Too many of these things are hitting the web lately. In the last couple of weeks I’ve had my psychoses and neuroses analyzed by a web site, had my seven deadly sins evalusted (Lust is what’ll do me in.) and just generally spent a little time taking this test.

The song fits, oddly enough.

Your Theme Song is Back in Black by AC/DC

“Back in black, I hit the sack, I’ve been too long, I’m glad to be back” Things sometimes get really crazy for you, and sometimes you have to get away from all the chaos. But each time you stage your comeback, it’s even better than the last!

Seems PA senator Rick Santorum is learning this lesson. Last year he published a book titled “It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good”. In it he ripped into working women, womens rights, etc.

Well – this didn’t sit well. He was supposed to speak to 3,000 women. Only 90 showed up and those that did show up weren’t all that happy with him. Of course the media was only allowed to cover 35 minutes of the event.

The guy is definitely a slime bag. He’s of the Mitt Romney mold except Romney seems to be playing it low.

Hopefully these are the last days for the neo-conservatives. Otherwise I fear the U.S. will sink into the morass of a theocracy.

This is too disturbing for words. I fall in the 13-15% range that thinks man evolved without the hand of god. But we’re in the minority here.

Did these people fall asleep during biology classes? Hell, I went to a Catholic high school and we learned about Mendel and Darwin in biology. Just what in hell are they teaching these days in public schools? If it’s Georgia they’re studying (And that’s me being optimistic!) the Bible so they get a pass.

I’m far too tired to lament this. So just read the blurb.

Right now I just finished watching Peter Sellers in the Blake Edwards productions of The Return of the Pink Panther (1975), and The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976). When these movies first came out I was between 11 and 12 and recall seeing them at The Castle cinema on Chalkstone Avenue in Providence, RI. It’s history has been one of ups and downs until finally finding it’s niche as a cafe/theatre.

All I can say is this – the two comic geniuses of the 1960’s through the 80’s were Blake Edwards and Mel Brooks. But my funny bone resonates more with Edwards than with Brooks.

The Pink Panther Strikes Again is funny as all hell. Sellers as usual has physical comedy down to an art. But Herbert Lom playing former Chief Inspector Dreyfus. Absolutey brilliant performance. He plays psychotic very well.

It just saddens me that Hollywood feels the need to either re-hash old movies with poorly thought out casting, or they have to take beloved comic books and cartoons and turn them into feature length movies.

Right now they’re shooting Underdog in Providence. Very low key as far as disruptions go. I remember when they shot Outside Providence and Federal Hill here – the disruptions were awful.

And now Providence is becoming a little Hollywood East. Lovely. Just what I wanted, vapid actors and egotistical directors making their landings in my beloved city.

President Bush says that the government has little control over the price of gasoline. I call foul on that statement.

First, one of the issues facing us is a lack of refining capability. Why not put U.S. money into building new sites that are less apt to face danger from natural disasters like hurricanes. But this is a panacea.

What we should really be doing is decreasing our dependence on oil. I can’t understand how a country like Brazil can fuel it’s vehicles on methanol, while here in the U.S. agri-business has to reap their profit first and instead give us the likes of MBTE which contaminates ground water supplies.

Why haven’t we taken a long, hard look at Thermal Depolymerization or TDP for short. TDP could eliminate the piles of tires in our landfills that represent serious environmental and health hazards into their constituent parts like oil, carbon, etc. Same goes for turkey offal – oil, carbon, etc.

Then of course there’s cold fusion. Turns out that Pons and Fleischman jumped the gun and went to the court of public opinion before they went through peer review. As a result their process wasn’t fully documented and other researchers struggled to duplicate the experiments. The end result is that it does work and can be replicated.

But the biggie is the ITER project. Imagine using Tritium and fusing it releasing huge amounts of energy while at the same time producing what is in essence water (Well, heavy water but it’s still water.) and very little radioactive byproduct. The design is inherently safe, cut off the tritium and the fusion stops.

Oh then there’s hydrogen. Hydrogen is all around us, a good chunk of the earth has hydrogen locked up in it. It’s water. When you run hydrogen through a fuel cell, you get electrical energy and water as the output. That same hydrogen is what produces tritium which could also fuel fusion reactors. But I like the fuel cell for one reason – it directly strips the electrons from the hydrogen/oxygen process. It’s a very neat and clean solution. The fusion reactor generates heat which is used to flash water to steam and drive a turbine. It’s that middle layer of complexity that I don’t like.

We need to write off the middle east. Let them fight over their sand and turn the entire middle east into a radioactive glass bowl should they wish. If the world doesn’t need their oil where does that put them? That’s right – back to sticks and stones.

The only thing necessary to push any of these projects ahead is money. I propose ending our little misadventure in Iraq and taking perhaps $100 billion from the military budget and using it for what I’ve outlined here.

