To those preaching tolerance...

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them"
― Karl Popper, 'The Open Society and Its Enemies'

"Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice."

― Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Risk

If you don't risk life, then you don't have a life.

To live is to risk. To risk is to live.

Everything we do in life, every decision, every choice, every action, carries within it an inherent degree of risk. And every risk, no matter how big or how small, is a risk to our lives. Maybe not immediately, maybe not today, nor tomorrow, maybe not for months or years or decades. But every thing we do affects everything else, echoes forever into eternity, from this generation to the next, until the end of time.

So do something. Make that risk worthwhile. Get out there and live.

Fireworks

Explosions wrack the city, an unceasing echo of chemical thunder. They've been going since well before midnight last night, marking the start of the Year of the Horse. We even set off some of our own in the moments just past midnight, adding to the general cacophony.

I wish we had fireworks in Australia. For, you know, anyone to use. It'd be fun.

I don't want to go overseas anymore!

At least, not for a little while. Say, the rest of this year.

Let's number them off. January last year, two weeks in Vietnam. June/July, two weeks in the US. December, two weeks in Hawaii. Now, on the 21st of January, I'll be flying to China until the 1st of March.

Five weeks in China. God.

Originally I was supposed to be an English language teacher. Now, I'm going to travel around China and sightsee. At least, that's what I think...unless things change again.

I'm just so sick of it. Like, thinking about going overseas again makes me pissed off and lethargic and I just don't want to do it.

Sigh.

Life in jail horrible: Aussie activist

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/19564823/life-in-jail-horrible-aussie-activist/

Shouldn't have decided that it would be a good idea to protest against a Russian oil rig then, stupid woman. I do dearly hope that you get the 7 years, and that Russia goes ahead with drilling anyway. A nice hard smack of reality would do you, and those like you, some good.

I mean, the logic here is pretty much, "I break the law, and I expect to get away with it". If someone scaled the Greenpeace Sydney headquarters and unfurled a banner with "No Greenpeace" on it, I'm pretty sure the Greenpeace folk there would call the police and complain about it. And yet they expect to get away with similar actions elsewhere. Double standards, double standards everywhere.