Palin Having Fun

HAVING FUN with Sarah Palin. Yeah, readers keep sending me reports like this, which I'm not getting about John McCain. She looks like she's having fun. He doesn't. That matters.

Why is Palin having fun but McCain, well, not? The answer is simple, this is McCain's last Presidential hurrah. He's already too old and that isn't a problem that will go away with time. So the pressure is on him, because nobody is going to elect McCain's head in a jar.

Palin? Not so much. If McCain loses she goes back to her overwhelmingly successful job as Governor of Alaska. She puts in four more years there and runs for President in 2012 (or perhaps 2016). Unless Bobby Jindal also runs, she's going to win the nomination in a landslide. Palin's personal situation is win-win. Why not be happy?

The Well-Deserved Punch in the Face

Amy and I watched a movie called License to Wed over the weekend. It is a bad movie, but one scene got me to to stand up and applaud. It's the one where the groom-to-be punches out the bastard minister. Great scene.

I had a similar experience with this story about Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld:

"From two very senior sources - one incredibly senior source - that he went to the gym after. Lehman was announced as going under. He was on a treadmill with a heart monitor on. Someone was in the corner, pumping iron and he walked over and he knocked him out cold. And frankly after having watched this, I'd have done the same too."

Encroaching Alzheimers

Terry Pratchett discusses the progression of his early onset Alzheimers. It's a tough read if you have family members with dementia like I do.

Homicidal Feline Rage

This is why Milo is not allowed on the counters in the bathroom:

A Bad Month for Cats

First Porch Cat passed on the 12, then Mittens died yesterday. September was a bad month for blogger cats.

Reminder to Self

The Legion of Honor Gun Show is in about two weeks on the 18th and 19th at the Shrine Building off of Rt 13 in Newcastle. It's the only gun show I know of that is actually held within Delaware. All the others are across state lines, usually in Pennsylvania.

How Could I Have Missed It?

Truly, Mary Poppins must be a Time Lord.

Wishing I Had Machine Tools

I thought of a product I'd love to see on the market, which would probably cheese off a lot of high dollar tacticool accessories makers: the bayonet light. Make a high-power tactical flashlight that can be mounted on an AR-15 or Mossberg 590 using the standard bayonet mounts. Why waste a lot of money on expensive fore-end replacements when you can just use the bayonet lug, the original accessory rail? I wish I had some simple milling equipment so I could try to whip something up.

Windows Misfeatures

I saw this piece on ways to improve the next iteration of Windows, and had to comment on it. You know, because someone is wrong on the internet and all...

One of the big issues with it is that I really don't understand where the writer is coming from. For instance:

Apple took a huge risk in releasing OS X, since doing so meant that it required nearly their entire user base to re-buy software and hardware or face immediate obsolescence.

Perhaps this is a big risk, but it is a big risk that Apple has historically taken all the time. The Mac has never had the legacy system support that PCs users take for granted. Back when I bought my first computer in the 90s, Macs were obsolete in about 3 years. Sometimes less. I don't know if has continued to be the case after they switched to Intel-based hardware and a unix-based OS. I do know that my newest PC is over 5 years old and I just put new hardware on it last week.

His suggestions for improvements are decidedly mixed as well:

1. Boot into multiple environments, and virtualize between them. To get around legacy kernel support, you should chose which kernel to use at boot up? This is silly. Would you like to perform the equivalent of booting to safe mode in order to use your old software? No. What you want to do is write a good solid new kernel and then support the old code through a virtual machine. This has been done before with other operation systems and can be done seamlessly so the user never knows what is happening. The old code might not right quite as fast as it used to, but it will still work.
2. Integrate Live service as a package manager and software store for Windows. I have no idea why you would need a package manager for Windows. The Linux distros use them because Unix software typically has tendrils of code dependency that reach deep into the OS through required libraries, etc. In order to make software installation simple, you need the manager to keep track of all this. Windows doesn't have this problem and should avoid introducing it. You run the installer and, the vast majority of the time, things just work.
3. Sell one extensible version of Windows 7, not twenty "editions". Agreed. Windows needs two versions: desktop and server. That's really it. I suppose you could split desktop into variants like business and home, but you shouldn't really have to do that.

What should MS do to make their next version better? Listen to their customers. We don't want our older hardware to slow down to a crawl. We don't want intrusive and all-pervasive digital rights management. We want stability and we want security.

Dishonesty in Advertising

I've seen a lot of dishonest advertising lately, especially political ads, and this piece just pisses me off whenever I see it. But it isn't a campaign ad, it's for a vacuum:



A short list of the things wrong with it:

• People vacuum in a back and forth pattern for simple reasons. Rooms are square. Objects in the rooms are square. You don't want to miss spots so you want a regular pattern. You're vacuuming a living room, not driving the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. If you tried to vacuum in grand sweeping curves, you'd just miss all the little corners and wind up with the cord wrapped around the coffee table.


• Dyson mentions that current designs don't work because they have four wheels on two shared fixed axles. Except that this isn't actually true. Look at your vacuum. You probably have four wheels on the bottom. The smaller set of two are probably rotating on fixed axles independent of each other. The other two (the bigger ones that carry most of the weight) are either also mounted on fixed independent axles or are caster wheels like on a shopping cart. No shared axles.


• Why are upright vacuums hard to turn? They're big and heavy. If the upright is completely upright, then the handle probably has a very short torque arm and therefore is difficult to turn.

It just amazes me that people have the balls to lie to your face about things you can easy check out with a trip to your hall closet. But they say it with such conviction that they know noone will call them on it.

Truly

From RoflRazzi.

$tewardship

Steve Lamp criticizes those who are tithing even while the bank forecloses on their house:

First, there is no explicit New Testament command to tithe. Impossible, right? Look it up. If you can find one I have overlooked, I am open to correction. Tithing is a good idea and a commendable practice, but not a command. Jesus didn't say don't do it. He did say it's not necessarily the most important aspect of our giving (Matthew 23:23).

This is true and one of those things I rarely hear mentioned in most churches. After the return from exile, the Jews moved from the tithe system to the temple tax system. Every Jewish male was expected to pay a half-shekel per year. Jesus's attack on the moneychangers in the temple was for practices surrounding the payment of this temple tax. I'm willing to bet that the current Jewish practice of maintaining synagogue memberships is descended from this practice.

The actual New Testament practice on giving was to give what you could afford. For instance Acts 4:32-37 where Barnabas donates the profit from selling property to the church.

The Tyrants Next Door

Amy and I have an HOA meeting tonight. They're bribing us to attend by raffling off one year's dues. I don't expect there to be a quorum even with that incentive though.

Death and...

From a recent Instapundit post on taxation:

Personally, I'd like to see everyone pay at least some income tax, and I'd like to see the amount of tax paid, by everyone, go up or down every year in tandem with federal spending. That would encourage fiscal discipline directly. It would also make it harder for politicians to promise everybody a free lunch, but hey -- why shouldn't they sacrifice something, too?

I don't know that everyone should be paying taxes. But I do think the tax-free break point should be indexed to something significant like the poverty line. I'm not against people barely getting by, getting tax relief and at least then it isn't completely arbitrary.

Unfortunately with what little reading I've done on the derivation of poverty line incomes, they seem to be developed somewhat arbitrarily and tying those values to taxation would almost certainly politicize the system even more. There is pretty good evidence that poverty line incomes have grown faster than inflation for instance.

News of My Demise...

I spent all last week on a testing range in Alabama. No internet. I considered myself lucky to have indoor plumbing. I spent a large part of the time huddled into a shady equipment shed reading paperbacks to avoid the burning gaze of the Daystar. The verdict?

Charles Stross's Atrocity Archives is good read. I didn't buy the whole IT support by day, field operative by night approach to the book. Nobody would organize their organization that way unless they were ridiculously understaffed. The book explicitly states that the Laundry is in fact ridiculously overstaffed because many of the employees are too dangerous to be employed in mundane society. But it made for a fun contrast anyway. It also handled magic in a much better way than the language hacking of, say, Snow Crash.

