"...for the land of the free, and the home of the brave." America is dying, and I believe there is no greater proof than airports. Allow me to explain. Our country, the "land of the free and home of the brave," responds substantially to terrorism and fear by removing personal liberties. We always hear the word freedom used to inspire us to patriotism, but what does it mean? To me, it's the ability to go where I want, do what I want, say what I want, think what I want, believe what I want and do so with as little oversight as possible, so long as I am not interfering with the freedoms of others. At the risk of editorializing (well, nevermind, this is an editorial) I'd like to point out that I've yet to see how Al Quaeda blowing up 50 buildings will stop me from being able to say or think what I want. Actually, the actions of our government in response to Al Quaeda's actions has removed more freedoms that Al Quaeda has (and killed more American citizens in Iraq), and it seems that through relationships with contractors such as Halliburton and KBR that they've profited supremely off of this chain of action, but that's besides the point. The airport is the greatest example of freedoms snatched up in the name of freedom. The plane, a convenience which makes travel easier, used to be just that, a vehicle, but now it has become a symbol and a weapon. Ignoring the fact that cars are also vehicles that can and have been used intentionally (and accidentally) as weapons to end many more lives and damage many buildings is apparantly the business of the policy makers. But, planes are the new symbol so that's where the government is acting. Close your eyes for a second, and think of what freedom means to you. Now, remove the ability to carry anything pointy and metallic. Now, imagine you have to be inspected, scanned, and potentially remove clothes for a government official to use something you paid for through a private company. Now, imagine that you can be arrested for saying the wrong thing, or even making a joke. Now, imagine that any time someone comes up with an idea to make something benign a threat, it gets acted upon with a dramatic overreaction, such as having to take off your shoes (even flip flops) when some dumbass tried to light his shoes on fire, and having to throw out toothpaste and shampoo since someone planned to use liquid explosives. I'm not sure what part of this scenario is resulting in me being more free, or even being the same amount of free, since the government is doing this to protect the freedoms we in theory already had. I'm certainly not sure which part of this is being done by the brave; for being brave we sure respond strongly to a lot of fear. My question is this...how come the billions of other ways to kill people haven't been addressed by the TSA? If somehow stopping bad people from hurting people on planes is going to protect all of our freedoms, why aren't glasses banned, or pens? I've seen "The Godfather," a pair of glasses can quickly be used as a weapon. Also, anything glass can be shattered or broken and then be used as a weapon, why is glass allowed on a plane? I've seen plastic knives, not only is there a very sharp plastic lettuce knife which is sold that can bypass security, but once I tried to cut myself with a plasticware knife given to me in an in-flight meal, and I was able to do so easily with one swipe (get over it, I was trying to see how sharp it was, I'm not into hurting myself). We all know the movie snakes on a plane, and on the last flight I was on a woman snuck a parakeet on the plane in her pocket since she was afraid the flight attendants would take it, and it got out. How easy would it be to bring poisonous or dangerous animals onto a plane, especially since many cold blooded reptiles will hibernate if they get too cold and reanimate once they warm up. The point is, we can't plan for every contingency, and shouldn't have to. Yea, some people blew up planes, but it caused enough of a reaction that no plane full of people would ever let three guys with box cutters take over a plane again, especially if instead of box cutters they had a nail clipper, a lighter, and a can of aftershave. If this is the land of the free and the home of the brave, I'm not afraid of Al-Quaeda bringing planes down on my head and suddenly having every woman I know having to cover their knees when they go outside. I'm afraid of the government hijacking patriotism in order to satisfy personal agendas that give them more power and give me less freedom. Remember, the government bailed out most of the airline industry, and not only are taxes on flights now higher but I still have had a disaster in one way or another on 8 of my last 9 flights, and the government controlled FAA prevents airlines from operating their own better services outside the structure of the existing and defunct airport system. Welcome to the land of the free and the home of the brave.

So this is the house I'll be living in, and I'd like to take you on a tour! Here's a Google Maps Satellite View of the house.

This is the same GMSV of the house, only I outlined the street, driveway, garden on the adjoining property, river near us, and Jenn's friend's Heather's house who lives right behind me.

Here's a high quality image of the floorplan.

The following image is the floorplan of our house, with buttons where I took pictures. Each red camera is where I was standing, with the arrow showing which direction the camera was pointing. Click on the camera to see what I saw!

