PolarLava::Blog

A few weeks back I wrote about wearing a LiveStrong wristband.  For me it's logical; I'm a cyclist, Lance Armstrong fan, it supports cancer victims who need assistance and my mother is a cancer survivor.  It just makes sense to me.  Unfortunately, an administrator run amok at the Virginia Beach City Public Schools just disqualified 26 cross-country runners for wearing them.  Why?  They're jewelery of course, and only religious or medical "jewelery" are allowed.

It's good to see a positive message for kids of all ages being squashed by an overzealous school bureaucrat.  Fortunately for me I would have been allowed to wear mine because cycling is my religion!

10/14/2004
Well it seems that the bureaucrats who made this blunder have reversed this decision after getting inundated with complaints from rational, sane people.

I used to do a lot of international travel for one of my previous jobs.  One place I spent a lot of time was in Japan.  Every time I would go there I always came home with lots of little gifts ("We have small gift for you.") from the facilities I would visit.    I was doing some cleaning up around my house a few weeks ago when I stumbled upon one of these.  A small rubber-stamp like all of the office workers would use to "sign" their paperwork in Kanji.  My coworker and I became sort of infatuated with these little stamps so they made a couple of them up for us.  This was mine:



The small note that they gave me with it had been stamped with "my signature".  Obviously my name can't be translated to Kanji, so they made my stamp with two Kanji symbols, "Multiply" and "Smart".  Thus implying that they viewed me as being intelligent…obviously a mistake on their part, but that's another story!  Then again, for all I know it could say "henna gaijing" (crazy foreigner)…or worse.

Anyhow, here it is and now I can be happy that I've finally gotten some use out of it!  Wait until you see my desk vacuum!

01/03/05
Earlier today I found this blog entry.  It was of interest to me because I learned that these name stamps are called "hanko", thus I've added this to the title of this entry.  Also, it was of interest because this one incorporates a (meager) 32MB USB flash drive.  Ordinarily I would have likely found that to be "neat", but it's a bit more today, as I acquired a 256MB PNY Attachê just this past Friday.

I'm all for saving a buck.  And although I'm not big on political statements myself, I don't really have a problem with others making them.  That is one of the fundamental tenets of the constitution after all.  (Although if Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft and company have their way it won't be for long.  Another conversation unto itself.)  But when you start dumpster diving as your primary means of providing sustenance for yourself and your friends, you've gone too far.  That is unless you're a freegan!  Sounds a lot like "freak man" to me.  As in "you're a freak, man"!

Last week I stumbled upon the website Undercaffeinated.  I don't currently subscribe to the right-wing rhetoric that he seems to be infatuated with, but I did find one thing of interest.  In the menu bar there's a link to The Political Compass, that I think everyone should check out.

So I went and took their political test.  The results basically say I'm a "centrist, liberal, libertarian".  I scored: Economic Left/Right: -1.25, Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.95.  This is in contrasts with Undercaffeinated's score of Economic Left/Right: 6.12, Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.44.  Thus I'd say we share a similar outlook on social issues, but apparently differ on how to achieve the goals…whatever they may be.

It really doesn't matter because our government seems to be on a constant downward (death?) spiral. Congress refuses to kill pork barrel projects and deal with the increasing burden of the national debt and the many entitlement programs.  We really need to reel in spending, but that isn't going to be happening anytime soon.  Gotta get re-elected you know!  Which is quite unfortunate for us, particularly our future generations.  Neither of the two major political parties really seem "gets it" anymore.  Your choice now is the "tax and spend" Democrats or the "tax cut and spend" Republicans.  Can someone please let me know when there's a "tax moderately and stop spending so damn much money we don't have" candidate/party?

Apparently God doesn't like George W. and the people in Florida that voted for him.