Pot

I have been told that pot makes your brain capacity diminish. Yet recently in the news a tunnel was found that went from Tijuana across the border to san Diego with over two tonnes of the stuff jammed in there. In fact since 2001 almost 21 tunnels have been found.

Mentally diminished my ass. Judged on this evidence perhaps we should all take a little. Perhaps bush and Blair could discuss with hamas the Middle East and perhaps mellow out. In fact the only bad thing that could happen in this peace process is an attack of the munchies.

Of course if certain drugs were legalised we would have the press castigate and hound politicians not because they took drugs. But because they did not take drugs.

Elections

So Hamas may soon be in charge of a country. How odd a bunch of suicidal maniacs should be in charge in rebuilding a country it tried so well to blow up bits of.
Not at all like our politicians and countries.
Not at all like the right wing religious fundamentalist president bush.
Not at all like the left wing (?) Prime Minister Tony Blair who supports president bush in blowing up countries.

What have they got in common? The people voted them all in. Thats right you and me together.
We are not like those poor deranged souls who went in and elected a party who has terrorised people for 20+ years.
Oh no not at all.
We are morons to put into power those who try their best to kill us.

Online lives

Recently I have taken up World of war craft at the recommendation of a friend. At first I was reluctant, I like to live in this world not another and not in one which is not real, but as I blog- which lets face it is another world, I thought I would give it a go.

I am now hooked.
I have found it to be the most compelling game ever, true it can get repetitive but it draws you in, I no longer go down to a bar for a drink with friends but instead meet those same friends in an online bar (do not fret alcohol is available beside me)
I have found it to be a very good tool for one of my favourite pastimes- people watching. In this game you get to see how people really are. You cannot do terrible things to each other player but how people play together does give you a good rundown on what they are like.

There is one fellow who I know in real life and in the game, now I knew he could be needy and a little too competitive but playing with him showed me a little more of his personality. When you play you have to work together and what did he do?
Think about nothing but himself he took everything he could and would leave us in the lurch to fight the bad guys.
All I can say after witnessing his behaviour I was glad I did not go into business with the man six months ago when he offered.
So it would seem as much as we may think of it as an escape from the world it still very much follows us in. I now wonder if they were to remove the limits on what you can do to other players what would happen. Anarchy and rampaging warlords would no doubt shatter this fantastic idyll.

Storming and norming

So i have had my blog now for a couple of months now not much has been written recently, not due to illness or work but because i cannot be bothered. At the beginning when something is new it consumes you for a while. You apply thought to it and think its great. but as time goes on the novelty wears off and you can become bored of it, hence the norming process you stop doing it and then come back to it at a pace you find more to your liking.
I am enjoying blogging so far, but it is like anything in life, you get out what you put in and i have to decide like all bloggers how much i want to put in.
I have found in blogging just how many different kinds of people there are. and it really does open your eyes to people and their ideas. People who you would think as right wing turn out to have left wing ideas and vica versa. This is a relief from the normal media channels where everything becomes polarised -usually to a so called left wing or liberal position (unless you are FOX news god or allah bless them)

Automatic for the people

Recently I watched a DVD called "stealth" now it is hokum. Enjoyable, but still hokum.
It did however raise one a question about the military pursuit of unmanned combat air vehicles (ucav).
Are we creating technology that will make it too easy for us to kill?
I remember in history of the second world war they setup the death camps because the time, cost and psychological effects on the people who did this slaughter was too high. It may seem odd to you but even the most diehard Nazi could not face the extended butchery that was carried out. And in fact when they created the death camps and the gas chambers they actually forced the Jews to do it themselves. They did this because again the effects on the people who did these tasks where high

You might think the above is a little strong but when you read how the Nazis went about it you can see they are distancing themselves as much as possible from the slaughter creating a buffer between the orders they made and the reality of the tasks. Even the language was altered into something neutral and harmless, you read some of them and you would never know they contained orders for the deaths of people.

Again a little strong but look at the language the military now uses it seems harmless beneficial even to the people on the receiving end of military hardware. Of course the military cannot be blamed for this they only react to the pressures that we put on them (and who ultimately benefit from their sacrifice with cheap oil and protection from terrorists)

Now back to the UCAVs death at a distance. We give it the orders it does them we never see the slaughter and we are separated from it killing making it more like a game. You just need the quarters. People say UCAVS will save pilots lives but that still leaves the poor bloody infantryman.

And perhaps we should have pilots who can die. Maybe we will be a little more cautious about going to war knowing our lives are at stake too.

As an extra point if we are so worried about robots taking over the world why do we insist on creating military robots?

I would like to say that the men and women who serve in the armed forces do have my respect. They have been given a thankless task in a dangerous environment and we often forget they really do want to help people and make the world safer for us.

Alcholisim

So the leader of a political party has had to resign because he is a recovering alchi. I myself drink a fair bit but as far as I know I am not an alcoholic (unless I am in denial).
Kennedy had a drink problem and his party (well those at the top not the people who actually make the party) said they could not tolerate his actions - one or two of them wants the position me thinks.

When I thought about this I compared Kennedy to other leaders.

Stalin
Genocidal egomaniac that killed more of his own people than you could think possible - I never saw his party try to put him out of power.

Margaret Thatcher
Matriarch of the conservative party. Finally done in not by Neil Kinnock but by the lesser people within her own party. Introduced some of the worst policies in the eighties leaving Britain’s industries a desolate wasteland.

Jacques Chirac
Named by the French people "super liar" for lying about everything.

President George bush
Idiot of the highest order. More interested in filling his bank balance than making the world a safer place.

Tony Blair
For supporting bush in a war without actually having something called a "plan"

When you compare the above with Kennedy it kind of puts everything thing into perspective and I wonder how much was his own top brass wanting the job and how much was actually down to his drinking problem.

xmas and new year

More inner peace was delivered than any year previously which was good.
back to work soon. Not so good.