Date:	2008-01-29 09:43
Subject:	After a long Hiatus
Security:	Public
Mood:	discontent

I apologize for not updating sooner, my sister-in-law is on the mend, she's out of the hospital and lessening the steroids she's taking each week.  She begins a treatment to help lessen her immune-system's propensity to attack her digestive system soon.

Date:	2007-11-06 12:03
Subject:	Me in the D & a post-wedding soliloquoy
Security:	Public
Mood:	surprised

I was interviewed late last week for an article that appeared today in an on-line publication about detroit called Model D.  They spelled my name wrong, sadly, but it's the first time something I've worked on architecturally has ever achieved any sort of unsolicited media recognition, so I'm fairly geeked.

On a more somber note, my brother's new wife is ailing and unwell.  She was diagnosed with Crohn's disease for years, and we believed she had a flare-up the week before the wedding.  She spent 2 nights in the hospital the weekend before the big day and despite a steroid treatment lacked the strength to even have her pictures taken before the ceremony.  They're back in Lansing this week and now the doctors are not sure if she's ever had Crohn's at all.  She may have been miss-diagnosed.  She's back in the hospital.  All I know for now is that she has pustules in her intestines leeching into her abdominal cavity.  They will be drained through surgery or an alternate procedure.  I imagine she's still in a lot of pain.  

Here's to hoping that she's soon on the mend.  Hang in there, Andrea.

at 1:10, she's the auburn-haired beauty who walks out the door first, coffee in hand, proving to the world the inherent livability of Detroit, MI.

His name's Guiness, "Guin" for short.  He was already named, but we like it.  We got him at an event this past weekend at the Detroit Zoo where a horde of rescue places from all around Michigan create a dog-crate-city with tents and hundreds of dogs.

We found him in the back in an unmarked cage.  The lady who owned the dog rescue seemed like a nice enough person and had glowing things to say about him.  He's a gem so far, very well behaved, loving and well-trained (Crate-trained  & knows sit, etc.).  He walks well, but gets very excited about squirrels and stray dogs. He's not overpoweringly strong though, so it's just a matter of getting him to "heel."  We think he's a Labrador Retreiver & Border Collie mix and should be about 1.5 years old.  We've been taking him on 45-minute walks each morning instead of going to the gym.  We'll see how cold it gets before laziness over-powers our desire to tire-out our dog in the mornings.

Now, if only he and the cats would ease up on each other a bit.

Here he is:

Date:	2007-09-17 15:00
Subject:	Sad Tidings
Security:	Public
Mood:	disappointed

One of my more favorite living authors is now one of my more favorite deceased authors.
Robert Jordan (James Oliver Rigney Jr.) died today.

Our vacation was great!  We just spent another week at the 1000 islands.

I got to see my parents and family, all except for one of my sisters, who did not make the trip.  I also got to do quite a lot of golfing.  My dad and I played 4x at 9-hole municipal courses (there's two decent ones nearby) - Jed joined us 2x, Aric once.  We also played 18-holes at a local country club with Jed.  The country club was definitely a prettier, better-maintained course, but the holes were a lot harder.  Although I was frequently parring holes on the municipal courses and ending in the mid 40's, I didn't get a single par at the country club and shot a 116, losing 7 balls.  I'm not a very reliable golfer.

I did have 2 pretty impressive highlights however:
1. On a 260yd par 4, I nearly drove the green (ending up on the fringe, 24" from the green) and then sunk a 50ft. putt for eagle.
2. On a par 4 at the country club, I was hitting my 3rd shot from a soggy section of the fairway, a sand wedge from 90 yds out, and I thought I'd miss-hit it, taking a huge divot, but I ended up sinking the shot for a birdie.

Other than golf, we always eat very well, each of us took a night and prepared food for everyone.  My wife and I also went to the drive-in Thursday night to see both Harry Potter & The Transformers at a $5 double-feature.