(Joe and Jenn, after Joe watches the last Voyager, the second of Joe's favorite shows about humans getting stranded in distant space going home)

Surfrock66: I wanna go on a far away space ship and be stranded 🙁
JoesSilentAngel: 🙂
Surfrock66: Ima build a space ship
JoesSilentAngel: sigh
Surfrock66: wanna help?
JoesSilentAngel: well, ok
Surfrock66: ok
Surfrock66: we'll form 2 teams
Surfrock66: design and implementation
Surfrock66: I'll do design, you implement
Surfrock66: ok,
Surfrock66: design aspect 1:
Surfrock66: has to go light speed
Surfrock66: awesome
Surfrock66: you get on the implement part of that
Surfrock66: design aspect 2:
Surfrock66: big cup holders to hold intergalactic sized smoothies
Surfrock66: knew I wouldn't make it easy for you huh.
Surfrock66: design aspect 3: metaphasic deflection shielding
Surfrock66: I think you can handle that one
JoesSilentAngel: man, dat's not really fair!!!
JoesSilentAngel: you get all the easy work
Surfrock66: no way!
Surfrock66: fine, if you need to be a ninny
JoesSilentAngel: 🙁
Surfrock66: I'll work on the cup holder
JoesSilentAngel: but pinkin!!! dat's da easiest one!
Surfrock66: 😉
JoesSilentAngel: sigh

I'm sure it is no surprise I like to think, so I read this article and it made me think a bit. I believe that to many people, creationism and evolution are pitted against each other in an epic battle for which is absolutely right. I of course am not in the business of telling religious people what to believe, but I think that this antagonism is based on an oversimplification. Both sides are wrong. People believing in creationism think that if evolution is at all right then what they belive is all wrong, so they must fight it, and vice versa. No one should be so bold as to believe that they have a full understanding of how everything in history happened and how everythign works, whether it be a christian reading the bible or a scientist uncovering fossils. No matter what, a christian understands the world from the reading and interpretation of a book written by man, and a scientist understands the world from the examination and interpretation of evidence found based on previous evidence found. Neither one is absolutely correct. I tend to side with science because in the past, scientists have been willing to say, "Yea, we fucked up and had that backwards, let's move on." while some christians in the past have said "Fossil shows world created 4 billion years ago? You faked it or god must have planted it, either way shenanigans." There is no evolution vs. creationism debate, when it's presented it's always presented as "which of these is right and which is wrong," but the real debate is always "who is humble enough to admit they don't know everything." A creationist should be able to say, "Yea, that's compelling evidence, I can't say that's wrong but I still believe in god and creation of the universe so somehow the two must mesh," and a scientist should be able to say "Well, here's all this evidence, but there's no proof god doesn't exist, so I can't be so bold as to say those guys are totally full of shit, since you see none of us were there at the beginning of time to see how it really happened." Am I a hypocrite for being an atheist and saying scientists should tolerate religion? Maybe, even probably, though I think I'm pretty good about letting religious people be and not telling them to believe what I believe.

  Democracy has now failed. The problem with democracy in this country is that we have been too stubborn to adapt to technology. Allow me to explain. To me, Democracy (and in our case, democratic republic) means that the will of the people should influence the direction and policy of the nation. In the past, when the country was founded, the best way to gague public opinion was the vote, since for someone in Florida to have their opinion heard in Washington took 2 weeks on horseback. We got comfortable with this system, and through districting we learned how to manipulate it. Since not everyone could make laws, the republic system made the most sense, your area chooses someone to represent you and trust they'll act in accordance with your will. Now though, the world has changed and so has Democracy. Communication technology allows the will of the people within or outside the limits of districts to be known. Representatives are not chosen based on what they plan to do or how they will represent their people, but on how good of an image they can put on. They say what they need to say to get elected, then they do what they want and stop listening to their constituents. The election process itself has become a game, we refer to it as win or lose instead of selection. The ideal election should not be choosing who is "better" but instead which of the equal options is right at the time. The "loser" of an election simply was not selected, just like the chicken nuggets when you order a Big Mac.
  The party system shows how messed up the system is. The only way to get elected is to have the support of a party, and the party only supports one candidate. What happens if right now the two best candidates for the office are Hillary and Obama? What if more Republicans like Obama but more Democrats like Hillary, so it goes to Hillary and a Republican and the Republican wins? It's a stupid system. The Primaries are basically an election to the head of a mass marketing firm. And it pitts people against each other; I think Mike Gravel is awesome since he's so out of the box, but then he has to go out and bash his co-runners (like Obama, "Who would you bomb Barack?") rather than work together to come up with better policies. Man, I'd love to see Obama/Gravel '08.
  I'd like to see someone who is willing to implement a system to gague public opinion outside of the election. I'd like to see a president (or at least candidate) who is willing to say "I personally think more money should go to defense, but I have listened to the people as best I can and it seems people want money in health care and education, so I will work to make it so." Who knows how that is done, using the polls that exist through the private media companies, by making new polls as best as they can, by working to actually personally read and respond to mail (ok, I know that's not realistic), who knows. Clearly, ABC's polls and their treatment of Ron Paul and Mike Gravel prove private media polls are worthless. Nevertheless, it is clear to me that choosing a president is abotu the same as choosing an American Idol, once they're chosen we don't really pay attention to what they do since you know they have a bunch of projects planned, but no matter what they have to sing pop songs to get to that #1 spot.