Sometimes, as Mick Jagger once sang, you’re 2000 light years from home. At least sometimes I feel that way. The third victim of a horrible beheading has occured this week in Iraq/Middle East. This is just not getting any better, is it? My opinion remains the same as its always been – we should have never gone there in the first place. However painful it is, though, I can’t argue with the logic behind not negotiating with these barely human people. It is horrible that it ends up costing human lives in such a dreadful way, but we must realize that to even negotiate once with these animals will only bring about a drastic increase in the amount of “me too” beheadings. In other words, the mentality would be this: “if the U.S. will negotiate with that terrorist, then they’ll negotiate with me, too. My turn to go get some prisoners.” Doesn’t work that way. Won’t work that way. Can’t work that way. Damn shame we’re even there.
Massachusetts is slightly abuzz about the new law which places restrictions on citizens who own Pitbulls. Naturally, the citizens who claim to own harmless, “nice” pitbulls are up in arms, as is the PETA group and probably every other animal rights orgazization out there. Gosh, their hearts are in the right place and they’re probably right when they say it’s the lack of training by the owners more than the temperament of the dogs. Seriously, though, how many more small children can be seriously injured? How many other dogs are going to die? I don’t think it’s the press picking on a certain breed, either. I agree with the law, and I am very very sympathetic and support animal rights and the ethical treatment of animals. Just ask Stephanie how I react when I see a dog (now is your chance to comment, Steph).
In somewhat unrelated news, I’m not a vegetarian, but I did just purchase the excellent cookbook The Clueless Vegetarian. Some fantastic stuff in there.
Finally, the web-based email market has gone utterly berzerk since Google’s announcement that they were offering a gazillion keterabytes of storage (note: I made up “keterabyte.” It really means “a whole lotta”). My theory remains that if Google were to put a huge, steaming pile of dogshit on their homepage, that everyone in the world would suddenly worship dogshit. Ah, well. Anyway, with Google’s announcement comes the predictable responses from MSN, Ask Jeeves and Yahoo that they, too, want to play. The search business keeps on truckin’……
Finally, since Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and probably MSN own their own advertising networks, even AOL feels compelled to get into the game now, with their purchase of Advertising.com. Will be interesting to see what, if anything, becomes of it. I thought as recently as six months ago that AOL was really heading for the ditch, but now there are little trickles here and there that are beginning to make me think……
Song now playing: The Von Bondies – “No Regrets”