On a non-vacation note:
I've ordered my official state-of-michigan architectural stamp and embossing seal from a local supplier.  It should arrive in 5-7 working days.

I've yet to receive the hard-copy of my license in the mail, but the State has cashed my check and I just located my official license ID number online at the State of Michigan website.

It's still hard to believe.

The rules:

• We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
• Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

I will ignore the last rule.  If anyone has an interest in continuing this meme, be my guest, but let me know that you are, so I can snoop your answers.

1. I have played 2 on-line games nearly every day for over 5 years: Cantr & Utopia.  Cantr is a role-playing society-simulation revolving mostly around diplomacy, trading, production, and creating political systems through interaction with other players in small communities (<100 individuals).  Utopia is a team strategy game where you're randomly placed in a kingdom with 24 max. other people and you work together to overcome other kingdoms of 25 max. players.  Both games bend the concept of real-time slightly, since usually this entails a short game that happens quickly.  These games last months (or years in terms of Cantr) and often significant events happen when you are not logged in.  I enjoy them immensely, but they have replaced other, older hobbies of mine entirely:  Role-Playing games (D&D, etc.) & Chess respectively.  I have met many people around the world through playing Utopia; I have never interacted with the game creator/manager.  I speak to none of the people I play Cantr with outside of the game; I have discussed the game with the creator via email.  One of my Utopia-friends is doing his master's thesis on the game and it's position in the society of gaming.

2.  Reading is one of the few private hobbies of mine to have survived my online gaming.  I used to read voraciously, of course I would read a lot of personal fiction during class in high school, often reasing more than a book a week.  I read maybe a book a month now.

3. I have played a wide variety of sports: Baseball, Softball, Soccer, Volleyball, pick-up Football, Cross-Country, Golf, Skiing, & Track.  I only play Volleyball now, although I would like to run a marathon or participate in a triathalon.  I started playing Volleyball in the 9th grade on my high school men's team.  The year I started, the school's team was fantastic, but all the players were nearly all seniors.  I went to a volleyball camp at Penn State each of the next two summers with the intention of becoming that good.  I lettered in volleyball for 3 years in their vacuum, and the year after I graduated, the team was brilliant again.  I was once named to an all-tournament team (the best 6 players at the tournament in the coach's opinions).  I always regretted not being part of a more accomplished team.  I played Junior Olympics volleyball the summer between my junior and senior years.  We traveled to Austin, TX for the US tournament and were soundly shellacked by teams from California and Hawaii.  In college, I tried to help a pair of guys start a club team, but the effort self-destructed.  I recently won a competitive co-ed volleyball league, where my team consisted of 2 ex-college players (who alternated games), 2 volleyball coaches, myself and 2 people I met at the Royal Oak YMCA playing pick-up games this last winter.  One of the two college players plays professionally in Austria and is trying to start playing professionally in American sand tournaments.

4. I went to the University of Detroit Mercy for Architecture and graduated in 1999.  I began taking my Architecture registration examination (ARE) in December of 2004, with the intention of completing them all before I was 30.  I just finished my 9th (and last) part of the ARE on June 15th.  I received notification that I had met all the requirements to be licensed by the State of Michigan on 2nd July and have submitted all the paperwork required to complete this process.  I'll be 32 in January.

5. I'm the oldest of 5 children.  I have 2 brothers and 2 sisters.  My parents still live in Pittsburgh, with my oldest sister.  My youngest brother and sister live in Dayton, OH.  My brother lives in Perry, MI.  He moved to Michigan last June to work for Hemlock Semiconductor.

6. I eat salads for lunch most work-days during the summer and soups for lunch most work-days during the winter.  When I worked in Ann Arbor in the summer of 1997, I'd eat dinner-sized lunches in the nicely catered cafeteria there and then have a can of soup and a small salad for dinner.

