More RUSH concert pics

Here's a photo of RUSH playing Tom Sawyer in Charlotte on June 18th, 2007. Geddy is playing his black Rickenbacker 4001 and this was the only song he used it for the whole night. Here's another pic showing a closeup of Geddy on the big screen.

RUSH, Snakes and Arrows Concert, June 18th, 2007

I saw RUSH last night for about the 7th time. This was the 3rd or 4th night of their latest tour for the new album "Snakes and Arrows." As always, they were incredible. The show was actually more interesting than ever, with lots of pyrotechnics and funny video clips to accompany their performances.

Here is the Set List

Set 1:

Video Intro

01. Limelight
02. Digital Man
03. Entre Nous
04. Mission
05. Freewill
06. The Main Monkey Business
07. The Larger Bowl
08. Secret Touch
09. Circumstances
10. Between The Wheels
11. Dreamline

Intermission

Set 2:

Video Intro

12. Far Cry
13. Workin' Them Angels
14. Armor And Sword
15. Spindrift
16. The Way The Wind Blows
17. Subdivisions
18. Natural Science
19. Witch Hunt
20. MalNar (Malignant Narcissism)
21. Drum Solo - with lots of new stuff since "Der Trommler"
22. Hope
23. Summertime Blues
24. The Spirit Of Radio
25. Tom Sawyer (nice to see Geddy play the old black Rickenbacker.)

Encore:

26. One Little Victory
27. A Passage to Bangkok
28. YYZ

We had 12th row seats which were the best I've ever had. It was disappointing as always to be around so many drunks but that's what you get at concerts I guess. I managed to sneak in a picture despite all the camera Nazis:

Why is it so hard to understand?

OK. It seems like we need a quick history lesson. Apparently some folks weren't paying attention the first time.

Saddam Hussein was a very bad man who personally killed a lot of people and was responsible for ordering the deaths of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands. He pillaged the country of Iraq and stole much of the oil wealth for himself while many Iraqis, mainly Shiites, suffered in poverty. His sons, Uday and Qusay, held highly influential positions and enjoyed being able to steal and torture people pretty much at their whims.

Saddam and his regime was a destabilizing force in the entire middle east. He made war with Iran and Kuwait and lobbed missiles, probably with chemical warheads, into Israel. His years of defiance of UN sanctions emboldened and inspired terrorists. He toyed with the nuclear weapons inspectors for years making it extremely difficult to verify whether he actually had weapons of mass destruction.

After 911, when our country and way of life was horrifically attacked while in a defensive posture, President Bush, with the support of Congress and many nations, decided the time had come to go on the offensive against terrorism. Terrorism is a threat to our way of life. We declared war on terrorists and those who support them.

At the time, our intelligence services, like Clinton appointee George Tenet, determined that Saddam probably had weapons of mass destruction. Whether he did or not his actions over the past two decades made him a threat and it was quite reasonable to think that he had some involvement. Does anyone remember the celebrations across the muslim world, including cities and towns in Iraq, on 9/11? Remember the video of Osama and his henchmen gloating about how the attacks were more successful than even they had planned?

Fast forward to 2007. Our military destroyed Saddam's regime and the country is now left in what the Liberals (I mean, surrender monkeys) refer to as "chaos."

Here are the facts. Saddam had a huge and loyal army. Saddam was a Sunni Muslim, who were the majority of the population but ruled Iraq through brutality. The suppressed, kidnapped, and killed many of the Shiite majority. We defeated the army but couldn't possibly kill all of the soldiers.

Many of the soldiers that were not killed in the war went into hiding and are now trying to destroy democracy in Iraq. We call these people "insurgents." No one knows what they really want other than to strike out at innocent people such as our soldiers, shoppers, police recruits, and everything else that represents freedom and democracy. I think they want another Sunni Dictator to rise up and take control of the county like Saddam did. Who knows.

