News, Thoughts, Opinions, & Stories

Brian and Christina (my brother and sister-in-law) were kind enough to bear a playmate for our soon to be little one... Jen and I have made sure to get in plenty of quality time with their adorable little one, Zoe... BCZ only live a mile away just north of us in U-City which should be awesome as we can tag team on babysitting and get the cousins together for play groups with minimal hassle.

Zoe had a bit of a bout of Pneumonia starting at the end of the 3rd week but after living in the hospital for a week and a half, she's settling in happily to her new home.

Brian created a nice little website for Zoe... we hope to add more to the site soon but it's a heck of a start...
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I'm still undecided on whether it was wise to invade Iraq. What I am certain of, is that how it was done was one of the most bungled attempts ever by the United States. Even assuming it is possible to create democracy in Iraq by force, the Bush administration blew its chance through a long string of miserable decisions: It rejected voluminous advance planning done by the State Department for a post-Saddam Iraq, disregarded military projections of force levels needed to maintain order, dismissed accurate CIA analyses of likely post-war ethnic and tribal conflicts, disbanded the Iraqi army, under-equipped U.S. troops and installed a hapless-to-corrupt provisional governing authority. And then there's the whole torture fiasco... It just doesn't seem the Bush administration is capable of planning for more than one possible outcome.

Tuesday's Los Angeles Times, for example, beefed up months of scattered news reports with a detailed account of the operations of Shiite paramilitary death squads within the Iraqi police force and Interior Ministry, including the use of torture in secret prisons and summary executions of Sunni opponents.
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But the world doesn't need to judge the U.S. solely on words. Other nations can hardly be expected to forget Muslim prisoners abused and humiliated at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq and Afghanistan, the web of internationally scattered CIA secret jails, the arbitrary imprisonment of prisoners without trial or even charges at Guantanamo, the administration's opposition to a statutory ban on inhumane treatment, the secret transport of prisoners to foreign countries for interrogation and, almost certainly, torture.

Do Bush, Cheney et al. believe these things have no effect on the credibility of the United States of America?
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When I first graduated college, I remember having a conversation with friends about the term, "Man" and when does it apply. While in news reports you may here reporters refer to a 16 year old "man", it just never seemed valid to me. No, a "Man" to me was always someone older to me, people my fathers age and up. In fact given the choice between referring to myself as "Man" or "Boy", I chose boy. ("Guy" was my choice of preference though.)

But today, I turn 35. I'm married. I've owned a house for 10 years. My last roommate moved out Saturday. I run my own company. And I've got a child on the way.

And so, it seems I'm becoming more comfortable with the term. I still don't know that I'm there yet... perhaps some occurrences as I raise my child and get used to be being referred to as Mr. O'Leary will finally make it seem to fit.

Had the second ultrasound yesterday (19 weeks). This was the one where we got to find out the sex of the baby.

It's an interesting process that you go through... First the nurse sprays goo on Jen's stomach and then fires up the machine and uses it to take a variety of measurements and look at the organs and stuff. So you're kinda flying around the baby like your viewing the 360 pics of a car online but in black and white and fuzzy. You catch glimpses of stuff here and there and try to figure out what it is you might be looking at... Read More...

It's interesting that ultimately, everyone's primary mission in life (or lives, for those that belief in afterlife) is happiness. People who are happy are healthier, more successful, harder-working, caring and more socially engaged. Misery makes people self-obsessed and inactive.

Yet very few people spend much time on defining what actually makes them happy. Instead they thoughtlessly focus on a variety of things that may or may not lead towards happiness such as money, security, fun, ...

The times has an interesting article on scientific studies of happiness. It's a good chance to step back and ask yourself if your priorities are properly ordered. Read More...

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush's shortsighted actions have come back to haunt him. It'd be nice if this were an aberation but to me, this is just one small piece of a larger pattern... Read More...