7. I fear that I lost my sense of humor and became a more bitter person without realizing it sometime after high school.  I do not know if I can reverse this, or if I'm being a hypochondriac.

8. I am fascinated by kitchens that I have never been in before.  There is a strangeness and wonder to a kitchen, such that it seems to have more clues and nuances to the life of the person/people who live there than any other room in a house.  I love the slow process of discovery through learning that kitchen's contents during use.  I was reminded of this recently during the kitchen scene of the movie, Music & Lyrics.  I have always loved physical insights into how people live (as opposed to conversations about it).  I used to snoop in my friend Dave's desk when I'd visit as a young teenager and he'd play computer games that weren't multi-player (an annoying habit of his).  Desks are rich in physical meaning like kitchens.  I never did this to anyone else.

Date:	2007-07-05 14:58
Subject:	This is a tragicomedy...
Security:	Public
Mood:	enthralled

The estate of Ron Goldman, the man O.J. Simpson may have murdered, apparently bought the rights to his hypothetical murder-confession-memoir as well as a lot of other rights to Simpson's image and etc. at a bankruptcy auction earlier this week and plans to rename it to a less polite title and shop it around.  Read the whole sordid tale here.

Date:	2007-07-03 00:15
Subject:	Independence!
Security:	Public
Mood:	ecstatic

...Of one sort or another anyway.

I received the best possible letter in the mail today.  It was my final exam results: PASS!  
All 9 architectural exams are behind me now, and I passed them all on the first attempt.  Granted, I often took quite a lot of time preparing for one or another of them (Structures and Lateral Forces were my big hurdles), but I feel massively accomplished.  I'm going to send my check and Michigan Department of Labor forms off tomorrow to the Michigan Board of Architects so I can make it all official.  Hopefully in a month or so, yours-truly will be an honest-to-goodness licensed architect.  It seems surreal still, and I can't really wrap my mind around the finality of the transition from dogged weekend-studier to license-awaiting applicant.  But I'm sure I'll work my way into comfort with it soon enough.  A half day today and tomorrow will likely make that easier.

It's a crazy day.  Amazing news, busy weeks, and money's a little tight too.  As part of my relaxing week in the 1000 islands 2 weeks ago (the week immediately following my ninth exam), I briefly dallied with smoking again.  It just seemed part of an appropriate way to let loose and be carefree.  So last week involved a bit of weening, and this weekend began the non-smoking again in earnest.  Since I'm on day 3 now, I'm a bit loony from that, and it feeds right into all the other crazinesses to make me A. disinterested in sleep at the moment (which is why you get this blog post) and B. on a bit of an emotional roller coaster of highs and lows.  Apologies to Elizabeth for being a bit of a bear tonight, I just can't seem to settle into an emotional groove.

Well, aside from the smoking, vacation was a blast and just what the Devan ordered: a solid week of R & R to cap my mad cramming spree.  We spent the week on my Great Aunt's island in Point Vivian, NY.  A very small community in the 1000 islands outside of Alexandria Bay.  Most days were spent just idling on the porch, a 600 sq. ft. affair overlooking the main shipping channel.  When the boats come by in the quiet of night (and it gets massively quiet up there.  Dark too), you can feel the house gently shaking from their massive propellers.

We didn't leave the island (except to get groceries) more than three times all week:  the second day we spent in Alex Bay on the 2nd floor patio of a bar overlooking the marina, another day I toured the surrounding areas by bike, and the night before we left, we took in a drive-in movie (Evan Almighty).  It wasn't necessarily the movie that was enjoyable, but there's something pleasurable about the very experience of drive-ins.  Especially ones outside small towns to cap off a leisurely week without a schedule.  We arrived massively early (2 hours or so), since we'd heard that the lines got long and it was the first evening the drive-in was open for the season.  We were the 4th or 5th car to arrive, and basically, we just took it all in.  The cars and families coming and going, setting themselves up, settling in.  Cars looking for spots to park, people walking and carrying on as they do.  Kids running, racing and screaming before it got dark enough to settle in to watch the show.  

