Things have changed

A dozen people showed up with guns outside of the event center in Phoenix where Obama spoke yesterday. Two even had SEMI-AUTOMATIC RIFLES in addition to the dozen or more with handguns.

A man (later updated to 2 men) was seen carrying an assault rifle and a pistol outside the VFW Convention in Phoenix where President Obama spoke today, a local newspaper reports. (Click through for a photo.)

Local police said it's legal under Arizona law, but two officers kept close by him.

"If we need to intervene, we will intervene at that time," said Detective J. Oliver.

"Because we can" seemed to be the reason. Seriously? While yes, technically, these people could carry guns in public in Arizona, they decided that having them at a presidential event was a good idea? Wanting to exercise your right to bear arms is one thing, making a "statement" by carrying one to a presidental speech goes beyond that.

Can you imagine what would have happened if someone had showed up to a Bush event carrying an assault rife? For pete's sake, they hauled people away for wearing threatening T-SHIRTS whenever Bush spoke. There were "Free speech zones" for that sort of thing, you know.

To what purpose are these people bringing guns? I'm sorry, but I would be inclined to view this as an imminent threat, especially considering some of the signs being waved in the same vicinity and the not-so-subtle threats against the president aired by the teabagger brigade. Who do these idiots think they are? I'm sure they style themselves as some sort of patrioric freedom fighters, but I cannot see any purpose to their actions but intimidation and provocation. Why?

Let's put this in perspective, shall we? Wear an anti-Bush t-shirt to a Bush speech and get arrested. Carry a frikking RIFLE to an Obama rally and...it's ok? Wow. Things really have changed. And not for the better.

And, in case you are wondering, I'm not an anti-gun fanatic. I don't agree with the NRA, but I believe that rational gun ownership is fine.

Truth-o-meter

This was an interesting website -- statements about health care, ranked from true to false (with a few 'pants on fire!' graphics.) Michelle Bachmann is a lunatic, it seems.

There are an awful lot of lies floating around out there, and it's hard to figure out what the truth is if you don't have time to read the thousand+ page documents themselves. This was very interesting. I knew that the opponents were stretching the truth a bit, but, woah. I hadn't even heard some of these whoppers.

Quite a few of the quotes are from the campaign season last year, too. That's a bit misleading, but it does highlight how much all the candidates stretch things to make themselves look good.

I need to stop listening to the news. It's just pissing me off.

Fact-checking, anyone?

Apparently, opponents of health-care reform think that their message is more important than actual facts...and didn't fact check things. Even the really, really obvious things that could have been check with a 2-second query in Google, for pete's sake.

Investors Business Daily, in criticizing the Obama health care plan, charged that if the famed scientist Stephen Hawking lived in Britain, its National Health Service wouldn’t save his life, which “because of his physical handicaps is essentially worthless.” Mr. Hawking, 67, who has a motor neuron disease that is like Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a British subject and has received lifelong care from that nation’s health system.

Not only are they wrong on the basics (Hawking does live in Britain, he is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University and has received lifelong medical care there, which he has recently praised for prolonging his life) they are also wrong on their assertion that medical care in Britain would have left him out in the cold.

The magazine ran a standard correction merely stating that Hawking actually lives in the UK. No mention of their false premise, no mention that they had banked on it being true to make their point. The Columbia Journalism Review pointed out that the error fundamentally invalidated the editorial's main argument.

When you make an error of that proportion, where the correct information COMPLETELY DISPROVES YOUR POINT, don't you think a little crow-eating is in order? This was a mistake of the worst sort, just half-assed, lazy journalism. Obviously, if it's more important that the initial idea was floated so people can spread the talking point properly -- the truth doesn't really matter much, does it?

Wrong...and Wrong again

Art Laffer had this gem to say (last week, I'm running a bit late) about the health care controversy.

If you like the Post Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they’re run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid and health care done by the government.

I'm actually too incredulous to laugh.

First off, who does he think Medicare and Medicaid are run by now? And the VA - these are all "done by" the government.

