The recent events in New Orleans have occupied my thoughts all day long. Trying to teach a bunch of high school freshmen with the crushing despair of others echoing in your brain is difficult.

I talked to my students about when it might be OK to loot. We discussed what they might do and I think that I got through to them about what total and over-powering desperation the people in New Orleans are facing.

We also talked about how it wasn’t just New Orleans but lots of smaller communities all over the area. Towns and cities that may simply never exist again.

Then one of the kids asked about comparing this with 9/11. For whatever reason, I simply hadn’t thought about it. I still don’t know how I feel about the differences. Is one worse than the other? Is one more justifiable or at least explainable? These are macabre and morose questions and it really hit me and all the other students when we thought about it.

The one thing I know is that I feel more national pain and unity now than I did during 9/11. I don’t know why, but I simply do. I suppose it’s the ongoing months of death and destruction that the New Orleans area is facing. 9/11 was one great moment of destruction and death. Hurricane Katrina is a time-bomb of disease, death, and desperation that will last for months. Whereas the collapse of the WTC towers was the worst part of that event, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is only going to get worse.

Thanks Maize, for 7 wonderful years.

Do dogs go to heaven?

Heaven just wouldn’t be heaven if dogs weren’t there.

I was going to post about the new Google Talk on my search engine marketing blog, but it has nothing to do with search other than it’s made by Google.

I’m not overly impressed with Google Talk, though I will likely end up using it. While it is still in beta, it lacks many features people expect in an IM client – smileys and a web cam tool to name two. Having an integrated voice chat is nice, but Yahoo! has that already. In short, there is nothing that makes this stand out.

I think Google undermined themselves with this. There is no prize for being the fourth IM on the market, unless it’s stellar. It’s not stellar. Of course, it’s still beta so they might have a trick or two up their sleeves.

I have met many interesting people in my life. These are the people that when they enter a room, seem to be remembered by every one after they leave.

A week ago while vacationing in Washington D.C. I was talking with one of these interesting people. He’s a guy that, for some reason, you just want to talk to. Then I realized it wasn’t because he was a great talker, it was because he’s a great listener. He knew how to keep me talking and seemed interested while I did.

He seemed to know what kind of questions to ask me to get a conversation going and to keep it going. I wondered if people like me, who aren’t naturally outgoing, knew what some of those questions were and asked them when we met new people, would seem more like those interesting people you want to talk to even though we aren’t saying much?

And I’m talking about the questions beyond, “so, where do you work?” Or, “Have you seen [insert new movie here]? What did you think of it?”

What are those questions? Do you know?

There isn’t much that would distinguish Charlie from anyone else in a room. Maybe his deep Tennessee accent, but that’s about it.

But he was the typical 19 year-old kid, caught up in events out of his control. He was a passenger on a train he would never have chosen to get on.

He was easy to like – polite and he laughed a lot. He also didn’t dislike anyone. Charlie was one of those guys that you would say, ‘didn’t have a bad bone in his body.’

He couldn’t wait to get home to see his family again. And I expect, outside the deep Tennessee accent, he was just like any one of us.

Which is why I started crying when I saw his name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. He was my dad’s best friend. He was the “uncle” I never got to grow up with.

Charlie and my dad met the very first day of boot camp and were never apart after that. They were two young kids still trying to figure out what was about to happen to them. Six weeks later when they got their orders to ship out, they saw they were both assigned to the same platoon. A little while after that, when my dad was promoted to Sergeant, Charlie was assigned to his squad. Like I say, since that first day of boot camp, they were side-by-side.

My dad and Charlie used to talk about life after Vietnam. About how they would drive to each others houses on the weekend and how their kids would play together.

Then August 1969 rolls around. The platoon is out on patrol when they are called for a rescue mission. A huey went down and the orders were for their platoon to go to the area to get the pilots out.

As they are entering the area, something in my father’s head tells him something is not quite right. So he runs up to the front and tells the Lieutenant that he fears the platoon is walking into an ambush. The Lt. does what a lot of cocky young Lt’s with no experience do — he waves his hand at my father and blurts out, “I know what the fuck I’m doing, get back in line.”

The Vietnamese soldiers were strategic. They knew that with a chopper down, the American’s would probably be coming to check it out. So they dug in around the area and waited. As that platoon entered the zone, they had the opportunity for the first shot.

Near the back of the line are two guys, walking not far apart from each other – my dad and Charlie. I wonder how that Vietnamese solder ultimately picked which one he was going to shoot.

However he chose, its Charlie’s name on the wall now. As I stood there last week, all I could do is cry as I looked at his name and tried not to think about how things could have been different.

In his weekly radio address, Bush today claimed the war in Iraq will keep Americans safe for generations to come. If an article published by Mother Jones today is true, however, the president may be wrong yet again.

