Tman In Tennessee

The Founder of Facebook Interviews George Bush

2010-11-30T23:21:00.000-08:00

The interview.

It's easy to criticize the things that went wrong during the Bush administration, but it's hard to hear the truth about what actually went down during the last ten years, for some of us. It will probably bother some of you that GW is actually a decent guy, and this interview will most likely make that perspective more difficult.

The important principles that Bush stood for are also important to me. I disagree with Bush from a spiritual standpoint, but these differences don't supersede the more important individual principles that we have in common.

Individual liberty and freedom is a universal genetic trait, and eventually those that find it fashionable to deny this reality will end up in the trash heap of history with the rest of those who have extended the suffering of others by pretending that if we just try harder maybe life will be fair for everyone.

It's not, and it won't be. What is most fair is equal opportunity, not equal outcome.

And on that note I leave you with an astronomical phenomenon....

The Semi-Voluntary Hiatus Is Over.

2010-09-07T18:20:00.001-07:00

I finally got a new laptop so I can start writing some more here at TmanInTN. I plan on returning shortly with a new face and a different font because a man just needs to change fonts every now and then. That's all I'm saying.

For A Great Cause, And A Great Lady

2009-11-11T11:58:00.000-08:00

My friend Amanda, who years ago sent me some great links about one of the main characters from the excellent documentary film by Irish filmmaker Phelim McAleer "Mine Your Own Business", is taking part in The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Mission to wipe out blood cancer by training for a half ironman as a member of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team In Training.

An eighth of ironman would be enough for me to call it a day, but I'm not as crazy about punishing my body as Amanda. She just ran the NYC Marathon too!

Running for four hours? Pass.

But seriously, take a moment if you have the time and drop on by to her page for the fundraiser an maybe drop some dimes for a good cause.

Good Luck Amanda!

Great Piece on Norman Borlaug, May He Rest In Peace....

2009-09-15T22:14:00.000-07:00

"Norman Borlaug, who has just died at age 95 in Dallas, was an exception among living Nobel Peace Prize beneficiaries: he actually deserved the award, which he received in 1970......."

You can read the rest here....the author of the article makes this exquisite point at the end..

"The wonderful legacy of the Green Revolution that Norman Borlaug gave birth to should be better known, not only for what it brought to mankind, but also as a permanent lesson for the future. Honest science, when coupled with entrepreneurship and reliable government, can solve the major threats to human life. The oldest human plague, famine, has been eradicated through these means. The next human plague, whatever it may be, deserves similar treatment."

Eight Years On..........

2009-09-11T14:32:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure why I feel compelled to write this, as there are plenty of other bloggers and pundits who will produce much more eloquent dissertations on the immediate impact and subsequent fallout from the events occurring on this day eight years ago, but for some reason I just feel as though I should.

Maybe for posterity? Who knows.

On September 11th, 2001 I was coming to the end of my morning commute on Nashville's interstate system, listening to the usual lackluster comic failings of the Bob and Tom show on the radio. Following yet another lamely attempted dick joke, Kristi Lee broke in to the broadcast with a news update about a "plane that has apparently hit the World Trade Center", which at first just seemed like another odd news item that would be explained away as some sort of tragic accident in which a few people died but would soon be forgotten. But instead of Bob and Tom making some wort of wise ass remark about the accident, you could hear a somber quizzical tone from the voices on the radio, as if something was horribly wrong about this news. After about two turns off the interstate I rushed to my desk to get online and find some more news about the incident as my sister was working in Manhattan at the time, and I was worried she might be near what I thought was a horrible accident. As soon as I got online, the second plane hit the other tower, and all naïve assumptions about this event being an accident vanished, and the sinister reality that this was a planned terrorist attack began to unveil its ugly truth. At first everyone in the office was pretty much ignoring the story and working on their business as usual, despite the news feeds blowing up on every major news site. Gradually the reality of the situation permeated the office until everyone started to go in to what I call "work cruise control" where everyone concentrates on the immediate task at hand, ignoring what's happening away from the office as a sort of defense mechanism. Finally the two towers collapsed and the pictures and video started to show up online. My attempts to contact my sister were -much like everyone else who had any family or friends in Manhattan- completely hopeless, and I began to fear the worst. My sister actually had plans to eat lunch with a friend at the towers that day, and luckily for me and my family, she had not been downtown before the collapse of the towers. I finally was able to reach her around noon because she had stayed home in the Brooklyn area, and she told me about the friend she was to have lunch with who showed up at her apartment covered in soot from the towers. The whole days events just seemed far too surreal to comprehend, and it wasn't until I got home and turned on the news that the reality of what had happened truly sunk in. I still remember how stunned everyone was at the time, and how little was known about who attacked us. This would change very quickly.

It was at this time that I -like many others- began to shift internally in my political perspectives about America, and what was important to me about these ideals. Suddenly my conspiratorial views about our government and the "hidden agenda of the elite secret societies" were flushed through the reality of the attacks, and became silly and meaningless in light of the real death and suffering that was occurring before my eyes. Instead of the villain being a "secret society" it was a real enemy who wanted to kill as many real American people as possible. It was impossible to imagine or even contemplate some kind of secret conspiracy that was as malicious and sinister as the people behind the attacks from that day. In what seems to be the reverse of what happened to certain other conspiracy-minded individuals, I transformed from a conspiracy nut in to a conservative/libertarian with renewed patriotic appreciation for the Great American Experiment. That transformation was further refined through the actions of all Americans in the following days as we as a country rallied around each other and did whatever we could to recover from the tragedy. I briefly toyed with the idea of joining the military, but my mom told me she would disown me if I did, so that idea was nixed. As much as I would do anything to defend this country, I could not entertain the possibility of my Mom having to worry about burying me after the personal issues she had recently been through. Family First, as they say.

I have found that I was not alone in this transformation process, and the blogosphere became my new outlet for discovery in my new found political leanings. I read tons of Stephen Den Beste, Glenn Reynolds, Bill Whittle, Jeff Goldstein and others, and laughed at my new favorite cartoons from Cox and Forkum. I actually ended up meeting Allen Forkum a few times at various Nashville blog gatherings. I have now landed comfortably amongst the small "L" libertarians at places like Reason.com, and have found solace in the study of Astronomy and Asteroids.

But todays anniversary made me realize how much I have changed politically as a result of the tragedy of the attacks, and I will never be the liberal hippie conspiracy freak I was at the time ever again. Certain fundamentals about life that are important to me are ingrained in the US Constitution, and I ignored them for far too long. Now I find new reasons to appreciate the genius behind the framers of that wonderfully exquisite document all the time, and I realize just how lucky I am to be a part of this great country.

I don't know why, but I've had this song stuck in my head all day.....

Finally, I want to say thanks to all of the men and women of the military who have responded to the events of those days with the same honor and courage that their forefathers did when this country faced similar challenges. I know I'm not alone in saying that in the weeks and months after that day no one believed that it would be eight years and counting without another successful attack on our shores. Thank you for your service in defense of our nation.

Update: This post from Cox and Forkum....for posterity or something..

Fun With Astronomy: The Galileoscope/SkyVoyager iphone App Edition

2009-09-08T18:17:00.000-07:00

So my latest bad excuse for staying up until ungodly hours of the evening is:

Scanning the skies with a Galileoscope and an iphone, and more specifically the iphone app SkyVoyager.

The combination of low-tech in the Galileoscope (manual focus, one moving part) mixed with ridiculously hi-tech (accurately shows the sky from any location on Earth, at any time up to 100 years in the past or future, and can identify and detail everything in the sky in same the direction that you're pointing your iphone) makes for a pretty direct learning experience in terms of astronomy. I've started to catalog what constellations are at what certain angles from my limited view at my apartment (pretty much anything between south and northwest), which allows me to begin to understand the rotation of our galaxay as opposed to just our solar system.

I've played around with a taking a few pictures after my buddy Fin let me borrow his Olympus DSLR- here's one that I took without actually attaching the camera to the scope, instead using a second tripod behind it to line up the shot. Not very efficient nor practical, but hey-I just started cut me some slack. Jeeeez..

A shot of Jupiter which was also taken using the double-tripod contraption, which in retrospect, is substantially more difficult than you might imagine. Notice the moons, which come through a lot more clearly through the scope by itself.

And if you want to truly see how amazing this telescope is for $20 (Twenty Dollars!!!) here is a shot from Flickr Contributor "Zoeff", a member of the Flickr Galileoscope pool. You can find other amazing shots taken from this very scope over there as well.

Moon trough the Galileoscope

Tycho (Crater)
Kepler (Cratepollo 11 landed here!
Plato (Crater)
BC is over here :D

This is taken trough the Galileoscope at prime focus with a CCD chip. This shows the great quality of the doublet lens that comes with this 15$ telescope kit!

I used K3CCTools for capturing and stacked 50 frames or so with RegiStax.

The CCD chip is a particular type of webcamera that is extremely efficient in taking astronomy pictures via video, and then stacking each video frame through available software in to a single picture. Not only is the resolution amazing but it is also clearly a lot less of a pain in the ass than using two tripods. Apparently these webcams are difficult to find but aside from the cost of my iphone and service, the app and scope have only set me back $35.00. I can see how astronomy viewing habits could get expensive very quickly, which at the moment for me is not an option. I'm ok for now as I stare at stars like Tarazed, that are a mere 146 light years away, but this star gazing stuff is very addictive, and I foresee an inevitable ascension from novice to amateur status in my future.

And the answer is yes of course the SkyVoyager also can point out asteroids, in case you were wondering. I just have to learn to live with less sleep, that's all.

NASA Lacking the Funding For Near Earth Asteroid Detection... Again.

2009-08-12T16:15:00.000-07:00

Ever since the SpaceGaurd Survey Report from 1992, Congress has been screwing around with this issue and not putting the money where their mouth is. As I have complained about repeatedly here at Tman in Tennessee, NASA does not spend enough of it's annual $17 Billion budget on meeting the minimum standards that were set out in the original SpaceGaurd Survey from 1994. The SpaceGaurd Survey was mainly for detection of asteroids 1 Kilometer in diameter or larger. This same program was "upgraded" again in the the NASA Authorization Act of 2005, when Congress called on NASA to provide an analysis of alternatives to discover, track, catalogue, and determine the physical characteristics of NEOs equal to or greater than 140 meters in diameter. The legislation also stipulated that NASA find 90 percent of all these NEOs within fifteen years.

In 2006, Congress requested that NASA give them an update on the state of NEO discovery and tracking efforts, which culminated in the Near Earth Object Congressional Hearings in November of 2007. I wrote about the hearings on this blog after they were concluded, and my analysis then is essentially the same as it was in 2004 when I started this blog, and also sadly enough absolutely nothing has changed.

Here's my analysis from 2007-

To sum up the hearings, I would say that we have somewhat of a mixed bag. On the one hand, the much needed argument for the continued funding of the Arecibo Observatory was made by all participants, and hopefully this will get some appropriations. As far as the Spacegaurd Suveys go, we are still behind on cataloging the big ones, and NASA's reps pretty much told Congress that they can't do what they were told to do as per the 2005 NASA Authorization Act, unless Congress.....tells them what to do. Fortunately, we have guys like Donald Yeomans and David Morrison around who are well aware of NASA's shortcomings, and are working around them to develop true answers like the folks at the B612 Foundation.

Next summer will be 100 years since the Tunguska impact. We have a long way to go before even pretending to think we could stop another impact as small as the Tunguska impact. And at $17 Billion I don't think we're getting our moneys worth from NASA in terms of protecting us from NEO's.

And if you're interested, since 2004 I've written several posts about this issue specifically, in terms of what NASA and Congress should be doing in regards to this issue.

Tman In Tennessee NASA NEO Posts

Check them out if you're interested.

Today the National Academy of Sciences released a report detailing the shortcomings of the NASA NEO programs.

NASA’s Asteroid Detection Programs Not Yet Meeting U.S. Goals

August 12 -- According to a new interim report from the National Research Council, NASA’s current near-Earth object surveys will not meet the congressionally mandated goal of discovering 90 percent of all objects over 140 meters in diameter by 2020. Funding for near-Earth object activities at NASA has been constrained, with most costs being met by funds from other programs. A final report will include findings and recommendations on detecting, characterizing, and mitigating the hazard of near-Earth objects.

Maybe someone will pay attention now? Based on the historical record, I have little faith that this report will do anything but restate the obvious, however more news about this issue is better than no news.

Along that same line, WIRED magazine posted a photo essay yesterday on Asteroid Impact Craters on Earth as seen from space-

By Betsy Mason
August 11, 2009 |
Asteroid impact craters are among the most interesting geological structures on any planet. Many other planets and moons in our solar system, including our own moon, are pock-marked with loads of craters. But because Earth has a protective atmosphere and is geologically active — with plate tectonics and volcanic eruptions, mostly relatively young oceanic crust, and harsh weathering from wind and water — impact structures don’t last long and can be tough to come by.

But on a few old pieces of continent, especially in arid deserts, the marks of asteroids have been preserved. One well-known example is our own Barringer crater, also known as Meteor Crater, in Arizona. The images here show some of the biggest, oldest and most interesting impact craters on the planet.

Here's one from just 50,000 years ago-

The Lonar crater in Maharashta, India is around 6,000 feet wide and 500 feet deep and contains a saltwater lake. Scientists determined the structure was caused by an asteroid through clues such as the presence of maskelynite, a glass that is only formed by extremely high-velocity impacts. The impact occurred around 50,000 years ago. This image was captured by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer on NASA’s Terra satellite. It is a simulated true-color image

Image: NASA, 2004

Again, for the umpteenth time, NOT IF BUT WHEN.

Jupiter Gets Slammed By A Huge Impactor, And We Missed It.

2009-07-21T22:03:00.000-07:00

Jupiter -the solar systems hoover vacuum- the planet that has literally swallowed major asteroids and comets that would have destroyed life on earth in a heart beat, got whacked recently by an impactor of unknown origins.

And even more interesting, it was discovered by an amateur astronomer-

Preliminary image showing a black mark in Jupiters South Polar Region (SPR) which is almost certainly the result of a large impact - either an asteroid or comet - similar to the Shoemaker-Ley impacts in 1994.

