Red Shirt Friday

I've been checking around, and there are a LOT of causes out there in the Wide Wonderful World of the Internet which encourage you to wear a Red Shirt on Friday.

Snopes reports a general email effort to get you to wear a red shirt on Friday to "support the troops".

Angelfire reports an effort from September 6, 2004, to wear red in order to support apartheid in hawaill (identify Native Hawaiians).

The American Heart Association wanted you to wear red to emphasize the heart disease risk for women.
(Community Dispatch wanted you to wear a red dress on February 4, 2004, for the same reason. I probably wouldn't have have gone for this, even if I had known about it at the time, 'cause I don't have the legs for it. Their red pin looks kinda swanky, though, and Laura Bush was kicking off American Heart Month .... Saint Mary's Hospital in Michigan was also pounding the drums)
Even the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians bought into this.
The University of Southern Mississippi thought this was a great idea, and mentioned that Daryl Hannah was the national spokeswoman for the campaign. I always liked Daryl Hanna, except for the Clan of the Cavebear thingie. But that's just me. I never liked movie dialogue that consists primarily of "OOG" and "Og" and "Whatever happened to foreplay, you Neanderthal!" I get too much of that in my personal life.

Some peacenik org wants Redshirt Friday (May 21, 2004) to encourage bringing our troops home. No word here on whether they should leave in the middle of a battle, but I'm sure their heart is in the right place.
In 2003, "Breaking the Chain" had the same idea, in support of the Special Forces Administration.

On the other hand, somebody nicknamed Sultan In the Spriit of Cyrus the Great wants us to wear red on Friday "... until we have peace in Iran...". I can get behind that.

The Witherspoon Society ("for progressive presbyterians") thinks this would be a good idea to protest the current Norweigan government's policies. This was a device used in 1940 to protest the German occupation of Norway.

Whew! That's a lot of links, and a lot of research behind it.

But most of the causes are a little dated, and I figure that the basic premise is up for grabs. So here's MY suggestion for Red Shirt Friday:

I live in Oregon ... generally acknowledged to be a "Blue State" because the socialist welfare people (who knew they voted?) folks in the major metropolitan areas, and the towns with big socialist universities (including Corvallis, home of Oregon State University, where I live and work) voted DemocRat in the last election.

Don't you think it would be appropriate to register a quiet protes once a week?

I do.

Here's the concept:
Whether you live in a Blue State or not, if you voted against the DemocRat/Socialist ticket in either of the last two Presidential Elections, or in the 2002 elections for U.S. Senator ... wear something red on Friday.

It doesn't have to be a shirt. It's enough to prominently display something Red on Fridays.

That will tell your friends and co-workers that you don't agree with their Liberal DemocRat views, that you DO support a more conservative approach to government, and that HEY! They voted for the wrong guys!

This is a lot easier than hanging a sticker that says "THANK ME, I VOTED FOR BUSH!" on the bumper of your Porsche.

Every little movement has a meaning of its own

(photo courtesy of The Analog Kid)


I love the Internet. You can find such INTERESTING things there!

Each of these are worthy of a complete article, but I think I'll just throw them out there so you can judge for yourself. Taken together, they form a commentary on not only the American culture, but perhaps our World Culture.

In America:

FIFTH AMENDMENT
A company which objected to the recent SCOTUS decision undermining private property rights has petitioned the Towne of Weare, NH, to condemn the home of Supreme Court Justice David H. Soutus so they can build a hotel on the property. No, it doesn't ask that an entire neighborhood be taken, just . . . that . . . one . . . lot, and only BECAUSE it belongs to Justice Soutus. The hotel, if the project should unaccountably go through (fat chance), would be named the Lost Liberty Hotel.
(H/T John Hurd of The IPSC List. Image, again, stolen from the Analogue Kid))



UNTIL THEN
On the "War Front", a company named "GCS" (I have no idea who they are) has provided a 'flashdance' all their own, composed of images from Iraq. (H/T John "Big Dog" Weill)

This takes a while to load via a modem, but it's do-able even though the music comes across better on broadband. Click on the link to get it started, then come back and read the Geek archives.

REMEMBER ITHACA SHOTGUNS?
... they've shot their wad.

PEARLS BEFORE SWINE
A few days ago, I responded to a Meme Tag which asked me about my reading habits. I wasn't entirely comfortable with the answers I gave, but that's only because I hadn't been doing enough Internet reading lately.

I'm glad that Stephan Pastis had a graphic demonstration about just how MUCH reading dominates my life. Apparently, I'm not the only one who is sufficiently "Type-A" that bathroom time translates directly to reading-time.




(the strip doesn't fit my format, so you can go here to see the 'hole thing'.)

Not VOODOO
In Barbados, they're reporting the possibility of witches as if it were a real human-interest story.

NOT YER VIRGIN ISLANDS, BUT I GOT YOUR VIRGIN RIGHT HERE, PAL!
JamesTaranto, over at Opinion Journal, links to an article which wonders, if male suicide bombers get 72 virgins as a heavenly reward . . . what's in it for the female suicide bombers?

No, I'll save you the download time: The Telegraph at Girls Gone Wild suggests . . .

Fundamentalist Muslim mythology has it that terrorist "martyrs" are greeted in heaven by 72 virgins. With Palestinian Arabs increasingly making use of female suicide bombers, we've often wondered what they get in heaven. Now we have the answer, thanks to a report in London's Sunday Telegraph from an Israeli prison:

One of the inmates, Ayat Allah Kamil, 20, from Kabatya, told me why she had wanted to become a martyr: "Because of my religion. I'm very religious. For the holy war [jihad] there's no difference between men and women shaid [martyrs]."

According to the Koran, male martyrs are welcomed to Paradise by 72 beautiful virgins. Ayat, as with many of the women she is incarcerated with, believes that a woman martyr "will be the chief of the 72 virgins, the fairest of the fair."

That is to say, the highest aspiration for a fundamentalist Palestinian girl is murder, suicide and prostitution. Has there ever been a more depraved culture?

COBOL meets SHOCKWAVE

Got Shockwave?

Get this!

H/T Ghost of a Flea and SondraK.

Even do-able with Modem access, if you have a few minutes to spare.

Not at the office? Turn up the volume. Rock out!