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It’s almost as if somebody over at CNN had the same thought that I did when they saw the amount of emotional outpour dedicated to Steve Irwin.

As you all know by now, Steve Irwin died yesterday off the coast of Australia while diving with stingrays. I think I first heard it on NPR and by the time I got to my computer, it was all over the web. CNN.com had it as their lead story for at least half the day, as fif MSNBC and Fox. Even ESPN.com (?!) had it on their main page and many of the local / national news stations didn’t just save the news for the backend of their broadcasts like they do with other celebrity deaths, but instead ran it earlier in the broadcast.

And while it’s sad news, I’m surprised it’s such big news.

I always thought people saw him more as a gimmick than anything else. A source of mild entertainment as they watched from the comfort of their home as he wrestled a croc or stabbed at a snake. As we saw him more on TV, we got used to seeing him around, but there really wasn’t anything beyond that. He simply was that crazy guy from Australia that we all liked listening to partially because of his cool accent and partially because he did things nobody else would do. His TV shows here in the states did moderately well in terms of ratings and his movie didn’t really set any records in terms of earnings. What I’m trying to say here is that while a celebrity, he was a D-list celebrity at best and somebody who you didn’t notice when you went a few months without seeing him on TV.

And yet I can remember when other, arguably “bigger” celebrities died recently and their deaths didn’t get near as much attention as Irwin’s has. I’m not saying it’s not sad he died, but I’m just left wondering how much of these condolences are real and how much are from the “ex-high school” crowd.

I guess I should explain the “ex-high school” crowd. One of my major pet peeves is when people display false emotion. I don’t care what emotion it is, I don’t care what the setting is, if the emotions you’re displaying aren’t real and are simply what you think they should be, then you’ve joined the crowd. In fact, there’s no group worse at this false emotion than all the people you used to go to high school with, which is where the name comes from. You know exactly who I’m talking about - say you’re in a bar and you spot somebody across the room who you went to high school with. As soon as they see you, they come running up and pretend y’all were best friends. They as how you’ve been and want to hear your whole life story just as long as you can fit it into 10 seconds. Then they cut you off, brag about their latest job or kid, and then make some over the top gesture about how you two need to get together and “catch” up sometime.

No, we don’t. We didn’t talk in high school. We don’t talk now. There’s a reason I didn’t hang out with you before and I bet it has something to do with your crappy personality that you so eloquently just put on display for everyone within earshot. Don’t patronize me with this false sense of past brotherhood, as if we were close only to have drifted apart over the years. That’s not how it was, trust me, I’m a history major. Sure, come on over and chat if you want, but don’t insult my memory or my intelligence.

Some people do this far too often in their lives and it only gets worse when they talk to you about somebody who isn’t around or who might even be dead. They conjure these memories out of thin air, lamenting over what they lost and how wonderful that person was. They pretend the person was a saint and that they could do nothing wrong and I just don’t understand how or why people do it. Speaking nothing but good and completely false things about a person after they’ve died helps not their memory or legacy, but instead tarnishes and insults it. Speak the truth, no matter how little the good was.

When I die, I want people to remember and speak of me as for who I really was; warts, faults, and everything else. Don’t make me out to be my generation’s Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. I simply want to be remembered and credited with whatever I managed to accomplish, no matter how little or great. And I think other people deserve just the same treatment.

And thus, I hope that the “ex-high school” crowd didn’t highjack the Steve Irwin memorial today. That said, however, if all the condolences that people expressed were completely real and heartfelt, then so be it. You earned them, mate.

I think what’s scariest about the situation in the Middle East is that I agree with President Bush. By now, everybody’s heard President Bush speak candidly about his thoughts on the whole situation and while most of the media attention has been focused upon his usage of the word “shit,” little has been said about the message President Bush was trying to convey. Which I completely don’t understand. Here is a grown man, talking in what he thought was a private conversation to a trusted friend and ally, and we’re shocked he used an expletive in regard to a situation that, in reality, is shitty? There are times I feel this country is far too prude and childish - watching people gasp and scream bloody murder over a four letter word is such a time. But I digress.