Date and Time of Report

Dark impact mark first noted at approximately 1330UTC on 19th July 2009 from my home observatory just outside Murrumbateman NSW Australia.

Inspection of earlier images shows the impact visible on the planets limb at 1411UTC.

Equipment and Contact Details

Contact info: Anthony Wesley
awesley@smartnetworks.com.au
awesley@acquerra.com.au
http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro

NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility at the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, confirmed that this was a major impact.

Scientists have found evidence that another object has bombarded Jupiter, exactly 15 years after the first impacts by the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.

Following up on a tip by an amateur astronomer, Anthony Wesley of Australia, that a new dark "scar" had suddenly appeared on Jupiter, this morning between 3 and 9 a.m. PDT (6 a.m. and noon EDT) scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., using NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility at the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, gathered evidence indicating an impact.

To give you an idea of how big this hole in Jupiter is, I give you a size comparison-

So something close to the size of the moon slammed in to Jupiter, and we completely missed it.

A 1992 U.S. Congressional study produced a "Spaceguard Survey Report" which led to a mandate that NASA locate 90% of large near-Earth asteroids larger than 1 km diameter within 10 years.

Clearly the ten year estimate was insufficient, because we missed an enormous impactor that was in our cosmic backyard, which was also one hell of a lot bigger than 1 km in diameter.

Our current NASA budget is around $17 billion annually. We haven't spent anywhere near close to a tenth of that in terms of Near Earth Object detection in the last ten years.

Priorities, that's all I'm saying.

Once again, visit the B612 Foundation for further information on what needs to be done to address this obvious shortcoming in the protection of our planet.

PJ O'Rourke- "Where Was The Government With Studebaker?"

2009-07-03T12:44:00.000-07:00

A little PJ to cheer you up on this glorious Fourth of July Weekend. I love his bit explaining how the automobile allowed the United States to come together. As someone who very much enjoys driving across this great country, I can't imagine having to do it in a train, where your freedom to go where you want is extremely limiting.

Reason.tv’s Ted Balaker sat down with O’Rourke at the Peterson Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. Topics include: bailouts, who ruined the U.S. auto industry, politicians’ love affair with trains, how easy women made O'Rourke a youthful socialist and how getting a paycheck turned him into a libertarian.

We Should All Listen More to Perry and the Brits...

2009-06-24T22:42:00.000-07:00

Perry de Havilland, over at Samizdata.net, commenting on what fun things we have to look forward to here in the USA....

Millions and millions of Americans support Obama's desire to even more massively intervene in the market for medical care than the US state already does. And of course Obama's moves are just the opening salvo in a desire to eventually end up with fully socialist healthcare, along the lines of Britain's ghastly National Health Service, which has intermittently tried to kill me over the years.

I have tried pointing Americans at the British example to show them what an appalling idea it is to have the state directing any industry, let alone medical care. But alas it is very hard to overcome that special kind of insular American optimism that does not think what happens in another advanced first world nation can teach them anything, because in the USA things will be different.

Well yes, it will be different... in that the control obsessed Obama's of this world will find new, innovative and oh so wholesome American ways to end up with a third rate health care system much like Britain has today.

This might be a good time for Americans to invest their money in Swiss medical clinics as I suspect in the coming years expatriated medical care will be a serious growth industry... plus it has the added benefit of getting your money out of the USA and US dollar.

The current emergency government run healthcare program we already have is Medicare, which is taking in less money than it is paying out, to the tune of $168 billion in 2006 and $179 billion in 2007.

Add that with Social Security deficits, it gets even worse. According to the American Academy of Actuaries-

Considering Medicare spending in conjunction with Social Security spending further highlights the strain these programs place on the economy. Social Security spending as a share of GDP increases more modestly than Medicare over the next several decades, and as a result, Medicare spending is expected to exceed that of Social Security in 2028. Combined, Medicare and Social Security expenditures equaled 7.3 percent of GDP in 2006. This share of GDP is expected to increase considerably to a projected 12.7 percent in 2030 and 17.6 percent in 2080. Medicare and Social Security expenditures are even more striking when considered relative to total federal revenues. The trustees report that total federal revenues have historically averaged about 18 percent of GDP. Using this average, about 40 percent of all federal revenues in 2007 will be used to pay Medicare and Social Security benefits. If no changes are made to either program and federal revenues remain at 18 percent of GDP, this share is expected to increase to 80 percent in 2040, and by 2080, Medicare and Social Security spending would equal nearly all total federal revenues. These projections highlight the increasing strains that Medicare, especially in conjunction with Social Security, will place on the U.S. economy. Moreover, increased spending for Medicare may crowd out the share of funds available for other federal programs.

Someone needs to explain to me why spending MORE MONEY ON HEALTHCARE will make HEALTHCARE CHEAPER thus saving our economy from catasrophe.

Good luck.

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lecture: Pluto and Some Q&A

2009-06-20T14:03:00.000-07:00

My favorite astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson gave a lecture/interview at the Los Angeles Public Library recently. He came to talk about Pluto and his recent book The Pluto Files, and as usual was Spock-like in his insight and logic in to the world of science and astronomy.

Here's the link to the full program where you can skip around to different parts of the lecture and Q&A session.

Here are two of my favorites from the lecture: Bush Innocent in War on Science

Remember this next time people talk about Obama "restoring science in America" or whatever, because I'm sure we'll hear about it again. His point about Bush appointing Judge John E. Jones III, who presided over Kitzmiller vs. Dover was especially poignant.

And this one, as Tyson destroys the silliness surrounding the conspiracies that will soon reach boiling point as we approach December 2012:

Just google it!

Iran should be liberated, and their regime eliminated......Part IX

2009-06-15T23:21:00.000-07:00

I wrote part VIII about three years ago, when Iraq was unraveling. I had no idea that today Iraq would look like a stable democracy next to Iran.

"Iran should be liberated, and their regime eliminated"
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

It is now more evident than ever before that the Iranian Regime is the biggest obstacle to peace in the region and the rest of the world. The two biggest hot spots in the middle east right now are in Lebanon and Iraq, and in both places the Iranian Regime is the state sponsor of those trying to kill innocent people ON PURPOSE. Every other surrounding Arab state except for Syria is ready to recognize Israel and end the pointless struggle over a bunch of freaking rocks.

This will never happen with the Iranian regime still in power.

Those of us who do not wish to "submit to God" involuntarily agree that these freaking nutjob Islamofascists trying to either convert the entire world to Islam or put the rest of us to death need to be stopped.

President Bush stated the following quite clearly after 9/11 that
"Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them.....Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.

Fast forward to the present. Hezbollah, the armed thugs whose salaries are paid by the Iranian Regime, have been trying to bleed Israel to death for over 20 years. They've wacked our US troops in the process. Today Iranian troops are fighting side by side with Hezbollah in Lebanon, just as they are with Al-Sadr in Iraq.

Sooner or later, if freedom for all from relgious persecution is to prevail, the Islamic Regime in Iran will have to fall. The sooner the better.

It remains to be seen how long it will take for the Iranian people to finally enjoy the liberty and freedom that we take for granted here in the US.

But one thing is certain, the Iranian people have had enough. And I don't think they are going to wait for help from the outside world before they take matters in to their own hands and finally push back against the bullies.

Michael Totten (now blogging for the time being at Commentary), who as usual has been running rings around the major news media organizations in providing breaking news about the Iranian demonstrations, had the following quote from Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski from his book Shah of Shahs, about the Iranian revolution in 1979, he describes the beginning of the end for the Shah Reza Pahlavi.

Now the most important moment, the moment that will determine the fate of the country, the Shah, and the revolution, is the moment when one policeman walks from his post toward one man on the edge of the crowd, raises his voice, and orders the man to go home. The policeman and the man on the edge of the crowd are ordinary, anonymous people, but their meeting has historic significance.

They are both adults, they have both lived through certain events, they have both their individual experiences.

The policeman’s experience: If I shout at someone and raise my truncheon, he will first go numb with terror and then take to his heels. The experience of the man at the edge of the crowd: At the sight of an approaching policeman I am seized by fear and start running. On the basis of these experiences we can elaborate a scenario: The policeman shouts, the man runs, others take flight, the square empties.

But this time everything turns out differently. The policeman shouts, but the man doesn’t run. He just stands there, looking at the policeman. It’s a cautious look, still tinged with fear, but at the same time tough and insolent. So that’s the way it is! The man on the edge of the crowd is looking insolently at uniformed authority. He doesn’t budge. He glances around and sees and sees the same look on other faces. Like his, their faces are watchful, still a bit fearful, but already firm and unrelenting. Nobody runs though the policeman has gone on shouting; at last he stops. There is a moment of silence.

We don’t know whether the policeman and the man on the edge of the crowd already realize what has happened. The man has stopped being afraid – and this is precisely the beginning of the revolution. Here it starts. Until now, whenever these two men approached each other, a third figure instantly intervened between them. That third figure was fear. Fear was the policeman’s ally and the man in the crowd’s foe. Fear interposed its rules and decided everything.

Now the two men find themselves alone, facing each other, and fear has disappeared into thin air. Until now their relationship was charged with emotion, a mixture of aggression, scorn, rage, terror. But now that fear has retreated, this perverse, hateful union has suddnely broken up; something has been extinguished. The two men have now grown mutually indifferent, useless to each other; they can now go their own ways.
Accordingly, the policeman turns around and begins to walk heavily back toward his post, while the man on the edge of the crowd stands there looking at his vanishing enemy.

May peace and liberty be upon the Iranian People.

The Iranian people are not happy with the election results

2009-06-13T23:11:00.000-07:00

Michael Totten is keeping the updates coming from Iran:

Iran On Fire
The BBC says clashes between demonstrators and police in Tehran are the most violent in a decade.

Video below shows a human wave of demonstrators chasing frightened police officers.

He has a quote from the Huffington Post:

"My next door neighbor is an Iranian immigrant who came here in 1977. He just received a SAT phone call from his brother in Tehran who reports that the rooftops of nighttime Tehran are filled with people shouting 'Allah O Akbar' in protest of the government and election results. The last time he remembers this happening is in 1979 during the Revolution. Says the sound of tens of thousands on the rooftops is deafening right now." It's almost four in the morning in Iran."

Hopefully this Cox and Forkum illustration will bear fruit...

Iowahawk Tried To Warn Us....

2009-06-03T21:58:00.000-07:00

.....we didn't listen. And now, this is very close to a reality-

Incidentally, I bought a new Ford Fusion a few months ago. I love it. For any of those idiots out there who say that the American Auto Industry isn't making anything that Americans want to buy, I give you the following evidence that you are dead wrong.

Here are the top selling cars in the US from the month of May-

1.) Ford F-Series: 33,381
2.) Chevy Silverado: 31,463
3.) Toyota Camry: 31,325
4.) Toyota Corolla: 23,576
5.) Honda Accord: 22,597
6.) Honda Civic: 20,723
7.) Ford Fusion: 19,786
8.) Chevy Impala: 18,709
9.) Nissan Altima: 18,408
10.) Ford Escape: 16,391

Ford has three in the top ten, with the Fusion at a healthy #7. Chevy is on life support from my tax dollars, and the car I bought was built by the company that didn't take any taxpayer money to stay alive. Sorry Chevy, but American Car Companies should be allowed to fail and disappear, and I don't see the point in rewarding failure.

What kills me is why did Ford wait this long to introduce this kind of sexiness to the American Roads?

And she drives as good as she looks.

A Saturday Treat From PJ O'Rourke- "The End of the Affair"

2009-05-30T16:24:00.001-07:00

The End of the Affair
The fate of Detroit isn’t a matter of economics. It’s a tragic romance, whose magic was killed by bureaucrats, bad taste and busybodies. P.J. O’Rourke on why Americans fell out of love with the automobile.

The phrase “bankrupt General Motors,” which we expect to hear uttered on Monday, leaves Americans my age in economic shock. The words are as melodramatic as “Mom’s nude photos.” And, indeed, if we want to understand what doomed the American automobile, we should give up on economics and turn to melodrama.

Politicians, journalists, financial analysts and other purveyors of banality have been looking at cars as if a convertible were a business. Fire the MBAs and hire a poet. The fate of Detroit isn’t a matter of financial crisis, foreign competition, corporate greed, union intransigence, energy costs or measuring the shoe size of the footprints in the carbon. It’s a tragic romance—unleashed passions, titanic clashes, lost love and wild horses........

Read the rest here...

Latinos for Impartiality

2009-05-30T00:43:00.000-07:00

Most of us have heard about the comment by SCOTUS nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor-

“‘I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,‘"

Many pundits have made the argument that this quote needs to placed in context of her full speech that day. You can read that same speech here, but in all honesty it doesn't really change the point she was making. In particular, the point about how she believes that "Although I agree with and attempt to work toward Judge Cedarbaum's aspiration(ed. to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law), I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases. And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society."

Basically, screw all that "impartiality", the law is something we can change to fit our needs in terms of identity politics, and retribution thereof.

A funny thing happened after Judge Sotomayor made her speech. Other Latino judges responded, and thanks to a diligent NRO reader, here are their thoughts-

I decided to peruse the comments delivered by the other participants in the 2001 Symposium at Berkeley, expecting to find that Judge Sotomayor's position was fairly mainstream among the presenters at an event sponsored by "La Raza Law Journal."

To my surprise, two of the judges speaking after her (she gave the keynote address the night before their presentations), rejected her relativism, her characterization of "[t]he aspiration to impartiality" as "just that"—a mere aspiration, and the endorsement of the use of "prejudices." None of the judges expressly disagreed with her by name, but given that, in her words, the "focus" of her keynote address was precisely the endorsement of prejudice, the implicit disagreement was fairly palpable and was probably obvious to the audience.

First, Judge Valeriano Saucedo of the California courts, noted that, because of his experiences, he had a certain degree of understanding to Hispanic defendants, but "[t]hat does not mean that I apply a different standard of justice, because that is wrong."

Speaking on the same panel, Judge Richard Paez (of the Ninth Circuit) was more emphatic, and emphasized that both juror and judge had a duty of impartiality. Here are his extended remarks on the subject:

"As Judge Saucedo said, we are required to apply the law fairly. I do not think that I ever have applied a different standard in judging a case involving a Latino defendant, a black defendant, an Asian defendant, a white defendant, or a multimillion dollar corporation. But, there is something about our own personal life experience that makes each of us different.

