LA Times writer Joel Stein is being raked over the coals for saying that he does not "support the troops":

I'm not for the war. And being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition. It's as if the one lesson they took away from Vietnam wasn't to avoid foreign conflicts with no pressing national interest but to remember to throw a parade afterward.

Blindly lending support to our soldiers, I fear, will keep them overseas longer by giving soft acquiescence to the hawks who sent them there — and who might one day want to send them somewhere else. Trust me, a guy who thought 50.7% was a mandate isn't going to pick up on the subtleties of a parade for just service in an unjust war. He's going to be looking for funnel cake.

Many on the right are almost gleefully appreciative of the club he's given them. I haven't really seen the left's reaction. The political fallout (which, from an unfamous talking head in a forgotten newspaper, will be nil) isn't what interests me. What interests me is that philosophical dilemma Stein brings forth.

There are, I suppose, two main reasons to oppose the war in Iraq.

The first is tactical. Raiding Iraq was the wrong thing to do because it distracted us from the war on terror, increased instability in an already unstable region, and has generally made us more vulnerable security-wise and not less. It is extremely easy for these people to say that they oppose the war but support the troops. It's not that they disagree with the US's aims as the things Bush has talked about have an appeal to both the left and the right. Throwing out tyrants is a good thing. Democracy is a good thing. They may harbor a deep mistrust of the messenger, but not a liberal I have met is in favor of tyrants or against democracy in the abstract. So these people can quite easily claim that they think that Iraq was a grave mistake, but hope that we can make the best of it. Or these days earnestly want us to just cut our losses and come home. So no problem there.

The second main reason to oppose the war in Iraq is moral. Whatever Hussein may have done does not warrant a pre-emptive invasion against the wishes of the UN. Tyranny is preferable to going to war for cheap mineral goods and/or to line the pockets of oil fatcats. The good that might come from saving lives in Iraq may be outweighed by its encouraging of further foreign policy adventures in Syria and Iran. According to this thinking, the world would truly be a better place if the United States lost. The hegemony would be humbled. We may even look inward at our own failings. The money spent on the military can be better spent elsewhere. Victory in Iraq would cost us more than it would get us, materially perhaps but especially morally.

This second group's ability to credibly claim that they "oppose the war" but "support the troops" is quite tenuous and the claims themselves disingenuous. For this group to achieve their ends, our troops will have to fail. That's not supporting the troops. Not actively hoping that they die does not constitute support. The military rank-and-file's continued support of Bush even suggests complicity. You may, like Joel Stein, be uncomfortable with it, but if you think that the United States is clearly in the moral wrong here and yet you hope they win, then you are morally confused, morally unserious, or morally irreprehensible.

A week or two back Eminem and his ex-wife Kim officially remarried:

Kim Mathers, 30, applied for a marriage license last week, and Detroit television station WXYZ showed an invitation to "join them as they exchange vows and the celebration of their new life together."

Eminem and Kim Mathers reconciled in late 2004, and he announced in December that the two would get back together.

I don't generally care about such things except for something funny on Rhapsody. Most of the time either all or none of the songs on a particular album are on Rhapsody. When a song or two are missing, it's usually because it's a cover or was performed with someone else or something.

Eminem has precisely one missing song. No one else sings on the song and there are no other obvious copyright issues. It's about a jilted husband's bloody murder-suicide revenge on his cheating wife:

Hey remember the time we went to Brian's party?
And you were like so drunk that you threw up all over Archie
That was funny wasn't it? That was funny wasn't it?
See it all makes sense, doesn't it?
You and your husband have a fight
One of you tries to grab a knife
And during the struggle he accidentally gets his Adams apple sliced
And while this is goin' on
His son just woke up and he just walks in
She panics and he gets his throat cut
So now they both dead and you slash your own throat
So now it's double homicide and suicide with no note
I should have known better when you started to act weird

The title of the song? "Kim", of course.

My wallet disappeared last weekend. Truly baffling how it did so. Baffling and inconvenient.

I'm waiting for a new debit card to get to me. Even though I'm 90% sure that the wallet did not fall into evil hands, they unsurprisingly cancelled the card. So it wasn't too much a surprise when I got an email from Rhapsody informing me that there was a billing problem and to give them a call.

I was hoping that they might cut me some slack on my due date. Ideally, they would try again in a week and I'd get service until then. Also acceptable was suspending my account until I could pay. Not desirable, but it would have been understandable. Mostly I just didn't want them to think that I was some sort of deadbeat.

