alpha whiskey hotel

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/03/0324_040324_catclones.html

If you’re too lazy to read the story, basically what it says is that some genetic lab has sold a cat-cloning service for $50000 (per cat) to 4 pet owners who wanted a cloned cat.

Something seems really wrong. How many cats are euthanized every single day because there aren’t enough people to adopt them, and not enough money to pay for them?

What if, rather than spending $50000 for a clone of your pet, you spent $200 to go down to the Humane Society and adopt one, and then donated the other $49,800 to keeping the other animals in the shelter alive a bit longer?

The World Trade Organization recently ruled that according to international trade laws, the USA can not ban online gambling. I couldn’t help laughing when I read one Senator’s reaction:

“‘It’s appalling,’ fumed Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. ‘It cannot be allowed to stand that another nation can impose its values on the U.S. and make it a trade issue.’”

Well, fate dictated that I would go to Boston last weekend, which also unfortunately meant flying to the United States.

To make a long story short, after unpacking all of my carry-on baggage, I also ended up having to take off my shoes, hat, and belt, and roll down my pants waist while a security guard (not even a government official, I think) put his hand down the front. All of this in a glassed-in room that was in full view of all of the other passengers waiting for their security screening.

And if you ask the Americans what they think of this, their eyes sort of go glassy and they start repeating “Oh, it’s okay because of the terrorists. Yes, the terrorists. No, we don’t need any privacy anymore, what about the terrorists? The TERRORISTS!” as has been so successfully drilled into their heads for the past two years.

You know that it’s now considered unpatriotic in the USA to speak out against your government? This is a country that used to value free speech so much that it was the very first amendment to their constitution. Hah. Used to be that it would be unpatriotic to not question your government when it was doing stupid things.

The Americans even turned around and bent over when their government enacted a law giving it full access to library records, computer contents, and wiretaps without even telling the person who had been surveyed. And having to show probable cause before jailing someone? Gone. The government, of course, called it the PATRIOT act, because only unamerican terrorists would be against something called PATRIOT. And you ask Americans why they put up with it? “The terrorists. It’s okay because of the terrorists.”

Anyway, standing there in Boston, the birthplace of the United States of America, I decided to bite my tongue and not say what I really thought about the country at that time. I’m sure that if I’d said it, I would have been considered too much of a risk to the USA to be allowed to fly. Hell, it’s probably illegal by now anyway.