"I used to tell jurors when they entered the courtroom and took their oaths as jurors, 'You walk into the courtroom with a lifetime of experiences, and we don't ask you to suddenly forget all that experience, to ignore that experience.' I asked them if they could judge fairly the case that they were about to hear. I explained, 'As jurors, recognize that you might have some bias, or prejudice. Recognize that it exists, and determine whether you can control it so that you can judge the case fairly. Because if you cannot - if you cannot set aside those prejudices, biases and passions - then you should not sit on the case.'

"The same principle applies to judges. We take an oath of office. At the federal level, it is a very interesting oath. It says, in part, that you promise or swear to do justice to both the poor and the rich. The first time I heard this oath, I was startled by its significance. I have my oath hanging on the wall in my office to remind me of my obligations. And so, although I am a Latino judge and there is no question about that - I am viewed as a Latino judge - as I judge cases, I try to judge them fairly. I try to remain faithful to my oath.

"I think we look at conflicts from our own life experiences. If you were to look at my life - at least my professional experience - and I'll just start with that, I probably have a unique professional experience. If you looked at the federal judiciary and asked how many federal court of appeals judges are there that worked in legal services, as I did for nine years, I doubt that you would find many. I never worked for a law firm, a district attorney's office, a U.S. Attorney's Office, a State Attorney General's office, or the Justice Department. I worked, instead, for legal services for the poor. That was my professional career. And working in that environment, representing individual clients as well as litigating larger cases, sometimes impacts the way one may look at issues or conflicts. You don't shed that experience - you don't leave it behind. But, when called upon to decide a case, judges have a distinct and clear obligation to apply the law fairly and justly to the parties in the case."

Obviously, the question for Judge Sotomayor, is whether she now agrees with Judges Saucedo and Paez. In any case, Senate Republicans need to bring up Judge Paez's disagreement with Judge Sotomayor as frequently as possible.

This tells me that Judge Sotomayor is incapable of separating her desire to instill identity politics in to the rule of law from what her job requirements are as a United States Judge.

What's even scarier is that this is the best Obama could come up with for his first appointment. I'm of the opinion that Judge Sotomayor will reveal her true ideals during the nomination process, and the American public will disapprove of her desire to make identity politics a part of the rule of law in the Supreme Court.

But then again, I'm an optimist.

Janeane Garafolo Is Not Prepared To Deal With The Real Generation X

2009-05-30T00:04:00.000-07:00

Kudos to Ms. Pierson who exemplifies what constitutes a REAL American Individual.

She isn't waiting for the government to bail her out. And Ms Garafolo is afraid of what Ms. Pierson represents.

Some Old People Are More Equal Than Others

2009-05-27T23:52:00.000-07:00

“‘I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,‘ said Judge Sotomayor........”

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

After that it did not seem strange when next day the pigs who were supervising the work of the farm all carried whips in their trotters. It did not seem strange to learn that the pigs had bought themselves a wireless set, were arranging to install a telephone, and had taken out subscriptions to John Bull, TitBits, and the Daily Mirror. It did not seem strange when Napoleon was seen strolling in the farmhouse garden with a pipe in his mouth-no, not even when the pigs took Mr. Jones's clothes out of the wardrobes and put them on, Napoleon himself appearing in a black coat, ratcatcher breeches, and leather leggings, while his favourite sow appeared in the watered silk dress which Mrs. Jones had been used to wear on Sundays.

I wish I wrote this, but here is Jeff Goldstein trying to help the GOP to control the message about why Sonia Sotomayor is a bad pick for the SCOTUS-

Don’t vote down the first latina SCOTUS nominee.

Vote down the first latina SCOTUS nominee who believes it is the role of the judiciary to make policy, and that some identity groups are more equal than others — and the law will be made to say so, should she be appointed to the bench.

Unless the GOP grows a spine, Judge Sotomayor will become our next Supreme Court Justice.

"Four legs good, two legs
bad!"

Here's the thing Judge Sotomayor. This statue is blind FOR A REASON.

Showtime For The Obama Administration....

2009-05-26T21:31:00.000-07:00

NKorea warns of military action against SKorea
May 26 11:05 PM US/Easter
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea's military says it considers South Korea's participation in a U.S.-led program to intercept ships suspected of spreading weapons of mass destruction tantamount to a declaration of war against the North.

The communist North's military said in a statement Wednesday that it will respond with "immediate, strong military measures" if the South actually stops and searches any North Korean ships under the Proliferation Security Initiative.

The statement, carried by the North's Korean Central News Agency, said North Korea no longer considers itself bound by the armistice that ended the Korean War, as a protest over the South's participation.

Joe Biden, October 2008-

"Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

North Korea is attempting to undo the armistice from the Korean War, which is bad. North Korea is also trading nuclear weapons technology with Syria, and probably Iran as well. This is real bad.

Hopefully the news is just more sabre-rattling from Mr. "Sea of Fire", because this is not the ideal "generated international crisis" I want Obama testing his mettle on. I suppose we will soon find out how the Administration is going to handle these things going forward, so we might as well find out now.

How Many Times Did Bush Blame Clinton?

2009-05-21T23:21:00.001-07:00

I don't remember, well, any specifically.

George W. Bush was dealt an incredibly farked up hand on 9/11. Many people may argue that he didn't do the right things after the attack. I'm not one of them; I think Bush did the impossible and kept us safe for eight years, however this is irrelevant to my point.

I've never heard anyone complain that he whined too much about what a mess he inherited from the Clinton Administration. Despite Enron collapsing, web start-ups in Silicon valley being exposed as a monetary fraud which caused the nation to have a bout with "irrational exuberance" or Bill's wag-the-dog chicken game with Iraq and Islamic terrorism, I don't remember Bush bitching about what a big mess he inherited.

I am very disappointed with the Obama administrations repeated attempts to blame our principles being shorted because of "the mess they inherited". I don't hear any recognition of the new war that our nation was pushed in to because of Islamic totalitarianism, nor any defense of our restrained response thereof. All I hear is "Bush did everything wrong, I will go in a different direction".

Obama was elected because he promised a different direction. Regardless if you feel we were going in the wrong direction under Bush, if Obama is going to lead the country, he needs to either start leading in a different direction or stop bitching about what a mess the country is in.

Well past 100 days in office and Obama hasn't changed anything.

Put up or shut up Barry. It's your mess now.

In Case You Were Wondering What Repairs Are Being Done To Hubble By NASA

2009-05-19T21:59:00.000-07:00

Servicing Mission 4 Essentials
09.15.08

Galaxies from the early universe. The birthplaces of planets. Dark matter. Dark energy. Since its launch in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has brought these mysteries into focus, its powerful gaze scanning the universe for the details planet-bound telescopes find impossible to detect.

Far above the Earth's surface, Hubble floats clear of the planet's light-distorting atmosphere, beaming back images that have transfixed humanity and changed the scientific world.

Hubble's triumphs continue to accumulate thanks to a unique design that allows astronauts to repair and upgrade the telescope while it remains in orbit. Repairs keep the telescope functioning smoothly, while upgrades to the instruments bring a slew of new discoveries and science.

The next servicing mission, Servicing Mission 4 (SM4), in May 2009, will be the final trip to the Hubble Telescope. Over the course of five spacewalks, astronauts will install two new instruments, repair two inactive ones, and perform the component replacements that will keep the telescope functioning at least into 2014. The effort-intensive, rigorously researched, exhaustively tested mission also involves diverse groups of people on the ground throughout the country

NASA's latest update says-

PRESS RELEASE
Date Released: Monday, May 18, 2009
Source: Johnson Space Center

Human hands have touched the Hubble Space Telescope for the last time. Astronauts Andrew Feustel and John Grunsfeld spent seven hours and two minutes putting the finishing touches on the telescope in the final spacewalk from a space shuttle airlock.

During the STS-125 mission's five spacewalks, Atlantis' crew completed all of the mission objectives to improve Hubble's view of the universe.

Over the course of the mission's five spacewalks, the crew added two new science instruments, repaired two others and replaced hardware that will extend the telescope's life at least through 2014. The five spacewalks lasted 36 hours and 56 minutes all together. There have been 23 spacewalks devoted to Hubble, totaling 166 hours and six minutes.

Greg Gutfield and The Evolution of the Libertarian

2009-05-19T13:14:00.000-07:00

Greg Gutfield, host of Fox News Channel's show Red Eye, recently gave an interview/Q&A session at Reason Weekend, the annual event held by the nonprofit that publishes Reason.com, where he was interviewed by Reason Senior Editor Katherine Mangu-Ward.

There are some great moments to the interview, but the interesting part for me is Mr. Gutfield's description of his political evolution from hippie-loving liberal in to a conservative, now to a full-blown libertarian. There are a lot of similarities between his story and mine, and I can understand how and why he is politically today, which are many of the same reasons I am the way I am as well.

Cool video, enjoy...

Wednesday Night Feast: Garlic/Herb Chevre Stuffed Chicken Thighs

2009-05-13T19:12:00.001-07:00

New recipe for tonight, and I got the Herb/Garlic Chevre idea from the Head Chef of the Family, my Mom. Try it out, and make sure you get good Chevre!

Garlic/Herb Chevre Stuffed Chicken Thighs

Ingredients:
4 Whole Chicken Thighs
2 Bell peppers
1 Yellow Onions
1 Bag of Golden Yellow Potatoes
1 Bulb garlic
1 block of Soft Chevre (goat cheese)
1 Tbsp Salt
1 tsp Pepper
1/2 cup Olive Oil
Fresh Rosemary

Dice finely one quarter of a bell pepper, three cloves of garlic, and 1/8th of the onion and mix together with the Chevre. Cut the potatoes in half and after salting and drizzling olive oil in a baking pan, lay them down, skin side up to coat the bottom of the pan. Chop up the rest of the garlic, peppers and onions and place on top of the potatoes. Take the chicken thighs, and dig out some space for Chevre behind the main bone, and then stuff the Chevre inside. Season the outside of the thighs with olive oil, salt and pepper.

Lay some rosemary around the chicken thighs and cook for about an 1:15-1:30 at 385.

Bon Apetit!

Reason # 854,265 Why The Private Sector Is More Efficient Than The Government

2009-05-08T09:18:00.001-07:00

This is hilarious. Do you remember how the government claimed that they were going to allow taxpayers to track the money being spent from the $780 Billion Stimulus package? They even set up a website in order to let taxpayers do this- "Recovery.gov".

Take it away Reason TV-

RECOVERY.ORG VS. RECOVERY.GOV: HOW THE PRIVATE SECTOR, NOT THE FEDS, IS TRACKING STIMULUS SPENDING IN REAL TIME

Recovery.gov, which doesn't have any details about contracts or grants yet—and won't until October 2009 or, more likely, sometime next year, long after the thrill of living is gone and a huge chunk of the $787 billion stimulus package has already been frittered away on "shovel-ready" projects such as the John Murtha-Johnstown Cambria County Airport (pop. 20 passengers a day).

Thankfully, the folks at the information-services firm Onvia stepped in and created the site Recovery.org, which is already on the case and showing, as much as is possible, who is getting what.

Hope! Also, change.

John Stewart Hits Bottom, Digs.

2009-05-01T23:24:00.000-07:00

So most of you have heard about the recent post-9/11 CIA Torture Memos that were released for political purposes to satiate the leftists who helped get Obama elected.

Basically the story goes like this: about a year after 9/11 happened three bigshot Islamic fanatical terrorists were waterboarded by the various experts from the FBI/CIA/Military in order to extract information about upcoming terrorist attacks. And apparently we "tortured" these three assholes because they openly mocked and bragged about the "second wave" of attacks that were about to happen. And we were right to do so because the information gathered allowed US authorities to thwart and defuse this "second wave" of attacks. No one who cares about their own survival would rationally argue against this process. It wasn't pretty, but these assholes are still alive, and clearly the "torture" prescribed was neither disfiguring nor barbaric.

Skip forward to April 2009, as Clifford May attempts to explain the preceding story to the masses on The Daily Show with John Stewart.

Here is the meat of the interview, which if you're interested, is below. Most of it makes me violently ill.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

M - Th 11p / 10c

Cliff May

thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Economic Crisis

First 100 Days

During this exchange, John Stewart took the clown nose off and argued the hypothetical about "protecting Americas values" to the extreme by claiming that Harry Truman was a war criminal for dropping the atomic bombs upon Japan during WWII, the key exchange comes around 5:30.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

M - Th 11p / 10c

Cliff May Unedited Interview Pt. 2

thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Economic Crisis

First 100 Days

Stewart reasons that "hey, we shoulda done WWII different, maybe scared the Japs with a Jerry Bruckheimer show instead of killed all these innocent people."

There aren't enough levels of wrong to detail why this particular version of historical revisionism is so idiotic and dangerous.

Thankfully, Bill Whittle of Pajamas Media helps do the heavy lifting. Watch this link for further clarification.

Realizing what a complete tool Mr. Stewart had made of himself, he decided to give a mini-mea-culpa to his adoring throngs at The Daily Show with this clip.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

M - Th 11p / 10c

Harry Truman Was Not a War Criminal

thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Economic Crisis

First 100 Days

Sorry John, but your clown nose doesn't hide the fact that you made some irreproachably asinine comments that insulted the very principles that you pretend to defend through your faux-news program at Comedy Central.

You can keep digging, and the trained seals that adulate your cheap shots will continue to supply the shovels. But sooner or later you'll realize that you reached the bottom a long time ago, and if you want to be a journalist that reports the news as entertainment, whether the clown nose is on or off, you are going to have to STOP DIGGING. Eventually those trained seals will realize "who's the more foolish - the fool, or the fool who follows him?"

Gonna be a long four years I think..

2009-04-27T21:05:00.001-07:00

8th WSJ UPDATE: Airplane ‘Photo Op’ Angers 9/11 Witnesses.

Now I realize this photo-op was apparently ok'd by Louis Caldera, the current Director of the White House Military Office, who is lesser known for:

serving on the board of directors for IndyMac Bank from 2002 until its failure and subsequent seizure by the government in July 2008. In other words, he was there for the entire housing bubble while the bank destroyed itself.

