You gets the doggy stuff.

I love my dogs because my dogs love me. No matter how sick, twisted, or dysfunctional we may be in certain aspects of our lives/training, we love each other.

And that (plus a giant oatmeal cookie) is where it is at.

P.S. Dog owners should make a better effort to remove doggy poopies. We're starting to thaw out here, and it ain't pretty along the bike trail right now...

At 16, Kinski began a romantic relationship with director Roman Polanski, who was 28 years her senior. Polanski urged her to study acting with Lee Strasberg in the U.S.A. and went on to cast her in his film, Tess. Shortly after this on-screen success, legendary photographer Richard Avedon photographed Kinski with a serpent coiled around her naked body. The poster of this photo contributed to Kinski's renown as a popular icon.

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Nastasia-Kinski

Not exactly a protector of young children.

I think Haruki Murakami has a very valid point. We should always weight our support to the least powerful side, because power is inherently corrosive to human relations. The platitude "Power Corrupts" is no less true for being a platitude.

However, morality and justice are also factors that must be considered. We cannot simply use the relative strength of a faction as a way to determine who we support. By itself, it is an inherently foolish way to make decisions, and lends itself to highly effective mockery.

In other words, morality has nothing to do with it. Everything comes down to power relations, and the less powerful should always be supported regardless of the morality, correctness or even truth of their position.

In the case of the conflict between organizations for Palestinian rights and the Government of Israel (for that is the conflict--not a battle between Arabs and Jews) there are offenses and abuses available from both factions.

But, for me, there are telling differences. In this case, the most extreme, and powerless, of the factions has made real overtures. Hamas did establish a ceasefire with Israel, did reduce the firing of crude rockets, and did make progress in curbing the violence. This is not the first, second or third time Hamas and earlier Fatah have made these attempts.

The response from the Government of Israel, however, has not been reciprocal. Instead of acting from power and security, Israel has increased the daily pressure on Palestinian populations through restrictions on commerce, trade and travel. It has made life perilous and frightening through bombing, shelling, and ground attacks that increasingly ignore civilian bystanders. And it has continued to take away land from Palestinians in contravention of the agreements that created the State of Israel in the first place.

These are injustices. And they are injustices that the Government of Israel has the power to refrain from and correct. Yet, rather than correct these injustices, we see the Israeli Government expanding and intensifying them. Most recently, the rightward lurch of the state, accompanied by serious threats against legal Israeli citizens of Arab descent, have made hope of progress and peace extremely fragile.

Walls and eggs are nice metaphors. They are a starting point for thinking about a question and moving toward necessary solutions. But they do not define the issue by themselves.

I do not oppose the wall simply because it is high and strong. I oppose it because it is built of bones and skulls, many of them belonging to innocents. I do not support the egg because it is helpless and fragile. I support it because I believe it has hope of becoming much more than an egg, and because it has a long history of peaceful co-existence with the former grains of sand that make up today's wall.

Jews and Arabs lived together in Palestine for centuries in a more peaceful fashion than the fractious nations of Europe have ever managed. The current conflict is an artificial creation designed to assuage the guilt of European allies who fostered a millennium of bigotry that culminated in a genocide. They dumped their problem with hate on an area that had a far better history of tolerance than their own.

And now, we shrink back from responsibility for the suffering we created. Better to talk of walls and eggs, or to shout slogans at each other.

We need strength and virtue to move away from the current bloody slide into destruction (eventually for both sides, I believe). We should consider strength and weakness, right and wrong, and justice for individuals no matter what side they are currently on.

It won't be simple.