Saturday, August 13, 2005

Now we know why we need stronger provisions in Roe V. Wade. Not for women; for men. One in 25 fathers could be unknowlingly raising someone else's (Since this is an all-inclusive blog, I am not using the phrase "another man's." Don't you feel better?) child.

This story reminded me of an old joke: Pastor Brown was asked to explain faith. He said, "See the Franklins over there? They have six children. Mrs. Franklin knows they're hers. Mr. Franklin beleives they're his. That's faith."

Friday, August 12, 2005

I count five majority minority states, but the caption says four.  Hrm.

Texas has become the fourth state to have minorities outnumber the majority. According to a Chicago Sun-Times story, minorities in Texas are 50.2% of the population. While Texas wasn't the first to reach this notable milestone (California, New Mexico and Hawaii beat us to it), at least we are ahead of Maryland, Mississippi, Georgia, New York and Arizona.

It's nice to see texas at the top of one of these lists. We've been at the bottom of the education list forever.

But, I guess I need to make a few changes to the blog. So in the words of Kent Brockman: "I, para uno, dan la bienvenida a nuestros overlords nuevos [ de la minoría ]. Quisiera recordarlos como una personalidad confiada en de la TV [ o blogger ], yo puedo ser provechoso en el redondeo encima de otros a trabajar en sus cuevas subterráneas del azúcar."

Translation by BabelFish.

For those of you too lazy to cut and paste and let Alta Vista do the work for you, here's the translation:

"I, for one, welcome our new [minority] overlords. I'd like to remind them as a trusted TV personality [or blogger], I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves." -- Kent Brockman and me

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Thursday, August 11, 2005

Exploring Stats, Part II

While exploring stats on my breweries website, I discovered that someone in Japan visited my site using Google Japan's Beta translation page. I spent the next few hours exploring my sites in another language. This is a lot of fun. The translations aren't perfect, but it is interesting to see my pages in Japanese.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

I was browsing my stats yesterday and discovered a couple of interesting facts.

If you Google "Isahaya Japan" my Historic Texas Breweries website "About Me" page comes up at the top of the list.

If you do a search on Yahoo! for "booty ass sneak shots pictures", I come in at #10.

See, writing those keyword rich articles helped! Now all I gotta figure out is what people are gonna be searching for.

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

The exact epicenter of the nuclear bomb blast over Nagasaki.  Photo by me, 1983.

Waaaay back in 1983, I found myself in Nagsaki, Japan. I was looking for the McDonalds restaurant, (or, makkudonarudo, in Japanese) and made a right turn into the Epicenter Park.

The epicenter of the blast was directly over Urakimi Catholic Church, and portions of the building were preserved there. But off to the right, was a black obelisk that marks the exact center of the detonation.

I remember standing there, in stunned silence. Here was where it happened, I thought.

Hunger won out over any sense of history, and I managed to find my way to McDonalds, and the Nagasaki arcade.

The Nagasaki Peace Park statue.  Photo by me and Photoshop.

A couple of months later, I decided to visit the Peace Park and the museum.

The museum was laid out so that the higher you went, the smaller the scope of the event. On the first floor were displays and information about world politics in 1945. The focus narrowed as I went up. World to nation. Nation to prefecture. Prefecture to city. City to people. On the top floor of the museum was one large room. Six display cases ringed the room. Two of each were dedicated to one person who died in the blast.

In one case, I saw a school notebook of an elementary school student. He had drawn in the margins of his homework just like I did. There were fighter planes and navy ships, and a couple of figures from the neighborhood. Obviously, he did not survive the bomb.

In Isahaya, I met a doctor who refused to speak English because his father was killed in the blast. I met a woman who, as an infant, had been blown from her crib and into the garden by the blast. She had cancer and the US was paying for her medical bills.

I realize that had the United States not dropped the bombs on Japan, about a million people would have died when the allies invaded Japan. But visiting Nagasaki brought a whole new perspective to that knowledge.

Nagasaki Peace Park is built on the site of a POW camp. Both Japanese and Allies died in the bombing. However, the park is a nice memorial to everyone who died that day.

To all my Nagasaki friends: I thinking about you today.

Monday, August 08, 2005

I actually scored higher than I thought I would on this quiz. Fortunately, my obesity is not yet life threatening. It's from the guys who created South Park.

Sunday, August 07, 2005

I hate when I get misty when I read the news.