We're in....
We've moved in to our new house, in the sense that all of our belongings are on our property. Many of them are even in the house. A few of them are put away....
Lots of work is ahead, though. Tomorrow's big project is some carpentry. There isn't much storage space in the place, and shelves are needed. This will allow there to be an "away" to "put" many of our belongings.
We also bought a futon today. So we'll have much better crash space than a sleeping bag on a floor....
My to do list is a mile long, and I don't even want to think about how much my credit card debt has increased.
But all in all, it's a very exciting, if exhausting time.
protecting Us(tm) from Terrorism(tm)
Imagine. A group has, after careful study, concluded that
Terrorism is not the focus of the Department of Homeland Security.
Exhibit A:
Of the 814,073 people charged by DHS in immigration courts during the past three years, 12 faced charges of terrorism, TRAC said. Those 12 cases represent 0.0015 percent of the total number of cases filed.
Exhibit B:
The TRAC analysis also found that DHS filed a minuscule number of what are called "national security" charges against people in the immigration courts. The report stated that 114, or 0.014 percent of the total of roughly 800,000 individuals charged were charged with national security violations.
And what was DHS's response? Nothing but empty rhetoric, stating that the report is "ill-conceived" and that the group "lacked a grasp of the DHS mission."
That's what is so maddening about this. This report looks at what the DHS DOES. The DHS spokesman wants us to focus on what they SAY they do. Big difference.
One can draw two possible conclusions from these facts: either the mission of DHS is not what it is commonly claimed (ie, to protect Us(tm) from Terrorism(tm), or they are just terribly incompetent at what they do. Additionally, it seems fairly obvious that terrorism just isn't the threat that it is made out to be.
Bucking The Trend
For the first time in human history, right around now is when the
World population becomes more urban than rural.
In other news, we have officially bought the house in New Gloucester. We've started moving now; we get the rental truck and take the bulk of our stuff on Monday. Then, we start sleeping there.
I guess they might have to wait another day on that; 3 Mainahs are going from urban to rural....
spring cleaning
Time for some spring cleaning around here, methinks.
I'm still thinking of moving this site to a WordPress blog. The cool thing about that is that I believe I could import both this blog and my old blog into one giant, mega-site of happy JWL goodness.
Though since Google bought out Blogger and went to Blogger 2.0, there seem to be some issues in importing the content.
This page, however, seems to say that it is possible.
Hopefully I'll start working on this soon....
