There are some posters coming out of North Korea that show just some of their true colors. These posters are very similar to the propaganda produced by many countries before. It resembles Soviet-style iconography, ubiquitous hyperbole, and U.S.-style emotional impulses.

Sure, I think it proves that we have our sights set on the wrong group of people. As President Bush measures our military’s forceful entry inot Iraq, “in a matter of weeks, not months,” we find that our communist Korean friends are bolstering their population into a fervent, vocal enemy. It’s one thing to fight in a country where the people have few resources and the leader of the country represents the greatest danger. But when an entire population is at your throat, the going gets rough. Think Vietnam.

What then are Bush’s true motives? Everyone cries oil, some say it’s a personal vendetta, others believe that he is doing what he knows to be right based on secret intelligence. What if it’s much easier than that? Winning a war, even an unpopular one is a great boost to the reelection hopes of any president.

Maybe Bush goes in and takes down Saddam fairly easily. But he knows, that the North Koreans are a much tougher foe, so he handles them with kid gloves. Later on, when a diplomatic end to the North Korean question comes about, he is seen as the president who can talk a big game, and play one as well. In the end, it’s about reelection, it’s about legacy, it’s about history.

These posters are a small, narrow periscope into the consciousness of a nation must of us, including me, know very little about. They show us that, perhaps, they are more united in their goals than we. They may be coerced into that unity by a ruthless socialistic system, but it works. Remember what the scared Russian soldiers did to the Germans in WWII. They faced German guns at the front, and their own guns should they retreat.

The US seems faced with a similar position: between a rock and a hard place. Anyone got a sledgehammer?

(to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It”)

If you cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq.
If the markets are a drama, bomb Iraq.
If the terrorists are frisky,
Pakistan is looking shifty,
North Korea is too risky,
Bomb Iraq.

If we have no allies with us, bomb Iraq.
If we think that someone’s dissed us, bomb Iraq.
So to hell with the inspections,
Let’s look tough for the elections,
Close your mind and take directions,
Bomb Iraq.

It’s pre-emptive non-aggression, bomb Iraq.
To prevent this mass destruction, bomb Iraq.
They’ve got weapons we can’t see,
And that’s all the proof we need,
If they’re not there, they must be there,
Bomb Iraq.

If you never were elected, bomb Iraq.
If your mood is quite dejected, bomb Iraq.
If you think Saddam’s gone mad,
With the weapons that he had,
And he tried to kill your dad,
Bomb Iraq.

If corporate fraud is growin’, bomb Iraq.
If your ties to it are showin’, bomb Iraq.
If your politics are sleazy,
And hiding that ain’t easy,
And your manhood’s getting queasy,
Bomb Iraq.

Fall in line and follow orders, bomb Iraq.
For our might knows not our borders, bomb Iraq.
Disagree? We’ll call it treason,
Let’s make war not love this season,
Even if we have no reason,
Bomb Iraq.

Imagine coming home after work to find a new family moving into the house next door. As you pull into your driveway, you notice that the father looks extremely familiar. He’s clean-shaven and sporting brown hair, but you seem to remember him from somewhere.

Then, two months later while he’s cutting the grass, it hits you. The guy whose son is studying Algebra with your daughter is Saddam Hussein AND your special new neighbor has a lawnmower that’s way better than the crappy one you own.

I’m quite the woodworking hobbyist. I have spent countless dollars and countless hours in my home wood shop. Working on my latest project and tending to some more menial tasks, my mind started to wander. I just finished reading a book that spends chapter after chapter singing the accolade of one antique tool after another. Antique tool collecting is quite a hobby in itself. Many a woodworker visits the local flea markets in search of old tool treasures.

And that’s when something dawned on me as I fired up my cordless power drill to sink another screw.

It dawned on me that we are likely seeing the end of real antique tools. Since about 1985, tools have all become powered. Bulky battery packs now adorn nearly every tool. Tools that were once bound by a cord are now powered by alkaline.