You can count the number of times I’ve agreed with President Bush on your right hand. In fact, my grandfather, who lost a few fingers in an old mill accident, can still count the times on his hand. And yet, for all those out there keeping count, it’s time to extend a finger. It’s no secret that President Bush’s approach to foreign policy is “kick ass and take names later.” And while that doesn’t work in most cases, it’s certainly a better approach than “kick ass against the wrong people and take names later,” which is exactly what Israel is doing. They’re causing a scene for no reason (I’m looking at the bigger picture here, not at the 2 kidnapped Israeli soldiers) and which in turn will only hurt their cause.

Lebanon is a pawn. It has been for decades now and any low-level State Department diplomat can tell you that. This is no secret. And yet the entire world seems to turn a blind eye and accept Israel turning Lebanon into a scapegoat and in exchange the world gets to sleep easier at night while Israel ignores Syria. Sure, it’s true that Hezbollah was formed and currently resides in Lebanon, but its true backing comes from Syria. Weapons, money, soldiers, you name it, Syria hooks them up with it. One could even argue the Lebanese government has little power over Hezbollah due to Hezbollah’s increasing political force, as well as their high level of local support since it was Hezbollah and not the government who was building schools, hospitals, and roads. All thanks to Syrian support and money. Although, it might be safe to bet that some of that support will erode in the near future since all those schools, hospitals, and roads are in flames now, but that’s beside the point.

The point is, as Israel bombs the hell out of Lebanon, they are only hurting themselves and the Lebanese people. Sure, they might slam a few Hezbollah buildings and headquarters, but this is just like fighting the Taliban or Al-Qaeda. You can’t eradicate them with long range missiles. Hell, we’ve been in Afghanistan for almost five years now and we still don’t have anywhere near complete control over the country.

You can’t wipe out a terror cell with bombs and missiles. You can’t even do it through unilateral occupation (hi there, Iraq!) You attack the center of the problem, Syria, and to make sure it doesn’t succumb to the same fate as Iraq, you get the rest of the world behind you and show the Syrian government that they are so outnumbered, they haven’t a chance.

If we take diplomacy off the table (which with President Bush is almost a given, at least with the old and true President Bush, the one we heard on the microphone talking to Blair), then the only way to do it is to get a global backing and wipe out the source.

And that’s what President Bush and Tony Blair suggested here. Blair takes the diplomatic route in saying that if the entire world united, they could pressure Israel to stop in a matter of minutes. And President Bush takes this conclusion a step further in the form of, if Israel truly meant to rid themselves of Hezbollah, they then use this global pressure and flip it into support for attacking the true root of the problem and hit Syria. Israel wins in destroying an enemy, Lebanon wins in no longer being bombed, and the world wins by removing one of the most dangerous nations from the oh-so-fun equation of “Oh God, Oh God, what crazy nation might kill us all?”

Israel has done a fantastic job of playing the Holier-than-thou maiden in distress role over the past 40 years, but that’s for another post. What’s clear now, though, is that A) Israel is helping nothing in the current situation and has other alternatives that if taken would produce a much better result, B) Syria is playing a wonderful game of poker, C) The rest of the world seems okay with the fact that Israel is beating Lebanon senselessly, and D) President Bush and I are in the same frame of mind.

I think I need a drink.

