Downtown Fire

We had a view of the downtown fire from our office building today. Seeing the huge brick wall collapse was surreal. I'm assuming some cars are beneath that rubble. A colleague of mine took some photos and I fixed them up a bit for you.


I regularly walk by that corner (Monroe and Ontario) and it always smelled so bad from the dampness and the birds. At the beginning of the fire, you could see a couple hundred pigeons just circling above, not sure where to go.

I always thought the architecture of that building (arches especially) gave it good potential for some renovation project like the Bartley Lofts.

weekend log

Friday night I was called in to work because my main database server was very sick. The data volume lost two drives from the RAID 5 team.

On Saturday mom took the kids for an overnighter. Megan and I spent some much needed quiet time together. We had lunch at Saigon Bistro, one of her favorites around town. I had the Pho Tai, which is a hot broth noodle dish with steak and green onions. They put sprouts, limes, and other various spices on the side for you to add to your liking. Later we went to see the Pibare Krishna Rasam by Sujatha Srinivasan, a beautiful collection of short Hindu poems and proverbs choreographed to live music and dancing. Absolutely fantastic! The dance school is based in Cleveland.



Sunday was the boring housework day, along with study time. I'm slogging my way through a differential equations course...ugh. Hopefully my fantasy football team will pull off an upset against my brother's team. The Tizzles are hungry for their first win of the season.

What is wrong with these people?

So we have had a roadmap for peace in Israel. Sharon withdraws from Gaza, taking great political and civil heat in doing so. I first thought the stories of settlers tearing down their structures before exiting seemed bitter and shallow. Next, Israel sent in troops to physically remove the remaining settlers from occupied Gaza. The keys to the kingdom are peacefully handed over. Then what happens? Massive chaotic Palestinians pouring into the areas, overwhelming their own police, with the extremists claiming the credit for making this day come true. Right, so if Arafat had lived just a bit longer this would have happened anyhow...my intuition says not. Palestinians torch the remaining synagogues and structures instead of dismantling in a civilized way. Now I thought THAT was really shallow and insulting as well. Now, just a couple weeks later, the militants are stupid enough to start shooting rockets/mortars into Israel?

News Link

Like they have a real chance at accomplishing anything? Unless of course what they are trying to accomplish is more occupation, more chaos, more physical retaliation, and less life. So the circle of violence grows and grows and grows. Darwin, where are you?

Basra Jailbreak

Today two British soldiers being held in an Iraqi prison were busted out by their comrades. What a shame the jail was destroyed and 150 criminals also went free. The Iraq situation gets crazier all the time! If there is control in Basra, why would this be necessary?

News Link

Pledge of allegiance unconstitutional?

Just in from AP "SAN FRANCISCO - A federal judge declared the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools unconstitutional Wednesday, a decision that could put the divisive issue on track for another round of Supreme Court arguments."

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Michael Newdow, the same man who brought the case to the supreme court last year, is back with the same argument. How could this be? Because the court threw the case out on a technicality. I just rolled my eyes when I heard that reasoning. He is back with 3 families that have full custody of their children. Well, nothing like a hotly divisive issue to give Roberts a baptism by fire! They should have known the case would be back.

I actually believe the pledge should revert back to the original, without the words "under God". If you believe in God, great, praise Him, her, it, however you believe God exists. If you don't believe in God, what good is it to say you think the country is under God? Does it make them less of a citizen? Does it make them less patriotic to believe only in what they can see/feel/prove? Why drive a wedge into patriotism?

Similarly, why should someone swear in under oath with a Bible if they don't subscribe to that religion? It makes no sense at all. They should be swearing by their own integrity, under penalty of perjury. Bearing false witness is already a sin according to the ten commandments, so isn't this procedure sort of redundant for Christian's sake?

Nice shot Wilkowski

It is time to take down my yard sign. I guess the people of Toledo really do not want change from the last 12 years of relative economic and population decline. If the supporters of Ludeman and Wilkowski joined together under one candidate they would have amost tied Carty, and beat Ford by 10%. I support Ford in the final election. He balanced the budget in hard times, and does not throw damaging temper tantrums when things aren't going his way. Ford certainly had the grass roots support out in force yesterday. I was handed two pieces of literature when walking in to vote, had one on my door when I came home, and found TWO answering machine messages from him. All this and I'm a registered republican!!! I received nothing from the republican party during the entire season thus far. I always vote for the best candidate regardless of party, but I found this fact interesting.

Hurricane Katrina

I heard about the shoot to kill orders this morning. Officials already know the majority of the people left behind at this point are impoverished, many of whom are blacks. Now that many those remaining have been forced to live like animals, you say you are thinking about killing some of them? What does an animal do when backed into a corner? Not only have they opened themselves up racial backlashes, retaliatory attitudes, and lawsuits, they've practically invited others to join the rioting. With any luck, people will be too tired to take this approach, and just be thankful for finally getting rescued.

There are armed thugs, armed vigilantes, armed people teetering on both sides of that fence, and even unarmed people still roaming the flooded streets. Police always have the right to respond with deadly force when they are attacked; there is no need to tell people watching TV that they are sending in troops ready to kill. That message is being stated for the benefit of the world disgusted by the reports of looting. Let me ask, with 2 million without power across that region, how many people in New Orleans are watching CNN?!? Declairing the will to use deadly force, whether they intend to kill or not, is a foolish strategy, because the people you are going to kill are not even hearing the message. The people hearing the pre-meditated message are bound to hear stories of injustice, and they will put the two together making a conspiracy out of it. The rhetoric will fly.

4 civilians were killed at Kent State in a protest 40 years ago and we've never stopped hearing about it. Think of that, combined with an element of desperate survival and throw the race card into the mix...if the guardsmen open fire on anyone publicly perceived as innocent you could have LA riots all over again. Lets pray for calm.