According to the Mother Jones article, Saddam’s nuclear program during the late 1980s was one of the most efficient covert nuclear efforts the world has ever seen. Yet despite the Bush administration’s claims of wanting to keep Americans safe for generations to come, only three of the 200-some scientists at the top of Saddam’s 1980s WMD program can be accounted for.

“Nobody knows how many Iraqi scientists may have been lured over the borders into Iran, Syria, or beyond. Nobody knows because no one is keeping tabs. But several observers agree that so little attention is being paid to Iraq’s scientists, the war may actually have increased the chances of nuclear capabilities proliferating beyond the country’s borders. Between its unemployed scientists and the disappearance of large amounts of WMD-related materials from former weapons sites, Iraq now poses a nightmare scenario.”

At what point does a dream become a pipe-dream? In other words, when does a person’s strongest desire become nothing more than a vain hope? Assume, for example, that I’m a very talented athlete or actor, when should I stop trying to get to the professional leagues or Hollywood movies? Is it better to try for too long than give up too early? Just wondering …

The Bush administration, following in the footsteps of the Family Research Council, has objected to the creation of a .xxx domain, suggesting it would create a virtual red-light district for Internet pornography.

Michael Gallagher, assistant secretary at the Commerce Department, has asked for a hold to be placed on the contract to run the new top-level domain, which was slated to receive final approval today, until the .xxx suffix can receive further scrutiny. “The Department of Commerce has received nearly 6,000 letters and e-mails from individuals expressing concern about the impact of pornography on families and children,” Gallagher said in a letter made public on Monday.

Undoubtedly, some of those letters and emails came from members of the Family Research Council headed up by Tony Perkins, who, in a statement made in June, said, “Attorney General Gonzales … intends to smash these criminal enterprises on the Internet and elsewhere with a new obscenity strike force” and that the domain should not be allowed because it “will increase not decrease porn on the Internet.”

Without getting into the censorship issues this creates, why would someone object to creating a domain specifically for pornographers? Everyone would know exactly where or where not to go. It would be much easier to detect when reviewing the history on a particular computer and would, in all likelihood, be even easier to block with parental guide software. Furthermore, the idea that the .xxx domain would increase Internet porn is laughable. What’s the point in attempting to decrease it? Besides having a particular domain would not increase porn. What increases porn activity on the Internet every day, which already has more than 4 million porn sites, is the money that can be made from it. And that’s certainly something Bush and his money-hungry cronies can understand.

It’s not uncommon for people on vacation to try to recharge. That’s the idea of vacation, right? During this process people often get reflective and analytical out their lives, and promise themselves they’ll change this or that. As I sat on the beach in Nags Head, NC, listening to the waves tickle the sandy shores and the chirp of the gulls overhead and watched my children play in the sand, it dawned on me that the beach is the perfect setting for someone to reflect upon their life.

Which is why it was odd I was not the least bit reflective there.

My reflective moments came earlier in the week, during our stop in Washington D.C. Crowded, busy, hot, muggy Washington D.C. And not to mention, smoggy. Living in central Ohio, the air is cleaner. Columbus is a city on the move, growing at a huge rate, but the air quality is generally pretty good. While in DC, both my son and I had asthma attacks daily, that cleared up within 45 minutes of leaving the city.

So why I got so reflective there… I don’t know.

As I stood next to the Washington Monument (which my 4-year old son called the Washington toothpick), I could see the White House, the Capital Building, the WWII memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the National Archives and several buildings of the Smithsonian all from that spot. That’s when I realized how unique America is.

I’m not talking about our recent history; I’m talking about how we came to be. Think of the personalities that had to all come together at a very specific point in history to make the revolution successful. Some of the greatest thinkers ever, all meeting at the same point on the historical timeline.

George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Patrick Henry, John Jay, John Marshall, Samuel Adams, James Monroe, John Witherspoon, George Mason, Fisher Ames, John Hancock, Richard Henry Lee and the many, many others we don’t know about.

Something sparked in them during those times that led these men (and let’s not forget the founding mothers, either) to declare that they could build a better life for themselves and their fellow man.

A better life. Imagine.

And as I stood there at the base of the Washington toothpick, I realized what a powerful statement that is.

“We can build a better life for our fellow man.”

They said it, in unison and the whole world heard it.

What are we saying to the world today?

The next person who compares anything to something done by the Nazis unless it was actually something done by the Nazis should be kicked in the neck. Why? Because, in general, the thing being compared to the Nazis or something they did isn’t even close in its heinous nature. In fact, it’s usually so far from being a remotely accurate simile that it’s insulting to anyone with more brain cells than a single-celled organism–or the president.