I was only on hold for a couple of minutes, which after waiting for half an hour or more while trying to sort out the RAW360.com business earlier in the month, was nice. I had a little trouble understanding the foreign accent of the guy who did take my call. I'm not sure if he was actually in a foreign call center, but if so I might say that I actually appreciate it comparison to some of the domestic call centers I've called where the calltakers may not have an accent, but are decidedly indifferent. If it's a foreign call center, score one for the Indians.

Anyhow, not only did they not cut service off, but they actually comped me for the month! Granted, I've been with them for a year and the $10 they comped me still doesn't make them less expensive than Yahoo Music over the course of six months or a year, but their flexibility alone is certainly worthy of commendation.

I talked to a young foreign gentleman

A couple weeks ago, Sammler used GoogleNews to illustrate a point:

This persistent idea that the socialized systems of Europe offer superior healthcare is simply an ahistorical folly. On a day of your choice, just search GoogleNews for "NHS" to taste the fate of those dependent on government care. I chose today, and found...

I said that I would do it the next week, but I fell asleep at the wheel so he did it again.

This time I made sure not to forget, so here I go. In the interest of fairness, I am going to highlight the first nine* articles, whether they are positive or negative (in cases where there are "related" articles I will take the first one before moving on to the next big headline):

1. Top chiefs discuss debt-ridden NHS (The Scotsman) "The extent of measures being taken by debt-ridden NHS trusts in efforts to balance their books was disclosed in a poll of NHS chief executives."


2. Hospitals on critical list as NHS cash crisis spirals (Times of London) "THE full scale of the crisis facing the NHS was laid bare last night by ministers who admitted that up to 50 trusts had lost control of their finances."


3. NHS trust is blasted for £35,000 PR exercise (The Scotsman) "THE debt-crippled NHS Lanarkshire trust has been labelled an "absolute disgrace" after spending almost £35,000 on spin doctors to soften the blow of a casualty unit's closure."


4. New Hospital a Step Closer, Say Bosses (Hemel Today) "Health chiefs have signed an agreement setting out the terms on which land will be bought for a new hospital in Hatfield."


5. Minister reveals new NHS research strategy (Financial Times) "A new research strategy for the National Health Service was launched by the government yesterday. It includes a "radical shake-up of the way research is funded" and measures to "tackle the increasing red-tape that is stifling research"."


6. NHS figures show wait times fall (BBC) "The latest NHS figures released by the Welsh Assembly Government have shown a fall in waiting times. The figures show that in the past month, the number of people waiting more than 12 months for inpatient or day-care treatment fell by 29%."


7. Patients 'failed' as six hundred beds blocked every day, say Tories (icWales) "THE Welsh Assembly Government has been accused of failing patients as it emerged more than 600 hospital beds are unavailable on any given day."


8. KPMG slams NHS managers (Financial Director) "KPMG has found that NHS managers' capabilities were 'inadequate' to turn around the dire financial situations of their organisation, according to the latest report from Department of Health finance director Richard Douglas."


9. City to get new health services (BBC) "New GP surgeries, health centres and clinics are to open in Wolverhampton. The city is one of only six areas in the country to benefit from millions of pounds of government investment."

* - It was originally going to be ten, but the tenth was a press release from the opposition Conservative Party, which does not qualify as "news" in my book. Neither does the nurse staffing come-on that was next. Besides... NHS Nine has a ring to it.

"I am hesitant to say so, but I've known it to be a fact that people who tend to expect the most from politics often have the least from family. This is a common sense observation and it informs some of the Conservative criticism of the Welfare State. We should not, I reiterate for the boringeth time, depend upon politics or the government to give us personal gratification or bolster our self-esteem. We seem to have lost, in reaching out with identity politics, a grasp of the essence of citizenship which primarily involves sacrifice for the common good. Instead we have invoked a sort of Hobbesean deal from those who have for the benefits of the have-nots. That's fundamentally a decent idea, but not when the have-nots are getting a state-sponsored identity out of the deal. That kind of care and feeding requires family. Family is what's going to save you from the slings and arrows.

