Watch this. I think Vanessa Hidary has something to say to all of us.
Paranoia Is Not Safety II
I have ranted about our national paranoia before. We are still paranoid and it still bothers me. Over the last few days, I have read about: AirTran Airways ejected nine people from a flight (including two women and three children, ages 7, 4, and 2) because two of the men in the group discussed the […]
How to Spot a Child Predator
I know what I am going to dress up as tonight. A Halloween costume so scary that my wife will be upset that I am wearing it in public. I am going to wear a disguise so socially unacceptable that three entire school districts will close for a day to assure they their students do […]
Why McCain and the Republican Party Scare Me
I am down on most career politicians (are there any other kinds?) but the Republican party has become particularly scary during the Bush administration. The Grand Old Party has shifted farther and farther right. McCain and the current party leaders are grandly continuing this new tradition. It looks like McCain’s platform, like Bush’s, boils down […]
Airport Security: What a Waste
I love the inconvenience of airport security. The fact that I am paying for the privilege of being inconvenienced, in lieu of having my security enhanced, makes the whole experience all the more charming. Recently, Jeffrey Goldberg took all of these goodies through airport security at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Read Goldberg’s entire article on […]
Steal This Comic or Song
I buy a lot of music on-line and it breaks down like this: 1,268 completely unlocked MP3 files, easily playable on any computer or device, all purchased from eMusic.com. (Here’s a link to get 25 FREE iPod® compatible downloads from eMusic! Choose from over 2.8 Million songs! ) 0 DRM-locked files from iTunes, Audible.com, etc.
Anthem Insurance Customer Disservice
I hate paying money to be abused. Here is this morning’s tale of woe regarding customer “service” at the Anthem insurance company. A few weeks ago, I received a letter telling me that the co-pay on my Zetia would increase dramatically and that I should switch to a statin instead. That is patently ridiculous advice, […]
Teenage Pregnancy, Politics, and Common Sense
Am I the only one baffled by the notion that a pregnant teenager is somehow a worthy part of a presidential political campaign? The last time I thought about teenage pregnancy (which is depressingly often, since I have two teenage sons), I considered a pregnancy to be an “Oh shit” moment which would have to […]
Woo Hoo! Glider Pilot!!
Woo hoo! This afternoon, I passed my glider pilot checkride in N5751S, a Schweizer 2-33A! I am now officially allowed to fly airplanes with either one or zero engines. 🙂 I owe it all to the Silver Creek Glider Club and the good folks there.
Caching Free LibraryThing Book Covers
LibraryThing did something amazing last Thursday: it made images of the covers of a million books available for anyone to use for free. This is way better than using Amazon.com’s book covers because you can display them without linking to Amazon. If you are a library or an independent book store, having links on your […]
Humanity Survives While Killing
I don’t often find myself smiling while reading about the killing in Iraq and Afghanistan but I did today when I ran across a short article in Wired, Shrinks Help Drone Pilots Cope With Robo-Violence. Like many people, I was concerned that fighting a war via remote controlled vehicles would turn the killing into a […]
Surprising Truth in Bush Inauguration Speech Satire
In January 2001, The Onion satirized George W. Bush’s first inauguration speech in Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over’. The sad part is, most of the satire turned out to be true. For instance, Bush swore to do “everything in [his] power” to undo the damage wrought by Clinton’s […]
Risk Analysis: NOT!
I just read a letter to the editor in my local newspaper. It begins, Are you kidding me? Jefferson Middle School says that no kids can bring peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch because there are kids with peanut allergies? Peanut butter is dangerous to the 1.3% of Americans who have peanut allergies. We […]
Casualties of War
For several years, my son planned to join the Army. As a father, I had mixed emotions: pride that he wanted to volunteer for a very tough job and fear that he would be killed… or worse. He and I had several discussions about the dangers; largely fruitless because teenagers believe they are immortal and […]
Paranoia Is Not Safety
Our country is founded on several key values and two of the most important are the right to vote and the belief in presumed innocence. Several school districts in St. Charles county, Missouri, seem determined to teach some important lessons to their students vis á vis these rights: United States citizens of voting age are […]
Express Lanes Ignore Real Problems
President Bush announced a “plan” to get holiday travelers to their destinations closer to on-time this holiday season. CNN.com wrote it up in, Skepticism about holiday air travel ‘express lane’. Bush announced a series of technical measures Thursday to reduce air traffic congestion and long delays that have left passengers stranded and turned holiday travel […]
$1,300,000,000,000
Yesterday I discussed $20,900,000, the amount of money that the families in my sons’ high school have spent on the Iraq war since 2002. The war has cost each of the 1,000 families $20,900. Let’s try this from the Iraqi perspective. The total cost of the Iraq war will have been $1.3 trillion during the […]
$20,900,000
CNN.com reports, in War costs could total $1.6 trillion by 2009, panel estimates, …[the] Joint Economic Committee [of Congress]… estimated $1.3 trillion in war costs by the end of 2008 for Iraq, and the remainder [of the 1.6 trillion estimate] for Afghanistan…. The committee calculated the average cost of both wars for a family of […]
New Home Theater Projector
Woo hoo! Just six years after Candy and I upgraded our stereo system to a 5.1 home theater system, we replaced the 27″ television with an Optoma HD72 projector. The picture we now see has diagonal measure of approximately 90″. The improvement is so dramatic that I could easily become a couch potato. Everything seems […]
Stunningly Poor Judgement
Unless you live under a rock, you are already aware that John P. “Pat” Philbin, FEMA’s director of external affairs, faked a press conference on Tuesday. All of the questions asked were posed by FEMA employees; there were no independent reporters present. This required such incredibly poor judgment at so many levels that I can […]
