Month: October 2003

Friday Five

About time I jumped on the bandwagon, I guess:

1. Name five things in your refrigerator.

This one’s difficult, as I don’t keep much food around. Dill pickles, Gatorade, salami, rye bread, gruyere.

2. Name five things in your freezer.

Even harder — I had to get up and check: ice cubes, a couple frozen dinners, a frozen pizza, Breyer’s traditional vanilla ice cream, extra lean ground beef, some salmon filets.

3. Name five things under your kitchen sink.

Trash bags, paper towels, phone books, a bottle of parrafin, a touch-up paint pen for my car.

4. Name five things around your computer.

A mug with snowmen on it, a spider plant in the last stages of dying from thirst, a stack of tech books, VFR aviation charts for Vancouver and the Lower Mainland, a world atlas.

5. Name five things in your medicine cabinet.

A comprehensive camping first-aid kit, extra band-aids, contact solution, nail clippers, Effexor XR.

My politics

Some have characterized me of being “right-wing and pro-war” on the basis of the contents of this blog. A brief clarification:

I am pro-the war against fundamentalist Islam, in which the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have been important victories — and have brought immeasurable benefits to the people of those countries. I’ll form my own opinion about any other war when it comes.

As for political opinion, I am rather more libertarian than anything else — I favour as small a government as possible. I am all in favor of the classical liberal values of individual freedom and human rights, but utterly condemn any system that says that government — or any elite — knows better than the individual how to regulate the individual’s affairs.

That said, I am a great admirer of the theory behind the American poltical system — and cheer whenever it works as it is supposed to.

Stupid Fat Men

A roundup of Michael Moore’s habit of, well, “giving scope to the truth”, at Spinsanity. Several people have asked me what I think of Bowling for Columbine. I’ve never seen it; the numerous commentary on errors of fact and implication in it I read haven’t encouraged me to.