Patrick’s Rants

Flagstaff Arizona.
Site of the upcoming fight against “Super Walmart”. The city decided that we needed an ordinance that makes it illegal for a Super Walmart to be built within city limits. They did this by limiting the size of allowed retailers, limiting the amount of floor space a retailer can devote to groceries to 8% of total floor space, and requiring a “conditional use permit” for retailers over a certain size.
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The other day, riding our bikes back from the park, my oldest daughter asked me where sugar comes from.
I told her “sugar cane”.
“Daddy! What makes you think I’m going to believe that?”
“But, sweetheart, that’s where sugar comes from.”
“I don’t believe you. Why would you tell me such a thing?”
After a bit more back and forth on the origins of the sugar she finally said to me,
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For anyone who was disgusted at the grand standing by politicians over one woman’s right to die (when thousands die everyday without any intereference from Congress, the President or Jesse Jackson) there is a glimmer of humor in this article published by the St Petersburg Times online edition.

I haven’t written about Iraq in some time, being focused on other issues of the “season”. However checking in with CNN shows us that over 1500 American troops have been killed since we went into Iraq. Estimates on how many Iraqi’s killed ranges from 5000 to over 100,000. The Department of Defense conventiently does not track civilian/enemy deaths, one must find estimates from other sources that may or may not be considered reliable.
In other news, articles about Iraq show up (ironically) on the war on terror web site operated by the United States military.

As the weekend draws to a close, I can look at my inbox and see 20+ attempts to spam using trackbacks since Saturday and just as many or more Friday night. During the week the spam is at a much lower level, apparently spammers think/know that bloggers don’t check their blogs as much over the weekend and the resulting links just might give them a slightly higher google rating. Thanks to the many anti spam plugins (especially the tar pit )available for wordpress, I can enjoy my weekend.
Thanks Dougal for a great plugin.