"So going back just a few months to the most recent and glaring example, our friend of great distinction Kanye West banged the needy drum once more with his observation that 'President Bush doesn't care about black people'. Is politics supposed to care? Politics is supposed to be a negotiated settlement, but there is not an active negotiation for black politics of West's sort going on. That's why it's episodic. When Jesse Jackson shows up to say the same thing at every photo op, this is a symptom of the kind of demand created for the politics of caring. But the basic contradiction is that politics is not an avenue for showing love. I think a bit too much of that thing which is popular black politics is looking for love in all the wrong places."-Michael Bowen

Are baseball statistics proprietary information of Major League Baseball or are they part of a historical record? The courts are about to figure that out:

In a lawsuit that could affect the pastime of an estimated 16 million people, CBC Distribution and Marketing wants the judge to stop Major League Baseball from requiring a license to use the statistics.

The company claims baseball statistics become historical facts as soon as the game is over, so it shouldn't have to pay for the right to use them.

Working mostly over the Internet, CBC and its hundreds of competitors provide player profiles and process reams of daily data for fans who pretend to be team owners, drafting players for imaginary squads and using statistics to determine a winner at the season's end.

While some leagues are just for fun, others award large cash prizes, and operating them has become a multimillion industry.

CBC, which has run the CDM Fantasy Sports leagues since 1992, sued baseball last year after it took over the rights to the statistics and profiles from the Major League Baseball Players Association and declined to grant the company a new license.

Before the shift, CBC had been paying the players' association 9 percent of gross royalties. But in January 2005, Major League Baseball announced a $50 million agreement with the players' association giving baseball exclusive rights to license statistics.

Daniel Drezner thinks the MLB is being monumentally stupid.

It honestly hadn't occured to me that royalties had to be paid for fantasy leagues, though I guess everything changes as companies start profiting off of it. After all, video games have to license stats from leagues to use in their games. By extention, so should fantasy leagues. And I guess it does make sense that the players ought to be compensated if their personas are used by a third party to make profit (and if they've sold their rights to MLB, then MLB would have them).

At the same time, I find the idea that Major League Baseball could shut down every fantasy league except its own to be particularly odious. Baseball is a public spot. I find the idea that something so ubiquitous can be commodified down to the last drop difficult to wrap my hands around. Should newspapers have to pay money to be able to report on games, and run standings and statistics? More importantly, could they withhold the right of a newspaper to publish statistics if they run columns critical of the industry? If we consider statistics to be intellectual property, it would seem so.

It sounds like it could be a complicated issue.

RAW: I need a copy of my drivers license. My wallet disappeared over the weekend.
DMV Lady: Sure thing. Will you be paying in cash or with a credit card?
RAW: Oh, crap. I have to go to the bank. I'll be right back.

[Five minutes later]

RAW: I would like to withdraw $100.
Teller: What is your account number?
RAW: xxxx-xx-xxxx
Teller: Okay, can I see some picture ID?
RAW: Well no. I'm here because I just got back from the DMV. They need $12 before they'll give me a duplicate of my drivers license. My wallet disappeared over the weekend. I need a new card and $100 of spending money to hold me over until the new card gets here.
Teller: Okay, but can I see some picture ID?
RAW: No.
Teller: Do you have an ATM card you can show me?
RAW: No.
Teller: Then I'm sorry, sir, I can't let you withdraw $100.
RAW: How about $12? Can you let me withdraw $12?
Teller: Not unless you have a photo ID...

[One discussion with the manager and interrogation later]

DMV Lady: Could I get you to go over there for the picture?
RAW: Don't you already have a picture on file?
DMV Lady: We have to get an updated picture, though.
RAW: But all I want is a copy of the old license. I actually have a good picture in that one. Right now my hair is all windblown and wet.
DMV Lady: But while you're here, we need to get an updated license.
RAW: But it's only been a year. I look almost exactly the same.
DMV Lady: Not completely the same. Your hair's different.

Idaho has apparently backed off a plan that would have required students take more math and science courses. The Idaho State Journal has a rather biased article on the subject entitled Plan worries area educators: What would science, math effort cost?

Geez, makes it sound kind of ominous, doesn't it?

The article dutifully carries the banner of the education establishment (teachers, principals, and so on) who are adamantly against it. Not a single person in favor of it is quoted. In condenses support for the plan in a single paragraph, dismissing it at the end:

Representatives from the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, Micron, the Idaho National Laboratory and the state's universities also voiced their support of the measure, leading some to question how much industry stands to financially benefit from the proposal.

Say what?!