John Scalzi's Ghost Brigades is as good as Old Man's War. The plot is good, characterization is solid, and things move well. It gets into some of the moral concerns touched on in Old Man's War like the Colonial Union keeping Earth in the interstellar dark ages.

Isaac Asimov's Foundation is a bit dated though and his technology tree and timeline don't work. You're not going to have a non-nuclear star-faring society. What are they going to run their starships on? Coal? He also seems to base a large part of his ideas on the fall of the Roman Empire, but the reason a lot of technologies disappeared with the fall of Rome is not because people forgot the technology (at least not at first). The reason they regressed is because they could no longer afford to pursue or maintain certain technologies with the economic collapse of the empire. You don't discard plate armor for maille because you forgot how to make plate. Making plate is easy if you have the metal. You discard it because metal is hard to come by and the labor is cheap. Actually losing technologies requires generations of economic decline not singular generations.

Joining the Crowd

Amy and I bought his and hers iPods yesterday. Or should I say ordered since we did it online. With the latest announcement from Apple, the price of refurbished 80 gig models has fallen to about $170 each. That's a price we couldn't pass up. Since the 120 gig classic is just the 80 with a larger hard drive, hopefully we won't lose third party support for a while.

UPDATE: Thanks to FedEx, we received our iPods on Saturday instead of Friday. Oh well. They work and we're currently ripping our entire combined CD collection into our iTunes Library.

One wrinkle, my five year-old desktop only has a 60GB hard drive and each of our iPods can pack in 80 GBs. Even with the data I already have on the desktop, I really needed more space. After a trip to Circuit City, my desktop now has a new 160 GB data drive to house all our music files and sundries. It cost me a whopping $80. By the time we max that out we'll probably need to upgrade our entire household PC infrastructure.

UPDATE2: A friend at work asked my what kind of iPod skin I was using. We bought a two pack of Init iPod skins at Best Buy. I like mine a lot.

The Palin Interview

Physics Geek is covering part of the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson that aired on ABC yesterday. I should expect this by now, but the partisanship of the ABC news staff really shocked me. One of the things the Good Morning America anchor desk focused in on was a wishy-washy answer about whether it would acceptable to cross an allied country's border without their permission in order to fight terrorists. Palin's answer was that in some cases (nuance, weasel, prevaricate), yes it would be.

At which point they cut back to the anchor desk who jumped down her throat. Cut to talking heads. The first talking head is a young blond I didn't recognize. She indicates that Palin's definite maybe is effectively the same as every other candidates on either ticket. Anchor desk rants about how that isn't true and Obama would never undermine an allies sovereignty. Cut to the second talking head, who is well known Democrat strategist and Friend-of-Bill James Carville. Carville points out that Obama actually did give that answer before and cited them chapter and verse. He takes the previous head's stance that we haven't seen anything surprising or newsworthy yet.

Now how far the left do you have to drift as a news organization when Democratic analysts are having to defend Republican candidates? It's sad that MSNBC has become the whipping boy for biased journalism, because there is a lot of blame to go around these days.

One other thing bugged me though. The interview format. Instead of airing the whole interview, it was aired in pieces. Gibson and Palin talking for a few minutes, followed by anchor desk coverage and "fact checking" about what she had said. Commercial, plug the section of interview to air in the next half hour, rinse, repeat.

I can understand why they aired the interview this way. They're breaking it up into bite-sized pieces for broadcast as part of a morning news program. They're also spacing it out to maximize ratings. But executed poorly, this format always strikes me as rhetorical ambushes. Palin is with the interviewer and on tape. However, because they're breaking the interview up and running commentary on each piece, the studio staff is essentially injecting itself into the interview as a third party. Palin (or whomever the interviewee is) can't rebut the studio comments and won't even know what they say about her until well after the fact. It can be an incredibly dishonest way to conduct an interview.

I remember a Howard Stern show back when he was still on E! and normal radio. He had a staffer interview Steven Curtis Chapman with a video crew outside of a concert, an awards show, or a charity event. I don't know which, but everyone was standing in a hallway. The interviewer would ask a question, Steven would give an answer, and then Howard would skewer him from the safety of his recording studio. It was incredibly cowardly. Not only couldn't Steven respond to Howard because he was on tape, but Howard had already seen the tape, so he could cook up his "on the spot" cutting remarks in advance.

ABC wasn't that bad. But good Lord they weren't that good either. If you're going to call yourself a news organization, you should have ethical standards that are clearly set apart from Howard Stern.

Operation Welcome Home

My morning radio program has an organizer for Operation Welcome Home Maryland. Because most of returning US soldiers from abroad travel through BWI, these volunteers decorate the international terminal appropriately for returning soldiers and offer them care packages. They assemble welcome groups about twice a week to greet people in person.

It's a group dedicated to making sure the shunning that occurred to Vietname Vets does not happen again to this next generation of soldiers. It's a good thing.

Constitutional Law Professors

Jeffrey Rosen notes that Obama/Biden is the first time two constitutional law professors have shared a presidential ticket. He predicts great things to come for civil liberties.

My question is this: Why is it that with two constitutional law professors on the ticket, neither one can get the 2nd amendment right? Biden's much touted 1994 Crime Bill gave us the ten-year assault weapons ban. Obama was on the board of the Joyce Foundation, the bank account for a range of gun-banning groups. He also promotes various new restrictions if elected.

So much for expansive civil liberties.

Republican Women

Here's an odd fact, Cindy McCain is a drifter. No, not one of those dirty, smelly greaser types from 1950s motorcycle movies. She makes regular trips to Japan to compete in amateur racing competitions that involve breaking traction with rear-wheel drive cars. She's evidently quite the gearhead.

McCain had a stroke in 2004. Her oldest son Jack bought her a four-day course to the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving in Chandler, Arizona as a get well present. The course was their "executive protection" program that involved serious defensive driving like hijackings and ambushes.

She's also received her pilot's license in 1986.

Man, a lot of Heinlein-esque Republican women out there these days.

Primary Results

Well things are shaping up well in the Diamond state. In the governors race Markell pulled out a close win over Carney. Grandma Ruth had this to say:

Markell often criticized the "Minner-Carney" administration for problems facing the state, but Minner said she did not view the defeat of Carney as a negative response to her eight years as governor.

Once again proving that she isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. Were I a registered Democrat, I would have voted Markell for just that reason. The NRA hates Markell and Sarah Brady loves him though. He's been calling for a state assault weapons ban and an end to state-wide preemption. I guess I know who I'm voting for in the general election.

Lee crushed Protack 70/30. Good, but Lee should have won by more. Who keeps voting for Protack anyway? His supporters on the internet always seem to turn out to be, well, Mike Protack.

In my very local results, Weldin edged out Daley in the 10th state senate district. I'm guessing it was based on Weldin's endorsement by outgoing Senator Steve Amick and because of allegations that Daley is a registered Democrat. I wish I'd had more time to check those out. Weldin outspent Daley, but that always makes me suspicious when we're looking at smaller state elections. I always want to know where that money is coming from although I suppose a few big dollar supporters could really effect this sort of election.

Police Militarization

This picture via Kim du Toit and Radley Balko shows it pretty well:



That's a South Carolina sheriffs department. I'm assuming the guy in the shirt and tie is the Sheriff. Those guys breaking multiple firearm safety rules by pointing their rifles at the camera? The deputies. Kim had this to say:

You know, this kind of militaristic bullshit overreach is one day going to call for a law which would require that any such equipment requests should be accompanied by a “clear and present danger” justification from the LEO in charge.

I have a better idea. We should pass a law that states that any equipment the police have access to should be accessible to the public through, at most, a simple licensing system to weed out the criminals and crazies. That means the more you militarize the cops, the more the populace can militarize itself in response to these newly shod jackbooted thugs.

