Greetings and salutations!

This week's featured book: The Da Vinci Code
This week's featured music: Collide [Bonus Track]
This week's featured movie: Appleseed [IMPORT]

In the News:

This morning brought the announcement that, at the upcoming Egyptian summit, Israel and Palestine will declare a truce. While this is certainly a positive development, outstanding issues, including Jewish settlements, the status of Jerusalem, the security wall, and militant threats, remain. Leaders in the region have met with each other, U.S. representative Condoleeza Rice, Egyptian and Jordanian leaders, and soon George Bush and even Canada's own Paul Martin. The renewal of U.S. involvement in the peace process is a good thing, as it places pressure on both parties. The offer of economic aid to the Palestinians is an important political tool and works in favor of every party involved.

In Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's Shiite coalition is poised to take power following the recent election. Despite the fact that Ali al-Sistani is a Muslim Cleric, and his powerful friends are Muslim clerics, he assures the world that Iraq will not be ruled by clerics as a theocracy similar to Iran.

The U.S. is implementing a program to improve the safety and reliability of its nuclear weapons. Safe, reliable, nuclear weapons....need any more be said? On the opposite end of the spectrum, the educational/philosophical/scientific debate over evolutionism, creationism, and intelligent design rages on. For an interesting view of intelligent design, click here. (You will need to sign up OR use bugmenot.com)

In Joe's Life:

Please check out HikeIsrael.com. This is an exciting project of a very good friend of mine. If you have any interest, or are involved in media production, consider lending your support.

There's been two interesting moments of insanity lately. I was looking into buying a new laptop and was, for the briefest of moments, actually considering buying a Mac. Forgive me my friends, I don't know what came over me! In a similar vein, I've had so many problems with Telus this past week that I was thinking of calling Shaw....can you believe it? I mean...Shaw....what the hell was I thinking? *S*

I realize I've never mentioned a great deal about my work, so here is the deal. I am a Project Manager for Anduro Technologies, a Search Engine Marketing firm downtown. The majority of my work involves writing optimized content pages for corporate websites. I also do internal documentation and IT. It's a good job with a good company and good people. That's all there is to say really!

With Hope,
Joseph