Second, the Postal Service is not run by the government. The Postal service is a quasi-governmental entity (it was spun off in 1970 by Nixon), as is the IRS. They are run as for-profit entitles. It remains a creature of the federal government, but it's been decades since it used tax dollars for its operations, and we have one of the most efficient, cheap, and reliable mail systems in the world.

Finally, I wonder what percentage of Republicans simply don't know that Medicare and Medicaid (and the VA) are government health care. Medicare is federal, Medicaid is state. It's socialized health care, as per their definition. I don't see anyone running about demanding that they be dismantled and replaced by private systems.

Hell, people in general don't seem to get this. I shouldn't single out Repubs (although they do seem to be less informed and more proudly ignorant than the Dems I know) -- how many people simply don't understand how those programs work?

They just feel "in their guts" that if a program seems to be working poorly, or is onerous, or causes issues, or does something they disagree with, that it must be a government program, because "government can't do anything right" and if something is working well, it must be a private entity, because only privately held corporations can make money and be successful.

They are wrong.

The ideologues think the Postal Service is a government department because it is huge, needs more money all the time, and is an effective monopoly. They think that Medicare and Medicaid, because they are efficient and timely, must be run by the insurance companies. Nope.

I'm not trying to say that all government programs are effective, efficient, and workable - that's obviously not true. Nor am I saying that all private efforts are horrible wastes and driven by corporate greed.

However, this oblivious ignorance of the existing health care options that are run by the government, and the insistence on scare tactics that try to convince people that they are going to get "dmv-style" service, or have "death panels" is ridiculous and should be a clear red flag that some of these people have no idea what they are talking about.

Stealing AC

So, I'm sitting at my computer yesterday and it's hot outside and it's getting warmer and warmer in my office. This is normal: me, two computers and monitors, two dogs...it tends to stay a bit warmer in here than the rest of the house.

I ticked down the A/C a bit to cool things down and on my way back to my desk, I realized why I have a problem:

The beasties are bogarting the cold air.

When the beasties flop down on the air vents, not a whole lot of the cool air ends up in my office! THEY are cool and comfortable, but the rest of the room gets awfully stuffy. Hah!

Best Family Costume Evah!

I found this image on a post from Friendly Athiest - parents and baby in Chef and Lobster costume. It just tickled me.


((no attribution on the photo - just from that blog))

Off to Baltimore

I've got client meetings this week in Baltimore. Be back Thursday!

Meeting the family

We had dinner with my sister and her boyfriend -- we're the first ones from the family to meet him (well, we are a pretty scary bunch). Nice guy -- the Adorable Husband gave him the 'Surrogate Older Brother Stamp of Approval". He seems to make Nin very happy, and I was very pleased to see that he's the first guy that she didn't desperately try to get us to like...she just let it be. I liked him.

And, being my sister, she also shared an embarassing tidbit with me after the fact -- apparently he got a bit nervous about meeting us and did a little manscaping: he trimmed his eyebrows and overdid it a bit. She said she didn't even notice, and he was very amused that she didn't see any difference between his normal, bushy-browed self and the clippered version.

I suppose if he's going to be around for a while, he'll have to get used to the fact that in our family, we celebrate those dorky, stupid, and embarassing moments -- often bringing them up ourselves about our own foibles. The Adorable Husband still doesn't understand why we do this -- if it's embarassing, why share it with all and sundry? Well, it's what we do.

Of course, the next time I meet him, I'm going to be staring at his eyebrows and will probably bring it up. It's a compulsion.

Backfilling

Backing up a bit - spending the weekend in MN seeing my Dad and getting him settled in. He looks really good -- still gaining strength, of course, but he's up and walking. He's doing much better at the MN altitude (more air!) and he and Pat have settled in at Jenna's. It's a tight fit, and I'm sure that there will be the inevitable conflicts of four people sharing a house, but the improvements are making everyone happy!

Wires, Wires, Everywhere!