I would really like it explained to me how these groups would benefit from a more fundamental curriculum. The only thing I can think of is that they benefit from better educated individuals. The state universities I suppose benefit more directly because they will have to offer less in the way of remedial classes. But if the students aren't taking lower level math courses, they are given the opportunity to take higher level math courses. That may not appeal to the high schooler that wants to take Theater III, but I can see why high-tech employers like Micron and INL might like that idea. They will have to do less recruiting from out of state.

So yeah, it may benefit Micron and INL and state universities, but absolutely not at the expense of the state. Unless, of course, you don't want the kind of educated employees that they are looking for. Or you don't think the state should be educating. Or you think it's more important that high schools offer Theater II and/or Ormanental Art rather than require students to take calculus. In any case, since I've gotten up here Idahoans have been complaining about the lack of well-paying jobs in eastern Idaho. Maybe when companies or organizations that hire such people say they want something -- something that could benefit everyone -- the state should listen to those people rather than the educators who may simply not want to be bothered with having to do it.

I'm actually not even sold on the plan. My main fear is that it would lead to students learning in four years what they currently learn in two or three. Mandatory classes are always slowed down to the lowest common denominator. One of the joys of the precalculus class I took my senior year was the notable absense of certain kinds of students. Add on top of the fact that I am interested in teaching what is still in most places an "elective" course in computers.

I guess it's the tone of the article and the sinister portrayal of those advocating the plan to sneak more insidious math and science classes into the curriculum that bothers me. The education establishment's motives are not challenged like this, only echoed and amplified. The educators' argument that this plan is unfunded seems like a non-starter. If all you're doing is swapping classes, then the cost should be the same. In fact probably less because in my experience supplies for elective classes cost considerably more than the pencil, paper, and calculator required for math and science classes. Maybe I'm missing something in this argument, but the article doesn't even address possible counterarguments to what the principals are saying. There is the layoffs argument, but it's not up to school districts to provide theater majors with jobs. Of course, many majored in education rather than what they're teaching, which is a problem in itself.

Anyway, the educator and state senator Bert Marley (D-nearby) could be correct in that it's simply a matter of rowing faster in the wrong direction. Though he thinks the issue is relevence. I presume that he is challenging the relevence of calculus, which is fair, but I would want to know why calculus - and learning the thought processes involved in calculus - is (or are) less relevent than than that fourth year of band or choir. Additionally, he would need to explain to me how exactly it is that our kids are getting such a great education that it's worthwhile to preserve the arts classes.

On the other hand, those in favor of heighening requirements would need to explain a couple things as well. First, as I mentioned above, how can we be assured that instead of teaching everyone what's in calculus classes now we won't end up teaching kids in calculus considerably less? That's a real problem and that's where I think that Marley may be correct about rowing in the wrong direction. One of the biggest obstacles I see in public education is the refusal to sufficiently differentiate between kids that are smart and those that aren't and those that want to be there and those that don't (and those whose parents require that they get an education and those that don't).

There are some kids that simply don't belong in calculus. But by making it optional, you're giving kids that should be in calculus the ability to get out of it. Few kids would prefer calculus over Positive Mental Attitude class, after all. And the way students are measured (Grade Point Average) will often actually reward the PMA student over the calculus one.

So I'm not sure. Thoughts?

Clarification: The classes I use above are examples. I use Theater and Positive Mental Attitude and fourth year of band and choir as examples of inessential electives. I use calculus as an example of upper-level math. Other electives include things that I find more useful such as computer programming and the like and it's quite possible that IT classes would be cut as well as theater classes. And in most cases, four years of math in high school would lead to precalculus or trigonometry (I took four years and ended up in precal).

Pratie Place extracts from a WSJ article on Blockbuster's recent financial woes:

Blockbuster last year ditched the late fees in a concession to competition from video-by-mail chains such as Netflix Inc. that allow customers to keep movies for as long as they like after paying a flat monthly rate. [Late fees brought in] $250 million to $300 million a year for the Dallas-based company -- about 15% of annual revenue when the fees were still in place.

Now, with the company's finances in tatters and its stock price down more than 60% last year, some investors and analysts are arguing for a companywide return of the fees for tardy customers.

I am of a mixed mind about this.

