I was playing around with web.archive.org, when I thought to look up OneStackMind. I thought it was pretty funny to look back at all of the websites I used to surf 10 years ago. When I looked at OneStackMind from 2004 I thought I should post it on here to show how little times have changed. You will notice the ever popular “I havent posted in a while” post at the top, and also a similar post to your Hybrid post from last week. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I’m getting married on Saturday, and my bride and I will be away on our honeymoon until the middle of next week. I’m also not quite certain when I’ll have internet access again (yes, I’m marrying someone who doesn’t have the internet. Shocking, I know), so it may be a little while between posts. Not that that’s anything unusual around here.

In the meantime, I’ve asked a friend of mine who comments here occasionally (Shinzou) to put up a few posts.

According to The Sun, a 14-year-old believes a picture taken in an ancient castle proves ghosts exist.

This seems like a pretty simple fake to me, though. Every digital camera I’ve ever used allowed me to set the exposure time. Long exposure times help to make up for extremely dim lighting, but anything moving through the shot will show up as a ghostly, blurry image. Someone walking down the steps and pausing briefly on the landing would produce this effect if the exposure time was set pretty high (which seems pretty likely to me — I would imagine that ancient castles are fairly dark).

Eric, at Classical Values, discusses an attempt to do away with Pennsylvania’s ban on dog-breed-specific legislation:

I deeply and bitterly resent this profound abuse of logic. Dog A is not controlled by his owner and attacks Dog B, so they want to punish owners of Dog C, because Dog C allegedly resembles Dog A. By definition, this is bigotry. Every dog is different, just as every person is different. There are good dogs with good owners and there are bad dogs with bad owners. People should be making up their minds about individual dogs and individual owners based on the conduct of the individual dogs and individual owners. There are leash laws, and laws against allowing dogs to run loose. If violators of these laws own ill-behaved pit bulls which are allowed to run around and wreak havoc, they’re like criminal gun owners who engage in drive-by shootings. Show me a bad pit bull that attacks innocent dogs or people, and I’ll show you a bad dog owner. (IMO, the popularity of strong dogs with criminals is a result of the drug war, which is another topic…..)

Emphasis Mine

In 2004, my family’s pet Boston Terrier was killed by a neighbor’s Rottweiler. The Rottweiler in question was known to have attacked other dogs, as well as acting very aggressively toward people^[a]. When I got home and learned what had happened to our dog, I was furious.

My anger was very, very specific. I was angry at the individual dog that killed ours, and I was angry at the owner, whose irresponsibility and selfishness had caused the dog to be free. When it became obvious later that the county authorities were completely incompetent and unreliable when it came to issues like this^[b], I was also angry at them.

I was never angry at Rottweilers in general. I have known Rottweilers that were gentle, or at least as gentle as their size allowed them to be — any dog that weighs more than a hundred pounds is capable of doing damage, even when they’re trying to be gentle. The problem here was not the breed of the dog, but the actions of the owner and the individual dog itself.

Near the end of the post, Eric explains that this issue is more emotional for him than the gun rights issue:

While I try defend my right to keep and bear arms as often as I can, there’s something about this that rankles me in a way that the gun control debate does not. That’s because a gun is a tool, and not a member of the family, and people who want to take them away are not threatening to take away and kill a member of the family.

My dog Coco is not a gun.

I’ve always loved dogs and can completely understand Eric’s vehemence over this issue. They are more than mere possessions, and individuals like Eric who own well-behaved animals who happen to be of a breed that is often considered “dangerous” are right to be offended when their loved one is lumped in with other dogs simply because they look similar.

1. In particular, the dog once attempted to bite my grandfather when he was tending to his cattle. [↩]
2. To be fair, I don’t think the government of Clay County was — or is — competent or reliable on any issue. [↩]

I know I’m late on this one, but I wrote this a while back and am only just getting around to posting it.

I almost always enjoy reading Orson Scott Card’s World Watch column over at The Ornery American. I occasionally disagree with him, but even at those times, he makes his points well.

In his column a couple of weeks ago, “What Obama Should Have Said“, Card discusses President Bush’s (correct) denouncement of appeasers and Obama’s reaction to that denouncement:

President Bush said, “Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.”

Thus he stated, quite clearly, how delusional are those who think that what we have in our war with radical Islam is a “failure to communicate.” There is no failure: communication has been crystal clear. Our enemies have announced their firm intention to destroy our civilization, to kill all the Jews, and to kill any Muslim who doesn’t go along with their program. Iran has announced its intention, if they get nuclear missiles, to obliterate Tel Aviv. Al Qaeda has declared its intention to destroy the West.

…

Poor Barack Obama. He saw a shoe, he tried it on, and it fit. Then he blamed President Bush for attacking him!

Here’s what he should have said: “I applaud President Bush for opposing any attempt at appeasement of terrorists. I agree with him completely that those who negotiate from weakness will accomplish nothing. Fortunately, when I am President I will talk to them from a position of strength, demanding that they comply with the rules of civilized behavior and put an end to terrorism. There is a middle way between blind war and mindless appeasement — it is negotiation with a credible threat of force. What Republican President Theodore Roosevelt said: Speak softly and carry a big stick. Appeasers have no stick. President Bush has nothing but the stick.”

The whole column is worth a read.

A quick look at recent history will show that negotiating with terrorists won’t work. We have spent decades trying to negotiate with Islamic radicals. Israel has consistently tried to negotiate with Palestinian terrorists. Every negotiation that ended with a temporary peace saw that peace end when the terrorists broke their part of the bargain, not the other way around.

Still, there is a possibility that Bush’s successor would be able to negotiate peace, at least temporarily. This would have been possible not in spite of Bush’s actions during his term of office, but because of his actions. Having seen an America that was willing to use force if it was necessary, terrorists (or, more accurately, the states that harbor and support them) may have been willing to stick to a peace agreement, at least temporarily.

The problem is that, if Obama is Bush’s successor, he will not be able to negotiate that peace. McCain might be, and even Clinton would have a faint hope of it, but Obama has made it perfectly clear that he opposes the use of force in any situation. Card quotes a memo written by Abraham Lincoln at a time when it appeared his opponent, who had run on a platform of negotiating with the South, was likely to win. Lincoln wrote that, should his opponent win, he would “have secured his election on such ground that he [could not] possibly save [the Union] afterward.”

If Obama is ultimately the Democratic nominee and, later, our next President, his election will be on grounds that will almost certainly make a negotiated peace an impossibility. Ironically enough, electing the candidate whose platform is most opposed to the War on Terror is the most likely path to a more horrific war.