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I’ve always known that Loki would die in the not too distant future, he’s going on thirteen, but I’ve never really thought about what that meant. Loki’s cancer gave me a year’s warning to his death, and that has been a blessing. I’ve gotten a chance to appreciate him and make sure we enjoyed a little more time together before he died.

But it’s also turned out to be a curse. Cancer has not taken him quickly, it has been taking him slowly. First he had another cancerous toe, and it bothered him. Then, very suddenly, he went blind, and that was hard on both of us. His energy dropped, and he became less interrsted in eating. Now I can’t even get him to take his medications. nor eat a treat. It was so hard to watch him try to eat a milkbone and not have the strength to chew it.

He shows no pain, he never whimpers, he acts so strong, even when he’s walking in circles, bumping into things, confused and blind. But I know he’s in pain, I know his body is failing, and I need to make the decision to put him to sleep before he’s in too much pain, but not before it’s really needed. That time is tomorrow, at 4PM.

Deciding to do it was easy. Making the call to schedule it was so hard. How do you make an appointment to kill one of your closest friends? It doesn’t matter that he’s sick, and this will save him a painful cancer death, it’s still so hard.

So, I have one more night with him, and tomorrow afternoon I’ll spend some more time with him before going to the vet.

He’s been my roommate for almost nine years, he’s been with me for half of my vacations, and almost all of my road-trips. We’ve enjoyed the lake, Detroit, Maryland, and several other trips. He’s been waiting for me at home everyday since 2001. He’s been so well behaved, and been everything I wanted in a dog, but now I need to say goodbye. I need to free him from him cancerous body and hope he finds something better.

Tomorrow I’ll have my last chance to say goodbye to him as I have every morning as I leave for work “Goodbye buddy, I’ll see you later.” Only this time, I doubt I’ll be able to say it without crying.

15 ft LEGO model of the USS Harry S Truman Aircraft Carrier

I found this on Make Magazine’s Blog, and it’s really impressive! I always thought it would be cool to build a really big LEGO thing like this, although I can’t imagine spending $20,000 to do it.

This is a seriously impressive LEGO build. It was built by German father Malle Hawking and here is his photo gallery including several news articles from Europe about this ship. There are lots of cool details to check out, this really is impressive.

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=126969

Seriously? Ben & Jerry’s Breast Ice Cream Ever? Ugh I hate PETA, I need to go eat a bunch of veal and other tasty mis-treated animals…

From Yahoo News:

Mama’s milk ice cream cone, anyone?

By JOHN CURRAN, Associated Press Writer Thu Sep 25, 8:04 PM ET

WATERBURY, Vt. – Mooove over, Holsteins. PETA wants world-famous Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream to tap nursing moms, rather than cows, for the milk used in its ice cream.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is asking the ice cream maker to begin using breast milk in its products instead of cow’s milk, saying it would reduce the suffering of cows and calves and give ice cream lovers a healthier product.

The idea got a cool reception Thursday from Ben & Jerry’s officials, the company’s customers and even La Leche League International, the world’s oldest breast-feeding support organization, which promotes the practice — for babies, anyway.

PETA wrote a letter to company founders Ben Cohen and telling them cow’s milk is hazardous and that milking them is cruel.

“If Ben and Jerry’s replaced the cow’s milk in its ice cream with breast milk, your customers — and cows — would reap the benefits,” wrote Tracy Reiman, executive vice president of the animal rights advocacy group. She said dairy products have been linked to juvenile diabetes, allergies and obesity.

Ashley Byrne, a campaign coordinator for PETA, acknowledged the implausibility of substituting breast milk for cow’s milk, but said it’s no stranger than humans consuming the milk of another species.

“We’re aware this idea is somewhat absurd, and that putting it into practice is a stretch. At the time same, it’s pretty absurd for us to be drinking the milk of cows,” she said.

It takes about 12 pounds — or 1 1/2 gallons of milk — to make a gallon of ice cream. Ben & Jerry’s, which gets its milk exclusively from Vermont cows, won’t say how much milk it uses or how much ice cream it sells.

As a standardized product under federal regulations, ice cream must be made with milk from healthy cows. Ice cream made from goat’s milk, for example, would have to be labeled as such.

Presumably, so would mother’s milk ice cream.

To Ben & Jerry’s, the idea is udderly ridiculous.

“We applaud PETA’s novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother’s milk is best used for her child,” spokesman Sean Greenwood said in an e-mail. He didn’t respond to requests for an interview.

Leon Berthiaume, general manager of the St. Albans Cooperative Creamery, which provides milk products to Ben & Jerry’s, called the dairy products “among the safest in the world.”

“Milk from cows has long-term health benefits and has been proven to be safe and healthy and an important part of the American diet for generations, ” he said. “I’m not ready to make that change.”

