After all this time it's just an embedded video?

I like this. I was on the edge of my seat while viewing it. It's kinda like what a stick figure themed version of the Matrix would be like...and no, I'm not referring the bullet-time action sequences.

Animator vs. Animation by *alanbecker on deviantART

We've been working on rolling out a Hyperion Business Intelligence (BI) environment at work, and have been pulling the 12-13 hour days for the past month it seems. Needless to say, it's been leaving home when the moon is still visible, and coming home when the crickets are composing their evening symphony, so their hasn't been much time for anything else. I don't even see much of the news anymore, although I do see a certain hillside every morning and see we're making good progress in filling it up with crosses.

Meanwhile gas is now over $4.00 a gallon in the Bay Area, layoffs are plentiful across industries, not everyone is getting the 'economic stimulus package' (read: kiss this money good-bye because it's either paying off debt, buying a flat screen LCD, or going to your interest-only home loan(s)), and our exit strategy is now to go through Iran.

Thank you Bush administration. You're leveling a bill that transcends 3 trillion dollars on future American generations that you'll never see or care about as you cooked your neural synapses on superb 1980s coke while your daddy was running the CIA. Bang up job Dubya.

I keep waiting for the Neo moment when Morpheus wakes me up with the red pill, and can fathom that power larger than the Bush dynasty is responsible for the economic and patriotic wasteland that's permeating our global landscape.

Right now I can't take the blue pill, as a $50 tank of gas coupled with a mortgage crisis, corporate 'downsizing', and (most importantly) a seemingly neverending antiseptic war on terrorism was unleashed on taxpayers by an American president.

What the war in Iraq costs us each second

How much money are we dumping in the Iraq War...conflict...civil support insertion...what the hell is it really anyway? Anywho, I'm sure you might hear all kinds of things about spending bills, and how Dubya vetoes them saying that he's not going to enforce an artificial timeline, but when it comes down to it, do you know how much it's costing us as a nation or you as a member of your city?

Well, the folks at the National Priorities Project have put together something that helps you visualize how much the war costs, and at what rate the money is being spent. You can also see the national cost ticker in the upper right hand of this blog. If you visit this site, which is part of the NPP, you can dynamically see how the cost affects your state, and your closest city. You also have the option of seeing how the money that we're spending on the conflict could have been used to resolve huge national concerns like children's health, public education, college scholarships, and public housing. There's also some features that allow you to calculate how war costs trade-offs directly impact your congressional district. Think the war is far away? Uh-uh...it's being fought out of your back pocket right now...that second of time involved the cost of about $1,667 of national taxpayer money that was just thrown on the pyre.

Even if you're a die-hard neo-con you're going to wince at the money we're wasting. That is unless you have holdings in an industry that supports military efforts in Iraq.

If the money doesn't bother you, then think about what Mark said in his recent piece, "Oh Right, We're Still At War":

Me, I like to imagine the babies. I like to imagine all the children born back in 2003 (or 2001, if you count the equally failed Afghan campaign), the Year of Brutal Idiocy, the Year It All Went Wrong, the Year America Jumped the Shark.

All these children born at the war's beginning are well over 4 years old now. They are walking, talking, speaking in complete sentences with more complexity and coherence than the president himself. And for their entire lives, America has been at war. They have never known a day where we have been at peace, where we haven't lived under this bitter cloud of rampant incompetence, violence, a deep sadness, a sense that something has gone very, very wrong with the American idea, and no one really has any clue how to fix it. How will they be affected? What sort of perception of a broken, lost America will they have drilled into their baffled little bones?

Which leaves us right here, in this murky no-man's-land of vague dis-ease, this foul, anesthetized place where our brutal-war-that-isn't-really-a-war has become the norm, a time when it feels like we as a country should be getting stronger and should be leading the world in everything from peacekeeping to environmentalism to medicine to technology, and yet we have this giant, bloodstained monkey on our backs, violent and ugly and still shockingly strong, and he is laughing, cackling at our feeble attempts to shake ourselves free, even as he eats at our soul.

Makes me think of what was going on in Afghanistan when I was a kid back in the 80s. Doesn't seem like much has changed. I think it's time to start focusing on rebuilding alliances, acknowledging mistakes, and moving forward. So far it seems like we've been in a circling pattern waiting for...an exit plan that takes us through Iran?