If we did that we might not see change this summer, but in summers of the future we will. So write your congresional delegates and paraphrase away. Explain that we shouldn’t be seeking diplomacy through military action.

This has been in the news for the past week but this article brought it home for me.

Having spent twelve years in Catholic schools, and having read and analyzed the Bible from cover to cover I think I should stand as a clear example of why I think it should be taught in schools, and how I think it should be taught.

Studying the Bible did two things for me.

First, it provided the reason for my suspicion that the Bible is a poorly cobbled together text with numerous falshoods, inaccuracies, contradictions, and outright lies. It’s should be fairly obvious to everyone once you actually read the entire text of your particular version of the Bible. If anything it made me more cynical of organized religion. I think this is a good thing.

Secondly, it showed me that Christ, though I don’t believe him to be the son of God, affected change simply be opposing the status quo. Christ taught us to love our fellow man, forgive each others transgressions, and just to generally live a good life.

I have more than a little suspicion he’d be appalled at what’s been done in his name.

What I’m afraid of in the case of Georgia, Texas, et al is that they’ll put hacks in front of the class. Men of the cloth in essence. I was taught by men of the cloth that had masters and PhD’s – they’ll be taught by men of the cloth that received their wisdom directly from their god. And there isn’t anything more dangerous in my opinion.

In the classes I had we read chapter and verse and discussed it with lay teachers, priests and the brothers. And some of the more cynical bastards were in fact the ordained teachers. Isn’t that interesting – they actually gave us the ability to choose. I’m so hoping that this is what happens in Georgia.

Once again there was no element of surprise in this informal little test. What did surprise me though was the histrionic rating. I never thought that of myself but then, I am a shameless self-promoter with some limits.

The Narcissistic Disorder part is interesting. I’ve often been accused of being self-centered, maybe due to that shameless self promotion bit. But in all the little evals I’ve done in the past two things come to light, first is that I’m of Italian descent which explains the paranoia. The second is that I definitely fit the profile of an adult with ADHD. This is precisely why computers are a very special thing for me. They allow me to switch my attention from one thing to the other very quickly. At the moment I have eight tabs open in Firefox that I’m flipping between as I write this.

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid Disorder:	Moderate
Schizoid Disorder:	High
Schizotypal Disorder:	Moderate
Antisocial Disorder:	High
Borderline Disorder:	Low
Histrionic Disorder:	Moderate
Narcissistic Disorder:	High
Avoidant Disorder:	Low
Dependent Disorder:	Low
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:	Low
— Personality Disorder Test – Take It! — — Personality Disorders —

Then why wouldn’t he stop for a moment to talk to protesters? Did he not want to sully his beautiful alcoholic mind?

This just reminds me of a quote I once saw. It said that when Clinton traveled and travels he’s treated like a rock star, when Dubya travels he’s treated like a the criminal that he is.

This is a short blurb but tells us everything we need to know about this administration.

This is great. Lust is my deadliest sin. Oh well. Actually my wrath is pretty high too.

Greed:	Medium
Gluttony:	Medium
Wrath:	High
Sloth:	Low
Envy:	Low
Lust:	Very High
Pride:	Medium

Take the Seven Deadly Sins Quiz

Found this gem by Davis Sweet on The Huffington Post blog.

Let me state the following so that you might understand my position. I have used marijuana when I was a young man. Got high frequently yet seem to suffer no ill effects from it now in mid-life. Haven’t actually touched the stuff in more than a decade because quite frankly the thrill is somewhat gone, and my brief career in law enforcement meant I couldn’t partake.

Wait, wait, wait. Did I mention that many in law enforcement DO actually partake? Had I also mentioned that they don’t seem to suffer any ill effects from smoking the old whacky tobacky.

Might I also tell you about my aunt and uncle. Regular tokers yet both are lucid, intelligent, and loving, as well as incredibly talented. Might I mention my partner, who occasionally has some and is the sweetest and again, most incredibly talented and intelligent person I know? How about the contact highs I get from going to very loud concerts. I’m not talking philharmonic here, I’m talking about the funk, the whole funk, and nothing but the funk. Actually when I come to think about it, P-Funk is best enjoyed whilst stoned, same with Pink Floyd.

I consider marijuana no worse than alcohol and other legal drugs. I am also one that thinks that pain management in the United States happens to be a joke and that marijuana would be beneficial to those in pain, both physcially and mentally.

Imagine how much happier we’d all be if we could just light up every now and then and kick back, listen to some good tunes, maybe make a little love, maybe create our masterpiece. In short, who knows what beneficial thing might come from one being stoned.

What is really mind blowing is imagining if our elected officials and corporate masters had a few tokes every now and then. Just picture what it would do for diplomacy, or more succinctly what it could do for democracy.

Some day we’ll stop this lunacy and relieve the pain of our brothers and sisters. Free those wrongfully imprisoned for posession, remove the power from the hands of organized crime. That’s what legalizing marijuana would do.