Police officers are not some sort of super citizen. They're civilians just like us. They ought not have more rights than you or I except those ceded to them while on duty enforcing the law and the courts for the public's benefit. As Sir Robert Peel stated when he founded the first modern police force:

Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

That is the seven of Peel's nine principles.

UPDATE: As I said, I agree with dropping immunity from civil and criminal prosecution for botched raids. More importantly, I think self defense should be a positive defense if police are shot in no-knock raids. If you don't let people know you're cops before you break in, then you should not be able to charge them with shooting a cop after they defend themselves accordingly.

I also think technology has reached the point that we can start recording cops on the job a lot more than we do. Interrogation rooms ought to be video and audio taped at all times with the tape accessible to prosecution and defense. SWAT officers (at least) should be required to wear audio recording equipment, if not compact audio-video recorders. In college a friend put together a wearable audio recording system using binaural mics and a Sony minidisk player. She used it to bootleg Broadway shows 10 years ago, but I'm sure you could put together something similar today (probably even more cheaply with mp3 player parts) to record evidence for or against an officer. You could even build them into the next gen communications gear for beat cops.

Simple and Effective.

When I saw this video on Lawdog's blog, I thought it was yet another mediocre political ad by some Joe Crewcut. Then at about 1:15 you realize the video isn't just about what Joe is saying.

Getting Dirty But Feeling Good

I spent some time Saturday volunteering with my church's singles group at Habitat for Humanity of New Castle County's Millers Row work site in Wilmington. I nailing up fireproofed plywood and oriented-strand board to the lower sections of the townhomes. Hard work, but we accomplished a lot before Hanna forced us to call it quits after our lunch break. When I got home I was drenched, but happy. I need to get out of the house and volunteer more.

One funny thing, my knees have been giving me trouble lately. They're just generally sore and achy right now. But they didn't give me any trouble when I was working on the houses, even with the broken ground on the job site. Maybe it was because I was wearing good supportive boots for once. Maybe it was because I morning on my feet and moving instead of sitting in an office chair. Maybe it was because I had something to do other than complain about my knees hurting. I don't know, but it was certainly a nice change of pace.

In Local Immigration News

Several Delaware Burger Kings are having trouble running full schedules after Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids netted 30 illegal immigrants from 7 BK locations across Newcastle County late last week.

Unfortunately the 896 Burger King isn't on the list because it has some of the worst service I've ever had in a fast food joint.

In a World... In a City... In a Cliche...

The reason for that cliche is voice over artist Don LaFontaine, who died on Monday after a blood clot in his lungs developed complications. You probably don't know him by name or face, but you've almost certainly heard his work:



LaFontaine had a pretty good sense of humor about himself like in this awards show opener:

Sarah Palin

McCain done good. Palin is, by all accounts, an excellent governor. She took on a corrupt Alaskan Republican party and won. This is exactly what needs to happen at the national level. Everybody is reacting to it, but Geek seems to sum it up well:

The smart Lefties just shat a brick. (And those who aren't think they've just won.)

I didn't think McCain had the balls to pick her, the closest thing to a libertarian candidate you're going to see in mainstream politics...and he did.

That was a brilliant move, in more dimensions than I have time to enumerate. The Lefties aren't going to know or understand what hit them in November.

Exactly. Palin might woo some identity voters from Hillary's old camp. But that's a side benefit, compared to the shot in the arm she just gave Conservative Republicans. As for her daughter, John the Methodist is addressing it via an extended quote from atheist Steven Den Beste:

Christians know that people make mistakes, and that people sin. From their point of view, the only man who never sinned was Jesus. They don't cast out sinners, because they believe that everyone is a sinner. What they look for is people trying to do right as well as they can, to live as good a life as they can, and to try to make up for their mistakes and sins. And from their point of view both McCain and the Palin family are doing so. And as long as they continue doing so, Christian voters won't turn away from them.

Other than some moralizing Christian malcontents, that right. Neither will I condemn you, go and sin no longer. My church has dealt with several pregnancies in our youth and singles ministries. There is some friction about it within our church, but what Steven describes is what happens.

Just as important to the theology and philosophy is this: look at who is running with the story. The lefties and the media (somewhat redundant) are running with it. The Christian social activists and press are giving it a pass. Given Palin's Christian street cred, this will become an us-vs-them issue. As such, the media is already switching to educating independent voters about Palin's "dangerous" sex education beliefs.

UPDATE: Let it not be said that I can't join the Palin bashing bandwagon. I mean come on Sarah, you call that a cheek weld?

I know, I know, judging from the pictures of Palin moose and elk hunting, she wouldn't even call that AR-15 a rifle (even if it wasn't a shooting simulator).

Expect Inflation

Instapundit reports that the economy grew faster than was expected in the second quarter:

Not to say things are hunky-dory -- I'm worried about inflation -- but this doesn't look like a recession.

I think inflation is a big concern and I'm expecting to see more of it than we have really considered "normal" for quite a while. Why? Because of the housing market.

Declining home value is bad for just about everybody. Negative equity means property owners are locked into their current holdings or walk away leaving the mortgage companies taking a loss. Not being able to sell is bad for most families. You can't trade up when you have kids. Worse, you can't follow work if you get laid off. Walking away ruins your credit and in large quantities will destroy the financial sector. Either way, bad stuff.

How to fix this? I'm betting home prices are going to hold steady while most other commodities will inflate at rates higher than we'd consider normal. Eventually real estate values come back into something approaching proper perspective. This hurts the real estate investors a lot and everyone else a little, but avoids most of the big negatives of declining home prices.

That's my call for the future.

Nancy Drew

We netflixed the 2007 movie and watched it on Monday. It's not bad. Not amazing, but perfectly ok especially for a rental.

It's a kids movie (or perhaps a tweens movie) and you need to keep that mind when you're watching it. There is action, but nobody really gets hurt. Everything and everyone is clean. The villains are of the frequently bumbling sort. The plot is unfortunately quite predictable. Over all it's cute and fun.

If you're a big Nancy Drew fan, I'd expect to be disappointed. I don't think the film is based on any of the books and I gather that the movie isn't really like them. Nancy is 16 and in high school, not 18 and mostly emancipated as in the books. After the film establishes her in River Heights with her canonical friends and neighbors, she is quickly whisked away to LA. Her boyfriend Ned and her blue convertible show up again, but no one else does. I really didn't care, but I've read IMDB reviews written by girls who grew up on Nancy Drew who were pissed.

Imagine a Disney channel original movie with a bigger budget and better casting (but unfortunately not better writing) and you've basically got this movie. If that sounds like hell to you, then skip it.

UPDATE: One thing, the funniest line for me was Ned telling Nancy to "release the lightning" while she's tailing some goons in her convertible. Nancy drives a Nash Metropolitan. There isn't any lightning to release when the car has 42 horsepower and a 0 to 60 time of over 20 seconds.

Turning a War on It's Head

Michael Totten's piece on the Russian-Georgian war in South Ossetia is a must read. Wow. Read it.

Like a Yakov Smirnoff Joke

Chris Byrne's recent mention of his family's large book collection reminds me of similar traps I've seen in my own family and friends. At first you simply own lots of stuff, but as it piles up the stuff owns you.

I've seen this happen with lots of people. Sometimes it's clothes or shoes. Other times it's books. You got to a store, see something you like and buy it. You do this consistently and soon you have a closet full of shoes you'll never get around to wearing or an ever-growing pile of books you'll never get around to reading. The key is to stop buying. After that you just have to nibble things down bit by bit until everything is manageable. As I'm doing the nibbling, I try to put some sort of organization in place so that I know when things have piled up too high.

Over the weekend I went through a lot of old bills (which I habitually file away) and got rid of everything I didn't need to keep. Then I went through the clothes in my closet, especially my dress pants. Everything I can't or don't wear is now in a bag for Goodwill. I've come to the realization that my books, especially my paperbacks, are going to be next. I have a ton of books that I've picked up one place or another and that I'll probably never read again. Might was well sell them off or donate them to someone who will.

