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Or in other words, take care.

I’m catching a direct flight from Seattle to Tokyo in a few hours and will spend the next ten days backpacking around the birthplace of geishas, samurai and FLCL. I don’t have any plans or itineraries locked down yet. However, high on my list of things to do include:

• Eat sushi
• Catch a kabuki show
• Check out the hipster cosplay scene
• Find the largest video arcade in the country
• Eat sashimi
• Hang out in the sumo district
• Buy some consumer electronic
• Drink sake

It’s pretty common knowledge that Bush’s performance in the polls has slipped dramatically as support for the Iraq war has waned. This is completely understandable given that 2500+ Americans have died in the conflict so far with little to show for their sacrifice.

However, this is the first time I’ve seen different online publications uniformly labeling our President as a war criminal.

Benjamin Ferenccz, one of the chief prosecutors of Nazi war crimes at Nuremberg, is accusing George W. Bush of the most heinous of all war crimes - that of commencing a war of aggression. Ferenccz asserts that Bush committed this crime by bringing armed forces to bear against Iraq without the approval of the UN Security Council.

The Village Voice expressed similar sentiments, this time condemning the President for the treatment of suspected terrorist prisoners and the strategy of “extracting information… by any means necessary.” These actions are in direct violation of the Geneva Convention and the US War Crimes Act of 1996.

It would be such a spectacle to see the United States President on trial in The Hague. Here’s to wishful thinking.

About a year ago, I happened to catch Steve Burns at the Crocodile Cafe. In case you don’t know who Steve Burns is, he was the goofy host of the popular children’s show Blue’s Clues.

I thought his music was by itself nothing remarkable. However, he had managed to blend it with a myriad of other visual media to create a show that was very unique and extremely engaging. It had seemed somewhat paradoxical at the time that this guy from a stupid kid’s show would demonstrate such artistic sophistication.

I mean, how could someone like this:

Transform himself to this:

I’m about halfway through The Tipping Point right now, and Gladwell is discussing the incredible amount of thought and research that went into the creation of Blue’s Clues. Every single episode was test run at least three times before it was aired even once. Apparently, the show revolutionized the way the industry approached educational programming.

I’m finally now able to reconcile the diametric versions of Steve Burns that I have in my head.

I usually spend some time every evening walking my dog, Pogo, and yesterday was no exception. However, this trip to Pratt Park ended with an encounter with a pitbull that broke off of its leash and came flying at Pogo. It managed to viciously latch its jaws onto Pogo’s shoulder and would not let go. Once I realized this wasn’t a typical scuffle, I reached in to intervene - while I managed to separate the two animals, the pitbull did get one last bite in.

It definitely left two decent sized puncture wounds, so I ended up spending yesterday night in the ER making sure I had all of my shots in order. It turns out that rabies is virtually non-existent in the Northwest, but I was told that animal bites like this still have a 40% chance of becoming infected even after medical treatment. Lovely.

The pitbull had one of those choke collars for controlling difficult dogs and had managed to break off its leash in spite of this extra precaution. So unfortunately, I couldn’t honestly say that the owner had been negligent. Still, she wasn’t particularly polite during the whole incident, and refused to give me her home address (apparently a cell number isn’t enough for the police to work with).

Chances are, my hospital bill will be just large enough to hurt my wallet, but not enough to justify going to the small claims court, leaving me with no recourse. Perhaps this would be a situation where Korean-style vigilante justice would be appropriate.

My mom is a Comp Sci instructor at Norfolk State, and being the concerned educator that she is, she forwarded me this article regarding trends in her field.

To sum it up, the number of CS majors in the US has been in a downward spiral over the past few years. Between 200 and 2004, the number of college freshman listing computer science as their probable major fell by 70%.

This isn’t breaking news - back in early ‘04, I’d coordinated a speaking tour for Bill Gates, during which he attempted to drum up interest in CS as a major. Fast forward through two additional years of software experience, and I’ve got to wonder whether this is still a cause for concern.

In the past, Computer Science was more of an esoteric science - the inner workings of programming were borderline black magic to the common man. These days, nearly every other punk kid on MySpace knows at least a little HTML, and probably a bit of scripting as well. The proliferation of blogging, personal websites and graphics design leads me to believe that CS is going the way of the liberal arts - you no longer need to study it in an academic environment to build a career in it. Just because you didn’t major in English doesn’t mean you can’t write.

The very first day of CS 101 at Penn, there were nearly 800 students present, filling every seat in the lecture hall and spilling over into the stairs as well. By the time midterms rolled around, at least 50% of the students had dropped the course. Of the students in attendance on that first day, maybe a third actually received degrees in the field. When you combine this with the results of the Middlesex Tests, you quickly realize the students who remain are the ones who are seriously interested in the subject, the ones who are truly meant to be there.

These special few now have better opportunities to learn because the professors can now focus on the brightest, most dedicated students. I won’t delve into the details of Brooks’ Law, suffice it to say the Silicon Valley has proven time and time again that a few brilliant hackers are significantly more valuable than a stable of mediocre programmers.

What this all means is that while we’re getting fewer CS grads, the overall pool of programming talent in the US remains the same, if its not in fact growing. Mom, Bill, you can both rest easy.