Quick post

We were pleased to attend our friend's, Kris and Stephen, wedding last night. They had a beautiful Celtic ceremony. Both the bride and the groom looked lovely. Plus, SophiaKitty, whom we were sitting with, revealed 2 joyous tidbits of news. First, she'll be joining us for Thanksgiving! Yaaayyyy! That means we will have 5 serious cooks in the house, which is always a good thing. I've cooked with all of these folks and I find that they are easy to work with in the kitchen and navigate around each other well. Now, the question becomes: is our kitchen big enough for 5 cooks? *smirk* I'm sure we'll work around it in shifts. Chairs on the other paw, are going to be another matter. I was already thinking of pulling out the footstool for Shawn (her suggestion) as we don't have enough as it is, but with SophiaKitty coming, we're in a quandary. Shawn and I will discuss it later. I'm really looking forward to Thursday.

The second tidbit that SophiaKitty revealed was that she was the anonymous commentator on my spelling error when reporting the Feminist Blogs site. Though I admitted to SophiaKitty that when I read that, it was nearly 3AM and I was a tad annoyed, it did spur me on to look for a spell checker for Firefox. That's always a good thing. I thanked SophiaKitty for it. Sometimes we learn from the things that, at first, annoy us.

We've got to work on the house and clean it today in order to get ready for visitors. In lieu of my more attentive presence here, I present some of the things that caught my eye this morning.

Shut the fuck up is an article from a man directed at men involved in the feminist movement. I love this type of read. It makes some good points that should be learned by any man, not just those in the feminist movement. It's good to be reminded to be silent and respectful once in a while. On the other paw, it's also good to be reminded that there are times when silence is not a good thing (this article being one of those times). Choose your battles and your actions wisely.

Afghanistan is a failed state and it's drug production is growing. This is an antidote to the propaganda proposed by the Bush Administration. Hey, if Afghanistan is such a success story, then why, as the article mentions, are U.S. officials discussing transporting drug leaders out of the country to bring them here for trial (a completely idiotic suggestion as it will invoke more enmity amongst Muslims)? Shouldn't the Afghan government try these people? Don't get me wrong. I'm a drug legalization proponent. However, there is a disconnect between what America is seeing on the news and what's happening on the ground.

Further proof of that disconnect is provided here: Amnesty International's report on the state of Afghan women. Note: the Bush Administration previously touted that fact that Afghan women were voting for the first time in an election (and no one would argue that this is a bad thing...well, I wouldn't). The report notes that as of October 2004, no one is certain how many women voted. Many women were held back and told not to vote by male family members. Women participating in voter's registration teams were attacked. Violence against women is still a pervasive problem with many attacks not being reported to authorities for fear of reprisal.

"A large number of women in Afghanistan continue to be imprisoned for committing so-called "zina" crimes. A female can be detained and prosecuted for adultery, running away from home or having consensual sex outside marriage, which are all referred to as zina crimes."

Keep in mind, this was exactly the type of thing that the Taliban did that outraged feminists everywhere.

On a lighter note, watch out PhotoShop, GIMP 2.2 is about to be released. Look for it sometime next month. Just in time for Xmas, a free, high quality, picture editing tool.

Finally, for all of you iPod and Zen users out there who have lots of CDs, but little time to convert them to files to load on your player, a new service has been announced to do that for you. Granted, it costs $1.10 per CD, but how much money is your time worth?