So True

more animals

Financial Training

A friend tipped me off about the Delaware Financial Literacy Institute and it's related programs like the Delaware Money School and Purses to Portfolios.

Financial training is one of those things people need, but rarely get. One of the big reasons the working poor stay poor is that they don't know how to spend and save their money. They also have few role models to show what wise financial stewardship looks like. Honestly, I think Home Economics would be far more useful if it taught people more about bank accounts and less about sewing or cooking.

Jack Markell, our State Treasurer and current Democratic gubernatorial candidate, founded these programs. I don't know that I love his party platform, but making free financial training was and is a great idea.

UPDATE: My coworker pointed out that financial training has a big problem. A lot of the people who need the training aren't fiscally responsible enough to realize it. I'm sure that's true. I'm also sure that there are a lot of people who want to be fiscally responsible, but just don't have the math skills to understand what that means in a practical sense.

Joe Who?

A phrase destined to be uttered by non-Delawareans everywhere. Every blog has analysis of Obama's choice for running mate, but I like Miss Anonymous's the best:

Obama must be in pretty bad straits to think he needs Biden. He needs Biden (if you'll excuse the hackneyed phrase) like a fish needs a bicycle. (Maybe he just needed a little GRAVITAS.)

How can you have a ticket of change and pick the guy who's like the wallpaper of the senate?

I agree with her here though:

Least it wasn't Hillary, he needs her like his back needs a knife. Which may be yet to come, if she decides to hijack the convention the way it's been whispered.

On the good side, I haven't seen this many people happy about Delaware getting mentioned since Wayne's World.

Me Too

Miss Anonymous is lamenting that she won't qualify for some sort of sweet bailout deal the FDIC because she isn't an idiot with bad credit. Ditto. When we were looking at houses our loan officer told us I had one of the best credit ratings he'd ever seen. Then he looked at Amy's. It is even better. Did we qualify for an amazing rate? Not really. We wound up with a 6+% 30 year fixed.

As an outsider, it looks like the mortgage companies are hoping that buy giving high risk borrowers low rates in hopes that they won't default and hedging their bets with mediocre rates for low risk consumers. This doesn't seem like a good idea to me. High risk borrowers aren't just high risk because they don't have any money, they're also high risk because they don't know how to manage the money they have. More importantly, a small startup could steal the low risk borrowers out from under them by simply offering them the rates they deserve, not the rates they're currently getting.

But then again I'm an engineer not some sort of actuary so what do I know?

MP3 Madness

Amy and I are thinking about picking up a new mp3 player. Amybear has a 512 megs of memory in her satellite radio. It's not enough and the radios interface stinks. She's going to upgrade to my 1G Mobiblu cube. It's a nice unit. 1 gig is enough music that you can't play it all on a single battery charge. Unfortunately it isn't enough to haul around your entire music collection and listen to whatever you want. You need to plan ahead. You also put files on there with Windows Explorer, which kind of sucks as an interface. If I were smart or bored, I'd write a decent Tcl GUI to do my file management for me.

But that aside, we're both thinking about getting a new mp3 player in the multi-zulti-gig portable music archive category. The two leading contenders are the iPod Classic and the Zune 80. Most of the comparisons indicate that the Zune is the iPod's equal. So we're leaning towards the Zune because we don't use Mac (the Zune's kryptonite), we don't particularly like Apple, but we do like the FM radio feature and the bigger screen on the Zune. Unlike most third party players, the Zune also seems to have a some third party vendor support which was the Mobiblu's Achilles heel.

UPDATE: Amy and I hit several places to look at mp3 players on display. We played with Zunes, Sansas, iPods, etc. The Sandisk products felt kind of cheap and the Archos products were either huge or unavailable. After getting a chance to play, we still like the Zune but its PC software makes us nervous. We're not in a hurry to buy, so maybe we'll wait and see if the market changes.

Self-Interested Activism

100 college presidents have banded together to call for a reduction in the drinking age from 21 to 18. They believe that this will curb binge drinking. Instapundit agrees. McQ dissents. Duffy thinks it will at least make them real popular with their students. McQ makes a great point:

Of course they're college and university presidents. Their only concern is their little world, and they're taking heat for not doing more about binge drinking by underage college students. Make 18 the law and they can wash their hands of the problem.

What effect it has in high-schools, of course, concerns them not at all.

Everyone I know who recalls when the drinking age was 18 thanked God for raising it. My bible-study leader in high school worked his way through college as a bar bouncer. He went from throwing people out once or twice a night to once or twice a week once the drinking age went up. I have yet to hear someone who was there say "yeah raising the age didn't change anything."

The reasons the college presidents are bringing this up is because if the drinking age drops to 18, they won't have to deal with the problem anymore. The number of collegians under 18 is negligible. The drinking problem will still exist, but it will be legal and therefore not the school's (and it's president's) problem. This lets them wash their hands of the whole situation.

What goes unsaid is that the drinking problem is going to get worse in high schools. Now you're going to have high school seniors running side businesses buying alcohol for underclassmen. And high school drinking is already a serious problem as it is.

Biden for Veep

Steve Lamp has this to say about Joe Biden possibly becoming the next VP:

I still find myself a bit confounded by the speculation that Barrack Obama would choose Joe Biden as his running mate because of his foreign policy credentials. Just because you have done something for a very long time doesn't necessarily mean that you are good at it. The bright side that I see to this though is that it gets Biden out of Delaware, and we can finally get a new Senator.

I've never been impressed with Biden's foreign policy performance, either. Considering Delaware's position as a powerhouse in the electoral college, I really think Biden would be a mis-step. The really unfortunately thing is that Biden will probably run for Senate and VP in 2008. We'll likely only lose Senator Biden if he and Obama won. I guess every cloud has a silver lining, but that's one dark cloud.

Technical Recidivism

I've noticed that my computer abilities have shifted since going to work for the Army. I'm probably a better programmer now than I was is college. I've learned new tricks and have access to better programming environments that make the chore easier. But my actual ability to fix hum-drum computer glitches is significantly worse. I suppose this is because I can't fix most major problems on my workplace PC without administrator access (which they won't give me).

My biggest embarrassment came when I reported a problem with one of our printers. The answering question was the obvious "have you turned it off and turned it on again?" Doh! Of course that fixed it. I would have saved the IT group minutes, but more importantly I would have saved me hours.

Athletic Drug Testing

Hube is reporting that the iPod Michael Phelps wears to the blocks while mentally preparing for a race may be giving him an unfair advantage over other competitors. Therefore he should be stripped of his medals. Says Hube:

...what's next? Checking into Phelps' diet? I heard yesterday that Phelps eats about 12,000 calories a day. Do we examine all the ingredients of his diet to make sure there are no artificial substances in it? What about breathing deeply before a race? Wouldn't this type of breathing be "artificial," since it is far from "normal" breathing?

A good friend in college ran track and cross country. She said that one of the main ways the NCAA looks for drugs to ban is by examining what commonly shows up in runners drug tests. If they see a lot of something, they move to ban it. One of the common substances detected this way was C₈H₁₀N₄O₂ which is in athletes' blood in huge quantities. That's caffeine by the way. The NCAA also considers energy drinks to be unfair performance enhancers and regulated athletes intake of substances like the herb guarana in 2002. They finally regulated caffeine intake in 2006. I'm sure regulating diet won't be far off now.

Can't Get It Out of My Head

You might have heard Katy Perry's single "I Kissed a Girl" on Top 40 airplay. It's catchy and somewhat naughty. I picked up her first album "One of the Boys" over the weekend. Its a solid piece of work that is mostly relationship-inspired dance rock. Perry has an interesting smokey voice and the songs flow well without being too similar to each other. Various songs make fun of emo boys and metrosexuals. What's not to like?

I'm not looking forward to her next single Hot N' Cold coming out in September, though. I already can't get it out of my head and I'm not hearing it on the radio 24-7.

UPDATE: Some coworkers listened to it going to lunch. They both consider it chick rock and therefore fit only for their sisters or Miata drivers.

