Bob Edwards Sacked

I was whole heartedly disappointed to find out that today, my birthday, is the last day Bob Edwards will be hosting Morning Edition. That's like....losing Terry Gross from "Fresh Air" or Bob Siegel from "All Things Considered" - some share my views and NPR's thoughts on the matter are pathetic in my opinion. Though one wonders if it is this speech of his at the University of Kentucky that caused his "demotion".

MIT Hawk Cam

As promised, it looks like we have a Webcam for the hawks. Yay!

Nader the Hypocrite(?)

I just followed this from MeFi and at the moment I'm stunned. I've heard rumors here and there that Nader was a hypocrite but I think this is the first comprehensive article I've read. At some point I'd love to follow up on this on my own - even if I just email the reporters cited as being former Naderites who have kept quiet and ask WHY? I'm not real big on supporting people who are "Do as I say, Not as I do" and think people in such positions should lead by example. I hope this gets picked up and goes all over the place - either as truth or to be debunked.

Then again, my experience working for a Nader org was pretty bad too. I wonder if I could dig those memories up in more detail.

Hawks & Squirrels

We just moved offices at work this week and I have a sweet corner cube at the corner of our building looking out over Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge at the place where the Stratton Student Center and the grand Rogers Building connect.

I have this great little "green area" outside my window that has a large tree with a pretty decent sized squirrel nest at the top. Behind me in front of Building 9, (to the right of the tree in this picture), is a dying pine tree with a bird's nest at the top. In this bird's nest, reside a mating pair of red-tailed hawks and their two recently-hatched chicks.

I've had the immense pleasure of watching these hawks fly in a cycle around campus. To the top of Building 7, to another tree across the street, and sometimes in the trees outside my window hopping after some of the rapidly-growing squirrels who were also born earlier this year. Truly a sight to behold - a gift of nature. MIT has started a "Hawk Cam" on Campus Cable and today, I finally brought in my own camera, soon to be producing pictures of this couple, their hatchlings as well as the squirrels hanging out around my window.

A Portrait of Iraq

Touche. (Image courtesy of Joe. "War President." American Leftist.)

OCW Nominated for Webby Award

Mucho coolness to find out that OCW was nominated for a The Webby Award - this the same day we launched a partnership with Utah State University to create Online Learning Support communities for OCW courses.

Not sure why we're in the category of "Services" alongside iTMS, Google, CDDB, and MeetUp. I mean, those services have been around for a while and we're more educational than a service. jgd3 sez iTMS will take us - so far according to People's Voice we're ahead of iTMS but behind Google. However the latter is also in the Best Practices category and the former in the Music & Commerce categories. How about sharing the love?

Countdown to Fatherhood

Well, one more step to fatherhood today. We picked up our first car seat today - a Graco SnugRide. We too some time to wander about BabysRUs and look at the plethora of strollers, car seats and stroller-carseat combinations called "Travel Systems".

We wandered rather aimlessly and half-heartedly tried to figure out the difference. I think we were both embarrased really - neither of us wanted to ask for help. Finally, I pulled out the cell phone and called my sister-in-law, haning the phone to the wife. Basically, we need a car seat. The "travel systems" tend to be heavier and a little more expensive. But we definitely needed a car seat - we could get by without a stroller if we had to. Besides, who can resist carrying baby around with a snuggli?!

So we picked up the car seat and tossed the matching stroller on the Baby Registry. We've been a bit frustrated because we have a shower being thrown at work and there are a lot of grad students who have been asking what to get the baby. They don't really need to get us anything but there's no "low-budget" items on our list. Plus we cannot seem to find many online to add to the list. We can find the sing-along CDs and relaxation music in the Music store but we cannot add them to our Baby Registry. So we created our child's first Amazon.com Wish list. A bit cheesy, I know, and probably a bit presumptious. It was bound to happen sooner or later - I mean, his parents are incredibly geeky.

