Random Thoughts! v2.0

[Sonikku]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lqEhjAToZc[/youtube]

I wish the stupid youtube tags were working, but I found this was a very interesting perspective on the characters Betty and Veronica from Archie Comics.

Doesn't work through https.

Anyway to get this url to work or are some videos just uncooperative?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyZHn7kx78k

[Sonikku]

Anyway to get this url to work or are some videos just uncooperative?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyZHn7kx78k[/youtube]

[Bluecast]

http://imgur.com/gallery/SKINe

26 jiggling breasts and fast cars in the link and yes it's SFW (sadly)

[Bluecast]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ij3MDUnx-w[/youtube]


So a bunch of underground Pyramids have been found in Alaska that are several thousand years old and last year in the Bermuda triangle they found the tip of one underwater. Believed to be 6000 years old.

[Sonikku]

The Last Letter

A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying Veteran


To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas Young

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole.

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

—Tomas Young

[Sonikku]

War is only good for the contractors and those reliant on their campaign contributions.

[Feelers Rebo]

Plus it's bad for real estate.

[Sonikku]

Ain't that the truth. Before we came to Iraq about 17% of the Iraqi people lived in slum scum homes. Now that they've been "liberated", over half of them do. Most of which still lack reliable utilities and clean water.

[Bambi]

Faces of Addiction - Chris Arnade's flickr



"The stories of addicts in the Hunts Point neighborhood, the poorest in all of New York City. I post people's stories as they tell them to me.

What I am hoping to do, by allowing my subjects to share their dreams and burdens with the viewer and by photographing them with respect, is to show that everyone, regardless of their station in life, is as valid as anyone else.

Its easy to ignore others. By not looking, by not talking to them, we can fall into constructing our own narrative that affirms our limited world view."

- Full gallery here.

Saw some of the pictures on Imgur today and looked out the gallery, it's really sad but interesting and definitely worth checking out.

[Bluecast]

Just curious why people care more about drug addicts than world changing discoveries?

[Kenny]

Cause human beings tend to be concerned for the welfare about other human beings from time to time. Whether it be to help or learn from their mistakes.

[Bluecast]

And these discoveries shape human history and shake everything we thought we knew. If we truly really learned from history then these discoveries would end war. Stop destroying ourselves over petty land and tribal god figures. We constantly hold ourselves back over petty wars. Yet thousands of years ago we were so advanced technologically we are not far from having the modern technology we are used to today..few thousand years early.....if it were not for human petty squabbles. Setting us back thousands of years and only re-discovering what they knew a couple hundred years ago.

[mue 26]

Just curious why people care more about drug addicts than world changing discoveries?

What world changing discovery are you even talking about?

[Kenny]

Nothing will end war because human beings have a natural tendency of being self-entitled and self-preserving. They will take more than needed if it means their families will survive generations to come. They will kill if other people try to take that away.

But what does that have to do with being concerned for humankind? What's the point of only paying attention to discoveries that could benefit the civilization in the future if you show so little concern for other human beings in dire circumstances NOW? You can learn from both the past and the present, no reason to chose sides.

[Bluecast]

Just curious why people care more about drug addicts than world changing discoveries?

What world changing discovery are you even talking about?

Look above DOA's tldr post