Test Your Awareness

One Way to Thank a Soldier

The Gratitude Campaign
A simple way to say thanks as you pass a soldier as you walk through an airport or wherever you see a soldier in uniform passing by.

The sign we are using is intended to communicate "thank you from the bottom of my heart. "

To make the sign simply place your hand on your heart as though you're saying the Pledge of Allegiance. Then pull your hand down and out, bending at the elbow (not the wrist), stopping for a moment at about the belly button with your hand flat, palm up, angled toward the person you're thanking.

Things Obama will do (and not do) to get elected President

Will Do:

1. Call his living grandmother who helped raise him a racist.
2. Accuse white people of not spending enough on schools.
3. Declare all Americans are victimized by corporations.

Won't Do:
1. Put his hand over his heart when reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
2. Wear an American Flag lapel.
3. Leave (or remove his daughters from) a church that preaches:

'God damn America.'
'US government created Aids, supplied drugs to our community.'
'US of KKKA.'
'What we are doing is the same thing al-Qaeda is doing.'

4. Admonish a wife who says:

'Until now, I was never proud of my country.'

The Corner on National Review Online

Two corollaries always follow the Obama victimology: moral equivalence and the subtle suggestion that any who question his thesis of despair are themselves suspect.

So we hear of poor Barack’s grandmother’s private fears in the same breath as Wright’s public hatred. Geraldine Ferraro is understood in the same context as Reverend Wright. The Reagan Coalition and talk radio are identical to Reverend Wright — albeit without similar contexts for their own purported racism. Your own pastor, priest, or rabbi are analogous to Rev. Wright.

And then, of course, your own motives are suspect if you question any of this sophistry. For Michelle it is always “they” who raised new obstacles against this deprived Ivy League couple and their quest for the Presidency; for Barack it is those who play “snippets”, or the system of “corporate culture” that has made Wright the object of anger to similarly victimized poor white pawns.

The message? Wright’s motives for espousing hatred are complex and misunderstood; your motives for worrying about Obama and his Pastor are simple and suspect.

Yep, I am now in total agreement with this sentiment:

Red Diaper Kid [John Derbyshire]

... I am now going to come out of the closet and declare clearly and firmly that I don't like Barack Obama one little bit.

What kind of person would traduce his grandmother (who is still alive) to score a political point? Yesterday's speech, read through in the clear light of dawn, is worse than I thought: an ugly mish-mash of ancient socialist clichés and Gen-X spoiled-brat self-congratulation, all enveloped in clouds of flatulent Oprahnian rhetoric. Ugh!

Obama's just a red-diaper baby with a nice smile. I actually like Jeremiah Wright better than I like Obama. At least you know where you are with Wright. Obama, I wouldn't trust to mail a letter.

NASA - Earth and Moon as Seen from Mars

NASA - Earth and Moon as Seen from Mars

Earth and Moon as photographed from Mars.

The Change Candidate

ABC News: Obama's Pastor: God Damn America, U.S. to Blame for 9/11

Sen. Barack Obama's pastor says blacks should not sing "God Bless America" but "God damn America."

It falls right in line with his wife not being proud of America and him refusing to wear a U.S. flag on his lapel while running for President of the United States.

In a campaign appearance earlier this month, Sen. Obama said, "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial."

In related news, playwright David Mamet announces "Why I am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'"

I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.

For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests.

To that end, the Constitution separates the power of the state into those three branches which are for most of us (I include myself) the only thing we remember from 12 years of schooling.

The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.

Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms.

I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.

Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.

And I began to question my hatred for "the Corporations"—the hatred of which, I found, was but the flip side of my hunger for those goods and services they provide and without which we could not live.

And I began to question my distrust of the "Bad, Bad Military" of my youth, which, I saw, was then and is now made up of those men and women who actually risk their lives to protect the rest of us from a very hostile world. Is the military always right? No. Neither is government, nor are the corporations—they are just different signposts for the particular amalgamation of our country into separate working groups, if you will. Are these groups infallible, free from the possibility of mismanagement, corruption, or crime? No, and neither are you or I. So, taking the tragic view, the question was not "Is everything perfect?" but "How could it be better, at what cost, and according to whose definition?" Put into which form, things appeared to me to be unfolding pretty well.

Clearly this is something for Obama to think about.