I'm getting incredibly nervous with .....what should I call it.....anthropomorphizing doesn't seem like the right word since he's certainly not inanimate - I felt the baby hiccuping the other morning. But "he" has a name, we talk to him and basically assume he's always there with us. My wife has had an incredibly good pregnancy. Only a little bit of nausea in the beginning and other than that she keeps saying things like "I forget I'm pregnant". She looks gorgeous, radiant, and very healthy. Still....I wonder if I'm jinxing things.

I've also been thinking about people who say "it's going to change your life" and "things will never be the same". Sure, I believe it to an extent - especially in the beginning. Sleepless nights, potential medical issues, raising someone who is essentially a blank slate. But I think our social live is incredibly different than others. We don't go out a lot except to dinner, (alone), and to the movies (alone) once in a great while. We enjoy spending most of our time at home playing on the computer, watching TV or DVDs. We love to cook, like to lay about and read books and truly enjoy each other's company - i.e. we have no active social live.

Who knows. Perhaps, like most people I will come back in a month or two and say "you have no idea". But for now, I'll continue the final month looking forward to being a dad.

US Pulls Afghan Troops for Iraq

I don't get it. Isn't this the "War on Terrorism" ? Shouldn't Afghanistan be our focus since Al Qaeda was essentially being run out of there prior to September 11th? I'll dig up some references but from what I've heard, many of the warlords are trying to take advantage of the void left by the Taliban and democracy is struggling incredibly to take hold. The Taliban is conducting attacks and trying to regain their foothold - if that happens, will Al Qaeda be welcomed back? Why aren't we focusing just as hard to bring democracy to Afghanistan?

Replacement Tech Editing

It's been quite a few years since I've done any real Technical Editing. Since the dot-bomb, there hasn't been any need to and I've always gotten my fix at work with Intranet documentation.

This puppy speaks to my literary heart. I will admit I haven't read many classics, but I love to read. That combined with my need to get back into editing makes Project Gutenberg's Distributed Proofing damn cool.

Iraqi Militia Attacks Ring (Liberty) Bell, Bush Takes Vacation

I was thinking on the drive into work this morning, how our involvement in Iraq could be perceived as a colonization of sorts resembling closely our own country's events leading up to the Revolutionary War.

OK, so Iraq was never an American Colony ruled over by King George W that had to pay taxes back to us.....but technically we were supposed to go in, take out Saddam, and install a new government into Iraq.

Yet the reasons we went into that country in the first place have completely eroded away. It's been well established by David Kay that there were and continue to be no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq - the President himself now jokes about a lack of WMDs as our soldiers continue to die. Previous to that, it was proven that a British report Powell cited to bolster the claim of WMDs in Iraq was actually plagiarized from a California post-grad student at University. Other claims that Saddam was purchasing nuclear materials from Niger also proved to be false, causing incredible chaos when someone from the administration leaked that the wife of Joseph C. Wilson, (Valerie Plame), who helped to disprove those claims, was a CIA Operative.

Colin Powell admitted this past week that the mobile biological warefare labs he mentioned in his UN presentation and case for going into Iraq was based on poor intelligence. And by my count, that leaves nothing left of the original reasons behind invading Iraq aside from the fact that Saddam was a Bad Guy &tm;.

So OUR soldiers continue to pay the price of bad politics and what Bush thought would sweep him into another term is backfiring miserably taking our troops lives and those of the country we are occupying. Where is the UN? When is the Bush administration going to realize that Iraq is not ready to fully govern itself sans assistance? We need to strike a deal with the UN to transfer authority and bring in peacekeepers from all over the world - not just our "coalition".

I already stated how bad I felt the situation was when I read that thousands of calls have been made to the GI Rights Hotline to find out penalties of going AWOL or how troops can just get out of there. We don't have enough military there to maintain the peace so we either bring in the UN or leave. I don't want my country's soldiers - who pledged to die for us.....to die for me in this cause.

And the last straw to provoke this rant?

