At the moment I do not have time to write an entire and detailed account of the situation surrounding my painful experience with driver's education. I just thought I should say that it is very panful. It has also made it virtually impossible for me to do anything I enjoy. Additionally, I have not been able to get my t-shirts online because of the class.

I find it amazing that you get discounts for taking this class.

Not to bash the people who fought in Vietnam, but this is ridiculous. I am still watching Hannity and Colmes and Ross Perot has just come on to tell Hannity and Colmes viewers about his latest project : Operation Homecoming USA - The homecoming you never received. There nothing wrong with supporting veterans, but it just seems like it would be more supportive to do something like push for legislation to give veterans more after the service they provided to the US. It might also be noted that technically there would never have been a giant homecoming for Vietnam vets, since, unlike in World War II for instance, the troops did not stay in Vietnam for the duration of the conflict. Furthermore, could they have possibly made the event sound more cheesy ? The title of the project sounds more like something I might find when I check my junk mail box in Mail.

I am still watching Hannity and Colmes and now Hannity is criticizing people about not supporting wars in this country's history. Somebody really should point out how much Hannity bashed BIll Clinton's plan to go into Bosnia and Kosovo. Also, Perot has just used FNC as a vehicle to bash the mainstream so-called liberal media by talking about how horrible that incorrect Newsweek article was. Newsweek was a little off, but attacking the media on FNC is just fishyish.

Just for kicks since today was my last day of school I decided to watch some high-quality programming by the name of Hannity and Colmes. It is a pretty strange show usually, but today it is supremely strange. I figured their top story might be the EU negotiations between France and Great Britain or maybe the statement made that Iraq is no saver today than it was in 2003. It was neither. Nor was it some new revelation about Michael Jackson, or even the latest in Kylie Minogue's cancer struggle. No, the top story on Hannity and Colmes is a story about an 18 year old from Alabama who is missing in Aruba. They call this real news ?

Furthermore, Hannity and Colmes is supposed to be a debate show. What on earth is there to debate about a girl who went missing ? All they seem to be able to "debate" is how horrible the search for this girl is going because it is not being done by the United States. They have turned a relatively unimportant, yet tragicish, story about a girl in Aruba into a way to bash other countries.

Boy do I love Fox News.

For the last few weeks British PM Tony Blair has been pushing his plan to end poverty in Africa by 2015 by getting the richest nations of the world to help out. Some progress has been made on his plan - the G8 just approved a plan to relive debt in Africa. However, Mr. Blair seems to think the primary way to eliminate poverty in Africa is by simply giving the Africans larger and larger sums of aid. This is not the most sensible plan to eliminate poverty. The G8 and other wealthy nations cannot endlessly dole out money to these countries. For that matter, most European countries are having trouble keeping their own unemployment low because they give out so much money in their own social programs.

So what should the G8 leaders do to get rid of poverty ? They should trade with the impoverished countries and integrate them into the global economy. Debt relief - not aid - is an important step in accomplishing this goal. Without the burden of copious amounts of debt governments can improve their infrastructure and make their country a more competitive place for corporations - both foreign and domestic - to invest.

China is a fantastic example of how capital investment eliminates poverty. The number of impoverished people in China living in poverty is declining exponentially because all sorts of companies are investing in China. It should be noted that wealthy countries did not have to give China obscene amounts of aid to accomplish this. China has the investment because China has the cheap labor and the infrastructure to make investing there possible. Labor might be cheap in Africa, but if you cannot get constant electricity, why go there ?

Instead of aid, why not encourage capital investment ?

Today I went to see Howl's Moving Castle, only because it got these incredible reviews from basically everybody. You know it really got great reviews because the ads did not need to take the quotes way out of context. Also, by reading the reviews.

Anyway, when I read "Moving Castle" in the title, I thought there would be - what else - a moving castle - somewhere in the film. However, as the title of this entry indicates, the so-called castle looked more like a pile of rubble on the brink of falling apart tottering on two legs. I was expecting a Victorian Era Palace. Instead, I got a pile of (what might literally be considered) junk for a castle.

Other than that minutely large distraction, the movie was good. However, it did seem as if it was just another Miyazaki cookie with slightly different frosting. All of Miyazaki's films have a very similar sort of base (cookie), which he then tweaks (changes frosting on) to make a new movie. This is not to say the film is bad - it is simply very Miyazaki-ish.

The other thing I noticed about the movie was its striking similarity to World War I. Granted, in World War I there were no crazy talking fires with Billy Crystal's voice, or magical wizard people, but the movie bore a striking resemblance to the first World War.

For one thing, the war which takes place in the film is provoked by the transfigurement of a prince into something affectionately called, "Turniphead," which could be compared to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Then there is the never-ending, very pointless war, which also claims many lives. The movie also seems to be set in a time of railroads and industrialization, just as World War I was.