Finally! A site to tell you how on earth to set up the home theater components you have unpacked on your basement floor -- what cables to buy, what settings to use, where everything is supposed to plug in.

Have you ever stared at this and thought, "oh, sure, yeah, THAT's intuitive!"


How to Hook up your Home Theater

It didn't have speakers and such listed, but those are usually easy to figure out. But cable-buying page and links to the diagrams for each component are great!

When Indigo Children Grow Up

This crossed my desk this morning, from CNN. A graduate of Monroe College in NY is suing the college (for the return of all tuition moneys) because she graduated in April and has not yet gotten a job, and blames the school for not finding her a job. The Office of Career Advancement (basically, the same help center that every college has to assist with job searches and resume writing), didn't do enough for her, she contends. Since she's still unemployed after she graduated with an oh-so-impresive GPA of 2.7 (please add as much sarcasm as you can to that sentence).

As Thompson sees it, any reasonable employer would pounce on an applicant with her academic credentials, which include a 2.7 grade-point average and a solid attendance record. But Monroe's career-services department has put forth insufficient effort to help her secure employment, she claims.

"They're supposed to say, 'I got this student, her attendance is good, her GPA is all right -- can you interview this person?' They're not doing that," she said.

"They're supposed to say..." Really? In what alternate universe? Did your school call employers for you to set up interviews? I don't think so. I think Miss Thompson needs to rethink her assessment that employers are clamoring for graduates like her. Sorry, honey, you highly over-rate your attractiveness to employers.

Don't you love the part about good attendance? Like this is grade school and she'll get a nice plaque at the end of the year? And she contends that the school offered more help and support to students with higher grade point averages. I especially liked the part where she accused the school of favoring students with 4.0GPA's. Oh, yes, I'm sure they were hired first because the school made extra effort to showcase them to employers, rather than employers preferentially hiring those with higher GPA's. Of course that's the problem.

Her complaint adds, "The office of career advancement information technology counselor did not make sure their Monroe e-recruiting clients call their graduates that recently finished college for an interview to get a job placement. They have not tried hard enough to help me."

Yes, because it's someone else's job to get her full-time employment. Apparently she hasn't considered the possibility that the e-recruiting companies took a look at her resume and her academic history and passed. I never realized that the school was supposed to MAKE local companies give interviews to recent graduates. Does this woman actually think that the school was supposed to force businesses to interview her? To call anyone? Wow, wouldn't that be nice? Graduate and the school is responsible for making sure you get the job you want? Where is that guarantee in the small print?

The very idea that you'd SUE a school because you can't get a job is so ridiculous and mockable that I initially thought it was a joke. But now, Miss I'm-So-Speshul really does seem to think it's someone else's fault that she isn't employed. It's not like the school lied about accreditation or misled her as to the job market. They didn't prevent her from taking certain classes or refuse to assist her. She got the same education and opportunity that every other student did. They did nothing wrong at all, although she seems to think that they supposed to grease her way into a new job automatically. Because she's so special, I guess. That sense of entitlement is boggling.

Is she so stupid that she doesn't realize that there are, literally, thousands of people out there who are more qualified than she is? She's even outranked by most of her graduating class, for pete's sake, not to mention the people out there with actual business experience. In this economy, no one is guaranteed a job, certainly not a self-entitled c-student.

Perhaps she should have paid more attention in class and gotten better grades so she was actually attractive to the empooyers that are out there. Although, if this is her attitude, even with a perfect gpa she might not be terribly attractive to an employer. I know I wouldn't want to hire someone who expected the world on a platter.

I hope, I really, really hope, that she is smacked down hard and publicly over this. She's an entitled idiot and should be dismissed as such.

[Oh, and the Indigo Children reference in the title? Here's Wiki's take on it]

A Bit Late to the Party

Glenn Beck today exposed the Cash for Clunkers scheme to force your submission to allow the Govt. to basically set a VIRUS on your computer so that they can access all files on your computer at any time and turn those files over to the "authorities" and any one else they choose.

