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No, the three really have nothing to do with eachother, although two are close. However, all three have a similar underlying issue: tensions between different groups of people. I’ll start with the Mutant part only to say to click the “Read More” link to read about it. This is so I’m not lobotomized for revealing spoilers (although, a publically released trailer can hardly be a spoiler).

Now on to the ports. I find it absolutely amusing that the Bush administration has been warning us of the oh-so evil Islamic terrorists for four years, and now finds itself shot in the foot with this ports deal. Personally, I don’t think there’s much danger in letting this Dubai state run company take over the operations. After all, they’re currently owned by a British company. The difference appears to be that some of the terrorists had operations there, and more specifically some had money running through Dubai banks. On the other hand, we’ve never actually accused the Dubai government of abhoring terrorists (like we did with Afghanistan), so what exactly is the problem here?

The company management is smart to agree to the 45-day review (like they have much choice if they want to administer the ports), but has anyone actually looked at the management of the DP World closely? Half of them are Americans! That shocked me a bit since DP World is state owned, but it isn’t so surprising with all I’ve read about Dubai becoming a new economic center. Also, on the issue of outsourcing, I’ve also seen some op-ed complaining about the on-going of outsourcing, and how it was so bad that our ports were now being outsourced. HELLO!! Pick up a newspaper, folks. They were already outsourced! I swear, some people need to actually read into things before complaining. Now, I understand that port security is important, and I’m all for making sure terrorist weapons don’t get into the U.S., but isn’t the actually security part remaining in American hands? So, what’s the problem, here?

Click the “Read More” link to continue…
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I’ve known of this website for some time now, but have never gotten around to talking around it for various reasons (chief reason being the non-existance of this blog).

Website: http://www.politicalcompass.org/

It’s called Political Compass, and it’s a different way of finding out where you are on the political spectrum. Instead of simply categorizing you as left or right, it asks you a series of questions and then places you on a graph according to both your social and economic views. The extremes in the graph are Authoritarian (Fascism) and Libertarian (Anarchism) for the social realm, and Communism and Neo-Liberalism for the economic realm. I don’t know if it’s the most scientifically conducted way of finding out your poitical views, but it does explain some things. Or at least, according to the examples on the site’s analysis page, it would do only to confirm my Former Soviet Union course’s professor that the President is an authoritarian, heh.

Read on to see my own graph, and, if you wish, post you own here.

Survey
Analysis (recommended to take survey before viewing)

The analysis page includes some examples of well known public figures, and where they fall on this scale.
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Just a quick note to myself for the future…

It is probably important to note that when installing a plug-in, to first make sure it has a php version for the dynamic rendered sections! I found this out the hard way, and for an awesome plug-in too, the Sidebar Manager. Hopefully it’ll come out with one soon. That is all.

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Quite the double entendre in the title, yea? *Cough* Get your mind out of the gutter!

But, really, I’ve had a link to the awesome Questionable Content to your right since at least January 6th, and have yet to explain it. QC is a webcomic by Jeph Jacques that’s all about the lives of an indie music listening, East Hampton, MA residing, early twenties (although a couple of the characters are still in the *-teen years) group of people. If I recall correctly, the comic was started as a commentary of the music the author has listened to, and this commentary still pops up every now and then, but the comic has since developed its own unique and complex story, full of love, heartbreak, life, the universe, everything, and a great deal of hilarity to fill the spaces inbetween. I rarely listen to indie music myself, but the rest of the story attracted my attention enough that I’ve been reading it since shortly before I graduated high school in 2004.

The comic has been going on since late 2003 and currently is running a smooth tenure with 533 strips. Definitely worth a read. I’d recommend it!

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Well, since I last wrote something, I’ve gotten this thing mostly compliant. XHTML wise, it’s all compliant up to version 1.1. CSS wise, I’ve gotten compliant in that there are no more major errors, but there are still a good amount of warnings. Umm, ok, so probably noone cares, but thought I’d give an update. In other news, the tweaking of the blog layout still goes on.

A real blog post will follow shortly.

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Well, pretty much anyway. Done in the sense that the major work on the blog layout and color scheme has been finished. However, expect there to be some small tweaks here and there over time.

Besides the layout, I’ve added the “Suggested Reading” block over to your right, along with the infamous “About” link. Nothing special, but if you’re bored at some point, give it a read. There will be more there as time goes on, but for now, it’s a start.

Now on to some real blogging.

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Whilst it’s still a few hours away for me, I’d like to wish anyone who comes across this blog a Happy New Year, and well wishes for 2006. I’m aiming to get a bit more work done on the templates tonight, so hopefully the blog will look a bit different shortly into 2006.

Have a good night!

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Extreme Audio Board

This is the audio board that my cousin (Second cousin? Great cousin? Something like that) uses when working with well known (and some not as well known) music artists. The story behind the picture is that my mom’s cousin went to California for Christmas. Her brother works for the Universal (as in Universal Studios) Music Group. Or, well, he used to anyway. Not sure if he still does. Anyway, he also has his own studio, which is what I believe the picture is showing. There are others, and I’ll upload some later. In addition, he was a project manager for a five-and-a-half million dollar club, which I also have some pictures of. The real reason I posted this, however, is to test the QuickImagePost plugin.
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