I'm sober, but my machine's soused

Alcohol-powered laptops ahead

BBC News Online technology correspondent - Toshiba has unveiled a prototype fuel cell it hopes will become the power source for laptops in the future.

The fuel cell breaks down methanol to generate power and, Toshiba claims, will provide enough juice to run a laptop for about five hours.

To get the cell working, the alcohol fuel is provided in small 50cc cartridges. Toshiba hopes to put the fuel cell on sale in early 2004.

Man, if this works and I ever get a laptop, even my computer would drink more than I do.

Trip update

Having every hope that the mystery virus will not turn into the 1918 Flu, Round II, I am still going ahead with my plans for the trip to China. Plane fares are still the same, so far as orbitz.com can see. I'll keep an eye out for specials just in case.

I did, however, check my account balance at the credit union. I set up a vacation account there a few weeks back and asked them to take $50 per paycheck. So far, between the paycheck stuff and one transfer I made from my regular account, I have $240 in there. That translates out to all the youth hostels plus enough for train fare to Xi'an. Possibly even train fare from Xi'an to Wuhan. Go, me... It can also be translated into 1/5 the price of my plane ticket, but I prefer to think of it as lodging money and start on saving for the plane now.

Now as long as the plague goes away, and as long as we don't go to war with a psychotic nation that has nothing to lose, and as long as the President doesn't get me stoned by angry residents of other countries... I'm well on my way!

So tired.

The speech we are promised tonight cannot be anything but bad. It would take a visitation from God Himself to change the President's mind tonight, and even that might not work, because the President seems just the sort to write off a visitation as an attempt made by the Devil in disguise to dissuade him. I know Saddam Hussein is a bad, bad man who should no more be left in charge of a country than I should be allowed to handle an automatic firearm, but how does that make him any different from the scumbags our government has supported in the past? After our behavior towards our more convenient allies, we have no moral grounds for claiming he's evil and must be destroyed. We seem to have been quite comfortable with evil in the past, and more than willing to snuggle down with it now and call it righteousness - or to ignore it utterly when it suits us. I am not talking of North Korea, here. The Hermit Kingdom is run by a madman who has nothing to lose, and they might well do anything. Saddam Hussein might be a bad, bad man, but he at least has some glimmer of common sense to him. Not going to war with Korea is a different matter... no, I am talking of ignoring evil when it wears names like Robert Mugabe, or Hafiz Assad, or any one of a dozen other names. Where is the real and true reason? Where is the moral imperative that is not present in these other cases? Where is the reason that will make me feel that what we are going to do is right? Can they come up with anything even remotely approaching that? I will happily grant them their 'he's a bad bad man' part of the equation, but where is it written that we have to put the smackdown on him and not someone else?

If there is one, somewhere, I hope they see fit to throw that particular bone to us. Because otherwise they're as faithless as the government was on the day Francis Gary Powers was shot down. "We don't spy! We're honest!" "Yeah? Then why do we have one of your boys right here?" "..."

I have not lost all faith in humanity, nor even all faith in our government - but dammit, the world today turns my stomach and so much of it does so in areas I can't even begin to affect by means of the normal methods. What am I supposed to do? *sigh* Be grateful for the Red Cross, my employers, that's what. Be human. Be decent. Live up to their seven principles and be an example, and hope that it's enough for others to see and consider. I don't know what else is going to work. I only know what I can live with.

Speech.

There is no historical precedent
To put the words in the mouth of the President
There's no such thing as a winnable war
It's a lie that we don't believe anymore
Mr. Reagan says we will protect you
I don't subscribe to this point of view
Believe me when I say to you
I hope the Russians love their children too

We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
What might save us, me, and you
Is that the Russians love their children too

What gives me fear is that I do not find any sense of love on either side of the situation that we are in now. I do not sense any action being taken out of love for life, or love of fellow human beings, or love of neighbor as oneself in Washington; I do not think I have ever seen any love displayed in the actions of Baghdad.

I see love in the actions and the lives of the people on both sides of the situation that we are in now. I see Iraqi fathers and mothers looking after their sons and daughters as best they can in the face of a horrible, untenable situation. I see American parents who remember the days when

... children lived in Levittown
and hid in the shelters underground
till the Soviets turned their ships around
and tore the Cuban missiles down...

I see human beings who love their children, who love each other, but who are helpless. Perhaps it is because they cannot do anything. Perhaps it is because they have learned no one will listen. Perhaps they fear what will become of their children if they act, or because they think that what they see now is how it ought to be. Or perhaps they are acting, for some of them surely are - in the way that their consciences and hearts tells them is right. In the way that they think love for their children, for their people, for their country dictates.

I do not see love in the citadels of power. I see two cynical men racing at each other with all the speed of the trains at Paddington, with all the subtlety of bull elephants in musth. I see men who use words so that the words mean what they want them to mean, and not what they actually mean. I see a pair of skilled evaders at full tilt, each counting on the other to blink. Neither one seems inclined to blink. I do not think either one is going to.

What I do not see in either man is any kind of love.

It is not the separation from the god of wrath and hellfire that has brought this on us. It is not the separation from the god of ritual, or the god of churches, or the god of King James. It is not the separation from any god at all that has brought us to this pass; for if all the nation were godless, but had love, this would not be happening. If the rulers of either nation had any kind of real love for the people around them, and for the people of their country whom they did not know but whose care was in their hand... if there were love, if they acted on that love, this would not be happening and there would be a better way. Perhaps there would still be a need for war. No amount of love can change a rabid dog into a healthy one; the mad dog must be destroyed, or all will be lost. But it would be a war motivated by a true desire to protect, rather than a desire for revenge. It would be a war to restore what ought to be, not a war to get what was wanted. And it would be a war entered into with great reluctance and a desire to end it as quickly and decisively as possible.

I do not think a war with the right motives would be a war that began with a warning to the other side not to burn oil wells.

What has brought us, and them, to this pass is that no amount of religion will do any human being alive any good if that religion is not motivated by love. When it is motivated by fear, jealousy, the desire to look good, the desire for honor - none of that can ever mean anything good. When it is manipulated, religion only leads into the toilet. The largest of churches, the greatest of temples, the most soaring of mosques means nothing and does no good if it is built out of a desire for honor. Those who cry 'Lord, Lord' but have no love in their hearts will be those left in the darkness, wailing and gnashing their teeth. The men who have brought us to this war - on both sides, on all sides - are men who acted in what they saw as their own best interests first, and the best interests of their allies second, and the best interests of their business partners third, and everyone else at the end of it. They acted for gain, and not for love, and in so doing created a very special kind of hell.

Without love, all the gods and prayers and faiths that have ever been are nothing. With love - compassion - the real and true desire to do for others what we ourselves would want done for us - no god is necessary.

May the men who have brought our nations to this pass be granted the understanding and will that comes from real, genuine love for all beings, and may they be granted this very soon. And may they act on it, now and for the rest of their lives.

Amen.

I gotta go work on my management and labor relations exam now.