Yeah, so I guess maybe he is lacking in foresight.

His apology came quick of course-

"Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision. While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it’s clear that the mission created confusion and disruption. I apologize and take responsibility for any distress that flight caused."

A mission? Really?

You want to impress the nation Obama?

Fire this idiot. Right now.

PJ O'Rourke Goes Down Under

2009-04-24T21:50:00.000-07:00

(via the Australian Blogfather Tim Blair) Glad to see him out and about, smashing leftist hypocrisy in his own unique style.

The immigration part is especially funny, around 35:00 minutes in.

Enjoy..

The Best Job Interview Cheat Sheet Ever

2009-04-21T18:14:00.001-07:00

Fortunately for me I don't need to worry about the fun and excitement of job interviews at the moment as I am currently employed. However, when I applied for my current job I spent a lot of time reading how to "nail the interview". I also spent a decent amount of time at my previous job interviewing people for various jobs.

Everything you need to know about nailing an interview is in this page, with video evidence.

How To Nail An Interview (22 Tips)

What is it that certain people say or do during a job interview that makes them stand out? Why do some people struggle to find work, while others land a job in no time? I wanted to know, and the only way to find out was to experience the interview from the other side of the table. If I could be the one asking the interview questions, not answering, I could see first hand what made candidates stand out. I could then take that knowledge and cater my behavior in any future interview to give myself the best chance of getting hired.............

Hope this helps somebody....

The Lesson To Take Home From Todays Tea Party

2009-04-14T22:33:00.000-07:00

Our Government Is Too Big.

I work every day to help people untangle the mess of government bureaucracy. The reason thousands of people are taking to the streets today is because they are a victim of:

TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION.

It's not your money Senator, Congressman, President.

You Work For US.

I don't get it.

2009-04-13T21:06:00.001-07:00

Lefty bloggers complain that the Democrats aren't paying them enough to pimp their message.

Jane Hamsher-

They come to us, expecting us to give them free publicity, and we do, but it’s not a two way street,” Jane Hamsher, the founder of FiredogLake, said in an interview. “They won’t do anything in return. They’re not advertising with us. They’re not offering fellowships. They’re not doing anything to help financially, and people are growing increasingly resentful.

Markos (spit!) Moulitsas-

“Most want the easy way — having a big blogger promote their agenda,” adds Markos Moulitsas, the founder of DailyKos. “Then they turn around and spend $50K for a one-page ad in the New York Times or whatever.”

Since none of the supposedly "right side" bloggers I read regularly have ever been paid a dime, much less actively on the payroll of the Democratic party, I don't understand how these same leftist bloggers are now complaining that the Tea Party Protests are somehow financed by the right, as if this isn't something of which they JUST COMPLAINED ABOUT NOT GETTING ENOUGH?

Really?

They think Fox News and Rick Santelli started the Tea Party protests?

Are they really this stupid?

This is a rhetorical question.

Our Resplendence Is Never Quiet

2009-04-06T19:00:00.000-07:00

The Soxaholix is back which means it's Red Sox Season......should be interesting this year, with Smoltz and what not. I'm still sort of floating on the last two WORLD SERIES CHAMPION BOSTON RED SOX seasons coming in just five years, so, you know.......

A Good Choice For Hubble By The World Wide Web

2009-04-04T23:17:00.000-07:00

Indeed...

Hubble Celebrates the International Year of Astronomy with the Galaxy Triplet Arp 274
April 3, 2009: On April 1-2, the Hubble Space Telescope photographed the winning target in the Space Telescope Science Institute's "You Decide" competition in celebration of the International Year of Astronomy (IYA). The winner is a group of galaxies called Arp 274. The striking object received 67,021 votes out of the nearly 140,000 votes cast for the six candidate targets.

Our Country Is In the Best of Hands...

2009-03-31T22:42:00.000-07:00

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

"Gentlemen, we have officially run out of everyone's money....who wants cake?"

So Asteroids Bump The News Again

2009-03-30T19:02:00.000-07:00

Professor Reynolds over at Instapundit links to the recent Wired article, "How to Defend Earth Against an Asteroid Strike".

It's a well written piece that lays out our current available arsenal of proven/semi-proven/unproven techniques for asteroid deflection. (National Geographic also did a great job of examining these techniques recently in their "Naked Science: Asteroids" program- the winner, or most logical in my opinion, is the gravity tractor- and the ex-astronauts at the B612 Foundation agree). It also links to the upcoming 1st International Academy of Astronautics Planetary Defense Conference, which is April 27th-30th in Granada, Spain. There's one vacation I wish I had planned earlier, because geeking out with asteroid freaks by day and some Paella at night is sort of my idea of heaven......

.......what? Shutup. Yes, I know, I'm a dork.

Anyhoo, the Wired article still holds off from making the one point I'm always railing about that never seems to get more attention whenever the subject of asteroids comes up: We are spending WAY TOO SMALL of a percentage of NASA's budget on Asteroid Mitigation. Wired breaches the subject at the end of the article by pointing out what the current spending is for our funding of Asteroid Mitigation and Detection; around $4 MILLION.

NASA's projected budget for 2009 is around $17 BILLION

There is something seriously wrong with this breakdown in this humble tax payers perspective. We should know TODAY or at least SOON what is the best and most readily available method to deflect a potentially devastating Asteroid. We have ideas, but none of them are getting tested the way they should. NASA has less than 1 tenth of a percent of its budget devoted to asteroid mitigation.

For comparison, NASA spent $278 million on a satellite to measure co2 in the atmosphere, or more specifically one that does it better then the ones we already have. That satellite didn't make it, and is now at the bottom of the ocean.

I'm beginning to think the ESA is way ahead of NASA. And NASA hasn't been behind anyone on anything space related since Sputnik. This is just wrong to me for some reason. Maybe I'm crazy.

I haven't posted this before, but here's how I'll end this post-one of my favorite all time asteroid impact videos. Make sure you hit the high def-

Turn On The Lights For Human Achievement

2009-03-28T17:12:00.000-07:00

Here is a question you didn't hear asked tonight at the White House

2009-03-24T18:53:00.001-07:00

"Mr President,

Your recent return of the Churchill bust to Britain, along with the DVD Gift errors seem to mean this administration is giving a cold shoulder to Britain, which is in great contrast to the previous administration. Is there anything personal behind your animosity that could be contributed to Churchill's decision to put down the Mau-Mau uprising in Kenya, where your grandfather was tortured by British troops?"

Nope. You probably won't hear that one for a while.

Good to see the boys from Cox And Forkum are back...they've been missed.

2009-03-19T19:05:00.000-07:00

I love these guys....

Socialism Reality Slap For the Boomers

2009-03-16T23:56:00.000-07:00

Tigerhawk lays out some staggering stats:

As the 'Villain and others have pointed out, the collapse in value of all assets other than cash has crushed the net worth of the Baby Boomers. It has also had a disproportionate impact on the rich and near rich.
The number of American households with a net worth of $1 million or more, excluding the value of their primary residence, fell 27% to 6.7 million in 2008 from an all-time high of 9.2 million the year before, according to a report from market research firm Spectrem Group.

"America has a lot fewer millionaires than when this economic crisis began," said George Walper, president of Spectrem Group, in a written statement.

But don't weep only for the 2.5 million fewer millionaires. The report, which is based on surveys of 3,000 affluent households, also showed the number of both multi-millionaires and aspiring millionaires plummeted last year.

Affluent households, defined as those with a net worth of $500,000 or more, declined 28% to 11.3 million from 15.7 million.

And, of course, it has only gotten worse since the beginning of the year.

Well, good thing Obama isn't going to do what they did in Massachusetts with their Universal Healthcare program-

Via The Boston Globe:

The subsidized insurance program at the heart of the state's healthcare initiative is expected to roughly double in size and expense over the next three years - an unexpected level of growth that could cost state taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars or force the state to scale back its ambitions.

It's not like he's going to propose a trillion dollar healthcare program that will double in two years, right?

I mean, look at Medicare, last year it was only $30.4 Trillion in debt! With a 13 trillion dollar GDP we'll have that paid off in no time!

See, what I'm trying to say is that I may not be an economist, but you say a trillion here, a trillion there and sooner or later you're talking real money!

This Guy Kutiman Is Incredible...

2009-03-15T23:36:00.000-07:00

His name is Ophir Kutiel aka Kutiman, and he's taken hundreds of individual Youtube videos and mixed them in to 7 single individual songs that make it appear as if the entire internet is its own band.

This one is my favorite so far- Thru-you 03- I'm New

There a few more too. Unbelievable..

Update: Correction, I have a new favorite-awesome Talkbox and the beat is sinful.

And you can download all the tracks mp3's here- Thru you

Best Tea Party Protest Sign So Far

2009-03-14T14:51:00.000-07:00

Shots on the House (via Instapundit) has this one from todays rally in Columbus...geez dad, get a better sign! I like the monkey Che t-shirt though. Nice touch.

National Iowahawk Day

2009-03-13T18:21:00.000-07:00

There's a bash going on up in Chicago, but I can't make it so I'll have to celebrate here in Nashvegas.

We tonight shall toast to Iowahawk, and will curse his name tomorrow I suspect.

I'm not sure there is anyone funnier than Iowahawk right now.

2009-03-10T20:32:00.001-07:00

He's just on another level. Goldstein, ball is in your court..

Give the Gift of Stuff

Dear Barry:
I've had a bit of a bad luck patch over the last month (losing my job, watching my 401k completely disintegrate, etc., etc.) and ended up relocating from a high rise in Lincoln Park to a new neighborhood along the Fullerton underpass on the Kennedy Expressway. I was a bit worried about the move at first, but my new neighbors have been great. In fact on move-in day they greeted me with a grocery cart "welcome wagon" containing some lovely and practical gifts like cans of Sterno, cardboard, fortified wine, and a hypo-allergenic harmonica. I would like to show my appreciation with thoughtful "thank you" gifts. Can you recommend something nice that won't break my budget ($3.00 total for 6 gifts)? Please help!
Barbara in Chicago
Dear Barbara:
With my busy schedule of entertaining foreign dignitaries and celebrities at the White House, I know how important a well chosen gift can be. Two weeks ago, for example, we received a visit from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The Prime Minister brought a few housewarming gag gifts including a pen set made from a boat, a framed paper thing from another boat, and some old books by Churchill (not Ward, but that English guy). Obviously we wanted to return the nice gesture so I sent my interns out on a scavenger hunt for an appropriate present. They couldn't find anything in the West Wing, but luckily Costco was open and was running a 25-for-the-price-of-10 clearance sale in the DVD department. You should have seen Mr. Brown light up when he opened that sack of classic titles like "Wizard of Oz" and "Baby Geniuses 2." I like to think those DVDs helped cement our Anglo-American "special relationship" even if, as he mentioned to me, they probably wouldn't work in his European player. Thinking quickly, I told the PM I would send him an American DVD player as soon as I earned enough cash-back points on my Costco card. Crisis averted, but that episode taught me a valuable lesson: always keep a stock of gifts handy in case some foreign poobah or supreme religious figure or failing industry leader pops by for coffee. As a result, I make sure the Oval Office closet is filled with pre-wrapped Sham-Wows and Snuggle blankets and trillion dollar bailout packages for whatever gift emergency might arise......

Read the rest...

Godspeed Johannes

2009-03-06T23:29:00.000-08:00

(AP Photo/Florida Today, Malcolm Denemark)

The Kepler Mission: A Search For Habitable Planets......because sooner or later we'll have to find one.

Coffee As An Art Form

2009-03-03T21:22:00.000-08:00

via the good folks at Bongo Java and Jackson's mad skills..

My Contribution To Today's Tea Party

2009-02-27T00:02:00.000-08:00

Since I have to work to pay taxes so the government can take my money to do what they think is best for me, I'm going to use my blog to spread the message of true conservatism in the best way I know how.

READ THIS.

How to Explain Conservatism to Your Squishy Liberal Friends: Individualism 'R' Us

By P.J. O'Rourke

......."When government quits being something we use only in an emergency and becomes the principal source of aid and assistance in our society, then the size, expense and power of government are greatly increased. The decision that politicians are wiser, kinder and more honest than we are and that they, not we, should control the dispensation of eleemosynary goods and services is, in itself, a diminishment of the individual and proof that we're jerks."

Update: Instapundit has this picture from the Nashville Tea Party Protest, as well as pics from others across the country.

WAY TO GO NASHVILLE!!! Wish I could've been there...

Larry Miller Explains the Economy...."we'll take the red one..."

2009-02-24T21:15:00.000-08:00

It's a good thing this is so funny, because it's sadly true.

Haunting....

2009-02-21T01:05:00.000-08:00

Here's the last time Stevie Ray Vaughn played his tribute to Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Chile".

Alpine Valley Music Theater East Troy WI, August 26, 1990.

Yes, it's a bootleg, but listen about four minutes in and you will hear the sounds of a guitar player that knows he's playing on borrowed time....

Sweet Music...

2009-02-13T22:54:00.000-08:00

For my buds Brad and Erin at Carma Performance Engineering in Nashville-

Once I win that lottery I'm bringing in one of these babies to play with....

Happy 200th Charles Darwin!

2009-02-12T15:55:00.000-08:00

Last night my friend Fin and I were discussing the genius that was Charles Darwin, and how utterly amazing it is that he was able to visualize such an advanced theory as evolution and natural selection without the aid of modern technology. What's even better about this is that modern technology has been used to further solidify and validate the theory of evolution in ways that Darwin could only dream about.

First, a birthday salute video from some of Darwins greatest admirers-

And here is the excellent program by NOVA about the final nail in the coffin of "intelligent design" versus the establishment clause of our constitution, Kitzmiller Vs. Dover....

Happy Birthday Charles, and thanks!

Isn't that weird?

2009-02-09T22:10:00.000-08:00

That our current president writes an editorial that is exclusively published by one particular newspaper?

Granted it's all hopeychangey and whatnot, but still......I'm half intrigued, because the president should be a guy that wants to duke it out intellectually across a major news media sounding board.