On one hand, it reminds me a bit of rebates in that it is backdoor income. It counts on people spending considerably more than they intend to in order to keep the situation afloat. From an ideological standpoint, I wish that they would charge whatever they need to just so that they can make their profit and so that people know how much they're going to pay going into it. Ahhhh... but would I pay twice as much to go to a place that charges less (or nothing) in the way of late fees? I might, but I would be in the minority, which reminds me of the other hand.

I was recently reminded of a fallacy that I see in the minds of many: that companies make a good profit on their main source of income and every other source of income is just ripping the consumer off. One example of this is a friend of mine who was recently complaining about paying $2 for a refillable softdrink when they knew that it was only costing the restaurant pennies. Or the assumption that cable/satellite companies are adding too many channels just so they can charge more. Gas stations are robbing their consumers and then overcharging for food items in the convenience stores. And, of course, the assumption that Blockbuster's seemingly exorbant late fees were just another revenue stream in their ocean of profits.

You ever see on television when a bunch of bored guys goad a somewhat gullible character into picking a fight with someone else? Or maybe you've seen this happen in real life. It's the ultimate pleasure. They get what they want (entertained) while they bear none of the rists should the goadee fail to lay a punch.

I've noticed that people often take this attitude with corporations. They harbor none of the risk, so they are unsurprisingly cavalier about how much a company might be hurt if they change their way of doing things. Restaurants, for instance, have one of the lowest margins of profit of any business. The $2 they're charging for a coke isn't just to make money, it's to make sure they don't lose money on all the things that the customer isn't paying for (the building, electricity bill, etc.). It is my contention that cable and satellite companies bundle channels because the marginal costs of additional channels are such that you wouldn't save more than a few dollars by giving up 2/3 of your channel line-up. Gas stations make most of their money in convenience stores, which is why you see a lot more convenience stores that don't sell gas than you do gas stations that don't have an attached convenience store.

The list goes on and on, but let's look for a moment at Blockbuster. For the record, I absolutely hate Blockbuster. I not only want to believe that they are liars and crooks, I actively do believe they are. I got burned by an Office Space DVD I rented a few years ago that ended up costing me $30. I know that accidentally forgetting to return it for a couple weeks did not cost them that much.

But lo and behold, they touch up their late fee policies and they're actually hurting. It's almost as if giving the customers what they want may not always be in the best interest of the company and even may not be fair to the company if they're losing money at the expense of their customer base. Imagine that.

My point here is not to defend a company that I detest. In fact, this isn't even about Blockbuster or the cable/satellite companies or gas stations or restaurants. It's to lay to rest the stupid notion that customers give anymore a rats patoot about the company than vice-versa, the stupid notion that the consumer wants to play fair and it's the companies that refuse to, and the stupid notion that the customers have any clue of how the businesses they swear up and down are ripping them off actually operate.

I have recently discovered the utilitarian delight of being able to read comic books on my computer. I have a confession to make: I've been downloading comics on the Internet and viewing them using CDisplay. For the most part, however, I'm downloading comics that I already own. The problem is that they're back in Texas and I am presently in Idaho. The only comic book I have up here is V for Vendetta and I've sorely missed comic book reading -- even reading stuff I've already read. Over the past week I read Watchmen. Next week I'm thinking maybe Hitman and Demon.

Reading comics on the computer is actually less undesirable than I thought it would be. One reason I never really considered doing so before was how much I don't like reading long tracts of text on a monitor. I guess I hadn't considered that I prefer reading comic strips online as compared to on paper. While I don't prefer reading CBR and CDZ files in comparison to paper, storage certainly is a lot easier!

Part of it has me considering the commercial viability of digital comics. One of the justifications the comic book companies give for price hikes competing in frequency with the post office (Comics were $1.25 a piece when I started collecting, they're $3 now) was how expensive paper has gotten. Not to mention comic book dealers and their financial troubles (they sell less, therefore need to make more per unit). So theoretically digital comics would alleviate a lot of the problem.

Unfortunately, however, I don't see it happening any time soon. The most immediate issue is copyright management. People have largely been able to hack through most DRM systems and I don't see that changing anytime in the near future. In many ways, I shudder to think of the limitations of a system that can truly prevent illegal copying. Eggs and omlettes.

Unfortunately that leads to the standoff between the companies and its potential customers that benefits nobody. People that honestly wish they could get comics digitally aren't able to. Comics that would almost certainly like to deliver them can't without fear of losing control of their product. Ironically, by not offering anything few really know what they're missing out on (I didn't until a week or two ago), they're in the clear. If they were to actually serve their audience and develop a system that let people read comics but prevented them from being copied and spread out, they would become villains in the eyes of many for protecting art that deserves to be free (as in unpaid for, not liberated).