I really think that we are going to see the end of the antique tool as we know it in the next 10 years. The tools made today lack the character of the tools of our fathers. Many of these new power tools can not be kept over a lifetime, no matter how well you tend to them. After 5 years, 10 if you’re lucky, that power drill, or cordless router will need replaced. Planned obsolescence?

Who would look at the tools you and I use now, the bright yellow DeWalt, the bright red Ryobi, the lifeless gray of Porter-Cable, and think them a collectors item in 2030?

What would make it an antique? If it still runs? If the battery can still hold a charge?

I have a shelf of old tools my uncle and my father gave me as I was moving out of my apartment and into my first house. I refuse to use them out of reverence. They have been tended by my uncle (who past 3 years ago) and my father since they were my age. Polished, kept dry, stored in their boxes for 25 years until I become their owner. I can’t fathom how many projects they have been used on over the years.

The power tools we have today, while much easier and better at their task, don’t have the quality of something that becomes an heirloom. Ultimately, they are high-pressure plastic with parts that wear down.

What concerns me more than the antique tool collectors hobby passing into history, is the memories that will no longer be passed from father to son. My dad and my uncle took on some amount of pride the day the assembled my first real tool box for me and stuffed it full of tools. They got to tell me about this project and that - the leaky gutter that ruined my aunt’s flower bed, the birdhouse hanging from the tree - and laughed.

How will that event take place? When my son is moving into his first house, what will I be able to assemble for him? What tool box will I be able to create? What memories will I be able to pass? A 19.2 volt battery?

McDonald’s has successfully gotten the court to dismiss a federal lawsuit alleging the fast food giant’s hamburgers and French fries caused children’s obesity.

U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet apparently agreed with our readers and decided the plaintiffs, including a 14-year-old girl who is 4-foot-10 and 170 pounds, failed to show that McDonald’s products presented an unknown danger.

Interestingly, Judge Sweet said the plaintiffs could refile their case if they presented data backing the claim that diners really don’t know what’s in the food or that the products are more harmful because of processing.

Who’s taking bets on the time it takes for this case to get refiled? In fact, considering the potential pay out for a win or a possible win, this thing could be back in court by Spring. Start chowing greasy burgers now and you too could be a chunkified class-action plaintiff.

According to the BBC, England is sending 1/4 of their military force to the Gulf. Many of these “Desert Rat” troops will be stationed in Kuwait. The British puppets echo Bush when they say on one hand, that “war is not inevitable,” while sending more and more troops to the region every day. Is Donald Rumsfeld (pictured: Bush’s Bulldawg) really the man you want deciding whether or not we go to war?

I honestly don’t know what the British are getting out of this. I can’t see how helping us storm the shores of Iraq…wait a minute. Doesn’t Britain supply a great deal of oil to the US from its North Sea drilling? And if the price of Middle Eastern oil skyrockets, won’t the gas-guzzling soccer moms of the US demand that America turn to Britain to bolster the rapidly draining oil stockpile? It seems cynical but world politics and the oil market weren’t built on glad-handing and open, honest relationships. Britain has everything to gain and very little to lose. If they join us in a war there, and the war turns for the worse and ends up like Vietnam, few will remember that the British were in it up to their necks. All that history will tell is how MadDog Rumsfeld and Baby Bush conspired to finish what Daddy Bush started.

Even if that scenario plays out, Britain wins out. The oil prices go up. More oil gets bought through the North Sea brokers and only some lives of British people are lost. There in it for the big picture, the long-term survival. Bush can barely see beyond the tip of his nose and the British are thinking decades out. It’s frightening how infantile and small-minded President Bush is.

I would love to get my hands on the lobbying checkbooks of some of these Defense contractors. Of course, Bush is in bed with the oil men, but he seems to be buddy-buddy with the missile and aircraft makers, too. Certainly, they are putting a bug in his ear about going to war. What sells more airplanes? Training crashes now and again or droves of F-16’s shot out of the sky with US-made Stinger missiles?