But I don't trust exclusivity to one sounding board. He shouldn't be afraid to defend those viewpoints on each major platform. And it troubles me that this doesn't seem to bother anyone.

Jay Pinkerton takes on Saddam

2009-02-04T23:02:00.001-08:00

......this is the internet, right?

And I can just post whatever here on blogger in tribute to the author of said whatever, right?

Like limewire for internet humor right? Or something?

Anyways.......here's an oldie but goodie....

"Husseins Big Day" by Jay Pinkerton

"a significant infringement on individual choice and liberty."

2009-02-03T20:47:00.000-08:00

And this is happening in Boston, my hometown, the birthplace of the revolution against taxation without representation?

Technically the last day to sign up for insurance in compliance with that mandate was November 15, though as a practical measure Massachusetts residents actually had until January 1, 2008. Those without insurance as of that date will lose their personal exemption for the state income tax when they file this spring. In 2009, the penalty will increase to 50 percent of the cost of a standard insurance policy.

Such a mandate was, of course, a significant infringement on individual choice and liberty. As the Congressional Budget Office noted, the mandate was "unprecedented," and represented the first time that a state has required that an individual, simply because they live in a state and for no other reason, must purchase a specific government- designated product.

It was also a failure.

There was a moment during the presidential debates when Obama and McCain were asked if healthcare was a "right" as an American whether they consider health care to be a commodity, a right, or something else.

Obama thought it was a right, McCain referred to it as a responsibility.

Your "rights" as an American are clearly detailed in the aptly named "Bill Of Rights". Those rights include things that government can take away such as; speech, guns, legal representation via due process, private property and rights solely vested in each state. And more specifically, the Bill of Rights guarantees what about these precious commodities the government CAN'T TAKE AWAY.

None of them include anything about what a Government should GIVE you. Our current president believes that healthcare is a right, and this is in direct contradiction of what our Bill of Rights clearly lays forward.

And he's the one with the Harvard Law degree.

I ask you, who is interpreting the constitution more accurately: one who agrees that healthcare is a responsibility or the one who thinks it is a right?

Gonna be a rough four years I imagine.

James Randi Is Not Here To Bless You

2009-01-28T21:52:00.000-08:00

But at 80 years old, he will give you a mental perspective that will supersede your spiritual desires. Randi discusses the illogical rationalization that some of the survivors of the recent Hudson River place crash describe and then extends the perspective to the dull reality that is our existence.

Humility in existence is an advantage if one wants to appreciate the possibilities.

This Himalayan Salt Rock Is Pretty Damn Cool

2009-01-16T11:36:00.000-08:00

So I was on vacation this week and my friends and I went to Gatlinburg and rented a cabin. The cabin itself was also pretty damn cool, and it had an amazing kitchen which made for great tapas-style dinners. You can go here to see the cabin we stayed in -Mountain View Lodge. What appears to have been the highlight from the trip was the Christmas gift I received from my sister, a Himalayan salt rock. We were all blown away how delectable different foods were when seared on the 500 degree rock. The prep for it is easy as ever; throw the rock in the oven at 500 degrees for around 20 minutes, and then put it on the stove while you sear whatever foods you decide to cook.

We tried some flank steak, salmon, mahi-mahi, shrimp, and also seared a full ribeye steak on the rock for flavoring before putting it in the oven. Everything was delicious, and the salt flavor from he rock takes care of the seasoning so you don't need to do much to the food before cooking it. We did use a little roasted garlic rub for the salmon, which turned out great.

So thanks again to my sis for a neat present, and try this thing out when you get a chance, you won't be disappointed.

This one hurts.

2009-01-10T20:54:00.000-08:00

It's been a great season to be a Titans fan and I thank Coach Fisher and the Team for putting together a great team that had the makings of a legitimate Super Bowl contender. This loss will sting for a while because we didn't get beat in any category but turnovers, and that was the difference in the game.

I have zero doubt that next year this team will be right back in the thick of things ready to compete for another shot at the title. Until then, we salute the Titans for a great year and look forward to next.....

Explorer | Moment of Death | National Geographic Channel

2009-01-08T15:49:00.001-08:00

Last night I watched a show on the National Geographic Channel that was by far one of the most fascinating examinations of the mysteries behind death itself. Probably the most interesting aspect of the show is the way they examined the aspects of mortality that cannot be explained in a scientific hypothesis, particularly the testimonies of people who have out-of-body experiences during their coma/death/near-death episodes.

Dr. Lance Becker of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania is trying to help cardiac arrest patients cheat death by using hypothermia, or cooling of the body, to slow down the process of cell death.

Explorer | Moment of Death | National Geographic Channel

Explorer opens your eyes to riveting, untold adventures with host Lisa Ling.

View >>

One might say morbidly fascinating?

The B612 Foundation Works With JPL To Answer The Question:

2008-12-18T20:55:00.000-08:00

Can we stop an asteroid from causing irreparable damage to planet earth using a Gravity Tractor?

The folks at the B612 Foundation have hired the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to use their advanced computer simulations to determine if a gravity tractor can significantly alter the course of a medium size asteroid enough so that it misses the "keyhole" -the "small region slightly further from the Earth than the resonance line per se, which would, should the asteroid pass through it result in an impact at the time of the resonant return."

Take it away B612:

B612 Foundation
760 Fifth Street East
Sonoma, CA 95476
707-343-1627
24 September, 2008
Summary Statement by B612 Foundation regarding its contract with JPL to conduct a detailed performance analysis of a transponder equipped Gravity Tractor spacecraft.
A successful NEO deflection campaign will involve several key functional elements, including the ability to, in situ, precisely determine the orbit of a threatening NEO prior to and post deflection, and to precisely adjust the NEO’s orbit to assure its successful passage between return keyholes at the time of its closest approach to Earth. B612’s contract with JPL called on it to quantify these two critical capabilities. The analysis verified the viability of the transponder-Gravity Tractor (t-GT) spacecraft to perform these critical deflection functions. A full report of this work is now available on the B612 website at http://www.b612foundation.org/press/press.html, #18.

The full report from JPL is available here, and here are some highlights from their conclusions:

1.5 Study Conclusions

1. This study has shown that a relatively simple and robust thrust control law can keep a gravity tractor spacecraft in close proximity to the station-keeping location required to effectively tow an irregularly shaped, rotating near-Earth asteroid. For our test case, the spacecraft could be kept within a 20 x 50 x 50 meter box at a nominal distance of 155 meters from the asteroid’s center-of-mass for a total translational ΔV monthly cost of 40 - 45 m/s with a corresponding monthly fuel consumption of only ~ 1.4 kg.
16. A gravity tractor could be useful for the possible case in which a primary deflection technique such as a kinetic impactor happens to move the asteroid trajectory into a keyhole; the gravity tractor could shift the asteroid’s trajectory enough to miss a secondary impact keyhole. At the same time, tracking of the gravity tractor spacecraft could provide precision orbit information for the asteroid before and after the primary deflection attempt and after the gravity tractor trim maneuver.
17. While the gravity tractor in our simulation example was a viable method for towing the asteroid away from the 2049 keyhole, and hence avoiding a 2054 Earth collision, there might be other impacting scenarios for which it would not be viable. Each threat scenario would have to be analyzed individually to determine whether a gravity tractor could be used to move an asteroid trajectory away from a keyhole.

Additional general study conclusions include the following:

• The most threatening NEAs are those on Earth similar orbits.
• Simulations show that most actual Earth impactor discoveries surpass 99% impact probability very early in the second optical apparition – or after optical and radar data are obtained during the discovery apparition.
• The primary deflection techniques (e.g., kinetic energy impactor) provide relatively uncertain amounts of deflection (e.g., the momentum multiplier β is unknown)
• Secondary impact possibilities (keyholes) must be carefully examined for each specific case.
• Determining potential keyholes during Earth encounters and determining optimal times for tractoring to avoid a keyhole passage requires fully perturbed, non-linear numerical analysis (two-body analyses do not suffice).
• The combination of radiometric tracking of a nearby spacecraft with optical imaging of the asteroid from the spacecraft is sufficient to significantly improve knowledge of an asteroid’s orbit. It is not necessary to place a transponder on the surface of the asteroid to achieve precise asteroid tracking.
• The asteroid orbit accuracy improvements provided by the spacecraft range from factors of 2 to 5 over the knowledge which can be obtained using only Earth-based observations of the asteroid. The size of the improvement is dependent on the relative viewing geometry and hence the time period over which the spacecraft is tracked.
• The amount of time it takes to realize these improvements in the knowledge of the asteroid’s ephemeris is measured in days to weeks. A spacecraft need not be in place for months or years for the improvements to take place.
• A close flyby, such as the one that occurs in 2046 for this scenario can magnify the asteroid’s position uncertainty for subsequent flybys by a large factor.

In review, it appears that we have the technology available to prevent a catastrophic impact provided we have the time to track and analyze the threat years before potential impact. What this should emphasize more is the reality that the kinetic energy that will be necessary to prevent an immediate impact -say, a threat that will hit in a year or less- is not available or even being considered at the present time. And more disturbing is the fact that this is not a bigger part of the budget at NASA.

I'm afraid that when this does become an issue, the time we've lost engineering a solution to this problem will become insurmountable. JPL and the B612 Foundation make me a little less concerned, but we still need to be aware of our shortcomings.

"Stupidity Is Not Necessarily Unconstitutional"

2008-12-10T17:47:00.000-08:00

So says Judge John E. Jones III, the George W. Bush appointee who presided over the 2005 Intelligent design trial, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District in Dover, Pennsylvania. This was the trial that essentially sunk any chance of allowing creationism to be taught as an alternative to evolution in public school science classes from a constitutional standpoint.

Via Charles Johnson at LGF, here's a neat video of a presentation and Q & A session with Judge Jones at Case Western University. His main point throughout is the sorry state of civics education in the public realm, and that he hopes trials like this will remind people about the elegant genius that is our US Constitution.

Also, be careful who you elect to your school board.

The Tennessee Titans Meet Their First Goal of the 2008 Season

2008-12-08T18:10:00.000-08:00

Jeff Fisher, in his usual no nonsense manner, explained what that was at yesterdays postgame press conference after the Titans waxing of the Cleveland Browns to clinch the AFC South title:

"It's a rewarding feeling; our goal was to -when we left the playoff game in San Diego [last season] the day we came back was to have a home playoff game here, this year. That was our first goal, first and foremost. We have now guaranteed that. So now we move on to the next step."

One of the things I like about this Titans team this year is that they have the mentality of the underdog, the disrespected, the backwoods nobodies, the chip on the shoulder that many championship teams have taken all the way to the top. Take the NY Giants last year. They were given zero chance to beat the 18-0 (at the time) Patriots in the super bowl, but they pulled it out. The Red Sox and Patriot teams from the last few years have changed from that scrappy underdog in to the team people are tired of seeing win all the time.

I've watched the Titans since they arrived in Nashville, and I was recently reviewing an old preview post from the year they finally blew up the Super Bowl team cap space and the resulting damage was a 4-12 season.

Titans still look to make another run next year. McNair appears to be ready to rock- his annual off season surgery appears to have gone well. I can't imagine why he would appear in the NFL "Annie-Tomorrow" commercial if he didn't plan on returning. And we still have some young guns upcoming in Chris Brown, Tory Fleming and Ben Troupe. Add in the offensive genius of one Norm Chow, former offensive coordinator for the USC Trojans, as well as Ray Sherman as the new Wide Receivers coach, and all certainly does not appear lost. On the defensive side, check out this interview with Jim Schwartz, the defensive co-ordinator who after a 5-11 season last year seems pretty fired up about the upcoming one.

Yep. My enthusiasm that year was not exactly justified. The 4-12 year, that was rock bottom. Consider the price paid. Minus about three guys from that squad we give you your 2008 Titans. It's pretty much an entirely rebuilt team around franchise guys like Haynesworth and Bulluck.

Despite being second in scoring in the AFC, this Titans team won't exactly light up the highlight real. There are however, several very good reasons they have only lost ONE GAME ALL SEASON. And I believe that we will continue to see more reasons as they progress. But for now, I'll take 12-1 and the AFC South title for a guaranteed home playoff game.

TITANS!!!!

Fireball Meteor Caught On Tape

2008-11-22T14:01:00.000-08:00

Edmonton had a nice fireworks show courtesy of the Universe on Thursday night-

The remains of the fireball are currently being searched for around Edmonton. They have estimated that this weighed about one to seven tons before it entered the Earth's atmosphere, and was five times as bright as a full moon. And after all of that there are only going to be softball sized pieces left of the rock itself.

And of course, now is the time when I link to The B612 PROJECT FOUNDATION.

Thanks To Those Who Served

2008-11-22T13:54:00.000-08:00

Yes, I realize this isn't official by any means, but today there are a bunch of us like-minded bloggers who want to take this opportunity thank those who served in the US Military for their service in Iraq and the success they have achieved.

In particular, I also want to thank afew friends of mine personally Hagan, Erin, and Dave. You guys are the real deal and you deserve a day of honor for your service.

Thanks to all who served, and may this day mark a new direction for the hopes of Iraqi's and the rest of the world!

Yes, It Needs To Be Said.......

2008-11-17T22:51:00.001-08:00

Victory In Iraq Day will be November 22, 2008.

The US Armed Forces ONCE AGAIN proved to be the single most liberating military force known to human history. In a little over five years the US and Coalition forces removed this scumbag from power:

So he could no longer do this:

And so he could no longer support Islamic terrorists who do things like this:

Kurdish Paper: Cooperation Between Saddam Regime, Al-Qaeda

The Kurdish daily Kurdistani Nwe has published a 2002 letter from the Iraqi presidency that it says proves that there was cooperation between the regime of Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda.

The letter, which appeared on the paper's front page, was published by the intelligence apparatus of the Iraqi presidency and discussed an intention to meet with Ayman Al-Zawahiri in order to examine a plan drawn up by the Iraqi presidency to carry out a "revenge operation" in Saudi Arabia.

Delroy Murdock explains it the best in my opinion at the Hussein and Terror page:

Thus, there is abundant and undeniable evidence that Saddam Hussein provided money, diplomatic services, shelter, medical care, and training to terrorists of every stripe, including those complicit in the 1993 WTC bombing and — according to a Clinton-appointed federal judge — the September 11 attacks. The Iraqi dictator aided al-Qaeda and other global terrorists who murdered Americans, both at home and abroad.