"During his stop in North Carolina on his way to a weeklong Easter vacation at his Crawford, Texas, ranch, Bush met with the family of Army Spec. Chris Hill, a soldier killed in Iraq. Bush usually meets with the families of fallen soldiers in larger groups." - Hedges, Stephen J and Bob Kemper. "U.S. military looks for ways to increase troops in Iraq, if needed." Chicago Tribune. 05 April 2004.

and

"The annual Easter Egg roll at the White House is back to being open to the public this year. But, like last year, the show will go on without President Bush.

...

Instead, Bush will be at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he is celebrating Easter and meeting on Monday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. - "Easter Egg Roll Reopens to Public." Associated Press. 06 April 2004.

A WEEKLONG vacation? How many vacations does this guy take? In this time of chaos that HE initiated in Iraq, shouldn't HE be in the White House - the primary home base of his rle as President of the United states being President? How many people, aside from students and teachers in various schools around the country, get a whole week off for Easter?

It would be a little better if he was at least talking for himself. Instead his spokesperson is "delivering messages" via proxy. This is not a time for him to be hiding away in Texas - he needs to be leading.

Meeting with Hosni Mubarak? Well, since we give the second most amount of monetary aid to Egypt that makes sense for Bush. But shouldn't he be meeting with the American people?

Running Casualty List from CNN

CNN.com has a running casualty list of the real people dying for "us" in Iraq. And with things heating up incredibly this week - I only expect that list to grow.

Someone should make this list into an RSS feed so we can all watch as it updates.

U.S. Servicefolk Flee to Canada

In a case of "you know it's bad when...", German publication Telepolis has an article about US Servicefolk - mostly reservists - fleeing to Canada to escape deployment to Iraq.

The article makes some good points. I'm not sure this is better than taking a stand as a " Conscientious Objector" but it is showing the lengths people are going through to not have to fight in a war they don't believe in.

Update: Doug had asked if there was any other information of soldiers "fleeing" to Canada so I'm pulling up a few articles:

• Deserter defends fleeing to Canada - (Army Spec. Jeremy Hinzman, 27, Fled to Canada.)
• Anti-war Soldier Charged Early Today With Desertion - (Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, 28, Captured, Arrested, Court-Martialed.)

Down 41 to 265

On January 5th of this year, I started my trek into the world of the South Beach Diet as first recommended by my doctor and then by a group of friends who wanted to all try it together.

Due to this new way of eating combined with daily exercise (mostly), I have lost 41lbs as of this morning: down from 306 to 265. That's damn impressive if I must say so myself.

I say "mostly" regarding the daily exercise because the last 2 weeks have been nasty outside and incredibly busy at work - so I ignored my morning 30-min walk around campus. Plus, we had a ton of work being done on the house which disrupted access to the kitchen and I had a piece of chocolate cake to celebrate work's release of 200 more courses.

So tomorrow, provided the weather holds out for the most part, I will start up my morning walks again. I have 9 more pounds until I hit 50lbs and 15 more pounds until I reach my first goal of 250lbs. I have two more goals after that - to be 200lbs by the end of summer and 175lbs by next January. The latter goal is quite ambitious - but it wouldn't hurt.

As soon as I figure out MovableType categories a bit more, I will create a whole page dedicated to my foray into better health. I have a checkup on the 14th and think my doctor will be pleasantly surprised - I know I am.

BrainStream has New Home - Mine

BrainStream now resides at my house, on my own Web server. No more dealing with quotas or annoying Web hosting companies. If the server goes down - it's most likely my fault. I have to make this quick, because the wife would like me to come to bed.

Loads of new things including a FOAF file and MovableType. See "About this Site" for more information.

To come? A lot more including politics & religion - the two big no-nos, and a look into my voyage towards becoming a father. More geek-tools like making use of FOAF, creating my OWN RSS feeds and diving into the Semantic Web.

Oh yeah - and you can now leave comments.....so say hello.