Whither online relationships? This article discusses some of the issues, such as inside a virtual world like Second Life.

If someone already has a real life relationship, I don’t see how this isn’t cheating. If someone feels s/he has to hide the relationship from the significant other, that should be a friggin’ huge red flag.

Although I have no personal experience, some people have approached me in WoW (my main is female). People will tell me from time to time that my character is sexy and/or try to flirt. One guy even tried to “get it on” in an auction house with scores of other people in the room. I didn’t respond. (Being somewhat kid-friendly, WoW does not have any mechanisms for nudity or sexual actions. But you can’t stop words and emotes.)

Only one guy has ever bothered to ask whether I were female in real life. He actually seemed very nice, and I felt a little bad for dashing his hopes. Yes, technically, it’s an assumption that he was male in real life.

Fred Kaplan of Slate has a fun article, Who Disbanded the Iraqi Army? These excerpts frighten me:

“The policy had been to keep the [Iraqi] army intact; didn’t happen,” Bush told Draper. Asked how he had reacted to Bremer’s reversal, Bush replied, “Yeah, I can’t remember. I’m sure I said, ‘This is the policy, what happened?’ “

Many stories have since been told about the dysfunctional nature of the Bush administration—the many instances when a decision would be made, in some cases by the president himself, only to be reversed or simply ignored by (most often) Rumsfeld and/or Cheney.

Despite the almost-certainty that John Kerry would not have been a great president, there are too many times when I wish he (or Gore in 2000) had won.

A week before the 2004 election, I’d planned on voting Kerry (see Kerry Haters for Kerry!), some reasons being it was time for a different face for international relations, not to mention Bush isn’t exactly president material. But when I saw that JFK wasn’t beating a weak GWB, that frightened me. How competent could someone be who has a tough time convincing people he’s better than Bush? Throw in that a couple Supreme Court justices would probably die soon, my decision was sealed (at that point, I’d rather have had the next justice be conversative). I voted for Bush.

If I had cast the election in its proper light—not Bush vs Kerry, but Kerry/Edwards vs Cheney/Rumsfeld—the decision would have been more obvious and less agonizing.

1. Sleep from 4am – 9am Sunday
2. Sleep from 3pm – 8pm Sunday
3. Sleep from 12:30am – 6:30am Monday

That’s 13.5 hours of sleep over a 48 hour period which, in theory, is sufficient. My body’s saying otherwise.