Thursday, April 19, 2007

to shoot or not to shoot

so, one thought i've heard from a coworker is if people were allowed to carry guns at virginia tech, perhaps they could have intervened and shot Cho Seung-Hui

this makes a bit of sense as we don't have the ideal situation where no one has guns at all but gun control debates are something that won't go away anytime soon

perhaps the focus should be on acknowledging that some people are troubled and that they should not be excluded from society, instead they should somehow be included so that future incidents such as this are something we only see in history books

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

remembering the message

visited my sister in-law's on the weekend in deepest darkest maple ridge...

their family lives in a 3800 square foot home which is very nice and i can see the attraction to living in a large home with lots of space

i almost got sucked into "the dream" but some anchored portion of me said "hey, wait a minute"

home builders still don't use methods to reduce environmental impact on a large enough scale - passive heating, solar water heating, grid tied power supplies, heat pumps, triple glazed windows, and as little wasted space as possible

and how much room does a family of four need?

i find it sad that the whole message of less; simplicity; decluttering; respect just isn't working and it pushes me to thinking that things are going to get a lot worse before they even approach being better

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

LBJ and the vietnam war

Lyndon Johnson in a speech to the American Bar Association of New York City:

It is right that the strong should help the weak defend their freedom...

It is right that nations should be free from the coercion of others.

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this leads me to ponder what freedom is and the importance of nations

also, put into context of the present, does the current american administration believe in this credo or is there some other agenda

there is no easy answer but motives must always be questioned and hopefully the people of the united states that vote for their representatives and president get the necessary information to pick the lesser of two evils in 2008