Forfeiting Real Debate

Duffy asked the left side of Delaware's blogosphere a serious question:

Please explain how you will tax corporations and not have them pass that cost on to consumers.

The answers he received were the standard "they're rich so they can afford it" and the always popular "you're stupid!" This explains why I never bother to read anything the left side of the Delaware blogosphere puts out.

There is a good reason why they won't pass all of the costs of their tax increases on to the consumer, but it involves actual economics so you won't hear it from the lefties. It and the rest of the discussion are taking place over in Duffy's comments.

Testing 1, 2, 3...

Well I can get to my email at work, so I'm experimenting with posting
via email. If you're seeing this chances are that I'll be making a
few posts tomorrow.

UPDATE: Well it isn't exactly perfect. The conversion from email to blog post seems to be adding line breaks which screw up the formatting. I also can't figure out how to put in proper labels. But something is better than nothing.

UPDATE2: Figures. Just as I get this setup, somebody has monkeyed with the permissions somewhere up the intertube from me. Now I can use the standard Blogger interface again.

The Missing Blogger

Why haven't I posted in over a week? Well partly because work has me in training that is both interesting and challenging. If it was just one or the other, I'd probably have mental faculties left over to blog. Unfortunately with both my brain is shot and all I'm good for is light reading like Star Wars books or Burroughs' Barsoom series.

The other reason is that I generally post at work while on breaks. Unfortunately my workplace has put in place a new filtering scheme that prevents me from accessing the inner workings of my own blog. I should be thankful since I can at least access my front page. I can't even get to Livejournal any more. All this means sparse blogging during business hours until further notice.

About the Barsoom books, Frazetta may go for a weird saber look on his book covers, I really think the martian longsword is probably more of a cut and thrust. And of course I want one now. I'm so impressionable.

Hard Contact

I finished Karen Traviss's first Republic Commando novel last night. Way, way too late last night. Amy says I should self-impose a reading curfew and that sounds like a good idea right about now.

The book itself is quite good. Unlike most things Star Wars, Hard Contact focuses on the adventures of a squad of commandos thrown together after their original squads are destroyed in the Battle of Geonosis at the end of Episode II. These four men are sent behind enemy lines by the Republic on a new mission to destroy a Separatist bioweapons facility. While doing so they run across some Jedi and a Mandalorian, There are no named characters from the films in this novel. This is a book about the troopers and Padawans that make the Republic war effort run.

It does a very good job. The book delves into the culture of the clone soldiers and their inherent humanity. While they are of identical genetic stock, each commando has their own personality derived from their personal experiences as individuals. They become more than just faceless "wet droids." These are tragic figures. Men born to die, either in battle or because of the side-effects of the rapid aging used to bring them to an early adulthood.

The military terminology of the book didn't quite work for me though. It is too derivative to really fit in Star Wars. Couldn't she have found a better acronym than GPS for am SW GPS system for instance? I also found it funny that acronyms were throw around a lot even though Star Wars uses Aurek-Besh instead of the Modern Latin alphabet. Not that this kept the movies from having characters named R2-D2 or C-3PO.

Dark Knight

I saw the new Batman movie on Sunday with my brother and wife. Wonderful. Best Joker ever. The only problem? It was long enough to require uncomfortable bladder moments for a significant number of the audience members. Myself included. Otherwise it's excellent. See it.

Terminology Problems

While I think this thing is a pretty cool idea, it is not a "jetpack" or "rocketpack." Perhaps you could call it a ducted-fan pack. But jetpack... wouldn't that require jets engines of some sort?

Snarking the Obamessiah

Nobody does biblically inspired snark like the British. Via LawDog.

Wiicked

Amy picked up WiiFit yesterday. For those budding eBay entrepreneurs out there, she did this by calling the local GameStop every morning for three days straight to see if they had received any with their most recent shipment. No, try back tomorrow. No, try back tomorrow. Yes, we have a few. Hurry, hurry. Get in line with other people buying WiiFits. Whoopie!

I have mixed feeling about the game itself though.

The balance board (or whatever you call it) is really a digital scale with built in wireless connectivity. Most of the minigames revolve around shifting your weight about while standing atop it. This lets you simulate everything from hula-hooping to downhill skiing. It is also integrated with strength training, cardio, and yoga exercises. Unfortunately for some games it's too large (like when Amy is doing the step aerobics class) and for others it's too small (like when I try to do pushups). I suppose that's just the way it goes.

The structure of WiiFit is derived from of Brain Age. It even has the calender stamps. You create an account for yourself and give the game important information like height and birthdate. Then it tracks your weight, derives your BMI, and asks that you set health goals for yourself. You play minigames and do exercises in order to accumulate points to unlock other games and exercises.

Theoretically these games help you lose weight and maintain fitness and posture, but I have my doubts. While a few of the games do give you a little burn and can potentially raise a sweat, at around 3 minutes, they're all very short. 3 minutes is a warm up, not a proper cardio workout. This makes me wonder whether WiiFit will actually move you towards accomplishing your stated health goals.

The big problem is that WiiFit seems to have the faults of Brain Age as well. It keeps track of when you play, but has no idea if you workout outside of the program. I hate getting guilt tripped about how often I play. Being called a health slacker right after I finish a 30 minute cardio workout on real exercise equipment just pisses me off.

Right now, it's a mixed bag for me. But hey if we wind up annoyed by it, there's always a market on eBay.

High Stakes Gambling

Steve Lamp has some thoughts on stocks:

So earlier this week, I think it was Tuesday night, I couldn't sleep, and I was thinking about all of the dour economic news that kept pouring across CNBC at work that day. Stocks were getting pummeled and people were in a near panic. I thought to myself, this is the perfect buying opportunity. I jotted down a list of five stocks and people were morbidly selling that I thought were being driven more by fear rather than by reasonable forecasting.

I remember having a conversation with Steve like that at Small Group during the downturn after 9-11. Steve recognized that a crappy stock market is a perfect time to buy.

But what to buy? I impulsively suggested investing in airlines. They were all under-performing after the air travel hit of 9/11, but there is no way they would all go under. We were right. The hard part is figuring out which airline stock to buy. The correct answer turned out to be Southwest, but unfortunately I was still a grad student with no money to invest in that sort of thing.

Right now the hit is in mortgage brokers and the trick is to find a smaller broker that isn't heavily involved in the sub-prime problems. They'll be in the best position to expand as other brokerages either go out of business or have to charge higher interest rates to cover their losses. The problem is finding that firm.

Free Stuff

TOR booms is giving away free e-ditions of various sci-fi and fantasy authors books along with electronic copies of cover art. They're available at the TOR blog.

Vulcan?

The Belt-fed "Vulcan" Nerf Machinegun, for those of you who thought the Nerf sniper rifle was just too wussy.

BTW, what is vulcan about this gun? Typically that denotes multiple barrels that this Nerf uber-blaster doesn't seem to have.

Range Wear

This video from Pretty Pistolera shows why I generally email out a dress code when I take people shooting for the first time (includes mild profanity):


Via Kim Du Toit.

Shopping Yesterday

Amy and I bought a Wii on Saturday. Miss Anon ran across a store that had them in stock and offered us the first crack at it before she auctioned it off for her own benefit. After church, we took a shopping trip to look for games that don't have the word "mini" attached to them. I had this experience several times:



Well, it wasn't actually that experience per se. People mistook me for a sales associate at both Best Buy and Fye. Unlike Sheldon, my reaction involved far more glaring and indignation. This is the last time I go shopping in khakis and a polo shirt.

Big Bang Theory clip from a Melody Byrne post.

Why You Get Fat

I have come to some conclusions about why people tend to get fat in their twenties. Their metabolism kicks off. They move from and active collegiate lifestyle to a sedentary office one. Lastly, they realize that they're cooking for themselves and can make whatever they want whenever they want it.

