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus.

Thursday or Friday on the news, there was a story about a budget bill. Apparently, this budget bill (the “omnibus” budget in the US congress) was released a whole week before they were to vote on it, so that people could read it and know what they were voting on.

And this is unusual.

Normally, they are released the night before. And they are thousands of pages long. So there’s no chance that anybody voting on it will have any idea what they are voting on. And that’s the normal, accepted, practice.

Doesn’t anybody but me think that’s wrong? Surely, that’s a miscarriage of our congressional representation, no matter how you look at it, if they are voting on stuff that they haven’t read?

The story went on to say that they were finding stuff in there (which they ordinarily would have approved blindly) giving zillions of dollars to personal projects in various folks’ hometown and home states. $100,000 for this hospital. $200,000 for park benches in that town. $800,000 to renovate a statue in some town square. It’s absolutely amazing.

For a while I’ve been viewing some stories like this in a sense of awe that we have a closed-source government. We’re not permitted to see how we are being government most of the time, at least until it’s too late. Granted, this is not a simple democracy – it’s much more complex and disfunctional than that. But it would at least be nice to see what’s going on before it’s too late.

Phrases like “crafted in closed door sessions in the dark of night” should not apply to how my tax dollars are being spent, or the next way I will be harrassed when I go on a business trip.

So, I applaud the folks that released this bill early so that people could actually read what they are voting on. I sincerely hope that they are not alarmed by people finding unsavory stuff in it, to the point that they don’t do this again. I only think that it doesn’t go far enough. I think that these things should be developed entirely openly, with cvs commits going to a public website and/or mailing list of interested persons, so that each addition and extra pork can be scrutinized while it is happening. Personal accountability for every wasted dollar would put a bit of a pinch on this kind of absurd spending on personal projects.

Which brought me to another point. Some of these things were worthy projects, and I’m sure that the folks that were to benefit from them are cringing that they are now likely to lose them. But should *my* tax dollars go to pay for a children’s museum in Potowski, Utah (or whatever)? No, *my* tax dollars should go to assist kids in Kentucky, not in Utah. That’s why we have state tax, right?

Anyways, I had other rants, but I need to go make breakfast.