Saddam Hussein was a living threat to American national security and the safety of the civilized world. Earth is a safer place with him now where he belonged all along:

HANGED BY THE NECK UNTIL DEAD.

VI Day, November 22nd. Mark your calendars.

The Latest from Despair.com

2008-11-05T19:23:00.000-08:00

And it couldn't be more apt than it is today....

Congrats To Our New President-elect.

2008-11-04T23:14:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama has attained the highest office in our land and deserves every bit of praise and support for his accomplishment. I don't agree with the majority of his policies, but Obama made history in the US tonight and he is surely who this country wanted to lead us the next four years.

When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his most famous "I have a dream" speech, he wished for the day when "my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

This is a momentous occasion in the history of the US, but I'm not convinced that Obama was elected sorely on the content of his character.

What I am convinced of is that this country will not deny someone the highest job in the land because of the color of their skin. This is what Dr. King dream t of and this is something very much worth celebrating.

Congrats and good luck President Obama.

Here's To Hoping McCain Pulls It Out, and Saluting America No Matter Who She Chooses

2008-11-03T23:41:00.000-08:00

The best comment I've read concerning my Country's quad-annual reshuffling was from the following commenter El Mondo at pajamas media from this satirical post about Roger Simon moving to France if McCain loses...

61. ElMondo:

Of course I understand that all this talk of leaving the country is a joke at previous crying celebrities responses. But in spite of that, the sentiment has an undertone that’s mildly worrying. So to speak towards that, this Asian Catholic proffers a phrase from Jewish wisdom that seems particularly applicable here:

“gam zeh yaavor”… “This, too, shall pass”

No need to leave the country. It’s a big, strong, vital one, despite the economic downturn and recent cynicism. The fundamentals of what makes America strong haven’t changed; it’s just that those fundamentals reputation has taken a bruising, slightly deserved, but not totally so. Anyway, I believe it’ll take more than a bad president to really screw up this country. I may not like the direction it would head in for 4 years of an Obama presidency, but even he couldn’t undermine the heart and soul of what makes this country great.

I guess you have to be an immigrant to appreciate what a truly screwed up government is. Trust me, despite my distaste for an Obama administration, it won’t be anything remotely resembling a genuinely broken government. It’ll just have the potential to be a bad one. And who knows? Sometimes when put to the test, people rise above themselves.

Call me Pollyannaish, but it’ll take more than Obama/Biden to screw this nation up.

Jimmy Carter, despite being better than Nixon, failed to run this country in to the ground. So I have faith that even if Obama is worse than Carter, which is entirely possible, this country is too fundamentally sound to screw up.

People talk a lot about racism in the US, and how this election can "redeem" the reputation of America in the world, for a variety of reasons. But I always find it telling that the most vociferous defense of the values of America come from recent immigrants. Every country in the world has their own fair share of ignorance and racists, but the US is one of few places that is based on fundamental values that negates this type of ignorance. Some of these values usually mentioned are a combination of the good traditions from our ancestors -hard work, personal and family responsiblity- mixed with a common theme- LIBERTY. Freedom is an overused cliché to Americans, but it's almost a dirty word in other countries.

I now realize why people move here. This is the country where people are least afraid of their own government.

Now about those asteroids.............

John McCain Makes Letterman, Leno and Stern Look Like "Up and Coming Local Comedians"

2008-10-16T23:50:00.000-07:00

You can vote for who you want, but this shite is farking hilarious.

Best line:

"But if you know know where to look, there are signs of hope. Even in the most unexpected places. Even in this room full of proud Manhattan Democrats I can't shake the feeling that some people here are pulling for me.......

.........I'm delighted to see you here tonight Hillary..."

And then Senator McCain reminds everyone what a great farking country we live in.

To the rest of the world: Reports of Americas’ demise are greatly exaggerated.

Apocalypse Watch Has Begun

2008-10-04T18:42:00.001-07:00

Its a fun weekend in Nashville kids!

Victor Hanson on Joe "GaffeyMcgaffenstein" Biden

2008-09-23T19:57:00.000-07:00

It's really sad considering the last two VP's the Democrats have put up are a World Class Aldulterer and this guy-

Victor Hanson at The Corner:

And the Media Worries about Palin's Experience and McCain's Age? [Victor Davis Hanson]

I think in the space of about the last 24 hours, Joe Biden claimed that the AIG bailout was bad, but then said it wasn't bad;

that we did not need to burn coal;

that his apology about the dirty McCain ad was, as they say, inoperative;

that FDR once went on television to address the nation after the stock market crash of '29 (that's a twofer that trumps Obama's Americans liberating Auschwitz);

and all but said that McCain took a $50,000 bribe.

Not a bad day's work — encompassing terrible energy policy, flip-flopping, historical ignorance, and slander. And this comes on top of Palin the "good looking" "Lt. Governor" of Alaska, Hillary as the better VP pick than himself, the patriotism of paying higher taxes, and so on.

And those in turn come on top of the primary remarks about Indians in donut shops, and "bright and clean" blacks. And those in turn come on top of . . . (Well, go back to the pilfered speeches and made-up bios.)

Something is very wrong here. While most forgive the silly slip like "Barack America" or asking the wheel-chair bound to stand up, I think the Obama staff must have gone from amusement to embarrassment and now to serious concern whether Biden is up to the job.

Had this been Palin, the election would now be over.

This of course isn't surprising to anyone. Palin managed to meet a bunch of World Leaders recently and people were more interested in talking about how dumb she is.

If Biden and Edwards are your alternatives, I'll take dumb, thanks.

It's Time For Another Installment Of DEEP SPACE NEWS......

2008-09-10T19:20:00.000-07:00

First up is the latest from NASA's Swift Satellite, which recently (ho-hum) picked up the single most luminous event ever witnessed by humans.

Take it away NASA-

On March 19, 2008, Swift discovered a bright Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB 080319B). The image shows the X-ray afterglow as seen by the X-Ray Telescope (left) and the bright optical afterglow as observed by the Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope on board Swift.

Credit: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler

The folks at the Eberly College of Science continue-

"Naked-Eye" Gamma-Ray Burst Was Aimed Squarely at Earth
10 September 2008 -- Unparalleled data from satellites and observatories around the globe show that the jet from a powerful stellar explosion on 19 March was aimed almost directly at Earth. The event, called a gamma-ray burst, became bright enough for human eyes to see. The burst's extraordinary brightness arose from a jet that shot material directly toward Earth at 99.99995 percent the speed of light.

NASA's Swift satellite detected the explosion -- formally called GRB 080319B -- at 2:13 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time that morning and pinpointed its position in the constellation Boötes. The Swift satellite is controlled by Penn State University from its Mission Operations Center at University Park, and Penn State led in the development and assembly of two of the Swift satellite's three telescopes. "Swift was designed to find unusual bursts," says Swift principal investigator Neil Gehrels at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "We really hit the jackpot with this one."

By the way, this Gamma Ray Burst was 7.5 billion light years away, which is more than halfway across the visible Universe. Very cool, and even cooler that it did not irradiate the entire planet with lethal high-energy gamma and X-rays in a matter of seconds. That would be bad, mmmmkay?

Also we have the latest from the Rosetta Mission . It recently flew within 800km of an asteroid known as Steins, which is orbiting in our solar system more than 220 million miles from Earth, whilst en route to the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. In 2015 Rosetta will do with a comet what NASA did with an asteroid during the NEAR Shoemaker mission in 2001: land a spacecraft on said comet/asteroid and ideally transmit back some data.

Here is the 3-mile wide in diameter asteroid Steins-For an amazing video, click here and watch the actual animation of the raw data from Rosetta as it flew by Steins.

Yes, since you didn't ask I'll tell you: if this asteroid was on its way to earth and scheduled to hit us within the next five years, we would be pretty much farked. We have nothing remotely capable of diverting a 3 mile wide asteroid from it's pre-ordained path that is available to launch in the next five years.

Yes, the folks at the B612 Project Foundation are one of the only groups currently doing anything about this. As former astronaut and current B612 Foundation contributor Ed Lu and said recently-"The number of people, worldwide, who are actively working on this problem, is enough to staff one shift at McDonalds. And that's about accurate."

Sure looks pretty though, don't it?

And finally in somewhat related deep space news, they turned on the Large Hadron Collider and sent a pair of photon beams around the 17 mile long path in different directions successfully. No, they didn't create any mini-black holes which was the latest fad conspiracy. And they won't when they send the other photon beam in to collide with the first one. Hopefully.

Take it away Science Daily-

It will take about a month for scientists to align the proton beams traveling in opposite directions in the LHC so that proton-proton collisions are generated. The LHC will create almost a billion such collisions per second at an energy of 14 trillion electron volts. These collisions will take place at four points around its 17-mile ring, where the four main LHC experiments, including CMS, are located.

"This is an extremely important moment," said Clare, a professor of physics. "We are now on the verge of making hopefully many discoveries over the next years in our understanding of particle physics and how the universe works. For the first time in a long time, we will be breaking new ground. We may discover the Higgs boson; we may discover supersymmetry. We may discover completely new and unexpected phenomena, which would be by far the most exciting prospect."

For a good chuckle, check out The 5 Scientific Experiments Most Likely to End the World

Until next time thanks for reading the latest installment of DEEP SPACE NEWWWWWSSSSSSSSsssssss........

Is This The Year For The Tennessee Titans?

2008-09-06T15:58:00.001-07:00

Can they win the Super Bowl this year?

Current Las Vegas odds put them at around 40:1 according to various sources, so there's what people with money think.

The majority of the talking heads on TV, print and alternative media don't even see the Titans finishing any better than the Houston Texans, and in most cases worse. There is a strong argument to be made that the AFC South actually has four playoff teams that should be playing in January, as they had the most last year with three. I can describe it in many ways, but the AFC South is one of the harder divisions to play in primarily because they have to play each other so much. There are no off days on division games. It is somewhat like the argument that the SEC makes in the NCAA Championship every year- "If we didn't have to play each other, we would've been undefeated". Actually, I guess it's like that for a reason; there are a ton of SEC players in the AFC South.

I normally don't make any pointless predictions about the season for any of the teams I like to follow, but this year I'm breaking with tradition.

THE TENNESSEE TITANS WILL WIN THE SUPER BOWL.

No hold on, I know what you're saying; Vince Young, no wide receivers. How can a team win a Super Bowl with a talented yet unpolished QB, and a wide receiver corps who would get shut down by Vanderbilt's secondary on most days? I don't necessarily disagree with these facts, because they are facts.

Vince Young has tons of talent but has been downright ugly at times in his decision making adjustments since he came to the the NFL. I've seen just about every NFL game snap he's had in the two years he's played. The list of plays he's made have ranged from walk-off homeruns in over time, like this-

to others like the abomination he had at home last year against the Atlanta Falcons, in which the Titans still won 20-13, thanks to the Defense. For an example of Vince also just being Vince, fast forward to about the 1:10 mark of this video and watch him throw a 2nd and 10 rollout directly to the other team as if he forgot what jersey they were wearing. That was also for my friends at DGDB&DM: A Texans Blog who will surely appreciate that video.

I think this is the year that Vince gets it together, mainly because Mike Heimerdinger has replaced Norm Chow as the Offensive coordinator. One thing Vince is not is a Matt Leinart Pac-10 style drop back QB. Chow and Young were never going to see eye to eye, and I'm not sure Chow worked all that well with McNair either. The last time Coach Heimerdinger was in charge of the Titans offense, Steve McNair shared the MVP of league with Peyton Manning. I have every reason to believe that Vince Young will fit better with Coach Heimerdinger based on what he was able to do with Steve McNair in terms of style. Steve was also a QB who could get the job done wth his legs too, running for four TD's in the 2003 MVP season. I think this was the problem with Vince last year, and it has now been corrected.

If Vince plays better, expect to see less whining about our Wide Receiver corps, because they do have some potential in the two Justin's- McCareins and Gage. Plus, the addition of pro-bowl Tight End Algae Crumpler will be a much needed safety valve option for Vince. Crumpler is used to playing with a non-traditional QB from his days with Michael Vick from Atlanta, so this could really be interesting.

Other than these two issues and the normal injury-free hopes for the starters, I can't really find any other big problems with the 2008 Titans lineup. The Defense appears ready to pick up where it left off last year. If pro-bowlers Albert Haynesworth and Kyle Vanden Bosch stay healthy, no one will be running against us, and our secondary is a year less green with true studs emerging at CB Courtland Finnegan and at safety Michael Griffin. We have one of the best LB's in the business in Keith Bulluck. Did I mention The Freak is back? Yes, Jevon Kearse has come back for another year to terrorize AFC South QB's again. How about thunder and lightning in the backfield with Lendale "Bowling Ball" White and Chris "What was that?" Johnson ?

Watch this run from Chris from this years preseason game against the Rams-

This kid should be fun to watch.

So there's my argument. I have no reason to root for or desire anything less than a Super Bowl Title for the Tennessee Titans. When you root for your team you should throw the odds and the talking heads out the window and cheer for them to win the whole damn thing. Why would I want to write anything less with this team? Sure, they have some issues, but which team doesn't?

Last year the Giants started out 35-1 odds to win the Super Bowl.

Iowahawk Reports From America

2008-09-03T18:23:00.000-07:00

The internet is many things.

Today it is very, very funny thanks to Iowahawk:

America Speaks Out: "Juno" in Juneau?

Go forth in laughter my children, and all will make sense with the world!

Did He Really Say This?

2008-08-28T21:44:00.000-07:00

I didn't get to watch all of the Obama speech tonight, so I read the transcript which is apparently available through The Corner, and the New York Times. Besides the enormous amount of scripted boilerplate that is pretty much verbatim of what all democrats have been whining about since Bush took office, there was this one line that stuck out considerably as Mr. Obama was discussing his non-policy of foreign policy......

You know, John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the gates of Hell, but he won't even follow him to the cave where he lives.

Obama hasn't served in the military, and neither have several other great presidents, so I don't consider that a prerequisite for running for president.

