Random Musings of Brian A. Thomas. Love for Sara and Ari.
Posted in Ari Update, General on Sep 11th, 2006
I posted some of the pictures of the trip Ari and I made to Stan Hywet Hall up at Flickr. I may post some of my favorites directly to a separate page (so people don’t have to wait a long time for the main page to load).
Posted in Ari Update on Sep 11th, 2006
After the obligatory heavy post prior to this one today, we move on to much lighter fair.
I took Ari to Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens to see the “Butterflies in Flight,” and “Trains Across the Valley” exhibits yesterday. He really enjoyed both, but I think he enjoyed the trains far more. I am trying to [...]
Today marks the 5th year anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center.
First, some reflection. I was working at Borders that day and everything was fairly normal. We got a call from one of our employees that a plane flew into the one of the towers of the World Trade Center. I believe, if [...]
The Cato Institute is offering a free book via mail or online. (I ordered a bound copy myself.) Power Surge: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush, is a look at the massive expansion of federal government, and abuses of its power that are in sharp contradiction to the Constitution.
Posted in Politics on Sep 10th, 2006
From the Cato Institute’s article: Fighting Terror Five Years Later:
Americans need to realize that we, Americans, determine the success of failure of future terrorists attacks and attempted attacks. If the goal of terrorists, by definition, is to induce panic, fear, and to disrupt our way of life, the best way to defuse them is to [...]
Posted in Politics on Sep 10th, 2006
I meant to post this a few days ago when I first read about it, but didn’t get around to it.
Phi Delta Kappa, an advocacy group for public schools, came out with a study that says support for vouchers is down to 36%. This contradicts other studies that show that support for vouchers is growing, [...]
Posted in Site News on Sep 9th, 2006
I updated some things on the back end here, but that update caused a few things to break. Namely the Amazon Wishlist and Asides are broken. I have no idea when I’ll fix them. I’ll probably fix the Amazon Wishlist first, then go from there.
Posted in CSharp, Programming on Sep 9th, 2006
I made a couple minor changes to my What Time Do I Leave Friday program that I made. This brings the beta from 0.5 to 0.5.3. One of the changes was behind the scenes and doesn’t matter to the end user. The other change was having the program check to see if the user entered [...]
Posted in Battlestar Galactica, TV Shows on Sep 7th, 2006
How did I miss this happening? I knew they were coming, but somehow missed them showing up. The best show on TV is going to start it’s third season soon, and to hold us over, there will be 10 mini episodes available online each Tuesday and Thursday until the show launches its new season. You [...]
Posted in Politics on Sep 6th, 2006
I was wondering why people in the Objectivism movement seem to have so much dislike for those in the Libertarianism movement. So far it looks like they dislike the whole idea that Libertarians are too tolerant and too diverse on their motives for Liberty and even their definition of Liberty. It seems to me that [...]
Posted in Ari Update, General on Sep 6th, 2006
This is Ari’s new pet Green Iguana, Quincy.
We chose Quincy as it was a nice unisex(ish) name. If it turns out to be a girl, we’ll just shorten it to Quinn.
I got rid of the mice the other day by abandoning them at a local abandoned house (somehow no condemned notice is on it, [...]
Posted in Site News on Sep 4th, 2006
I am trying to move to a constant Title Case here. Basically, all titles should have their first and last word capitalized, and capitalize all other words except a, an, the, at, by, for, in, of, on, to, up, and, as, but, it, or, and nor. I will not be fixing old articles to reflect [...]
Posted in Politics on Sep 4th, 2006
You can get up to a $60 refund/credit this year as a refund for overpaying on a tax imposed on phone calls (in this case the refund is only for the tax on long distance calls) to pay for the Spanish American War which took place in 1898. The war was paid off eons ago, [...]
Posted in General on Sep 4th, 2006
All the best to Steve Irwin’s family and all of Australia for loosing a national treasure. Steve died Monday (Sunday US time) diving on the Great Barrier Reef filming his show when he was stabbed in the heart by a stingray. (More.) He died happy doing what he loved doing.
Posted in General on Sep 4th, 2006
If you want to die of old age, you will have to leave the United States, as it is illegal here. Death because of old age was removed from the reasons that may be legally listed for cause of death in 1951. (Source: Discovery Magazine - 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Death and confirmed [...]
Posted in General on Sep 3rd, 2006
I couldn’t find a good photo of myself, so I snapped a bad shot of myself to do this, so beware… (All the good photo’s of me are not in digital form)
Not on the picture above, but on their list is Daphne Zuniza (54%) and Takuya Kimura (54%).
They don’t have George Stephanopoulos on their current [...]
Posted in Politics on Sep 3rd, 2006
I have long been a fan of the Cato Institute, but have been reading a lot more of it lately, especially since upgrading my copy of FeedDemon (still perhaps the best RSS reader for Windows).
Anyhow, the Daily Commentary for today is Witch Doctors and Thugs by Alan Reynolds, and it’s about Bush’s recent use of [...]
Posted in General, Lost, Politics, TV Shows on Sep 2nd, 2006
From the Wikipedia article on Natural Rights:
Some thinkers like John Locke emphasized “property” as primary. Indeed, Locke’s influential defense of the right of revolution is represented in the Declaration of Independence, where Thomas Jefferson cited “life, liberty, and private property” in his initial drafts. For political reasons, the committee approving the Declaration later substituted “pursuit [...]
Imajica: Featuring New Illustrations and an Appendix by Clive Barker