If you haven’t heard of Facebook.com by now, you’re obviously (A) Not on the Internet more than an hour a day, (B) Not a college student, or (C) Have absolutely no friends and spend all your time brooding and plotting to blow up your campus. If you happen to fall into one of those categories, then I’ll be kind enough to give ya a quick rundown about the site so that you too can seem hip and cool and feel like a young kid again. Started back in late 2004 by a Harvard student, it’s basically a college social networking site that is the ninth most visited website on the Internet, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings. Open only to people with college e-mail addresses, you can create an account, link up with your friend’s accounts, upload and share photos, join groups, and “poke” people in a somewhat sexual manner, among countless other things. I joined back in October of ‘05 and since then it’s added another 4.6 million students and received a $13 million dollar investment by a group of Silicon Valley wizards. Also since October of ‘05, I’ve spent way, way, waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many hours on it. At one point, I was logging in 10 or 20 times a day to check up on things. I even have my own Goob Fanclub Groub (Ignore the fact that it’s titled “Goob Sucks”)

One day I might tell you about the time I became a Facebook God and had unlimited powers on the site, but that’s not what this post is about (Although I’m sure Fellner can tell you all about how depressed I was when I was suddenly stripped of my newfound powers). No, this post is to share a little story about a group of kids one upping the local police.

Not every college is on Facebook, but all the important and big ones are. On most campuses, statistics place the Facebook saturation rate somewhere between 50-90% and recently, college officials have caught on to this. Since registration only requires a college e-mail address, they too can create accounts and make fake student pages with the real intention of spying on students. There have been a few reports of people being busted for drug and alcohol use thanks to pictures they’ve posted on their Facebook profile. A student at Fisher College in Boston was expelled last year for his online criticism of a campus security officer. Officials at the University of California Santa Barbara, said they would discipline students living on campus who posted information or photographs on their profiles that involved illegal activity like under-age drinking. At North Carolina State, RAs wrote up 15 students seen consuming alcohol in photos on Facebook. The list goes on and on.

And then there are the students at George Washington University who decided to fight back and launch a “Facebook Attack.”

It all started last year when a party was shut down by campus police. Students found it odd that the cops had known about it and then began to realize that the only place they’d heavily talked about it was on Facebook. So, a few months ago, they decided to strike back. They planned another party and talked about it only on Facebook, therefore ensuring that if the cops came this time, the students were being spied upon. They created a group, left tags on each other’s boards, and talked non-stop for weeks about how awesome their “Beer Bash” was going to be.

So imagine the look on the police officer’s faces when they burst through the doors only to find a group of kids standing around eating cake and cookies with the word “Beer” painted on them in icing. Luckily for you, though, you don’t have to imagine. Pictures of the party surfaced on the net soon after and I’ve stuck them in the newly reformatted (although not yet finished) Shyzer Gallery. Have a look here. My absolute favorite is the last one, which contains the stunned look of one of the cops. I just wish I could have been there.

This whole topic raises an interesting issue, though. I used to tell Fellner I couldn’t wait until the Presidential elections of 2024 or beyond. I always thought it was interesting to imagine how sites like Myspace, Livejournal, and the such could come back and bite a politician in the ass. Bush and Kerry and Dean might be a little too old to have run a website while they were growing up, but my generation isn’t. When it comes time for my fellow peers to start running for office, people are going to dig up what they wrote in their blogs, what they posted on message boards, what they said in chat rooms. Everything, and I mean everything, put on the Internet is archived somewhere. Whether it be in Google’s cache or archive.org or a server’s backup in downtown Atlanta, chances are if you want to find an Angelfire site from 1999, you can, especially if you have the resources most powerful news agencies have. We make such a big fuss over what our politicians have maybe said in an interview or possibly said in a speech. Now think about having daily writings from an angst-ridden teenager who went on to clean up his act and run for political office. Imagine the worst thing you’ve ever typed and posted on the Internet. Now imagine seeing that run as a headline in the New York Times or USA Today. I’ve kissed any possible political career away with Shyzer, but that’s fine with me. For other people my age, they might not be ready to write off a certain career choice already and yet they might have already done so without even knowing it.