However, I think it is the height of arrogance and contempt (not to mention UNTRUE) for Mr. Obama to claim that a guy who spent several years being tortured by the Vietcong is somehow afraid of going to a farking cave in Afghanistan.

Tonight On The Menu We Have.....

2008-08-27T20:37:00.001-07:00

Sauteed Onion, Squash and Zucchini in Angel hair pesto pasta with Italian sausage....

Ingredients:
1 Zucchini
1 Onion
1 Squash
1 Bulb of Garlic
1/2 cup Pinenuts
1 Tbsp Green curry paste
1 splash Dave's Insanity Sauce
1/2 cup Olive Oil
1/2 pound Italian Sausage
3 Handfuls of fresh Basil
Angel Hair Pasta
2 tsp salt
Fresh ground Pepper
1/2 tsp dill
1/2 tsp thyme

Brown Italian sausage with some garlic and salt, and drain the fat. Take all the vegetables, curry paste, hot sauce, lightly chopped garlic, and sauté with the salt pepper and spices to taste. Take the basil, pine nuts, olive oil, three cloves of garlic (peeled), 1 tsp of salt and ground pepper to taste and mix separately in a blender.

Cook pasta, drain and get one big mixing bowl.

Combine pasta and pesto first, then fold in both the sausage and vegetable mix.

Serve with salad, garlic bread and beverage of your choice...bon appetit!

Bush Did Not Lie About Iraq..

2008-08-25T12:07:00.000-07:00

The common mantra that we hear repeated by the Major News Media is that the war in Iraq is a disaster that was fought under dubious pretenses. As further evidence comes to light we can now safely state that neither of these statements are true. Currently, the situation in Iraq is vastly improving on a daily basis, and attacks on coalition forces were the lowest they have been in the last several months than since the war started. The idea that the war in Iraq is a "failure" or a "disaster" is in stark contrast to the reality on the ground. What is not a debate is if the people of Iraq are much better off without a psychopathic dictator running the country anymore. This is a guy who raped and pillaged his own people for the better part of 30 years, and relentlessly purged any dissent. A dead Saddam is a vast improvement for the lives of the Iraqi people.

And as far as the lies that supposedly "duped" congress in to voting for the Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq, I just came across a post by Randall Hoven at American Thinker that once and for all demolishes any argument that Bush "lied" to force us to war.

Read the whole thing of course, but here is the conclusion from the article-

The True Story

The Bush administration did not lie. Saddam's Iraq was a threat to the US that demanded the use of military force. That was not just Bush's "cowboy" opinion; that was the written law, passed by huge and bipartisan margins in both houses of Congress. That opinion was supported by both pre-war intelligence and post-war intelligence.

Moreover, the "legal case" was solid and Iraq was given chance after chance after chance. The authorization noted at least 10 UN resolutions, spread out over a decade, to justify the use of US military force. The Authorization noted that "the President has authority under the Constitution to take action in order to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States, as Congress recognized in ... Public Law 107-40." The Authorization noted Public Law 105-235 (passed under President Clinton) that urged the President "to take appropriate action, in accordance with the Constitution and relevant laws of the United States, to bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations."

The invasion of Iraq was arguably the most justified case of military action the US has ever taken in its history, based on national defense, validated intelligence and legal authority, not to mention morality. Articles of impeachment would have made more sense if Bush had not invaded.

That the exact opposite story is what a majority of Americans appear to believe, and a super-majority of non-Americans, is a scary thought. The truth has been sabotaged, and not by President Bush or his allies.

People should not be allowed to make the claim that Bush "lied" about taking us to war in Iraq, nor should they now make the claim that Iraq is a "dismal failure" based on the available facts and evidence.

They can make the claim all they want, but IT ISN'T TRUE.

YO! LHC Raps!

2008-08-23T13:00:00.000-07:00

This is why nerds don't make hip-hop tracks. The following is a rap video explaining what is going down with CERN's Large Hadron Collider,..Yo.

17 days until the first beam is fired, yo...word.

A B612 Foundation Cameo: Ed Lu For The Win!

2008-08-17T13:04:00.000-07:00

I was watching the History Channel yesterday and they were replaying "The Last Days On Earth" from 2006. The show is a documentary that has some amazing science for the first hour and a half followed by a thirty minute lecture on why none of what they mentioned in the first half matters if we don't stop global warming because things will get too crowded and there won't be any water to drink.

Yes, it gets that stupid at the end. Even Al Gore gets in to compare global warming skeptics with the Tobacco executives who lied under oath to a grand jury in the 1970's. Fortunately for Al, another scientist says something so ridiculous and offensive that Al's own hypocrisy can be ignored. Bill McGuire, a Professor from University College in London, makes the argument that those who are skeptical about global warming are just as bad if not worse than those that deny the holocaust.

Yes, really. The History channel, to their credit, has a discussion board where you can read various posts in agreement about how insulting and absurd this comparison is. ("Last Days on Earth" -Insulting)

The show does however have a nice bit about asteroids, which comes in at #4 on the list of apocalyptic scenarios. Neil deGrasse Tyson has a little cameo where he gives bits of essentially the same speech from this lecture. Again, Mr. Tyson clearly lays out the specifics behind asteroids and the threat they raise to humanity. One of my favorite points he always makes is how Hollywood always shows an asteroid strike as this dramatic explosion where people slowly watch this streaking ball of fire crash in to a building or something. The reality is that these asteroids are moving at several thousand feet a second, at essentially hypersonic speed. This means that anyone anywhere near close enough to see this object slam in to the earth will be dead before they really see anything hit. Astronaut Stan Love, also a contributing member of The B612 Foundation, describes during the show thusly-

"If you are anywhere in the let's say 1000 mile diameter area where you can see this thing coming down, the light and the heat coming off it would just burn you to death immediately".

Here's a link to the computer analysis of what this impact would look like from a thermal level Via the Sandia Labs-

But the quote of the weekend, which further typified why this show had so much potential that fizzled out was this quote from Astronaut and B612 Foundation member Ed Lu-

Narrator: "So what is humanity doing to address this deadly threat?"

Astronaut Ed Lu: "The number of people, worldwide, who are actively working on this problem, is enough to staff one shift at McDonalds. And that's about accurate."

It is well past the time that NASA and the B612 Foundation start planning a mission to Apophis to track and further detail our respective options for mitigating the threats posed by asteroids. U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher has been backing the efforts of the B612 Foundation, and this issue needs continual support.

We need more people than one shift at McDonalds.

Are you ready for some football?

2008-08-09T16:45:00.001-07:00

So What Is Space Made Out Of?

2008-08-07T22:50:00.001-07:00

Here is the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image.

There are an estimated 10,000 galaxies in this picture. Each galaxy, like our own, may contain millions to trillions of stars. Our own star, what we collectively refer to as "the sun" is this much bigger than the Earth.

Notice in each picture you see a lot of black stuff. That black stuff has a gravitational pull on everything in each picture, and for lack of a better term we have called it Dark Matter and dark energy, which put together make up 96% of the universe that is visible to us.

Now we are trying to recreate the conditions that allow us to observe dark matter/energy in the lab. It takes a big science experiment to make this happen.

Say hello to the Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator complex intended to collide opposing beams of protons at a rate which will allow us to test theories about particle physics in ways that we haven't been able to try before.

Here's a picture timeline of the 25 some year history of the LHC. And here is the main page of the site complete with countdown to flipping of the switch and everything.

I'm fascinated to find out which theories about quantum mechanics are supported, and how they relate to the rest of the universe. Can you imagine if Newton were alive to see this today? It would be the equivalent of Darwin observing our completion of the human genome.

Neat time to be alive folks, that's all I'm sayin.

Oh, and ah TITANS!!!!!!!!

This One's For Me Sis

2008-08-05T21:47:00.000-07:00

Stand and Deliver.......and whatnot......Thankyou Sis for staying sufficiently obscure.

We are both better off.

So A Lot Of People Ask Me.............

2008-08-01T23:03:00.000-07:00

.......whaddaya think about the whole "Manny being a Dodger" thing.

I respond succinctly:

Have you ever had a job where you failed at what you're paid to do 2 out of the 3 times you do it, and then the company that fires you pays your new boss a $7 million advance for two months of your future employment just so you won't be around anymore?

Me neither.

Thanks for the Jazz-hands Manny. We'll miss you!

Bosox fans, Say hello to your new left fielder Jason "I-can't-believe-I'm-playing-for-the-BOSTONREDSAWX" Bay-

Bay triples, scores winning run as Red Sox clip A's in extras

So yeah, I think the current World Champion Boston Red Sox Organization will be just fine thank you.

Time For Some New Reading Material

2008-07-29T17:21:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been going back and forth between reading about two subjects that are near and dear to me; Evolution and Near Earth Objects. In doing so I've been running across the familiar faces I admire who are involved in the debate about these subjects such as Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens in terms of evolution, and Rusty Schweickart and David Morrison on the NEO side.

But there's this other guy that keeps showing up in these debates, and the funny part (for me anyways) is that he shows up with regularity as a recognized and respected perspective in both debates.

His name is Neil deGrasse Tyson. He is an astrophysicist and, since 1996, the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. You may also recognize him from PBS's educational TV show NOVA scienceNOW.

I was reading the following Gizmodo.com report of a recent public lecture by Rusty Schweickart about the B612 Foundation and I came across this video of Mr. Tyson discussing Apophis, the asteroid scheduled to buzz the earth in about 30 years.

And here he is discussing what the B612 Foundation and others have been working on to resolve the deflection "problem"-

Great stuff. Mr. Tyson breaks it down in layman's terms effortlessly. I've seen him on other shows before, but this was a neat explanation of the facts behind NEO's like Apophis and what is currently being done about it.

I have also been following the recent intellectual purging that Charles Johnson has been subjecting his audience to over at Little Green Footballs. He's been taking on each and every last idiotic and ignorant stance on creationism/intelligent design and flailing it mercilessly in to a beaten stump of denial, and in doing so getting the full wrath from the usual suspects. It's been refreshing for me to watch this happen as his stances on politics are similar to mine, yet the audience that has made his site one of the most visited on the web had a reputation for being knuckle-dragging creationist-conservatives. His posts on evolution have cleared any misconceptions about what the owner of the site believes.

As I was thumbing through some of the more recent discussions in the evolution debate , I came across, well, Neil Tyson again.

And in this following video from the Beyond Belief 2006 Forum , Mr. Tyson takes the evolution debate and sort of turns it on its head by taking some angles that I bet you haven't heard of before. For instance (about 8:45 in) he talks about how Sir Isaac Newton himself could be considered a proponent of intelligent design and still be wrong, so maybe that's what we need to be teaching in science class. He also brings up 9/11 (he lives four blocks from ground zero) to make a point about Arabic culture and creationism that should be a lesson for humanity.

Next step for me was to order his recent book, Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries, and now I basically have to ignore the web because I don't want to spoil the book.

Thank you video poker. I'll post a review when I finish the book.

Update:.....so I found this video of Tyson on the Daily Show......so sue me, alright?

Daily Show - Neil Degrasse Tyson Pt 1 Comedy Video via Noolmusic.com

The Dark Knight Mirrors Bush?

2008-07-24T22:37:00.001-07:00

Somehow I don't see our current president riding the batpod without killing himself and several bystanders simultaneously, but Mr. Andrew Klavan makes some interesting points in his recent WSJ article...

What Bush and Batman Have in Common
By ANDREW KLAVAN
July 25, 2008

A cry for help goes out from a city beleaguered by violence and fear: A beam of light flashed into the night sky, the dark symbol of a bat projected onto the surface of the racing clouds . . .

Oh, wait a minute. That's not a bat, actually. In fact, when you trace the outline with your finger, it looks kind of like . . . a "W."

There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society -- in which people sometimes make the wrong choices -- and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.

"The Dark Knight," then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year's "300," "The Dark Knight" is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.

Mr. Klavan talks about the current Hollywood movies that depict the actual wars going on right now in Afghanistan and Iraq, and how they appear to be more interested in moral equivalence than right vs. wrong, whereas The Dark Knight never hesitates. It spells it out the entire movie:

We all know what evil men can do. And we know we have to stop it. We don't know how far we will have to go to stop it, but one thing we know for sure, the evil men aren't going away.

I've Found Someone Who Almost Makes Stephen A. Smith Tolerable

2008-07-24T18:28:00.001-07:00

Skip Bayless decided to jump on in to the Ledger/Nicholson Joker debate recently and he achieved something monumentally difficult; make Stephen A. Smith a.)stop yelling and b.)not sound like an idiot.

Very sly senor Bayless.....

I plan on writing some thoughts about The Dark Knight here soon, but I need to see it again and this time in IMAX because it really whizzes by even at two and a half hours.

And if you haven't seen it yet, go immediately. There hasn't been a villain like this that scrapes the very depths of mankind's potential for evil since Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs, and the Joker is just one part of the movie.

Is there anything that ISN'T on youtube?

2008-07-22T23:59:00.000-07:00

The Allman Brothers on David Letterman from the 90's?

Yep, we have that.

Ron Bailey Reports From The Conference on Global Catastrophic Risks

2008-07-20T15:18:00.000-07:00

Saturday's subject was the one yours truly was extremely interested in hearing about..

It Came From Outer Space

Ronald Bailey | July 19, 2008, 7:21pm

July 19, Oxford, UK-Death by asteroids, comets and gamma ray bursts was on the agenda of the conference on Global Catastrophic Risks this morning. First up was NASA senior scientist David Morrison to talk about the Spaceguard Survey and the threat of a catastrophic asteroid strike.......
..........According to Morrison, 80 percent of the NEAs that are a kilometer or more in size have been identified. Consequently, Morrison could happily assure the assembled Oxford catastrophe mavens, "We are not going the way of the dinosaurs." Why because the Spaceguard Survey has not turned up any NEAs near the size of the one that likely killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. That asteroid measured between 10 and 15 kilometers and blasted the 180 kilometer-wide Chicxulub crater.

Bailey reports that "Morrison groused that NASA has spent only $ 4 million on Spaceguard and argued that the magnitude of the risk merits a budget of half a billion dolars."