This last one leads to thirty year old engineers making breakfasts like this:Amy and I realized we could make pancakes for ourselves a couple weeks ago. A quick trip to the store for milk, eggbeaters, and Bisquick and we are now just slightly fatter than we used to be. We had kept this to a special weekend breakfast or two, but it turns out I didn't have any of my normal breakfast materials this morning. Not that I'm really complaining about the results.

Shapeshifting

I've been really sore all week. I tried doing the first day of the hundred push-ups schedule on Tuesday. My initial test put me in the "more than 10" category and I went through the recommended exercises. The first set of ten was pretty easy. The last set was considerably more difficult.

Wednesday I woke up with tired arms (a good sign) and that progressed to Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) by bedtime. I was really sore Thursday morning too. After a google, it turns out that this is pretty normal if you're just getting into a workout routine. Most places also suggest you not put serious stress on those sore muscles because they're rebuilding. This is especially true if you experience residual muscle weakness like I was. My recommended Thursday workout was therefore postponed. Oh well.

I'll try to do my Thursday push-ups tonight along with my usual cardio. Hopefully it won't take me an extra day to recover again. I'm thinking the "weekly" schedule of 100 push-ups may become more of a suggestion if it does.

Dreaded Phone Calls

I was polled over the telephone at dinner time yesterday. Normally I hang up on pollsters as if they were telemarketers, but it occurred to me that someone (possibly someone I even like) would be using this data to make important decisions. They asked me whether I love or despise President Bush (neither). Who various Delaware candidates for office were and what I thought of them. In the end, they focused more on the Democrats than the Republicans, so I can't help but wonder if I haven't aided the dreaded enemies of the Republic. Oh well it was a risk worth taking none-the-less.

Hellboy II: the Golden Movie?

I dragged Amy to see Hellboy II last night with a bunch of friends. I liked it.

The plot is that thousands of years ago, Mankind made war against the creatures of magic. In the end they were defeated when the Elves and Goblins forged an invincible mechanical fighting force called the Golden Army. But the war was ended when the creatures of magic recoiled at the horror of what they had wrought and created a truce. Now an Elven prince seeks to break the truce, gain control of the Golden Army, and use it to destroy mankind.

Along the way Hellboy runs across fairytale creatures that are quite Grimm. Think of the dark fantasy world in Del Toro's prior work Pan's Labyrinth. The fae and folklore behind H2 have a similar edgy and sinister feel. The BPRD gang also gets some character development (unfortunately except for Jeffrey Tambor). The action scenes are solid. Although the story isn't based directly on a comic like the first movie, it still has the Hellboy comic feel that makes the movie fun.

If you liked the first Hellboy movie, you'll enjoy the second. It's a good ride and definitely worth a few bucks.

UPDATE: Chris Byrne has this to say:

What bugs me the most though, is that the quality was there, what they really needed was more time to explore; and they could have had it. The movie was only 110 minutes with credits; and audiences in this genre are fully prepared to sit for 150 plus credits. If they had taken the 150 minutes, this movie would have been spectacular.

I disagree. I like unplumbed depths in my films, especially when good pacing means not plumbing them. Hellboy II is a fun action film, but would make a horrible epic. We need more 110 minute movies made today, because making them generally leaves about 40 minutes of crap on a cutting room floor somewhere.

Tony Snow Dies of Cancer

The former White House Press Secretary and Fox News anchor lost his battle with colon cancer, the same disease that took his mother when Snow was 17. Snow was 53 and left behind his wife of 20 years, 2 daughters, and one son.

Working Out

100 Push Ups seems like something I want to try. I like the exercises that largely deal with body weight and my current work out routine (as paltry as it is) includes pushups and crunches. I'm currently doing the exercise bike MWF so this will get slated in on my TRS slot. Via Incoherent Ramblings.

Reaping What You Sow

The ACLU Blog's entry clarifying their stance on the Second Amendment (they're against it) is racking up quite a lot of comments. Few favor the ACLU. Good stuff.

UPDATE: It appears that the Nevada chapter of the ACLU has broken with the national ACLU on the 2nd amendment.

The Nevada ACLU has declared its support for an individual’s right to bear arms, apparently making it the first state affiliate in the nation to buck the national organization’s position on the Second Amendment.

Good. I hope other states follow suit.

Spending Money Stupidly

I'm in pretty decent financial shape at the moment. Sure my retirement savings is taking a nosedive with the stock market, but in terms of current weekly input and output I'm doing well. So what should I spent that money on? Swords, knives, kilts?

How should Jeff waste his money?
	Ronin Swords Deshi Katana
	Kukri House No 1 Kukri
	Windlass Gurhka Kukri
	Stillwater Gordon Standard Kilt
	Stillwater Solid Green Heavyweight Kilt
	Other (Use Comments)
pollcode.com free polls

UPDATE: Doh! I figured out why I have a few hundred extra dollars in my bank account. I haven't got the bill for the exercise bike that Amy and I bought yet. I may still have extra dough after this, but not nearly as much as I had thought. The good news is that I've been using the bike every other day for two weeks so it hasn't been a stupid purchase. In fact, if I wind up losing a few pounds it'll be a pretty smart buy.

The Lost is Found

A film museum in Buenos Aires has discovered an intact copy of Metropolis in their film archives. Holy Crap! Did someone ask to see their copy of the Magnificent Ambersons while they were at it?

Every Morning at My House

I also like this one.

Denied!

After hitting a few places on the way, I ended up at Ommelanden to finally celebrate Heller properly. Only to find the range is already closed for the holiday. This is what I get for not checking ahead over the internets.

Programming Perplexion

In college I learned to program in FORTRAN. Why? Because I'm an engineer and that's what we program in goldurnit. FORTRAN is very good at doing math and difficult to screw up. Most of the stuff that people screw up in C, you simply can't do in FORTRAN. This has the disadvantage that unless you're doing lots of math, FORTRAN is essentially worthless. It's sort of the idiot savant of programming languages in that way.

Right now I'm writing a few tools for work in Tcl/Tk. Tcl/Tk is sort of the anti-FORTRAN. It sucks at math, it's easy to screw up, and it's syntax is labyrinthine. But you can crank out a GUI in Tcl in no time flat. Tcl is also a higher level language that has been assimilating parts of other languages like crazy. If you want it, Tcl probably has it. If you can find it and figure out how to use it.

Unfortunately as a FORTRAN programmer, I'm just not used to this kitchen sink programming paradigm. If I need something, I have generally build it myself. With FORTRAN you basically had to. I just discovered that several of my Tcl routine could be replaced with a simple line of code. Doh. Oh well, at least mine work.

The Invincible Oba-chan

77 year-old Japanese grandmother Keiko Wakabayshi is regularly kicking the crap out of Italian soldiers twice her size. Wakabayshi is in charge of their martial arts training and is skilled in a wide array of disciplines.

Thankfully they picked a woman. As we all know from anime like Ranma and Dragonball, all male Japanese martial-arts masters will spend all their time chasing tail when they should be teaching.

When Fake Women Are Real Characters

Amybear mentioned that we watched Lars and the Real Girl over the weekend. To my surprise it turned out to be a fun and even heartwarming film.

Lars and the Real Girl is about Lars, an incredibly shy office worker, and his odd attempt to emerge from his self-imposed exile into society at large. It's odd because Lars method of doing this was purchase a Real Doll and then delude himself into thinking it was his Brazilian internet girlfriend Bianca.

Bianca becomes Lars' social crutch. On orders from the local doctor/psychologist, Lars friends and family play along to facilitate this self-treatment. It all results in scenes which are both funny and heartwarming. Bianca grows on the community and is treated like a real girl (complete with volunteer work and girls nights out). In the end, although inanimate, she essentially becomes a character in the story that the characters and the audience can identify with. It's a mind trip.

About the only bad thing I can say about the movie is that suspension of disbelief is required. You have to believe that everyone in this small town will treat an obvious nutcase like Lars with kindness instead of mockery. For that matter you have to believe that lots of people will care about someone who is essentially the town recluse. That's a pretty big pill to swallow.