I miss that.  We used to go to the drive-in when I was a child.  The ravening hordes of Andersons all piled into the station wagon.   And although you could hardly compare it to an idyll, it is a fond memory and it does make for a warmer time in the night air with my memories.  Plus there's something about being in the open air, beneath the stars, with good friends watching a movie and bundling up, not because the air-conditioning is too strong, but because there's an early summer, northern chill in the air and the breeze blowing off the St. Lawrence Seeway over the open fields to us.

I AM Spider-Man

Spider-Man 75% Superman 65% Iron Man 65% Robin 60% Green Lantern 60% Supergirl 55% Wonder Woman 50% Catwoman 45% Hulk 40% The Flash 40% Batman 35%

I AM intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test
Hopefully, my web-slinging and wall-crawling prowesses will help me in my upcoming (9th/LAST!) Architecture Liscense Exam on Friday.  They may definately have had some small impact on my Stay and Play Social Club volleyball team winning the competetive league last night.  This is a busy week, it'll make next week's vacation all the more therapeutic.

Date:	2007-04-24 10:24
Subject:	Wikipedia
Security:	Public
Mood:	working

In my post-collegiate days, I rely (perhaps overmuch) on Wikipedia to get a quick and general understand of an issue of which I'm ignorant.  Recent examples include such gems as:
- the names of the bones in the arms and legs (I couldn't remember where the humerus was)
- Intact dilation and extraction
- Clostridium difficile infection
And the list could probably go on and on.  It's amazingly convenient.  I love it, and find it credible every time.  I've never uncovered any glaring discrepancies, nor have I ever even been pointed to any minor mistakes therein either.

Now, my dilemma comes down to this...
A good friend of mine (and I suspect others in the academic sphere), look down on wikipedia as more of a silly game than a serious resource.  If anything, referencing wikipedia directly opens you up to mockery more than it may lend any support to your particular argument.

Interestingly enough, I play volleyball with a pre-med student from a local university.  A great player and a pretty awesome guy.  After our game last night, we were talking across a lot subjects while having a drink (the winning team each evening gets a free pitcher at a local bar) and the topic of wikipedia came up.  He relies on it and finds it 99% accurate.  He espoused the dedication of the larger sphere of experts who do the duties of fact-checking for the website through nothing more than a devotion to the truth and a respect for the value of the resource.  Apparently, it's helping him to get through medical school.  Comforting or disturbing?

Date:	2007-04-03 12:30
Subject:	More about Planks
Security:	Public
Mood:	thoughtful

I have, I feel, an annoying tendency to try and subvert other people's blogs with comments about Devan.  This makes me uncomfortable and I think, in the future, I will endeavor to blog in my own space about me, and leave their poor comments sections free of my self-explorations.

With that in mind, my sister-in-law Zena recently blogged some interesting comments about the movie Jesus Camp.  In discussing the movie (which I've not yet seen) and those comments with my mom, one of the more devout people I know, she pointed me toward the following Khalil Gibran poem, "On Children," which I thought was an appropriate commentary on some of the wrongs shown in that film.  As someone who's actually raised children, I'll defer to her expertise here, rather than try and preach about something I know nothing about...

On Children
And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of Children."
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable. 

Zena's entry and her reactions to the movie stirred my thoughts about my own breach from Christianity.  Since making the decision to no-longer consider myself Catholic, I've tended to shun group-membership in general.  I treat such things with reservation, and only enter into such communities with the greatest of caution.  One of the reasons I left (but by no means the tantamount or only one) was that I saw my membership as entailing a thorough endorsement of the Church.  Not just their beliefs, tenets and positions, but their very essence, their being.  As a willing part of that entity, I saw myself as holding responsibility for not just their official actions, but their unofficial ones as well.  Everything they do & everything done in their name (officially or not).