But Facebook is bringing this scenario to us in the present day, even if it’s only in a smaller scale. Reports are now surfacing that big-time companies and possible employers are getting into Facebook to check out prospective employees. Like I said, all it takes is a college e-mail and any bigwig in a Fortune 500 company surely can call up his alumni rep and get a college address to his old school. Ten minutes later, he’s pulling up Brad Johnson’s profile on Facebook and finding pictures of Johnson’s Johnson on there, right next to another one of him drunk and passed out in his dorm and reading about his “appreciation of the festive greens.” And just like that, there goes Bard’s chances of landing that internship.

On-line privacy debates are nothing new. From the recording industry suing Internet Providers for ISP records, to the Bush Administration’s attack on pornography, to employers being able to read their employees e-mails - It’s all ongoing. But the recent rash of Facebook incidents shine light on the new question involved. Where does the privacy line lie with minors and those releasing their pent up, youthful expressions and indiscretions?

Looks like we’re lumped together with the porn peddlers, the illegal downloaders, and those who are lazy on the job. Good company.

Now I just can’t wait for those 2024 Presidential Debates.

There was a time where all I had to do was sign a little sheet of paper and I would have been able to see the sights and sounds of Iraq myself. Well this kid from Florida just up and decided to go to Iraq on his own.

Seriously, the story is slightly stunning, slightly hilarious, and mainly downright retarded. I applaud his efforts and motivation, but damn kid, this is naivety taken to a whole new level. How can you expect to walk around Iraq without being able to speak a word of Arabic and survive? It seems like the only thing going for him was that he was rich, his dad had connections, and he looked as if he was a local. But Daddy’s friends can’t save you when you’re abducted from the street corner one evening.

But do you know the way I’m certain this kid is simply stupid and not naive? If he’d had any sense, he’d have started a blogger site and documented his journey. Imagine the publicity and traffic he could have gotten with that. Anyways, this is the last post of ‘05, but expect some new stuff come tomorrow.

I am still up at 0332, which means that I’ve been following the election of the new pope since the story broke. And I only have one thing to say.

How does the name Joseph Ratzinger get changed into Pope Benedict XVI?! What kind of crap names does he have to chose from? Is there not any way we can get some new names added to the selection? Pope Goob VI would sound pretty cool if you ask me. Even Google is throwing me goose eggs on this subject. This is a thousand times worse than the old James to Jim switch that some people try to pull on us. IT’S NOT THE SAME NAME! That’s like me going from Ryan to Robert and then saying “eh, they start with the same letters. Close enough.”

Seriously, how do these types of questions go unasked and unanswered in the world?!

I should have taken the safe odds and placed a few bets on Ratzinger.

Seriously though, I was hoping to see a more moderately liberal Pope elected. Guess I’ll have to wait until next time. But it’s good to see a new Pope elected without much trouble. Hopefully he can be as strong a leader and moral force as Pope John Paul II was.

This story is simply heartbreaking. I’ve probably stared at the above photo for 20 minutes and tried to imagine what he must be running though his mind. One minute he’s going to buy ice cream for his little girls and the next, they’re all dead. How do you recover from that? How?

You may notice some weird stuff over on the left side of the page today/tomorrow. I’m working on finding one decent ad company as well as adding a few new subpages and a search function. All should be well by tomorrow night.

I actually have two full posts sitting on my laptop waiting to be uploaded, but my laptop has finally given up and won’t connect to the Internet anymore. I would retype them on this computer, but I’m at my uncle’s office working, so no time for that. I’ll have to look around here and try to find a floppy or USB disk.

While you’re waiting for my new post, make sure you go read up on this. If I meet one more person who asks me what a “Tsunami” is or why the news keeps talking about all those “slant eyes” over there, I’m going to beat them with a blunt object for a minimum of four hours. You’ve been warned. With that said, I’ll leave you with this:

I hope Secretary of State Colin Powell was privately embarrassed when, two days into the catastrophic disaster that hit 12 of the world’s poorer countries and will cost billions of dollars to meliorate, he held a press conference to say that America, the world’s richest nation, would contribute $15 million. That’s less than half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural festivities.

