Some Things I Don’t Understand About Turkey.

Yes I’m talking about the country here not the bird. Why do they feel attacked whenever what happened to the Armenians at the end of WWI is labeled Genocide? If you look at this logically: The persecution of the Armenians happened at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. However, Turkey is no longer an Empire it is a Republic. The Republic of Turkey was set up by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk after the Ottoman Empire fell. Modern day Turkey is nothing like the Turkey of the Ottoman Empire and even has changed their language (although mostly just the character types). It would be very easy for the Government of modern Turkey to say, “We accept that the Ottoman Empire has committed Genocide. However, the Republic of Turkey does not accept that we were to blame.” Which is exactly the truth. When the Armenians were being put to death the Republic of Turkey did not yet exists. You can’t say that Genocide is inherited from a previous government. When the Armenians were persecuted Turkey was part of a Monarchy. It is now a Democracy. Just as during WWII Germany was a Fascist state. However, now is a Democracy. Can we truly blame the current German Democracy for the crimes of a government that was overthrown? No, it would make no sense. If the rest of the world would only declare that the Genocide that happened to the Armenians to be the fault of the Ottoman Empire and not the Republic of Turkey then the Turkish people and politicians would really have no reason to agree.

Maybe it is just me but it seems that the problem is either bad wording, improper understanding, or a group that won’t accept that they are not who their forefathers were.

The Crazy Things Children Will Do.

As a father of a soon to be three year old boy and another boy on the way soon, I can tell you that this story I found on Yahoo! would have scared the bajeebus out of me had it happened to my child. I think I can understand what that father was feeling.

A brief summary of the story is that a three year old boy and his two year old friend were playing with a toy Mustang GT (apparently large enough to ride in). They decided to take it for a joy ride and went several blocks on busy roads before being pulled over by the police. According to reports they followed the traffic signs and obeyed the traffic laws (except the fact that their “Car” probably wasn’t street legal).

It all had a happy ending after the the police picked up the boys about five blocks from their home. The little boy was quoted as saying “We went for a ride, daddy.” At which point I as a father would have collapsed from the stress and started with hysterical laughter.

Tagegory? Man I Wish I Had Thought of That!

Hey I would like to point people to That Girl Again’s blog Wank She’s got a great post about this whole grey area of Categories and Tags or as she calls them Tagegories.

It looks to me that she’s waging a little war against the administrators of WordPress.com which honestly I can agree with in part. In particular the comments, lack of support, and firewalling of the particular admin Matt (not sure what he does other than act as a human firewall but he apparently is staff here He’s the software Author? No wonder he is so sensitive. Maybe we should be nicer … nah!). So I’m going to start a new Tagegory (damn I love that word) called “Bad Matt” and I hope everyone who has a complaint about him joins in with this.