I know that it’s cynical, but it’s business. You can’t sell the newest, greatest people killer until some of the older stuff you built gets blown up. It’s the law of supply and demand.

And in this case, the economics are all backwards because the leadership of this country is supplying us with a war that none of us are demanding.

In response to a nice article advocating a computer worker’s union over at Corporate Mofo, I wrote the following missive. YES! YES!

I have been advocating an Internet Worker’s Union for years now.
Imagine the cohesiveness and speed with which this union, with its
permanently connected members, could acheive the desired results.

The key here is that the union must work for the good of the worker.
It needs to work to secure benefits like health insurance and
retirement plans for computer workers. What it doesn’t need to do is
to advocate for mandatory UT2003 time and silly shit like allowing
Nerf guns in the office.

At some point, even the educated will realize the power in unionizing.
The problem as I see it is that as educated people, most of us see the
ruin that unions have caused in the American manufacturing complex.
All the workers complain about jobs going overseas while out of the
other side of their mouths, they insist on their 15-minute smoke break
every hour.

As much as I think this union is a good idea, I wonder if it won’t
just push more offshore development into the marketplace. With the
code slums of India and Siberia bursting with intelligent, calm, and
underempowered quality workers, what does an American code monkey do?

(Here my original email to the editors stopped, but I add these few tidbits for your interest.)

The key to making the technology worker’s life better is to make the workers realize that they are professionals. They need to act a certain way to get respect. Some sysadmin can’t gain respect by sitting in a dark corner wiping Lunchable crumbs off his shirt while snickering about how he is keylogging his boss’ machine. He needs to shower, get a normal shirt (throw away the Evercon ‘97 rag), and learn to speak and write with effectiveness.

The reason so many of these computer workers get run over is that they let themselves be run over. They let people classifu them as the expendable, faceless, void of personality person that they project to all “outsiders.” So, then the problem might stem from less of an economic base as it does from a social norms and standards point of view.

What should a gym teacher do when there’s a 15-year-old lesbian in the girl’s locker room? Do nothing? Remove the lesbian and send her to the principal’s office? Create a third dressing area? Or just throw everyone in one big uncomfortable locker room?

Ashly Massey is an eighth-grader in Banning, California. The 15-year-old is suing her middle school because she claims the school forced her to sit in the principal’s office during physical education class after the teacher heard Ashly was a lesbian.

School officials contend that other girls were uncomfortable dressing in front of Ashly. Obviously, Ashly was disappointed and is suing for discrimination. But let’s ignore the legalities and Constitutional issues for a moment and discuss the situation itself.

This is a middle school. A place where the majority of teenage girls are extremely self-conscious about their bodies. And this is when there’s no chance of anyone being attracted to them in the locker room. How are these teenagers supposed to deal with the possibility of being in the shower while another girl might be looking at them in a sexual way?

This isn’t to say that Ashly would look at these girls in a sexual way. She might not. In fact, she might be the most controlled individual on the planet and, with all her being, rush to get out of the locker room so as to prevent anyone from thinking she might look. But these are still teenagers. They’re not adults who can suck it up and be uncomfortable. They are girls who probably giggle uncontrollably about that girl who got her period playing kickball last year.

So what’s a gym teacher to do? She can’t ban Ashly from gym. That would probably be unconstitutional and violative of equal protection laws. But the teacher can’t just ignore the fact that other girls might be uncomfortable dressing in front of Ashly. Creating a third locker room doesn’t make sense because then you have the possibility that everyone in that locker room is looking at each other in a sexual way.

The best solution is to build individual showers with attached dressing rooms. Like the ones you see in most college dorms. Sure, it’s an expensive option, but it’s really the only alternative that can satisfy everyone involved. And, maybe by promising to take this step, the school system can take a step forward in privacy and remove this case from an already clogged legal docket. Of course, that’s only if Ashly wants a solution instead of cash.

Yes, some idiot will attempt to ride this. Some fool will try to go over 300 mph on a bike with four wheels. Darwin will be proven correct.

That or those bigger penis emails are getting more confusing.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

-Aristotle