Obviously, I think prayer is good.

I don't need, or even want, my government to tell me to pray.

And--although part of my job is praying in public, Jesus made it pretty clear that prayer is something best done in private (Matthew 6), and so I will follow that admonition.

So, (e:jim)'s update has reminded me that I have not updated.

Basically, I am off the meds because the doctor's appointments and bills became to much to deal with. My doctor was great, but their office staff was a wreck.

I promised my dear wife I would start over again with a new doctor.

Does anybody know a good doc, with an organized/efficient front office and billing system?

And Jim, I am sorry that the other stuff stopped working for you. The Ritalin, for the short time that I was on it, worked sometimes and not others. I only felt bad if I drank too much coffee with it, or took my doses to close together.

I am downloading the newest version of Ubuntu right now. Windows will live on in a partition of my harddrive, but hopefully, I will use it infrequently.

I am more excited about changing an OS than a person should be, but I am glad to stop complaining about crazy Microsoft and actually start doing something about it.

I give credit to Open Office and Firefox for demonstrating how much better Open source can be, and to Vista, for convincing me that a different OS couldn't be much worse. Also to Ubuntu for making a live CD easy to test out and for making installation look easy (we'll see how easy when I am done)

Our government has admitted to torture, in general, but hasn't "named names" or prosecuted it. In my opinion, the Obama administration is failing to do its' duty here. While the "low-level" guys MIGHT have an excuse, the higher ups do not. Prosecution will be difficult, but if we do nothing, there is no deterrent to future torture.

To avoid trials, I would be willing to offer amnesty for all people that made a full reporting and apology for any involvement in torture. Following that period of amnesty, there should be a full investigation and trials.

To me, this is not a left/right thing. It's a humanity thing, a security thing, and a rule of law thing. There is never a reason to torture a person. Every time we condone torture, we gain enemies and alienate allies. Every time we ignore our laws and our values, we weaken them.