I saw another showing of the Shakespeare Young Company show, this time with my girlfriend. She acts herself, and actually knew the actor-mentor of the Salamander theatre people. The show is still on, Ottawans, so go see it.
It's been almost 3 years since the last Family Computer Purchase, so that's got the "New System" gears in my head turning. In the past, I've been a great fan of AMD, and so it pains me to say that I may be going Intel this time - the Core 2 Duo performance numbers are just too good to ignore, and I'm a supporter of efficient chips, both in performance/MHz and in performance/watt. Should AMD counter with a better architecture, I'll be all the happier, but Intel has the better product for now. Oh well, at least I'm not defecting to consoles.
In a less "boring-stuff-about-me" direction, there's the new wave of violence between Israel and its neighbors. Now, as a very-left-of-centre person, politically, I would stereotypically play up the piteous case of Palestine, or of the innocent civilians killed in Israeli airstrikes. But you've already heard that point of view. The Israelis visit violence upon themselves by overreaction, and the terrorists invite civilian casualties by attacking a nation, and a people who have already suffered greatly, and are now (ironically) playing the big, tough bully to ensure it won't happen again. If the terrorists ever built anything, instead of keeping their people in a miserable state - which breeds angry youth for recruitment - they could be somewhere. If Israel ever took the high road, over the quick and easy path of vengeance, maybe, maybe they'd be in a better position
But these people are...well, people. That means that they will act in their own interests, in no one's interests, so long as it means avoiding admitting that they're wrong. So what is the world to do with these powers? Well, my Grandfather once suggested, when I asked him how Canada can consider backing out of Afghanistan, when we helped to break it, that "[The Afghanis] need to learn for themselves that violence is not the way [to prosperity], as Europe now has". Perhaps this situation is no different; maybe the Israelis and their neighbours need to kill, maim, slaughter, and die by the millions, before they'll realize the error of their ways.
Being human sucks, but what can we do about it now?
No comments:
Post a Comment