Scientific Research and Progress just lost one of it’s most identifiable and likable spokesman of our generation. Christopher Reeve was this country’s best champion for the possibilities that stem cell and spinal cord research had to offer. Not only did he inspire millions of paralyzed individuals around the world into realizing that their lives were not over simply because they couldn’t move their limbs, but he also gave them something many of them desperately needed. Hope. Even though Reeve was in one of the worst paraplegic conditions possible, he never once gave up hope that one day he might be cured. In fact, after only five years of being paralyzed, Reeve was able to inspire millions upon millions of people worldwide…by lifting his index finger, something that doctors had sworn he’d never be able to do again. I can only hope that before he passed on, Reeve was able to inspire and pass the torch over to another champion for Scientific Research. God knows it sometimes takes seemingly improbably odds to finally make miracles happen and I pray I’m alive to see the day when those miracles finally come to fruition.

I just wish Christopher Reeve could have lived to see the day as well…

And even though I agree with him wholeheartedly when it comes to stem cell research, I hope John Kerry doesn’t take Reeves’ death and use it as a playing chip in the days leading up to the election. Please, have some common decency and don’t make a political gain out of this…

It’s events like this that make me wonder sometimes why we don’t have a group like the one proposed in Tom Clancy’s book Rainbow 6, but I’ll get back to that in a minute.

The Chechen rebels fight the hardest of all fights – the one for freedom. There is no harder struggle then that for one’s independence. The context alone already puts you at a disadvantage since you are fighting a stronger, dominating, and possessive force. Otherwise, you’d already have your freedom. Screw a strong backbone – you’ve got to have balls of steel that would make William Wallace look like a pussy. When you say you’ll do something unless your demands are met, you must follow through with your threat. Nothing is more weakening to a cause than a hollowed threat that you’re too fearful of fulfilling.

And with that being said…..

When you turn to taking hostages, committing executions, and then pull innocent children into the mix, you’ve crossed the proverbial line. You’ve lost all credibility and forsaken your people to not only a much longer and harsher battle, but likely failure. You rile and ruffle the feathers of not only the entire nation you are fighting against, but those of the world as well. You’ve just handed the Russians a blank check and you’d damned well not act surprised when the whole weight of their military comes crashing down upon you. You think you have it bad with the few thousand Russian soldiers in your providence now? Just wait another week as President Putin responds to your craven, cowardly, despicable act.

If the terrorists who committed this act truly were Chechen rebels, then they have just set their cause for freedom back at least 20 years and sentenced thousands of their own people to death. What good they thought could have come from this, I have absolutely no idea.

And back to what I was talking about earlier with the Rainbow 6 idea. For those of you who haven’t read the book, the basic premise is that to help combat terrorists, especially those who would be considered “professionals”, the U.N. puts together a crack team comprised of the best of the best who basically train just for situations like the one in Russia. Therefore, when a situation arises in a country with a horribly trained military, like, say……oh…..Russia…..then these men are sent in to take over the military aspects of the operation. I could get a little more into the logistics of the process and how they would all be worked out, like the damage control on a country’s ego for basically saying their military sucks, but you get the overall point.

The Russian military and government has consistently botched one hostage crisis after another. Take for instance that standoff back in 2002 where rebels took over a theater. The Russian solution? Pump mysterious gas into the building three days later that not only kills all the captors, but hundreds of the hostages as well. The government didn’t help matters any by refusing to release the name of the gas, which limited doctor’s ability to treat those who lived since they had no idea what to treat them for!

I understand money is tight and their economy has never been strong since the collapse of the Union, but seriously, I find it tough to believe that this is the best they can do when it comes to special operation situations. I doubt you are in danger of being invaded anytime soon. Divert some of that basic military training money and invest a little in some spec. op. forces. Whether you want to face the grim truth or not, you are waging a Civil War and have been for over a decade now.

How many more innocent schoolchildren need to be shot in the back as they flee before you understand that?