Kipling

I came across this poem in an article about Rudyard Kipling and his son who died during World War War I, the first "war to end all wars." Kipling wrote an amazing poem about his dead son a year later. The
article is here and the poem is below and in the article.

My Boy Jack (1916)

Have you news of my boy Jack?'
Not this tide.
'When d'you think that he'll come back?'
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

'Has any one else had word of him?'
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

'Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?'
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind -
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

New Toy

You can never have enough things in your life to distract, I always say. I've been looking around for a good piece of software that I can do panoramic pictures with and I think I found one I like. It's called Autostitch and, surprisingly, you don't have to do a thing to make the panorama. You just choose the photographs you want stitched together and the program takes care of the rest. Here's an example below. I took five pictures of my back courtyard and stitched them together this morning. There is some distortion in the picture because I stood in one spot. If you move sideways you can avoid this.

Beauty and horror

I guess images like these were unavoidable if you have a disaster in a city like New York. A city full of artists can't help but produce photographs like these during the worst of days.

Richard Dawkins

"You won't find any opposition to the idea of evolution among sophisticated, educated theologians. It comes from an exceedingly retarded, primitive version of religion, which unfortunately is at present undergoing an epidemic in the United States. Not in Europe, not in Britain, but in the United States."

It gets better

"Actually, holy alliance would be a better phrase. Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion. Both have implacable faith that they are right and the other is evil. Each believes that when he dies he is going to heaven. Each believes that if he could kill the other, his path to paradise in the next world would be even swifter. The delusional "next world" is welcome to both of them. This world would be a much better place without either of them."

This guy is my hero

"An astronomically overwhelming majority of the people who could be born never will be. You are one of the tiny minority whose number came up. Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one. The world would be a better place if we all had this positive attitude to life. It would also be a better place if morality was all about doing good to others and refraining from hurting them, rather than religion's morbid obsession with private sin and the evils of sexual enjoyment."

Never even knew about this

Sometimes we live in such an interesting world.

Young and Colbert

Here is Neil Young's appearance on the Colbert Report. Good stuff.

Another one

It is impossible for me to say how much this stuff cracks me up.

Still the worst president ever

During the month, 3,438 Iraqis were killed -- 1,855 because of sectarian or political violence and another 1,583 from bombings and shootings. Nearly 3,600 Iraqis were wounded, the official said.

The release of these figures comes on the heels of a U.N. report that said nearly 6,000 people were killed in Iraq in May and June.

Nation o' prisons

According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice in 1980 there were 315,974 prisoners serving sentences of a year or more that were incarcerated in federal in state prisons. That is a ratio of 139 per 100,000 of the resident population. In 2002 there 1,380,370 prisoners serveing sentences of a year or more that were incarcerated in federal and state prisons. That is a ratio of 476 per 100,000 of the resident population. These numbers have risen every year since 1980. You better watch your step and do what your supposed to do, mister.

What to get me for Christmas, the bad-ass camera

Now capturing more souls per second that ever thought possible.