The impression I get from the conference is that we still aren't looking at this issue from a reasonable cost-benefit analysis. The budget for NASA is usually in the $18-20 billion range the last few years, and it's inexcusable that we've spent such a mere pittance on resolving the one issue that would make all of NASA'S other projects a moot point.

As always, please visit the folks at the B612 Foundation for more.

People Ask Me Sometimes Why I'm Not In A Band Anymore...

2008-07-18T23:58:00.000-07:00

I tell them it's because when you live in Nashville a guy like this-

probably served your dinner at that restaurant last night.

Welcome to Music City Kids!

Update: To answer my sisters question, this sensational guitar player is the Australian Tommy Emmanuel.

20 Years Later, And This Film Still Kicks Ass

2008-07-08T23:47:00.000-07:00

My buddy Mark and I were in high school when we wore a VHS version of this movie out to the point that we probably could've recited the entire script from memory.

Midnight Run

Below are some of the greatest clips from the movie via Youtube. If you haven't seen this movie then I would suggest watching it first, and then watching this clip.

Rated R For Swear words and such. You have been warned.

Fourth Of July Feast.

2008-07-04T16:07:00.001-07:00

Appetizers were a fruit salad with mint and cilantro, grilled jalapeno peppers stuffed with chevre and wrapped in pancetta and bacon, and some fresh guacamole.

Main course was this year we have the standard Tmans Ribs which we did on the grill instead of the smoker, grilled salmon steaks (that spent the night in a marinade of olive oil, salt and pepper, lemon slices, and covered in fresh rosemary and thyme), a rib eye steak, pork chipolte tacos and sides of grilled squash and zucchini in roasted red chile paste and corn on the cob in herb butter.

I'm stuffed. Happy Fourth Everyone!!

That's A Big Flag...

2008-07-03T17:43:00.000-07:00

Let's hand it over to the folks from the NASA Image of the Day Gallery-

Stars and a Stripe in Celestial Fireworks

A delicate ribbon of gas floats eerily in our galaxy. A contrail from an alien spaceship? A jet from a black-hole? Actually this image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, is a very thin section of a supernova remnant caused by a stellar explosion that occurred more than 1,000 years ago.

100 Years Later....

2008-06-30T11:28:00.000-07:00

Today is the 100th anniversary of the 30-megaton explosion over a desolate Siberian Forest, known as The Tunguska Impact-

Via Wikipedia-

The Tunguska Event, or Tunguska explosion, was a massive explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya (Lower Stony) Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai of Russia, at around 7:14 a.m.^[1] (0:14 UT, 7:02 a.m. local solar time^[2]) on June 30, 1908 (June 17 in the Julian calendar, in use locally at the time).^[2]

The explosion was most likely caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of 5–10 kilometres (3–6 miles) above Earth's surface. Different studies have yielded varying estimates for the object's size, with general agreement that it was a few tens of metres across.^[3]

The Tunguska event is believed to be the largest impact event on land in Earth's recent history;^[8] impacts of similar size in remote ocean areas would have gone unnoticed before the advent of global satellite monitoring in the 1960s and 1970s.
(Damage from the impact)

This particular anniversary at the very least would have been much more somber day had the impact occurred several hours earlier. As you can see from this picture, St. Petersburg lines up relatively close to the center of the impact on latitudinal lines.

I think it's safe to say that if this impact happened in a major urban area like St. Petersburg which it very well could have done, our priorities today in terms of space exploration and human survival in general would be very different.

There are positive signs from Congress that NASA has been given the ok to start projects that are primarily designed to resolve the logistics behind altering the course of a potentially devastating earth impact. Let's hope this continues.

Happy "Thank God A Million People Didn't Die In One Impact" Day!

I Can't Believe I'm Saying This But.....CONGRESS FOR THE WIN!!!

2008-06-27T10:23:00.000-07:00

Via KurzweilAI.net-

House passes bill mandating a plan for asteroid warning and deflection

KurzweilAI.net, June 27, 2008

In recently passed H.R.6063, The U.S. House of Representatives would direct the NASA Administrator to develop plans for a low-cost space mission to rendezvous with the Apophis asteroid and attach a tracking device (subject to Senate approval).

The Apophis is expected to pass at a distance from Earth that is closer than geostationary satellites in 2029.

The bill would also require the Director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to develop a policy within two years for notifying Federal agencies and relevant emergency response institutions of an impending near-Earth object threat. And the OSTP would be required to recommend a Federal agency (or agencies) to be responsible for protecting the Nation from any near-Earth object anticipated to collide with Earth, and for implementing a deflection campaign.

This is extremely good news. NASA has been pretty much ignoring this issue while they concentrate on missions that excite people more such as trips to Mars etc. At the last senate hearings in November 2007- [nai.arc.nasa.gov]- here is Scott Pace, from the Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation at NASA:

"NASA would be pleased to implement a more aggressive NEO program, if so directed by the President and Congress. However, given the constrained resources and strategic objectives the Agency has already been tasked with, NASA cannot place a new NEO program above current scientific and exploration missions."

Well, here you go Mr. Pace. You have now been so directed. Get crackin'. As I said over at Gizmodo, PUT THESE GUYS ON THE JOB.

THE B612 FOUNDATION.

Saturday Night Feast

2008-06-21T21:22:00.001-07:00

Grilled sirloin with a grilled zuchini-squash-jalapeno-red chili paste mix. Side garlic bread....Bon apetit!

Friday Night Downtown Nashville......

2008-06-20T22:54:00.001-07:00

TOP OF THE WORLD MA!!......or third floor downtown, whatever..

Ladies And Gentlemen, I Give You Your 2008 NBA Champion Boston Celtics!!!!!

2008-06-17T21:51:00.000-07:00

I'm barely able to type right now after listening to Kevin Garnett explain how winning this title was the same as finally laying out that bully at school, words can't explain.

But hey, I'll give you nine. Here are the nine players taken BEFORE Paul Pierce in the 1998 NBA draft...

1 Michael Olowokandi (C)
2 Mike Bibby (PG)
3 Raef LaFrentz (C/F)
4 Antawn Jamison (F)
5 Vince Carter (G/F)
6 Robert Traylor (F/C)
7 Jason Williams (PG)
8 Larry Hughes (SG)
9 Dirk Nowitzki (PF)

Take it home Paul Pierce......WOW, what a team......

Defense BEATS LA!!! AGAIN!!!

2008-06-12T22:14:00.000-07:00

I wrote the following post four years ago before the 2004 Detroit Pistons proved all of the naysayers wrong by demolishing the three time champion Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal led LA Lakers in five games by playing THE BEST DEFENSE.

So did anyone else read this Bill Russell column in the Wall Street Journal?....
...............Anyone?.........No?

See, since I only have time to read one paper every day, I choose the Journal. I choose the WSJ mainly because they don't pretend to be unbiased. The paper is primarily concerned with money, and what it's doing. You can elaborate, which the Journal does and say the philosophy behind the paper is Free Markets, Free people, and you would be right. It isn't a coincidence that those two go together. You could criticize it and say that it's conservative/republican biased. I would disagree. Albert Hunt bashes Bush worse than anyone in the New York Times. There is always a "this is good, but" media balancing act in every front page political briefing. Free markets, Free people, that's the only bias.

As a bonus, The WSJ somehow managed to get Bill Russell, the Hall Of Famer (who won 11 NBA championships with the Boston Celtics in 13 seasons (1957, 1959-66, 1968-69)) to pen a column about the beauty of this years NBA Finals.

DEFENSE.

I'm not exactly sure if I'm breaking any laws here, but I want to post the whole article, with a link to the original, because after the absolute beating the Pistons gave the Lakers tonight, it almost writes itself. Keep in mind that Bill Russell rarely, if ever even grants interviews, never mind writing his own column.

Enjoy.........and buy a journal or something....

An NBA Finals Victory
Begins With Team Defense

By BILL RUSSELL

June 8, 2004; Page D14

As we saw Sunday in Game One of the NBA Finals (the most exciting time of the NBA season), defense is the tiebreaker. Tonight, as the Los Angeles Lakers meet the Detroit Pistons for Game Two, defense will continue to be the key.

I always would rather play in and win a close game with unrelenting defense and a final score of 84-83 than a game where one team scores 120 points and wins by 15. Dunks and great passes are always exciting, and even so-called low-scoring games have their share of them. But nothing compares to the subtle beauty of a winner absolutely taking away the other team's "game."

Defense is an action, not a reaction. Great defense attacks an opponent's offense vs. reacting to it.

When I was playing for them, the Boston Celtics won an unprecedented 11 championships in 13 seasons, from 1957 to 1969, by embracing a team strategy that I call "team ego." Team ego recognizes the collective alignment of everyone's individual talents for the benefit of the team. Team defense wins games. Team defense -- that is, the coordinated efforts of five individuals -- wins championships. From high school to the NBA, I played 21 years of organized basketball and won 18 championships, including the record 11 NBA titles, by focusing on our being the better defensive team.

How does one team become the better defensive team?

Game One of the NBA Finals.

The most successful defensive teams understand one critical reality: All players have patterns of play. Wilt Chamberlain was bigger, stronger and faster than almost any center to play the game. When his team was on offense, Wilt like every other player had one particular place he liked to start his offensive pattern from. By simply "nudging" Wilt a few inches (any more would have tipped him off to what I was doing) from that "starting" spot, I quietly took Wilt out of his comfort zone of play.

Great defensive teams study the offensive patterns of every team and every player they play against. Great defensive teams understand the predictability of their opponents' offensive patterns. All great offensive players are predictable. Still, it's inconceivable that any team can always take away its opponent's first shot option or favorite move or favorite starting offensive position. But in team defense, the core operating principle is to reduce efficiency. Our game plan never varied, we could let our opponent's star offensive player score 35 points, but if we could take away Jerry West, Oscar Robertson or Walt Frazier's preferred shot and cause him to miss three, four, five or six shots...we believed that we could convert those misses into Celtic points.

This week during The Finals, try watching the Lakers and the Pistons differently. Watch for the team that builds its defense around taking away its opponent's preferred shots (its first option) or preferred shooting positions. Watch Kobe Bryant or Ben Wallace try to force their opponents into their second or third options. As we began taking our opponents out of their offensive comfort zone, our team would subtly begin backing up each other to compensate for these defensive changes. This team defensive effort was singularly what created the Celtics' records.

The second characteristic of great team defense is a team that understands the power of invisibility. I can admit this now, some 35 years after my last game: I used to get this great joy from having my opponents "look for me." Why? Because it distracted them and took them out of their pattern of comfort. Defense is about breaking your opponent's offensive patterns, breaking its concentration and subtly modifying its offensive schemes. Blocking shots, stealing passes and causing turnovers all distract its concentration. Team defense is as much a psychological strategy as it is a tactical weapon.

In the end, an offense feeds off of its defense. And effective offenses begin with effective defense.

Our Celtic style of play is timeless and will always be relevant. I see a number of players and teams in the NBA who understand the subtle art and science of defense. Wallace of the Pistons comes to mind. Ron Artest of the Indiana Pacers clearly earned the Defensive Player of the Year award. And while both Kevin Garnett of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Bryant of the Lakers are known for their scoring ability, they also are among the best players in shutting down their opponent.

It is no mystery why the Lakers, Timberwolves, Pistons and Pacers were all within sight of The Finals. Four of the five players named to the All-NBA Defensive First Team made it to the Conference Finals -- Wallace, Bryant, Artest and Garnett. In fact, the past 15 NBA champions ranked in the top five in at least one of the two major defensive categories (points and field-goal percentage) during the regular season or postseason.

I don't know who will win tonight, or if it will be the Lakers or Pistons to emerge as the 2004 NBA champions. But I do know how the eventual champion will arrive at the Larry O'Brien Trophy. Since the Celtics transformed basketball, defense wins championships.

Mr. Russell, who played for the Boston Celtics from 1956 to 1969, was named Sports Illustrated's Greatest Team Player on the Greatest Team of the 20th Century and is a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame and the NBA's 50 Greatest Players.

Ladies And Gentlemen, I give you your 2008 NBA Defensive Player of the Year

BEAT LA.

Congrats To Josh And Nicole, That Was An Awesome Wedding...

2008-06-01T18:09:00.001-07:00

BEAT L.A.!! BEAT L.A.!!!

2008-05-31T00:28:00.001-07:00

How much did we Celtics fans hate the LA Lakers back in the day?

This much:

1982 Eastern Conference Finals, Philadelphia 76ers at Boston Celtics-Game 7...

The 76ers are cruising as the Celtics are down by 12 points with 30 seconds left in the game, and it's serious garbage time as the game winds down the final seconds. The crowd at the Boston Garden has realized defeat is upon them, and there will be no Boston team this year in the NBA Finals. But they already know that the LA Lakers will be the team from the West representing in the Finals against the 76ers.

That means there is only one thing left to do.........

Bring it LA.

Update:

I'm adding this wonderful youtube gem for posterity...

Update revised:

Oh, and this too. This is how you celebrate a World Championship..

Happy Memorial Day Weekend, And Thank You For Those Soldiers Who Have And Continue to Serve Our Country

2008-05-23T16:18:00.000-07:00

I'll probably catch Indiana Jones tonight, and hopefully I'll have a review that will help to stem the tide of the viciousness that's been hurled at the Crystal Skull. Enjoy the long weekend everyone, and thank a Veteran if you can...

Man, I'm glad I don't live in Canada...

2008-05-21T17:49:00.000-07:00

I'm watching Steyn's recent visit to the Canadian tv show "The Agenda with Steve Paikin", and his depressingly fruitless attempts to explain free speech to three Canadian Muslim LAW students of all people and man, I'd be checking the real estate prices in Michigan right now, because you're looking at your future lawyers and judges in this video.

Youtube has them, part's 1-7.

It's very uncomfortable to watch law students from any country or background be so flippant about the rights of free speech, as if the word "Law" itself has been mangled. The idea that you can now sue someone because you're "offended" is pretty freaking stupid.

It'g getting even worse when some of the people who are offended get so offended that they blow up and kill people. That's a problem.

Update: Kathy Shaidle at PajamasMedia has a more in depth analysis of the show, including a reference to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunals 100% conviction rate on hate crime issues.

Riverfront crawfish thingy

2008-05-17T16:01:00.001-07:00