I was planning to do some research about the book upon which the film is based, however I am quite tired and thought I might do that tomorrow instead. I am curious to see if the book was written during, around, or in response to World War I.

As I continue to get Kibeland working again I figured I may as well make some minor changes. At any rate, I have decided I want a section where I create lists. There might be a list of favorite words, a list of fantastic places to buy sticky notes, and other similar lists. However, the one snag I have hit is really quite a simple one. What do I name the section of the website ? A section called "LIsts" does not have the ring and wit I would like to have for a section of my website. It also does not seem descriptive enough in certain senses.

Since I was nearly fourteen there has been a debate as to which sort of vehicle I will be zooming around in once I get my license. At first it seemed I was going to be behind the wheel of a MINI Cooper. It sounded fun, but a) the insurance was insane and b) it seemed somewhat excessive.

So more choices emerged. After the MINI there was the VW Jetta. Of course, that is not a luxury car, so the Audi equivalent (Volkswagen makes the Audi), the Audi A4, came into the fray. If the MINI was somewhat excessive, the A4 is just plain excessive. Does one really need a $30,000 plus car as their first car ? I mean, I bet it's safe, but still - it seems excessive.

Then the auto show rolled into town and other choices were pondered there. The Scion (from Toyota) tC was a contender. However, the whole Scion brand has a sort of urban (pardon my slang) "gangsta" sort of connotation. Though, I must admit, for a $13,000ish car, it had a very nice stereo system.

So after some consideration, it was basically back to the Jetta and the Audi, which had since been redesigned. It seemed almost certain that the car would be one of those.

But then, there was a day of reckoning. Caught up in my daily news reading I stumbled upon some article about the Mercedes B-class. At any rate, I meandered over to the Mercedes international website and poked around. Eventually it came to me that I should visit the Smart website to see what they're up to.

From day one I have absolutely loved the Smart automobile. They're engineered by Mercedes Benz, meaning they drive very nicely. The Smart is smaller than the average car, meaning that it not only gets better gas mileage, but is ideal for city driving. I could go on for a very long time babbling about how great the Smart car is. They're pretty great.

The one big, very important, drawback to the Smart automobile has been that they were not sold in the United States, which made it rather difficult for me to purchase one. Until now, that is. At the Detroit Auto Show earlier this year Smart announced they were going to begin selling their vehicles in the US. Now it is only a matter of time before I can get one of these great cars. I think I'll get a Smart forfour. They're pretty great

The move on the behalf of Apple computer to switch to Intel processors is mostly a good one. For several years the Intel Pentium M laptop processor has been best of breed, and I would love to have one in the next PowerBook I buy, some twelve to eighteen months from now. However, I really think the PowerPC G5 has a lot of potential. Microsoft is using it in their next generation game console and it's a 64-bit chip. It is in many ways superior to what Intel has out at the moment. But perhaps Intel has something I don't know about that will go into the Intel-based Powermac in 2007.

Switching to Intel processors also creates a problem for me. Until a few days ago I thought I would be buying a Powermac sometime in the next six to eight months, if not sooner. However, now that I know that I will, in a sense, be buying obsolete technology, I don't know that I want to do that. But at the same time, I realize the PowerBook I have now, while great for most things, really gets bogged down when I do processor intensive tasks. Memory is also really expensive compared with the Powermac.

I suppose I'll just wait and see how things pan out. Maybe Apple will release a dual 3.6 GHz Powermac in October or November. I can't possibly feel like I'm buying obsolete technology if they do that.

I was reminded last night when I read Thomas Friedman's column in the New York Times of my intent to write a blog entry about the "No" vote on the E.U. Constitution.

When the E.U. Constitution was put into its current form last year, I saw it as Europe finally waking up, coming to its senses and reforming to stay competitive in the new global economy. However, it seems as if the populous of the E.U. is still stuck in their pseudo Cold War era mindset. I really do not understand how on earth people in Europe expect to survive when they demand a 35-hour work week and insane government benefits, like years of maternity leave for the mother and father.

In my mind Sweden sticks out as the first country where extremely socialist policies are starting to hurt the economy. For the past few decades most Swedes have lived a very comfortable life. The government subsidizes or pays for everything from doctors to dentists. However in the past few years this has begun to catch up with Sweden. Its economy is slowing down and citizens are not particularly happy about it.

As such, by voting "Non" and "Nee" on the E.U. Constitution, the Europeans didn't safeguard their way of life. They're just going to make it worse in the long run.

I've made yet another incredibly stupid mistake. I hadn't backed up all 150 plus blog entries that I had written before my website unexpectedly went down. I may still be able to rectify the situation, but it looks grim. I'll just have to start over again.

At least the website's back up.