Cow’s milk and mother’s milk aren’t interchangeable, according to La Leche spokeswoman Jane Crouse, who says breast milk is a dynamic substance that’s different with each woman and each child and might have difficulty being processed into ice cream.

Then there’s the question of who would provide the milk, and whether they’d be paid.

“Some women feel compelled to donate milk to a milk bank for adopted babies, or for someone who’s ill or unable to breast feed. There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence about sisters who nurse each others’ babies. There’s a population of women very willing to share their milk. Whether there’s enough to do it for a commercial entity, who can say?” she said.

At the Ben & Jerry’s factory in Waterbury, consumers gave a collective “Eww” to the idea Thursday.

“It’s kind of creepy,” said Jeff Waugh, 42, of Dayton, Ohio.

“I think it’s a little nutty,” said the Rev. Roger Wooton, 83, of Malden, Mass., finishing up a cup of Heath Bar Crunch.

“How would they get all that milk?” said his wife, Jane Wooton, 77.

Jen Wahlbrink, 34, of Phoenix, who breast-fed her 11-month-old son, Cameron, said she wouldn’t touch ice cream made from mother’s milk. She remembers her nursing days — and not that fondly.

“The (breast) pumps just weren’t that much fun. You really do feel like a cow,” she said, cradling her son in her hands.

 VS

Us vs. Them (or Them vs. Us, depending on your leanings)

It’s that time of year again, it’s election time. This year in addition to the local congress-people, we get to vote for our next president. It’s the greatness of our democracy (or actually, our republic.) We have the freedom to determine who we want to vote for, and create a government just like we want it.
 
Of course, the problem is that we all want something a little different. Somebody will always be unhappy with our government, because they wanted bigger government vs. smaller government or more taxes vs. new taxes or a governor vs. a congress-person, etc. We cannot have a perfect government, because we could never agree on what it should be. This is not a problem; this is our system, and our society.

This does, however, create an “us versus them” thought process that ends up affecting every election in negative attack ads. Instead of politicians telling us why we should vote for them, they seem to only want to tell us why we shouldn’t vote for their opponent. They are forcing us into a lesser of two evils decision. Why? Why do we always degrade any debate into name calling and slander? Why can’t a politician tell us why he’ll be great rather than how their opponent will ruin everything? On top of that, half of the crap they say are half-truths at best. So why are they saying it?
 
Our society seems to really push to tear things down, rather than build things up. There are still plenty of builders out there, and plenty of people to support them, but there is a significant part of our society that merely wants to tear things down, and it seems like all of these people are involved in politics. These are people who would rather make things worse for others rather then make things better for everybody. Again, why?

Perhaps I’m still, deep down, an idealist, but why don’t we figure out how to work with those who disagree with us, rather than blindly try to cram our opinion down their throats, while ignoring anything they may say in response. We will never agree on everything, but that disagreement can result in healthy debate, rather than overly emotional arguing. I love to debate with others, because I often learn a lot about how others think. That not only makes me a more rounded person, but the more I know about how “they” think, the more it helps me argue against the people who don’t want to listen.
 
Negativity, person attacks, and mud-slinging are tactics of poorly educated and immature children. Most politicians are not poorly educated nor are they children, so does this, then, make them immature? Let’s drive our government and politics to build up our society, and our view of ourselves and the world, rather than try to tear down anybody that thinks differently than “us”.

Originally publish in the Utopian Status of America volume 1, issue 2, Fall 2001

When some of the passengers on United Airlines, flight 93 from Newark, NJ to San Francisco, CA realized that their aircraft had been hijacked by people intending to use it as a suicidal weapon of mass destruction, they took action. In a phone call to his wife, one passenger said that the airplane had been hijacked, a passenger had been murdered, and that he and some of the other passengers were going to do something about it. Shortly after that call, the plane crashed the woods of Somerset County in western Pennsylvania, and not into the building or monument in Washington, DC as suspected to be the original plans of the hijackers.

In a society that has taught us to follow the rules, to form neat lines, to wait our turn, to not rock the boat, to become sheep in the flock of society, it’s nice to see that some people are still willing to stand up and defend themselves when the situation looks futile. So many people today watch what happens around them as though it wasn’t real, and fail to take action when they should.

But what about the ability and want to take action when action is needed, isn’t that what our country is based on? Our fight for freedom from the British, the Boston tea party, the Declaration of Independence – these are all times when Americans stood up and risked life and limb in the pursuit of liberty and freedom. Some of the passengers on board flight 93 did just that. They took there lives into their hands and made sure that the hijackers weren’t able to complete their horrible mission and kill far more than the passengers on that airplane. It is a great tragedy that these heroes and the other innocent people on board flight 93 had to die this way, but a greater tragedy was certainly averted.

Too many people now have the attitude that somebody else will deal with the problem and that they don’t need to take action. The American spirit compels us to take action, even though all too often we don’t.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”  – Edmund Burke