CustomizeGoogle :: Firefox Add-ons

CustomizeGoogle :: Firefox Add-ons

Has the function to make accessing Gmail, Google Calendar and Google docs more secure.

tips and downloads for getting things done

Lifehacker, tips and downloads for getting things done:

"Windows only: If there's only a few things most Microsoft Vista upgraders and nay-sayers can agree upon, one likely talking point is that Vista's fonts are generally clean, smooth, and a step up from XP. Getting the newer fonts in XP doesn't have to involve illegal downloads and system tweaking, however—as the gHacks tech blog points out, simply installing Microsoft's PowerPoint Viewer 2007 installs a bundle of Vista fonts in XP that you can use as your system defaults. Once installed, head to your display properties, then hit the Appearance tab to select a system-wide font. You'll also want to enable ClearType, which, luckily, we've covered before. PowerPoint Viewer 2007 is a free download for Windows only.

PowerPoint Viewer 2007 [Microsoft via gHacks]"

But here's a simple trick to download the Vista fonts for free and legally without buying a Vista license:

Download either the free Microsoft Powerpoint 2007 Viewer or the Microsoft Office Compatibility pack - both the software include the new Windows Vista fonts.

Once you install the above Microsoft programs, the Vista Fonts also become available for use on your Windows XP system. The fonts are Candara, Consolas, Calibri, Cambria, Constantia and Corbel.

William F. Buckly Jr. R.I.P.

National Review Online:

Once when Bill was asked what job he wanted in the Administration of his friend the President, he replied in his typically retiring and deferential way: 'Ventriloquist.' -- Ronald Reagan

More coverage at nationalreview.com

The Al Gore Effect

DailyTech - Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling

All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=332289

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."

He is not alone. Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.

The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.

It's way too early to claim the same is about to happen again, but then it's way too early for the hysteria of the global warmers, too.

Response to Lehman Bros vs. Passarelli & Potts - Appraisers Forum - Improving the Profession

In case the link works, this is the thread on the Appraiser's Forum

Response to Lehman Bros vs. Passarelli & Potts - Appraisers Forum - Improving the Profession

Passarelli suit settled

Late in the article:

Lenders including Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the biggest underwriter of mortgage-backed bonds in 2007, say they too have been victimized by fraudulent appraisals. New York-based Lehman sued 14 people and five companies including Passarelli & Potts Appraisal Service and appraiser Fred Passarelli in federal court in Tampa, Florida, alleging ``grossly inaccurate'' appraisals that valued residences in the Sunset Bay development at about $733,000 when they were only worth $73,000.

. . . Passarelli & Potts Appraisal was ordered to pay $4.5 million.

Bloomberg.com: Finance

Homer Simpson For President

The Plight of the American Middle Class

To hear the Lou Dobbses and Bill O’Reillys of the world--not to mention politicians ranging from Ron Paul to Hillary Clinton--the middle class of America (however you define that term) has never had it so tough . . .

Americans Are Better Off Than Anyone In Politics Or The Media Would Like To Admit - Say Anything

Asus Eee

Asus Eee 4G-Galaxy 7" PC Mobile Internet Device

This sounds like a remarkable device. It is a mini laptop that comes with Linux, Wifi and 4 GB of FLASH memory and speakers, microphone and a WebCam. No hard drive at all. This would be perfect for surfing the web at home. With online tools like Gmail and Google Documents you can manage to write a Word like memo or Excel like spreadsheet. If you need more memory for storage, you can add an 8GB SD Flash card using the machines available memory card reader.

Unlike a Windows machine it boots up very fast. Unlike a Windows machine you don't have to download a new set of anti-virus tools everytime you turn the notebook on. The lack of hard drive boosts battery life.

Play, relax, and entertain on the go with shock-proof design. At 7" and weighing only 2lbs, you can take the Eee PC anywhere. Bumps and shocks are no longer issues. With a dependable solid-state disk, you get unparalleled shock-protection and reliability. Power-efficient design provides longer operating time when on the go. With a rapid start-up time, the Eee PC is always ready to get into action. No technical manual required with the specially designed, user-friendly and intuitive graphic interface. You're always connected with built-in WiFi 802.11 b/g that automatically detects and connects to the Internet at any hotspot. The Eee PC includes the documents and the e-mails software, and a suite of other productivity software to help keep you on track. Upload photos and videos and share them instantly on Flickr or YouTube without waiting till you get home. Enjoy music and videos with extensive support for a wide range of digital multimedia. Log on to Skype or other network, and you can connect with friends anywhere, anytime. Clear up wire clutter with the built-in card reader, camera, speakers, and microphone. Since it's so easy to use and durable this makes a perfect gift for children. 4GB flash drive Built-in webcam Over 40 built-in applications for learn, work and play Linux based operating system 2 Year Limited Warranty Approximate Unit Weight - 2lbs Windows compatibility but comes with Linux OS only

How Gross is Double Dipping that Chip?