After seeing both films, I'm sorry that Lars lost to Juno so often during this past awards season. Lars is frankly the better film with the better script. Juno has needlessly indie scenes and jerky plot development. Ellen Page's portrayal of a scared pregnant girl who is putting on a brave face is brilliant, but none of the characters in Juno really develop. In contrast, Lars is brilliantly paced with characters who grow as the plot unfolds. Juno is less than a hundred minutes and it could be more in retrospect. Lars is less than a hundred minutes and you really can't change a thing.

A Reminder

This is why the ACLU doesn't get any of my money:

In Heller, the Court reinterpreted the Second Amendment as a source of individual rights. Washington D.C.'s gun control law, which bans the private possession of handguns and was widely considered the most restrictive such law in the country, became a victim of that reinterpretation.

The Court was careful to note that the right to bear arms is not absolute and can be subject to reasonable regulation. Yet, by concluding that D.C.'s gun control law was unreasonable and thus invalid, the Court placed a constitutional limit on gun control legislation that had not existed prior to its decision in Heller. It is too early to know how much of a constitutional straitjacket the new rule will create.

Yes, God forbid we apply the Constitution to reduce the power of the State or even the states. The collective rights interpretation the ACLU supports is bankrupt. It allows the State to uphold the right of "the people" while effectively preventing the exercise of that right from all individual persons. Except those who actively support the State of course.

The Scripture Mangler

From Paul Smith, Obama uses the Sermon on the Mount to advance the idea that Jesus would have supported Gay Marriage. I guess he missed some major parts of the Sermon like:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

So Barack Obama - the least of these?

You Might Not Know Anything about the Gun Industry If...

From Charles Austin via Instapundit:

What if Colt made a big show of offering Senator Obama a custom engraved 1911 to celebrate Heller? If he accepts it, his base is up in arms, no pun intended. If he declines it, well, let's just say that 5-4 vote will look a little more frightening to everyone not in his base. Seem like a win-win to me.

Why won't Colt do this? The answer is that they're on Obama's side politically. Colt's ownership is murky but has included groups like the UAW and the State of Connecticut. Not example pro-gun groups. The current chairman is Donald Zilkha, a New York financier who generally support Democrats like Chuck Schumer. Chuck Schumer! If you want someone to give Obama a fancy 1911, try Kimber or a Springfield Armory Custom instead.

Gun Cams, Not Just For WWII Pilots Anymore

My lovely wife sent me a link to the PistolCam. It's a small camera that fits on pistol accessory rails and works like to a tactical light, taking pictures of whatever the gun is pointed at once it leaves the holster.

Frankly, I'd really like to see this sort of technology applied more widely to police work. I cannot think of any reason why SWAT teams can't have a small video camera on their helmets and microphones mounted to their gear. The equipment could be put together cheaply (<$1000), could be lightweight, and would provide invaluable evidence if anything goes wrong in a raid. It would exonerate the good cops and condemn the bad ones. Just what citizens want.

Heller Wins!

In a 5-4 opinion, the Supreme Court struck down the D.C. gun ban and affirmed an individual right to keep and bear arms. Scotusblog is hosting a copy of the decision pdf. I'm sure the legal blogs will have a lot to take about soon, although they seem to be groaning under the weight of their traffic at the moment.

The 5-4 opinion is disappointing, but depending on the specifics, I suppose it is understandable.

UPDATE: This is a narrow decision in that the SC did not address incorporation to the states because DC is a federal district so they had no standing to do so. The NRA is already moving to test incorporation to the states with challenges of the handgun bans in NYC, Chicago, and San Francisco. I may have to renew my membership soon.

Man-Floss

This is an interesting (if a bit disgusting) idea: bacon flavored dental floss. I guess if you hate the mint flavored ones.

With my luck, I'd come home to find the cat amid of slobbery pile of bacon floss on the living room floor. Via Amybear.

And Perhaps a Cat Owner

George Carlin died unexpectedly. I was never a huge fan. Sure he had that screw the establishment attitude and some interesting ideas about wordplay, but neither of those really float my boat. This Youtube video (some profanity of course) makes me wonder if he had pets though:


All very true. Cats are cute when they kill (especially since most cat games are kill training). They have some absurd sort of dignity. And yes they stick their fuzzy butts in your face in the early AM.

Lol Humor

Not Just for Deep Crows

Trogdor created via Spore. Gabe and Tycho also like it.

The Prayer Grunt

I haven't linked to Stuff Christians Like lately and his recent post on the Prayer Grunt of Affirmation reminded me of long ago small group days:

It's probably not good that I measure the quality of my group prayers by the number of grunts of affirmation I get. What are those? A grunt of affirmation is when you pray in a group and someone near you says, "Mhm" or "Unh" or some other grunt like statement that means, "I'm down with that."

While not everyone uses the prayer grunt, I remember the leader of my bible study during my senior year had that habit and I often found myself looking to make a good prayer at the end of a study in order to get that "warm manly." I think I may have subconsciously adopted it myself for a while when I was a small group leader.

Is it a little idolatrous? I don't know, but I suggest you avoid memorizing his prayer grunt score sheet just in case.

Getting in Shape

Amy and I picked up recumbent exercise bike yesterday. Both Amy and I fit on it, it was solid, and it had a heart rate monitor. That hit all the boxes on our check list.

We actually picked it up ourselves. Literally as a fair bit of carrying was involved. The store we purchased it from is within walking distance of our house. It seemed kind of stupid to pay a $100 install fee to move a piece of equipment less than a mile, especially when it broke down into fairly light weight parts. They took it apart, we got the pieces in our cars, drove home, moved it in, and put it back together. Seems to work great so far and we have a heft warranty if it doesn't.

Now we just need to rearrange our basement so we can watch the TV, use the bike and the treadmill, and still be able to put her parents down there on the hide-a-bed when they visit. That should provide a pretty decent workout when I'm off on Friday.

Nerds!

Amy and I had a lot of trouble coming up with wedding/reception themes. We thought about doing an around the world theme, with each table being a different country. This isn't because we're well traveled, but because we could use it as an excuse to have a wide variety of ethnic appetizers, dishes, and deserts. We quickly gave up on it and went generic. It was just too much effort.

These people went with a video game theme and it seems to work for them in a very nerdy way. I wonder if you can tell the age of the guest by the table they're seated at. If the parents are at Pac-man, do the grandparents wind up at Pong?

Too Much USB?

Via my lovely bride, the USB greenhouse. Yeah, someone ought to tell people that USB is not a substitute for actual power sources. Or for that matter that if you're growing plants inside your climate controlled house, you probably don't need a greenhouse pod in the first place.

Now Where Did I Put My Time Machine...

111 As a 1930s husband, I am Very Superior Take the test!

UPDATE: I'd imagine Amybear would fill mine out a little differently, but I really didn't pad my old school husband resume very much. Amybear doesn't make for a very good 1930s wife according to the test, but she thinks that's because she does unconscionable things like work outside the home and manage her own finances. She even deigns to give me advice without my prior solicitation. I agree. While the role of husband and father hasn't changed much in the last 70 or 80 years, the wife's role has changed a lot.

Let the Gloating Commence

From the Brady Campaign President Paul Helmke:

We've lost the battle on what the Second Amendment means. Seventy-five percent of the public thinks it's an individual right. Why are we arguing a theory anymore? We are concerned about what we can do practically."

This doesn't mean they've actually learned their lesson though (or even think they were wrong in the first place), from Brady Campaign Attorney Dennis Henigan:

Universal background checks don't affect the right of self-defense in the home. Banning a super dangerous class of weapons, like assault weapons, also would not adversely affect the right of self-defense in the home. Curbing large volume sales doesn't affect self-defense in the home.

With strategies like that, I look forward to future legal battles with the Brady Campaign and other Joyce Foundation funded programs. They do have a few points:

But given that McCain stood by his support for closing "the gun-show loophole" during a recent speech to the N.R.A., the Brady Campaign president hopes that new gun restrictions can make headway regardless of who wins in November.

