The Blame Game

http://www.insidepulse.com/article.php?contentid=34956
http://news.com.com/More+states+target+violent+games/2100-1043_3-5600534.html

Apparently Washington State is looking to make sure responsbility for violent crimes is placed squarely where it belongs, on people who make video games. If this gets passed I'm gonna have to beat some people to death with a baseball bat.

Break the Wall Down
Looks like Dubbya is back to pushing his faith-based initiatives program again. He's already gotten it more or less set up via executive order (since it wasn't getting passed in congress) but now he's trying to get congressional approval so it can be made law.

For those who don't know about the program, it basically allows religious groups to receive government funding for running shelters and community programs. The catch is that they are only supposed to get the money if they make their services available to everyone one.

There are number of flaws with the program and I've actually written on them at length when he first announced this program way back in 2001. I wrote 2 articles on my old Geocities site (one of them the day I heard about the program which lead to a lot of angry ranting and the other a few days later which outlined in a more logical way just why the program sucked.) and it also very much strengthened my anti-Bush stance (I was already anti-Bush even when he was running against McCain in the primaries but until this point I only disapproved of him because I thought he was an idiot).

I'll just outline the briefly outline the flaws here as the Geocities page seems to no longer exist.
#1: As these religious shelters and programs are generally run by a church (or order or what have you), it is difficult to ensure the money earmarked for the program actually goes to the program and not to some other need the group may have (rebuilding a chapel may be a worthy cause but it is not one the government should be kicking in on)
#2: While these groups are supposed to help anyone who wants their services, the churches made sure that receiving this money did not restrict any sort of religious bias they may want for their hiring policies. This means that the government is helping to pay for jobs that can be restricted to a particular group (Christian only, Baptist only, etc). While it may be natural for a church-run program to want to hire within the family (so to speak), it is not right for tax-payer money to go towards something that may very well delibrately exclude them.
#3: While these programs may be available to anyone, they generally have an overtly religious message. For example, some Christian-run food kitchens will have a little sermon during or immediately following the meal. This may be comforting for the Christians at the kitchen but it's not likely to provide much solace to a Hindu or an atheist.
#4: The government funding has gone almost exclusively to Christian groups. That reason may be a bit out of date now but I remember reading a couple years ago about a lot of religious non-Christian groups complaining as they were having a lot of trouble (and in most cases were unsuccessful in) receiving funding. I think at the time the protests were coming from mainly Jewish and Hindu groups but as I said it's been a while since I've heard anything on this front. If the money is only really going to Christian groups however the state is not only endorsing religion, they are endorsing a specific religion.

All of these reasons basically boil down to a violation of the whole church-state seperation thing. That's a wall that the religious right (and for the last 4 years, Dubbya) have been working to break down for years. And with high likelihood of Supreme Court retirements in the next 4 years, it's a wall that's likely to come under further fire as well.

Independence Post

No I'm not bitching about the fact that Fox pre-empted Simpsons to show Independence Day (though I'm not pleased with that, I understand their reasons for doing so). I've been missing my appartment a lot lately. There was just something nice about being able to do what I wanted, when I wanted. I still do what I want when I want most of the time at home but there's a lot less freedom.

If I take an early release at work I can be guaranteed my parents will nag me about it, I am pretty much confined to downstairs after work as my parents room is open thus making trips upstairs difficult at best. It's not just my parents either. Heidi can also be quite a drain at times. I'll be sitting here after work some nights and she'll decide I need to be paying attention to her so you'll scratch my leg until I throw one of her toys. And then about 15 seconds later she'll lose it under the bed and howl till I go and get something to get the toy out with.

I love my parents and I love my dog so it's not like I don't want them around. It's just that it was nice when I had my own space to do my own thing. Now I'm pretty much anytime I'm home and awake there's someone demanding my attention.

I shan't complain too much though as there are definite perks to the whole home thing. (Free laundry, room and board, more people around I know, etc).

Well that's enough venting for today.

I Don't Suck!

Toxodont came out after work tonight and there was much gaming to be had. Primarily we played Def Jam: Fight for NY, Total Carnage and Mortal Kombat 2 (for those who don't know, Total Carnage is a fun, hectic and extremely difficult overhead shooter type game. Think Smash TV). It was all fun but my poor ego was most concerned with redemption in Mortal Kombat 2.

It looks like the rust's fading pretty quickly. I lost some matches but not in a my god, do I ever suck sort of way. There was a period where Toxodont picked Raiden and just owned me for 3 matches but then I picked Kitana. I had forgotten until I started using her just how awesome I was with her. I trounced Raiden, barely taking a hit and then I went on to win the next 3 before being dethroned in an extremely close match versus Mileena. I had another 3 match winning streak with Kitana to end the evening as well.

The odd thing about my Kitana dominance is that I don't remember any of her moves. I remember what some of them are, but I wasn't able to remember/figure out how to do them (though I did figure out a couple more moves for some of the other fighters). And yet I was still mopping the floor with her. Good ol' Kitana.

It felt good to get some multiplayer gaming on the go. I rarely get the opportunity to play multiplayer games, and I'm always quite happy when I get to play them. I think that's one of the things that was the most fun about Acadia. There were always people around willing to play a game of pretty much anything.