Dip Once or Dip Twice? - New York Times: "On average, the students found that three to six double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from the eater’s mouth to the remaining dip.

Each cracker picked up between one and two grams of dip. That means that sporadic double dipping in a cup of dip would transfer at least 50 to 100 bacteria from one mouth to another with every bite."

Top Four Tips For Driving Like A Pro | Editorial Blog at Motor Trend

Top Four Tips For Driving Like A Pro | Editorial Blog at Motor Trend

1. Be smooth.
2. Turn later.
3. Look ahead
4. Brake like you are taking a ...

Air Traffic Safety vs. Capacity

Get the Flick: Air Traffic Safety vs. Capacity

Blog by an air traffic controller explains the pressures of the airline industry vs. the absolutes of runway capacities. Excerpt:

But it won’t solve the core problem -- runway capacity. Remembering the lessons above, you still need a minimum of three miles (or one minute) between landing airliners. Controllers are capable of running airplanes closer together now -- with the current radar-based system -- but safety won’t allow them to do it. Until the safety-mandated rule that only allows one airplane on the runway at a time changes, a system that allows controllers to run aircraft closer together won’t increase the runway’s capacity.

While we are on this subject, I need to call your attention to another point about wake turbulence. Wake turbulence exists behind departing and landing airliners. Behind the largest aircraft -- classified as “heavy” aircraft -- the spacing requirements increase to 5 miles. Remember that theoretical line of aircraft stretching out 180 miles from JFK airport ? Throw in a couple of “heavy” airliners and the line will stretch past Washington, D.C.

www.woot.com

Only the internet could have a store that only sells one item per day, with a new item every day:

What is Woot and who's behind it?

Woot.com is an online store and community that focuses on selling cool stuff cheap. It started as an employee-store slash market-testing type of place for an electronics distributor, but it's taken on a life of its own. We anticipate profitability by 2043 – by then we should be retired; someone smarter might take over and jack up the prices. Until then, we're still the lovable scamps we've always been. But don't take our word for it: see what the online community has to say at this Wikipedia article.

I see only one item, do you sell anything else?

No. We sell one item per day until it is sold out or until 11:59pm central time when it is replaced (see next entry for details). However, each item we sell is in stock and typically ships within 2-3 business days.

Camp Hoover Updates

I finally updated the foster lab blog. You can find the link on the right side of this page.

On January 1st we had our 25th graduate of Camp Hoover. Participants at Camp Hoover are expected to learn how to sit before dinner, walk on a leash, and not to bite when being handed a cookie. If they get out of line they shouldn't be surprised to find themselves locked up for a time-out.

Favorite FireFox Add Ons

AdBlock Plus
FoxyTunes
Gmail Manager
Google Toolbar for Firefox
PDF Download
Skype Extensions for Firefox

Reagan on Surrender

Hand Bell Hero

Hand Bell Hero - VML

Peter Jackson to make two Hobbit movies

The Sound of a Million Elves Celebrating: "Los Angeles, CA (Tuesday, December 18, 2007) Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Peter Jackson; Harry Sloan, Chairman and CEO, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (MGM); Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne, Co-Chairmen and Co-CEOs of New Line Cinema have jointly announced today that they have entered into the following series of agreements:

* MGM and New Line will co-finance and co-distribute two films, “The Hobbit” and a sequel to “The Hobbit.” New Line will distribute in North America and MGM will distribute internationally.

* Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh will serve as Executive Producers of two films based on “The Hobbit.” New Line will manage the production of the films, which will be shot simultaneously."

Environmentalism hits a new low

Don Surber » Blog Archive » Baby tax

For years I've believed that environmentalism has replaced Christianity as the official religion of western governments. For those who think that is "progressive" think again.

Now comes Professor Barry Walters of Australia who wants to impose a $5,000 childbirth tax and an annual baby tax of $800 to pay for the carbon footprint of children.

Writing in a medical journal, the professor said, “Every newborn baby in Australia represents a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions for an average of 80 years, not simply by breathing but by the profligate consumption of resources typical of our society. Far from showering financial booty on new mothers and rewarding greenhouse-unfriendly behaviour, a ‘baby levy’ in the form of a carbon tax should apply, in line with the ‘polluter pays’ principle.”

Self-loathing on display. First step Kyoto on the march to government forced abortions in the name of stopping climate change.

Stop Worrying and Love Nuclear Power

Former 'No Nukes' Protester: Stop Worrying and Love Nuclear Power

Just think how much better-off the planet would be if people had been smart enough to ignore the no-nukes crowd 30 years ago.