McCain is not a stalwart conservative with regards to gun control. He never has been. On the other hand, Barack Obama was one the Board of the Joyce Foundation for 8 years. The Joyce Foundation is the answer to the question "Where do all these gun control groups get their funding from?" When you look at the vast left-wing gun control "conspiracy," Barack Obama was one of the people holding its purse strings. Almost anyone else would be better in comparison.

For further gloating see Armed and Safe, Say Uncle, Days of Our Trailers, Snowflakes in Hell.

Things George Bush Will Never Get Credit For

The obsolescence of the embryonic stem cell controversy continues unabated. This time it's an Australian researchers who have used adult stem cells develop a potential treatment for Parkinson's Disease. Trying this with embryonic cells results in brain tumors. Keep in mind this was in Australia so anything George Bush did or didn't do had no effect on this new treatment.

Via The Anchoress and the Thinklings.

Microsoft Miscorrections

At work we use and refer to a collection of software called JWES. A coworker told me that his copy of Word autocorrects this acronym to "JEWS." I'd imagine that could be a problem if you're highly critical of JWES and sloppy about proofreading your documentation.

Open Carry in the News

Instapundit brought up a Chicago Tribune piece about open carry and related activism in Utah. For those interested in the legalities of open carry in Delaware, there's now a dedicated forum for that along with one operated by Opencarry.com.

"Imagine" Obama's Presidency

I'm not a fan of John Lennon's Imagine, but NRAhab's rewording of this hymn to secular humanism to fit the Leftwing Messiah's campaign message is hilarious. Frank J.'s chope-hange piece also bursts the whole hopey-changey balloon.

Via View from the Porch

Politics and Economic Planning

Steve Lamp has this to say about Barack Obama:

I like Barrack Obama. The problem is I disagree with his position on a wide range of issues. One of the biggest is Social Security. Like most Democrats, Obama is against privatization. In fact, he adamantly opposes it.

Steve goes on to briefly discuss the state of Social Security (as assessed by the Social Security Administration) and how Obama's solution to it amounts to sticking his finger in his ears and humming loudly.

What is most sad about the coming election is that we really need a candidate that wants to put the Federal Government's finances in order. Bush started doing this early in his first term by reducing the rate of government growth, but completely failed to follow up after 9/11. Neither Obama nor McCain have any record of slowing government growth or solving problems outside of massive government spending. Both of these are practically mandatory at this point.

The US government really needs to have our finances together by 2017. After that the SSA is going to start cashing in it's treasury securities. Which means money essentially comes out of the general fund to pay for social security instead of coming in from surplus SS taxes. That's a big deal.

Left Wing Hypocrisy

I can smell it rolling in. From Bruce Prescott's blog post opposing illegal immigration reforms which crack down on employers:

"It drives up the wages of this particular group. As these wages go up, it essentially makes Oklahoma production less competitive relative to our neighbors and suppresses Oklahoma production. So as Oklahoma firms produce less, as they slow the rate of expansion, not only do they require fewer workers, they require fewer high-skill workers."

Funny how he completely rejected this argument two years ago when he was crusading for a hike in the minimum wage. Now the effects of that policy are coming home with sudden unemployment spikes caused by cheap student labor that is unemployable.

Thinks I Should Have Known By Now

Max Brooks, of Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z fame, is the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft. He's also done voice work on Batman Beyond and the Justice League TV shows. If I get home and this is written on the author blurb on the back of those books, I'll be annoyed.

The Death of Free Speech

The results (pdf) of the Alberta Human Rights Commission trial of a Canadian Pastor has the blogosphere in a buzz. Samizdata has comments and QandO has commentary. Novelist John C. Wright chimes in.

The lesson for us is twofold. Firstly, speech must be protected broadly and any exceptions must be defined narrowly. Secondly, we cannot allow entities like the Alberta HRC to come into being. The AHRC takes cases at it's discretion in which it acts as judge, jury, and prosecutor and it's decisions act with the full force of law. Disgusting.

Story of My Life

Amy and I are looking at health equipment. We have a treadmill which works well for walking, but not for much else. It really isn't up to the load a 185 lbs. jogger like myself puts on it. Seriously, the lights in the basement dim in time with my stride and the load I put on its motor.

I started looking at ellipticals because of this. Unfortunately I've since discovered by doing the department store rounds that cheap ellipticals are garbage. Getting a good one means putting out over a grand. Not the price range I want. This has me looking at exercise bikes. The recumbent ones, because the standard bicycle layout gets darned uncomfortable during a workout of any significant duration. Decent ones seem to be available at around $300.

The problem? Amy hated ellipticals and didn't care what I bought. Amy wants to use the exercise bike though. This means we need one with a pretty wide range of seat adjustment because I'm almost a foot taller than my wife. So far no luck with that. Ah well the search goes on.

Facial Expressions

Something about the look on this Dog's face is hilarious. Although I am hoping he's yawning and not about to eat the little girl's head.

Free Books that Don't Suck

SFSignal is offering up a free electronic version of John C. Wright's Orphan's of Chaos. It is an excellent book and a limited time offer.

Deaths in the Family

Melody Byrne's mother just died at the age of 61. I'm sure Melody is devastated, but after posts like this, I'm pretty sure that her father is going to have a harder time of it. They were married for 41 years and it is pretty clear that he depended on his wife for a lot.

Candy From the Old Country

While the Brits have crunchy frog the Scots have this.

UPDATE: Amybear (who originally sent me that link) has more fun links over at her blog. She even found someone who sells gargantuan lego bricks.

Where Will They Get the Guns?

Hube found this gem on Newsbusters:

I think we need to take right-wing nut jobs outside line them up on a wall and shoot them. It will make everyone happy and the world a better place.

Tell me Johnny Gungrabber, where are you going to get the heaters you need to do that? I have mine, but where will you get yours? More importantly, who is the nutjob, me with my politics or you with your suggestions of mass murder "for the greater good."

Housing Codes

Kim du Toit deals with someone who uses the oft-repeated logic of "it's my land isn't it?"

The answer to this is that it is, but it won't always be. Building codes protect no just the current owner from huckster contractors, but also the future owner and his neighbors. You can't replace them with home inspections, because home inspections don't include looking inside the walls at plumbing, wiring, structure, and weather stripping. Which means the state takes over and does these things for us. That doesn't mean they do it well, lots of inspectors are incompetent or, worse, petty bureaucrats. But they do it and they need to do it.

It isn't a coincidence that earliest written codes like Ur-Nammu or Hammurabi involve laws about land drainage. For that matter Deuteronomy has a law about safety railings. This is basic and important stuff.

How Considerate of Her

It appears that Hillary Clinton will concede based on the results of the final primaries that show Barack Obama clinching the nomination. Some stories are spinning this as a magnanimous gesture on her part, which is laughable. Conceding when you are losing so that you go out with grace is noble. Conceding when you have lost, after this conclusion was obvious months ago, is not.

Interdicting Iran

The Iraqis are moving against Iranian smuggling points in southern Iraq near Basrah. This is a good thing.

For those not in the know, who are listening to all the leftward listing pundits talk about how the US is going to go to war with Iran, we already are. Iran has been running guns, explosives, money, and members of their military into Iraq with the expressed purpose of killing members of the US military. They have done this for years. The quest is not whether we at war with Iran. By any reasonable measure, we are. The question is whether we turn this Cold War with Iran into a Hot War.

The answer to that is preferably not. The Iranian government isn't free, it is a theocratic oligarchy. About half the political positions in the national government report not to the people of Iran through elections, but to the Supreme Leader who is appointed by the Assembly of Experts (86 Islamic scholars and priests). This includes half of the Guardian Council which decides who can run for nationwide offices. The national media, the army, etc. also report to the Supreme Leader. This is causing some friction in Iran, especially with the numerous young Iranians. Best to sit back and watch things fester and, hopefully, fall apart when the young Iranians and young Iraqis compare notes in a few years.