Years of exposés on government warrantless wiretapping and TIPS, and "Cash For Cars" is what gets the conservatives to cry foul? Are they kidding? Seriously, this is starting to read like an Onion article.

Coming just a bit late to the party, aren't they?

Paging Becky and Tim!

No, I really don't know any Becky and Tim, but someone sent me this link yesterday and I just had to pass it on.

Enter as evidence: one Craiglist entry (if you're not familiar with Craigslist, it's basically a huge on-line flea market/swap meet). Becky (of Becky and Tim) is offering "blank" Wedding Invitations.

But apparently, she is not quite clear on the concept of "blank".

These are probably not going to work if your name is not Becky and you are not marrying a person named Tim. That might limit your possible purchasing pool quite a bit.

Read the email exchange from the blog post, though. It's a hoot!

More Word Fun

I often laugh that the Adorable Husband thinks that punctuation is optional (he argues, of course, that it is not optional, but that he just writes a few lines and then think he should add something, anything, and so throws a comma or semi-colon on there).

Anyway, this little quiz has some bizarre punctuation marks - try it!

Stress Relief

This is what happens when I have an afternoon surfing the web while waiting for files to convert.

Having a bad day? Need a way to shake off that stress?

Peluches

Be patient - the main flash page takes a bit to load (they are apparently very proud of their fade-in logo). Turn on your sound.

Scroll over the cute little fluffy stuffed animals.

Feeling less stressed now? It certainly helped me!

Harder than it looks

Did you ever think about all the little words that you utter and read every day? We talk about a college graduate knowing about 20,000 words, and the average person using perhaps 4-5,000 during the course of normal interaction. College professors and avid readers and writers use perhaps 30,000. Shakespeare used 60,000. But, he was a huge show off.

But what are the top 100? This quiz was surprisingly hard. List the top 100 English words (picked by their frequency of use) in five minutes.

I got 47 the first time around, although I'm sure it ignored some of my entries!

Desperate Refusal of Reality

A recent poll (and take that for what its worth, of course) noted that less than half of Republicans polled believe that Obama is an American citizen. They assert that the current president is illegitimate.

This is the idiotic 'birther' conspiracy - apparently a bunch of IQ-challenged mouth-breathers are so upset at the idea that a bi-racial man is president that they are desperately trying to convince everyone that the current president wasn't actually born in Hawaii, but in Kenya and the Obama family has been conspiring to hide this fact for the last 47 years. The tin-foil hat brigade is demanding a birth certificate, and when that was provided, declared it fake and went on demanding "proof". At one point, some of them tried to argue that Hawaii wasn't a state when Obama was born there, and when that failed, they claimed he was born in Kenya, and then they tried to argue that his mother's second marriage invalidated his citizenship.

These people are IDIOTS. They are an embarassment to anyone with an IQ higher than 70.

They are ignorant of the constitution, ignorant of the laws governing citizenship, and so blindingly racist and stupid that they defy description. It's embarassing.

The GOP needs to get control of the wacko wing of their party and get them to shut the hell up, or they are going to lose any semblance of respectability they have. Cater to the idiots and people will think you are on eo

Computational Knowledge

And yet another COOL thing. Ask it a question ("meaning of life", "airspeed of an african swallow") or type in a mathematical formula ("integral of 1/sqrt(x*x + 1) dx" and click 'show steps', for example. Type in a date...I've spent the last hour trying to think of esoteric questions.

Wolfram/Alpha

Cool Tree Identifier

Yes, I'm spending an afternoon randomly surfing the web while I convert Mp3s to iPod audiobook format.

Here's a very interesting site by the Arbor Day Foundation - Tree Identifier. A guided Q&A to find out what kind of tree you're looking at. Cool!

How NOT to Design a webpage

This is NSFW (due to sound), and be ready to hit the mute button and close a loud popup window. But....wow. This is one of the most atrocious web pages I've ever seen.

http://hosanna1.com/

You've been warned! (and she apparently runs a web design service, too. Oh, my)