James Doolittle

For those of you who have been caught up in school work and haven’t had time to read some internet news, the world is going crazy over this infamous Mohamed (Muhammad, Mohamet, Muhammat, etc.) Cartoon (that I have yet to see, so if you have a link, please give it to me).  I was perusing the WorldPress.org headlines, and I came across “Danish Paper Rejected Jesus Cartoon“:

Muslims are expressing further disappointment with the Danish newspaper that published sacrilegious cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) after The Guardian of London reported that the same publication had earlier refused to run cartoons of the Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him) contending they could be offensive to readers.

The article hooked me by writing about how the same paper that published the Mohamed cartoon dismissed a Jesus cartoon on the grounds of it being offensive. Through further reading, I discovered the article’s headline to be a little bit misleading.  The editor refused publishing an article three years ago on the grounds that it would offend readers; however, the editor said that he asked for an illustrator to write a comic about Mohamed, and that the comic about Jesus was unsolicited, and that that’s the reason he didn’t publish it.
Because we’re living in a bubble in Japan–none of us students have the television or a newspaper subscription, and for the most part, we’re working constantly (or should be)–some of us might not know about the riots and deaths that are happening all over the world.  This article mentions some of the violence–crowds throwing stones at US Embassies and statements threatening those who will sully the name of the Prophet Mohamed.

For those of you who can recall your high school US History class, you’ll remember that the US only supports the first amendment so long as it does not “present a clear and present danger.”  The article quotes Bush as stating that, “With freedom comes the responsibility to be thoughtful about others.”  I guess I can’t really nail him for not knowing the constitutions and its ammendments for this particular quote, but why wouldn’t he just say that?  I mean, there was a Tom Clancy novel turned into a Harrison Ford movie with the amendment-line in it!

Oh well…  That’s what makes this world interesting, right?  Danish journalists who are too headstrong about their freedoms and the entire muslim world’s inability to accept the joke like everyone else wants it to do.

I saw this on Steve’s FW blog.  It was an entry about Kansai Time Out’s upcoming writing contest on living in Japan, and it occured to me that those of us in Friends World could use our position papers for Behind the Mask as a platform for writing these articles.  I know that Natalie’s post “Kawai“ would easily place, and she didn’t even write the paper for the contest.

I think it’s a sign I’m in trouble when my outline is 1000 words long, and spans over three pages. I’m in the process of mapping out how many words I want to devote to each section, and I don’t think I’m going to overshoot my mark of roughly 14,000 words, but I’ve definitely got some work cut out for myself in the next couple of months. With only seventy-some-odd days left to complete the assignment, I’m happy that I’ve completed over half the reading I’ve set up for myself. I have a lot of notes, but I need more. I’m having lots of thoughts about the subject, and I’m writing notes to myself on my computer and journaling about where I want the project to head in a notebook seperate from my private journal. I feel like I’m set up to do all right, but I wonder how much of the work I’m going to convince myself to do without putting some pressure on.I’m keeping myself mighty distracted playing computer risk and rocking out on the ol’ guitar. I know I’m in a webpublishing class right now, but this blog entry feels more like another distraction or means of procrastination than actual work (but boy, I didn’t want to blog about this when I started writing).

Sticking with it,

J-Dog

In 80 days, the semester ends!  We have to have all our work done by then!  Yeah!  For those of you doing a Junior Research Project, that means that if you write a page every two days from now until the semester ends, you’ll complete the assignment ontime!  Yeah!

For the rest of you out there, DO YOUR WORK NOW.  Save yourselves the strung-out midnight writing sessions that lead to MASS DELUSION!

Today I wrote an e-mail to Becky using links, like I am doing during this very blog.  It made writing the e-mail more fun because if I was unsure whether or not she would know of something or someone in my e-mail, I just linked to that thing or person.  For example, I told her about a dream I had where Christopher Walken was a conquistador.  I linked “Christopher Walken” to a page listing his works from Internet Movie Data Base, and conquistador to a web site about Spanish Conquistadors.  Not only did writing in this way serve as a means of information, it was also fun.  I linked normal words to online dictionary definitions and wikipedia entries.  I wrote about a friend of ours and linked to a picture of her on my blog.  I did it using gmail, but I bet other mail services enable linking as well.  I strongly recommend that everyone try it.

Over the past few days, I’ve written to a bunch of people dear to my heart. Sounds cheesy, I know (but if you really know me, you know my flavor for things cheesy), but the feeling of writing to them and even talking to some of them was most enjoyable. Among them, I wrote to Maddy, a friend from my days teaching at Isikent in Izmir, my mother, my father, Friends World’s own Kyle Weiner, and a few of my homies from LEAPYear.

Hey, I just switched themes on my blog, and this new one enables you’ll to leave comments on my pages.  So, make sure you visit my Love Letters page, and follow the instructions.

This is my homestay family from Shiga. I visited them last semester, and I’m going to visit them on the 24th of February… Ten days after I turn 20! I’m looking forward to being older because that will enable me to buy a ketai because in Japan you’re not a person until you’re 20. It’s a little unerving because in America, you get to be a person after you turn 18, so I’ve been walking around with the false illusion that I was an adult when I was really a child. Weird the way the world works. All that will be solved, though, in a matter of weeks.

I was browsing Feedster looking for daily Rumi poems. I didn’t find what I was looking for, but I did discover a blog entitled Happy Wednesday. The blog has weekly inspirational quotes and life tips. It’s kinda hokie and it isn’t for everyone, but if you’re looking for a pick-me-up or reminder that life is its own source of hapiness, check it out.

I was perusing Friends World EAC blogs this morning and came across Ayme Frye’s most recent post:

this speech blew my mind, check it out.its al gore speaking on bush’s wiretapping practices.

I read it, but I think it means things are even more grim than they are. Rather than whistle-blowers, we need politicians who will make it their goal and mission to uphold American ethics and values expressed in the constitution.