The radical Shiites on the other hand, inspired by wackos like Moqtada Al Sadr, want revenge for all of their years of suffering. Al-Sadr and his insane compatriots, want to see Iraq become a fundamentalist state like Iran that is ruled by Islamic law (Sharia.) In fact, the Iranians are said to be sheltering Al Sadr right now.

If he was in charge of Iraq, guess what the world would have? An alliance of fundamentalist whack-jobs controlling a region of the world vital to the entire world. Not just for the oil (as simple-minded liberals say to make themselves feel smart) but to use as a home base for anti-Christian and anti-Jewish attackers. Make no mistake, the radical fundamentalists will not rest until they destroy Israel and all western influences in their countries.

So what is the answer? Who knows? There is no play book for this war. It is a war of ideals. Of freedom versus terrorism. You can ask 25 different experts on international diplomacy and world history and get 25 different ideas about what we should do. Some say surrender and let the country suffer. Others say stay and risk losing more and more of our brave soldiers.

I also have to note what most of our soldiers are doing there. They're training! We have somewhere around 140,000 soldiers and thousands more contractors. Many are defending against attackers, others are on the offensive trying to root out insurgents. Most, however, are training Iraqis to take over for themselves. We cannot cut that mission short!

Everyone (Democrats, Republicans, and the majority) agree that this is the ultimate goal for the Iraq war...for the Iraqis to be able to defend their fledging democracy from internal and external threats. It is how they are going to get there that is being debated.

Personally, I believe that telling their enemies when the Americans are leaving is a huge mistake. What if we told the British "We need you to defeat the Nazis by 1944 or we're leaving."

VA Tech Shooting

Unbelievable. 31 shot dead on the campus of Virginia Tech today. Reports say the majority of the victims were in Norris Hall!

I have some fond (and not so fond) memories of several classes in Norris Hall between 1984 and 1988 including:

• Engineering Statics and Dynamics (Professor Arpad Pap)
• Programming (FORTRAN)
• Fluid mechanics lab
• Strength of Materials (and busting lab.)
• Mechanics of Composite Materials (Professor Robert Jones)

and others I can't seem to remember.

I lived in Pritchard Hall, an all-male dormitory, during my freshman year (1984-1985.) It was adjacent to Ambler-Johnson (AJ.) We went over to AJ occasionally because they had a state-of-the-art PC lab with the latest in dot-matrix printer technology.

What could possess a person (or persons) to commit such heinous and senseless acts? What troubles were they having that drove them to this? I guess you can take two points of view on it. One, try to understand what drives people to this level and two, develop processes and safeguards to deal with the inevitability of such situations. There are many questions yet to answer. For now we must empathize with the victim's families and try to comprehend why this happened.

Comparison of Polar S625 and Garmin Forerunner 305

I've owned a Polar 625X for about the past year. It's been a great upgrade over my older 610 series (which I thought was awesome for 3 years.)

I liked the 625 since it was so similar to the 610. The only thing I didn't like was the footpod. However, it was worth it to have a pretty good speed approximation to add to the other data it collects. I found that it was pretty accurate for 5k races (the only races I've done lately.)

I've seen several others with Forerunner 305's and the prospect of using one device for both running and biking was very attractive. Not to mention being able to get rid of the footpod since the 305 is a GPS based tool.

I got my 305 yesterday and have only used it once. Pretty cool except the HR display is pretty tiny. I went on the Motion based website and it looks like you can do some impressive maps and backgrounds especially using Google Earth.

I found this article and plan to read it right now:
http://www.pccoach.com/newsletters/May06/ComparisonReviewS625XvFR305.htm

Surreal Sky

I took this picture in Myrtle Beach in January at about 8 am. The sky looked like a Michelangelo frescoe. I almost expected God's arm to reach out from behind one of the clouds. Of course, God looked like he did in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Risk

I can't believe we've never played Risk before! I've always wanted to conquer Asia!