See Also: Loonyblog has this and this to say about the general subject.

I mostly went to the computer store to purchase an ethernet cable for the laptop. Well, I actually went to get two of them, but when I got there I only remembered needing one, but you get the idea. While I was there, though, I saw a mousepad for sale on the wall. I thought about getting one for my coworker because she just moved desks and needed a mousepad, but I figured that she would probably get one for herself over the weekend. Then I realized that I actually need another mousepad. In case you're wondering, this paragraph could easily have been one sentence long, but I wanted to give you a bit of insight into how much of an uphill challenge it is to get my mind to work clearly and concisely. Of course, you read the blog, so you know that.

Anyway, so I buy a black standard mousepad. Not cool leather like my other one, but it'll do. Nice. Black. Utilitarian. Really weird wrapper.

Along the top it says:

Brighten Your Desktop with World's   most Beautiful Picture

Forgetting for a moment the fact that "most" isn't capitalized and the extra space between "World's" and "most"...

Brighten? It's black.

Beautiful? It's plain black.

Was this thing packaged by Taiwannese goths or something? At the very least, the Taiwan company that made it didn't bother to run a spellcheck (It says that the mousepad "Maxmizes" performance), much less have an English proofreader.

I guess those are the corners they had to cut to make a $3 mousepad.

The AP has an interesting story about some vandalism of convenience stores in California owned by Muslims. The vandals are... Muslims. Sort of.

Dressed in bow ties and dark suits, the group of nearly a dozen men entered a corner store and smashed bottles of liquor, wine and beer with metal pipes, shattering refrigerator cases and leaving behind a terrified clerk along with piles of broken glass.

No one was held up. Nothing was stolen. The vandals just wanted to leave a message: Stop selling booze to fellow Muslims.

In urban America, friction between poor residents and the immigrant merchants who sell cigarettes, bread and alcoholic beverages from neighborhood markets is nothing new. But the recent attack at San Pablo Liquor has injected religion into the old debate over whether a glut of such stores contributes to violent crime, vagrancy and other social ills.

Followed by an identical attack at another West Oakland store the same evening, the episode highlighted tensions _ and different interpretations of doctrine _ between black Muslims hoping to reclaim troubled parts of the city and Middle Eastern shop owners, many of them also of Muslim faith.

The story is interesting, though the article is awfully written. I don't know how one can talk about "bowtied Muslims" and "black Muslims" with outlining the peculiarity that is the Nation of Islam.

Then there's this bit which just takes the cake:

While black and Middle Eastern Muslims may pray at the same mosques on weekends, their worlds do not tend to overlap much beyond that, said Hatem Bazian, professor of Near East and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

That's about as close as the article gets to pointing out the real issue, and even that it gets wrong. Black Muslims in general do not, generally, pray at the same mosques. Black Muslims are generally members of the Nation of Islam, which is roughly to Islam what Mormonism is to Christianity. Both are largely an American spin of a worldwide religion (LDS founded in New York, NOI founded in Michigan). Both consider themselves part of the larger religion but are viewed by suspicion by most other splinters of the faith. It's members of the Nation of Islam that wear the bowties, are African-American, and whatnot. As for the mosques, well no, they're not the same either. Among other things, Nation of Islam mosques have church-like pews.

Obviously not every article that discusses the Nation of Islam does not need to go into its history and its differences from traditional Islam, but it seems to me that one that is specifically talking about the conflict between the two ought to at least provide a little context.

Above is a picture of Venesuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and American singer Harry Belafonte. Harry has always looked a little strange to me and only periodically can I put my finger on it. Something about his bone-structure... he looks like a white guy wearing brown makeup. I'm really not sure why he looks this way to me, but he does. Am I the only one that has noticed or thought of this?

RAW360 is back up.

The short version: RAW ran into troubles, not with his host (I run the server) but with the his domain registrar, a company that basically tried to screw him over in revenge for his wanting to switch to a competitor.

This screwage brought to you courtesy of the folks at ICANN, who have "rules" regarding transferring domains but absolutely no enforcement methods to prevent domain registars from screwing over customers.

I'll let RAW describe the whole ordeal later, if he feels like it.