This is difficult for me to explain, because it's not about feelings of being "holier than thou,"  but more about being firmly entrenched within my own moral code.  It's hard enough for me to do the things I think are right and maintain my own internal position in relation to society without having to worry how the actions of others effect the way I am perceived and more importantly the way I see myself.  The benefits of fulfillment, enrichment, community or support I might have received from religion at that phase in my life did not compensate for the shame I feel for the offensive actions undertaken by fellow members, supporting those beliefs with their faith's strictures to my detriment.  Being powerless to effect a change in that community and owning the things I disliked through my choice to continue a membership, choosing to disown the Church seemed best.

Date:	2007-03-26 11:38
Subject:	My sick sister
Security:	Public
Mood:	distressed

Date:	2006-12-29 19:03
Subject:	8 of 9
Security:	Public
Mood:	chipper

I got my results back from my latest Architecture exam today (General Structures):
PASS!

I've been overly stressed out lately, unforgiving and short-tempered.  I hope this good news bolsters my spirits some.

Spending the day off work, sleeping in (as much as the hungry cats would allow) and then going to eat lunch at Fishbones with my brother and his fiancee helped.  As did watching "The Pursuit of Happyness" on the big screen.  I enjoyed it.  I wouldn't say it was a masterful movie, but it's everything the trailers lead you to expect, and it delivers.  The "true story" ending felt contrived and ruined the resolution for me somewhat, since the plot didn't seem driven that way.  It was disjointed and unpleasant to me.  But the company was great.

I've had a grand day.
I'm off to "game night" at my brother-in-law's house.  Should be an excellent evening.

(politely stolen from jupiters_angel)

This is a list of the 50 most significant science fiction/fantasy novels, 1953-2002, according to the Science Fiction Book Club. Bold the ones you've read, strike-out the ones you hated, italicize those you started but never finished, and put an asterisk beside the ones you loved.

*1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien*
*2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov*
*3. Dune, Frank Herbert*
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
*21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey*
*22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card*
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
*27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams*
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick 
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
*43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson*
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

Date:	2006-12-01 16:45
Subject:	Why Agnosticism?
Security:	Public
Mood:	contemplative

I've been watching some serials and short clips on YouTube and GoogleVideo about Atheism by Richard Dawkins over the last couple of days and thinking about religion and discussing it on-line with a variety of folks.  Often in the context of the evolution/Creationism framework, but mostly just idly between other things.  It all got me to thinking about my own religious history:

I was raised Catholic.  I went to catechism class weekly during the school year, I was an alter-boy at my church, and I even took the sacrament of Confirmation.  I even protested legalized abortion in front of city hall.   In high school, I was part of the Church's youth group, a social network of Catholic high-schoolers who met weekly after Confirmation.  After high school, I went to a Jesuit College.

I re-analyzed my faith my freshman year.  I used to believe partly because I was raised to it and partly from the famous (risk/reward) rationale (Pascal's Wager) that belief causes no harm and has the potential for limitless good (salvation), while disbelief causes no good, and brings with it the possibility for limitless harm (damnation).

I also felt that so many people had believed in Jesus for so many years, and so many of them were respectably intelligent, that a couple of myths couldn't have duped so many so completely.  I also rationalized that much of the world could not be so easily misled by charlatans.  I've come to realize that in fact both those COULD and most likely DO happen quite regularly.  Given the myriad of religions throughout the world's history, it seems to me that they're all just primitive man's desperate attempts at answering life's unanswerable questions.  They aren't terribly similar to one another, and they certainly all cannot be completely correct.  Truthfully, is there a symbiosis of the Norse or Greek Pantheons, Asian Ancestor Worship, Celtic Druidism, Native American Shamanism and Islam that would be anything other than comical?

