Archive for the ‘personal’ Category

Global Warming my — Storm Thoughts

Posted: January 11, 2009 by datechguy in local stuff, opinion/news, personal
Tags: ,

Some thoughts on the snow.

It kept the crew from coming to try out that talisman expansion, will have to do it this afternoon.

Figured with all the snow people might be shoveling and not calling into unemployment yet, I was right got through on the 2nd try!

Had to dig out to get Steve’s son to hockey this morning as he is staying with us this weekend. I don’t know how he and his wife manage all the events with 4 kids.

I noticed the long list of protestant churches and Jewish synagogues closed on the news. You never see a Catholic Church closed. Mass is always held but the faithful are advised not to risk life to get there. Since the priest usually lives in a rectory next door this isn’t a problem. Also in a city like mine the Church are neighborhood churches so many people can walk to mass. I don’t know how it is in more rural areas.

Notice when things seemed to be getting warmer everyone cried Global Warming, now since things are cold it is “Climate Change”.

Our city had budget problems before the market crashes, I can’t see how we are going to pay for our snow removal this year.

I’ll have more to say on that but I have shoveling to do. Read you in a few hours.

Game night roundup

Posted: January 7, 2009 by datechguy in gaming, personal, war
Tags: , ,

Played a game called Descent Journey’s in the Dark last night. We didn’t finish as we started late (my fault) but it was better than I thought it would be. I would feel pretty good about recommending it to other gamers.

Then again for a price of $90 it oughta be good.

The subject of the Gaza operation came up. All agreed that Hamas are a bunch of bastards. My hesitation on the ground offensive wasn’t shared by anyone but 60% of the table criticized Israel for settlement activity on the west bank for giving Hamas an excuse. Barbara Lerner would take exception to that.

Speaking of gamers one of the guys saw The Gamers 2 recently and kept going on and on about it. It would have to be really funny to be better than the first one.

A quick fyi

Posted: January 6, 2009 by datechguy in personal
Tags:

I’ll be going within the house and I have Chicken in the oven so I may be slow in answering and allowing comments in the next few hours. Opinions of all stripes are most welcome and when time permits will be answered personally, so if your comment isn’t answered or posted be aware that this is the reason.

This one is for my friends at the open house

Posted: January 5, 2009 by datechguy in personal, war
Tags: ,

At my open house I mentioned the non-shrapnel missiles that Israel is using to chase civilians before blasts. A pair of liberal friends of mine looked at me like I had two heads or was a naive idiot so this post is for them. The process is known as “Knocking on the roof” here is a post on the subject:

5:05 PM Just to give people an idea of how the Israeli Air Force works, they use a method called “Knocking On The Roof”. There are several steps…
1. The AF calls the house they’re about to hit that they are about to bomb it.
2. The residents send all the women and children to the roof of the building with the understanding that the AF won’t strike civilians.
3. The AF has developed a small missile that creates a small non-lethal explosion without shrapnel to scare off all the civilians.
4. When they have left the area the building is hit with the big guns.

The base post is from this post at The Muqata which along with Israellycool has been liveblogging the war. (I was sure I had read it at Israellycool but was mistaken).


This post at Mere Rethoric also mentions it but not by name:

The IDF has made frequent use of what is known as “knocking on the roof”: Militants are warned by phone when a residential building used to store arms will be bombed, and told to vacate the premised together with their neighbors. The weapons caches are hit only after the residents leave. Hamas has tried placing civilians on the roofs of such buildings when the phone call warning comes in. In these cases, the IDF fired antitank missiles near the building, and in a few cases the residents left

His bottom line is the war’s bottom line:

Israel warns the Palestinian civilians whom Hamas has endangered. Hamas uses those warnings to endanger their civilians even more dramatically. Israel gets blamed for Palestinian civilian casualties. Makes perfect sense.

The irony is both on offense and defense our Palestinian friends try to maximize civilian deaths, both Israeli and their own. This is just plain a different culture.

Older Entries
Newer Entries