From a Rolling Stone interview with George Clooney:

Rolling Stone: Very few people wake up in the morning and say, “I’m going to do some evil today.”

Clooney: Yeah, I think they believe in what they’re doing and that they’re going to get seventy virgins after they die — but, really, who wants seventy virgins? I want eight pros.

On the drive back from my parents house along one stretch of the 401, near Chatham, Ontario I saw something I have never seen before.  In the span of may 3-4 miles I saw at least a dozen red-tailed hawks sitting in trees along the roadway.  I regularly see 1 hawk when I am driving to and from work.  This is the first time I have ever seen so many hawks in the wild in such a short span of time.  Pretty cool.

We went to visit my parents in Canada for a couple of days early this week.  Whenever we go there we take a trip into Toronto, so Jules can go shopping at Romni Wool on queen st.  This trip happened to come the day after a big shooting in front of the Eaton Centre on Yonge St.  But that is for a another discussion.  On the way into downtown TO we saw these banners on all the light posts that said coming February 2006, Lord of the Rings at the Princess of Wales Theatre. For some inexplicable reason they are making a musical out of the Lord of the rings trilogy.  If you have read the books and/or seen the Peter Jackson directed films, imagine trying to stage this tale on a live stage, with songs even!  It just doesn’t strike me as a good idea.  In fact it seems like a phenomenonaly bad idea.  Here is a news item about a recent preview shown to some media at a rehearsal hall.  Creativity is a good thing.  To me this seems like jsut trying to cash in on the success of the movies.  I can’t fathom how this production can possible succeed.  The scope of the story is just to vast and covers too much ground both literally and in terms of plot to compress into a 3 hour stage production.  I see a financial disaster in the making here.

I was driving by the Washtenaw country club the other day, and there is a pond at the north west corner of the property. There are always a large group of ducks that congregate there. As I was going by I glanced over and saw something that was clearly not one of the usual mallards sitting there by the edge of the water. I swung by my house and grabbed the camera and came back and got the following shot

Zooming in on the image reveals that the red-tailed hawk was apparently partaking in a pre-christmas duck for lunch (note the red stain on the snow to the right of the hawk).

It’s amazing what you can see in nature around here if you just keep your eyes open. Unfortunately as I approached the fence of the golf course the ducks started to quack, the hawk looked over at me and the took off carrying the rest of it’s meal in it’s talons. This is the first time I have seen a hawk here in town, although I see them pretty regularly on my drive to work, in Superior Twp. and along M-14.

Today is the winter solstice.  It is a day of rebirth, as for the next 6 months the days will be getting steadily longer!

In a speech in April 2004 in Buffalo NY, addressing concerns about the USA Patriot Act George W. Bush said:

“A wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed by the way.”

Bush clearly lied to the American people when he made that statement. They are running the video on CNN right now.

So clearly the judge in the Dover, PA, intelligent design lawsuit is an “Activist” judge. U.S. District Judge John Jones today ruled that ID is not science but rather a supernatural explanation for the origin of life and is nothing more than a thinly disguised version of biblical creationism. He was quite open in his criticism of the ID proponents:

Jones condemned the “breathtaking inanity” of the policy of the board, all but one of whom have now been ousted by local voters. “Any asserted secular purposes by the Board are a sham and are merely secondary to a religious objective,” he said.

Jones said the students and teachers of Dover High School “deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.”

Fortunately the members of the Dover school board who put this policy were ejected by the voters this fall, so hopefully this case will not get appealed. Undoubtedly other similar cases will follow, particularly in Kansas that has a statewide rather local policy on ID. Lets just hope that the same kind of rulings follow.

This time of year lots of people buy new gadgets. If you need any help setting up new computers, networking gear, ipods or other gadgets, just drop me an e-mail sam DOT abuelsamid AT gmail DOT com and I can fill you in on rates. I’m very reasonable and I have time available this week and next. If you would like to get something configured in advance, it can be ready to go on Christmas morning.

I finished the video of ZombieClaus. It is up on ourmedia.org because it is free. If anyone else wants to host it on their site feel free to save a copy and put it on your own site.

It is up on ourmedia.org because it is free. If anyone else wants to host it on their site feel free to save a copy and put it on your own site.

Here is a very rough cut of the zombie claus video. I will be doing some more editing on this as soon as I get a chance