Can we stop the trajectory in which we're currently, seemingly locked? 2008 baby. Let your voice and vote do the talking.

300 given 2 thumbs down in Persian homeland

300 is a movie out right now that's gotten a lot of buzz for its "stylized action" and interpretation of the battle of Thermopylae between 300 Spartan soldiers and an invading Persian army that grossly outnumbered the small group of Spartans. While the movie itself is based on Frank Miller's graphic novel with the eponymous title, it does take certain liberties with the history.

Apparently, no one's been more upset by the artistic interpretation than Iran, per one of the country's cultural advisers. It would seem that the way the Persians are portrayed has so offended the Iranian people (who are descendants of the masters of the Persian Empire) that there's an online petition being circulated to prompt an apology from Warner Bros. The rest of the Arab world doesn't seem to have a problem with the film, and movie distributors don't see anything that would prohibit the film from being released within the region.

2 things:

1. Iran shouldn't worry about America using this film to denigrate Persians and indirectly Iranians because I'm betting that most Americans weren't aware that people in the U.S. from this region identify themselves as Persian foremost. The only way I became schooled in this juicy nugget of information was by attending university where the Persian kids I studied with broke it down for a brother.

2. Iran should probably focus its energy (nuclear or otherwise...ZING!) on the global tension surrounding their uranium enrichment program and not worry about a fictionalized production of a graphic novel, itself just one interpretation of an event that happened between 2 ancient civilizations over 2,000 years ago.

Iran has the U.S. bearing down on them, U.N. sanctions coming into play, and now the Russians have (reportedly) threatened to cut off their fuel unless they cease work on their nuclear program. This latter point most likely stems from the Russian claim that the Iranian government has been a little lax in footing the bill. Nuclear material isn't cheap you know!

Besides, we know the pirated DVD market will add many needed rials to the economy once some bootleg versions start to show up on the shelves, so perhaps 300 will end up helping the country after all! Yay capitalism!

If Anna Nicole nuked you, the mushroom cloud would look like a pretty tiara

Aside from the juicy news that a pitiful looking Bobby Brown was apparently bailed out of jail by a radio station (please stop doing crack, Bobby, that thing with your mouth is weird), or the opulent and utterly wasteful Anna-Nicole funeral where family and suitors vie over her corpse for money) did anyone notice that the U.S. just approved a new atomic warhead design to be implemented by Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Labs?

We don't yet know how much it'll cost, but to give you a sense let's just say that we currently spend over $5 billion a year to maintain the aging mushroom cloud layers we have sitting in torpedo bays and launch silos. I'm going to go out on a limb here...doesn't it seem even a little bit hypocritical that we're telling Iran that it can't play with these wonderful magical toys because they're not mature enough to handle them? Granted, the government there is not pro-U.S., detests Israel, and is quite possibly helping to fund terrorists, but does this strike anyone like a little bit of the pot calling the kettle black?

It's interesting that Dubya recently called Iran and North Korea the new "axis of evil" while John Bolton (former U.S. envoy to the United Nations) said that Iran is "ready for regime change" [note the tone implied in those words: it's like they're a tree that produces sweet juicy fruit, and we need to act fast to harvest] because it's close to being able to enrich its uranium. Speaking of which, are you curious what this means? Here's what enrichment entails.

I'm thankful that Dubya's days are numbered and his administration's days of threat-baiting are almost at a close, but still I wonder if he's going to try and get us committed in another armed maneuver in Iran in order to prevent them from building a functional nuclear device. Hopefully we try diplomacy and sanctions before resorting to the construction of another "coalition of the willing".

So...let's see...North Korea has the bomb (but we're trying to buy them off)...Iran is working on the bomb (don't lie, you know you are)...Israel doesn't (wink-wink) have the bomb, while China, France, Russia, India, Pakistan, and the U.K. all do.Maybe we should just give everyone nuclear weapons...you know, kinda like when we were in elementary school and the teacher told us we couldn't chew gum in class unless we brought enough to share for everyone? Well this way we could share the fun!

Maybe I'll just apply for the position as Warren Buffet's successor, make tons of money, then blast off to build me a nice moon mansion, and wait for the fireworks. At least then no one will be able to steal my precious bodily fluids.