In light of a lot of these thoughts, a favorite mantra of mine at the time was, "The leading cause of faith is drug abuse."  Due to the prevalence of the acceptance of a higher-power as a necessary step in kicking addiction, when ones own will-power fails.  I don't carry that view any longer, and it's not a terribly fair or kind turn of phrase, but I found it highly amusing at the time, and gives insight into my turn of mind then.

I'm not now, and never was a person of faith.  Religion when I had it, was wholly grounded in reason.  I find belief to be something I'm inherently unskilled at.  I tend to rely greatly on both mind and willpower to succeed in daily life and I cannot set reason aside to accept religion into my life.  I do not celebrate Christmas.  Christmas without Christ is just a blind celebration of consumerism.  My marriage was a celebration of my wife and my relationship with our closest and dearest friends.  God had no part in it.  It was a beautiful ceremony of love and friends and family continue to tell us what an amazing time they had to this day.

However, by the same token, just as the presence of God is unknowable, so is his absence, and I'm convinced that I just will not know for certain until I die.  I'm hardly in any hurry to solve that particular problem, so I'm enjoying the world as I'm able, and making the most of this life, since it's quite possibly the only one I will get.  I lack both the strength of belief to be a theist or an atheist, and as such consider myself to be agnostic.

Date:	2006-11-26 23:52
Subject:	Volleyball playoffs!
Security:	Public
Mood:	predatory

Date:	2006-11-09 16:58
Subject:	Violins
Security:	Public
Mood:	contemplative

I had a pair of realizations steer my thinking this way this week, and felt this the appropriate soap-box upon which to air them. I apologize for the lack of eloquence with this iteration, but I was quite happy with this post before Netscape ate it.  *shakes a fist at Netscape*  I hope I can recreate it well.

Basically, on Monday night I overhead a local Blimpie's sandwich shop owner discussing with another customer his feelings about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.  He discussed how he loves this country and the opportunities it has provided for him.  He loves many of the ideals it stands for, but he hates that the US supports the Israeli's and aids them in slaughtering the Palestinians.  Until that day, I had nothing but the utmost respect for him.  He was always a friendly man with nothing but good-cheer to greet me whenever I went to his shop.  Blimpie sandwiches are better than Subway for instance, but not by much, and most of the reason I went there had to do with him and the way he made me feel welcome.

I do not feel strongly about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but I do have fairly well-formed opinions about it.  I don't hold them tightly, but they are the opinions I have accepted and believe, because they help me to feel better about the terrible news I hear whenever events in the middle-east are discussed.  I think that the Israeli's are entitled to the state that was carved out of historic Palestine for them after World War 2.  I believe that their defensive war when faced with the mobilization of their Middle-Eastern neighbors against them entitled them to additional territories captured.  I also think that they do their best as a government and as a people to target only those Palestinians who directly threaten their citizens and their peace with violence.  I see them on the more defensible of the two sides in this matter.  I support the US support of their existence.  But I also recognize that this conflict is terribly convoluted and there are depths to it that my pathetic synopsis above insults.  I could not hope to have a responsible understanding of the issues involved without devoting more of my life to it than I care to.  And therein lies the rub.  Momentarily, I allowed my opinions of someone I respect to waver because of his opinions on a issue to which I really have no reasonable ties, one where I could not hope to know what is right, or even whether his comment or my own opinions have merit.

But what I did realize while I pondered my feelings at the time was that there was thing I knew about the conflict about which I felt strongly.  One tenet that became obvious to me through all the murk and mire and the ongoing travesty in the middle east.  

Once both sides decided that the only appropriate recourse that remained to them was one of violence, both sides had lost.  From that point forward, when the language of their debate became one of murder, both sides were equally wrong and equally culpable for all the miss-deeds done not only by their own people in search of a victory for their cause, but also of those miss-deeds performed against them.  The murder of every man, woman and child can be laid at the feet of a stubborn refusal to set asside arms and seek a peaceful solution.  I see similarities in both our country's response 9-11 and our aggression in Iraq.