I'm sorry, Mr President. I was wrong about you.

Dear Mr President,

I owe you an apology. During an ill-advised excursion into Republican-ness, I, too, thought you were wagging the dog.

I said some of the very things that some of these people said at the time. And I'm ashamed of myself for doing so.

You were right, President Clinton. I was wrong. I apologize. And how I wish you were still in office.

Religious E-mails

What is it about some "Christians" that makes them automatically assume that anyone who gives them their e-mail address, for whatever reason, just naturally shares their religious ferver/persecution complex/stance on various issues?

I'm a Christian. But I don't assume that everyone shares my beliefs & values, nor do I expect them to do so. And I don't send e-mails around to everyone I know, proclaiming how great Christians are, or how persecuted we are, or how other religions are to blame for the state of the world today. But I sure get a lot of e-mail like that from otherwise apparently sane people. My favorite ones are the rants about the big bad ACLU (of which I am proud to say that I'm a card-carrying member.)

Want prayer in public schools? Hey, I'm all for it - as long as it goes for everyone. Does little Johnny have any Muslim classmates? Hindu? Buddhist? Jewish? Jedi? Make sure they all get to say their prayers there, too. Out loud, so everyone can follow along.

If you're not willing to do that, just drop the damn subject & get on with teaching the three Rs. And while you're at it, why not throw in some real science, too, just for a novel use of taxpayers' dollars?

Oh, and stop sending me those stupid e-mails & threatening me with eternal damnation unless I forward them to everyone I know within the next 5 minutes. God's probably got more important things to worry about than my e-mails - or yours, for that matter. And I sorta doubt that forwarding a bunch of spam to a lot of people is reserving you a special place in heaven, either.

Flashing Web Adverts

Who on earth decided that unsolicited visual movement on a website was a good idea? Flashing adverts are worse than popups; at least popups are in a different browser window.*

But these things... my gawd. They grab my mental focus and don't let go - which is probably what the advertiser had in mind, but was it really what the site owner intended? I can't read any site content without holding something up against the screen to block out the flashing. And if I don't absolutely need to read something on that site, I leave it immediately and never intentionally return. Surely this isn't what site owners are after?


*Yeah, I know you can block all ads, but that's more trouble than it's worth when my idea of content is the blocker's idea of advertising, and vice versa.