I am 17 years old and I live in Virginia. I play as a guard on my high schools football team. My plan is to go to Virginia Tech or VMI, and study history but I'm thinking about joining the army or marines right out of High School.

My family has a long history of being in the military. My dad was in the National Guard, my Grandfather fought in Korea, my great uncle fought on Iwo Jima, and my great great great grandfather fought at Gettysburg for the 26th North Carolina regiment.

I am a Republican and I will be voting for the first time this november. I don't trust either Clinton at all. I like Obama as a person but I don't like his policies. Huckabee is a cool guy but he doesn't have a chance to win the election. The canidate that I am supporing is John McCain. I don't agree with him on some things but I like his foriegn policy and his ability to be bipartisan when he has to be and make compromises.

My poilitical beliefs are this, stay in Iraq and Afaganistan untill the job is done (no matter how long it takes), stop illegal imigration, and no universal health care.

I am Catholic but I believe that abortion should be legal in cases of rape, incest, the pregnant mother is under 16, and if the mother is physically unable to have a child. I do not believe that a mother has the right to terminate her pregnancy just because she does not want to have the child (there is another A word that you can use in cases like these, ADOPTION). In this day and age with all the birth control that we have there should be no way somebody gets pregnant by accident.

Rules that I live my life by

1. Empathize with your enemy.
2. Rationality will not save us.
3. There's something beyond one's self.
4. Maximize efficiency.
5. Proportionality should be a guideline in war.
6. Get the data.
7. Belief and seeing are both often wrong.
8. Be prepared to reexamine your reasoning.
9. In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil.
10. Never say never.
11. You can't change human nature.

From "The Fog of War"


In a speech to a bunch of highschoolers Bill Gates laid out the 11 things he did not learn in School.

RULE 1
Life is not fair - get used to it.
RULE 2
The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel
good about yourself.
RULE 3
You will NOT make 40 thousand dollars a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice president with car phone, until you earn both.
RULE 4
If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.
RULE 5
Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping they called it Opportunity.
RULE 6
If you mess up,it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
RULE 7
Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
RULE 8
Your school may have done away with winners and losers,but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
RULE 9
Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.
RULE 10
Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
RULE 11
Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.


"If you want a picture of the future imagine a boot stomping on a human face-forever" 1984

"Peace is a period of cheating between two periods of fighting."
Bierce