Whoa...

For shame! I forgot this even existed...

Anyway, I guess I should introduce myself. As my username suggests, my nickname is Lucky, although my real name is Pashalis...however, I'm sure any of you may read this (ha!) already know as much.

I graduated from Assumption College in 2007 with a degree in International Business, and after a summer of doing pretty much nothing, I ended up at a very large financial services company in Boston. I won't go into details on exactly where I work, but let's just say it's named after a certain street.

I won't pretend I have some high-brow reason for joining this blog; I mainly wanted to find some place where I could post about the bizarre things that I enjoy. You can also expect some political comments (if not commentary), although I'm sure Mike will be posting the vast majority of both. Politically, I'm pretty much like Mike, except I was never silly enough to donate to the Libertarian Party.

So there you have it. On the off chance that I don't know you, this likely didn't help you get to know me better. I suppose, though, that's kind of the point of a blog - so hopefully I'll manage some pretty interesting posts.

- Lucky

Joblessness Rates, the Electoral Map, and the Stimulus

I saw a link about state-by-state joblessness, and it was setup like an electoral map where you could hover over different states, and so on, and it was interesting... but reminding me of the electoral map, I wanted to compare.

Joblessness Map of the United States

2008 Electoral Map

Now the article from the joblessness page:

While some states fared better than others, December was a cruel month for many workers nationwide, and economists predict job losses will continue for the rest of this year.

All 50 states recorded an increase in the jobless rate in December and an overall spike since last year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday (Jan. 27). The national unemployment rate rose from 6.8 percent to 7.2 percent — compared with 4.9 percent a year ago.

The numbers of people losing jobs last month varied widely from state to state.
Michigan (10.6 percent) and Rhode Island (10 percent) posted the highest rates of unemployment, while Wyoming (3.4 percent) and North Dakota (3.5 percent) had the lowest. Ten states had jobless rates significantly higher than the national average and 22 states reported much lower rates.

In employment growth — an indicator of which states are likely to restore jobs most quickly —Wyoming also showed the healthiest signs, with a 2.2 percent increase in employment since last year. Four other states — Texas (1.5 percent), Oklahoma (1 percent), Alaska (.9 percent) and South Dakota (.8 percent) — recorded an increase in the number of people employed.

But in most states, the job market is shrinking. Since December 2007, 29 states reported a significant decline in the number of people employed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Topping the list is California with 257,400 fewer people employed since last year. Florida is next with 255,200 fewer jobs, followed by Michigan with 173,000 jobs lost and North Carolina with 120,200.

Nationwide, employers have shed 2.6 million jobs since December 2007 and the number is not expected to peak until sometime next year. Without government intervention, the national unemployment rate is likely to exceed 10 percent by mid-2010 and could remain as high as 7.6 percent through 2012, according to a Jan. 13 report by the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit research group.

“This is going to take a long time to turn around. But the magnitude of the employment drop will depend on what comes out of Congress on the economic stimulus bill,” said Heidi Shierholz, co-author of the report.

Now, the states that they mention:

Highest Joblessness, Followed by Presidential Electoral Results:
Michigan: 10.6% (Democrat)
Rhode Island: 10% (Democrat)

Lowest Joblessness
Wyoming: 3.4% (Republican)
North Dakota: 3.5% (Republican)

Highest Employment Growth
Wyoming: 2.2% (Republican)
Texas: 1.5% (Republican)
Oklahoma: 1% (Republican)
Alaska: .9% (Republican)
South Dakota: .8% (Republican)

Employment Declines
California: -257,400 (Democrat)
Florida: -255,200 (Democrat)
Michigan: -173,000 (Democrat)
North Carolina: -120,200 (Democrat)


Now, from this we can come to a couple of conclusions. The first, and perhaps most obvious, is that every area in significant economic decline voted Democrat in 2008, similarly, every area with growth voted Republican. Clearly, the areas that were hit the hardest were looking to elect somebody new into office -- this is natural, normal, and we'd expect it. However, perhaps the blame is in the wrong place. Let's look at 2004, where we were generally in the midst of job growth and economic satisfaction, having recovered from the post-9/11 recession quickly and job numbers generally growing nationally. I'll save you the trouble of listing out the data -- it maps identically with the exception of Florida and North Carolina. Of course, Obama's victory in 2008 was much greater than those 42 electoral college votes.

In so far as only two of those states differ on the list of states that the article mentions explicitly, it's reasonable to say that those states probably consistently lean more Republican or more Democrat. This is supported by senate and house counts by party, not just after 2008 (where Democrats have a solid lead, especially in the House), but also from 2004 - 2006, where the Senate was a practically a tie (resting only on Joe Lieberman's forced expulsion from his party in 2006).

Senate counts for worst economies:
California: 2 Democrats, 0 Republicans
Florida: 1 Democrat, 1 Republican
Michigan: 2 Democrats, 0 Republicans
North Carolina: 1 Democrat, 1 Republican
Rhode Island: 2 Democrats, 0 Republicans
Oregon: 2 Democrats, 0 Republicans
Nevada: 1 Democrat, 1 Republican
South Carolina: 0 Democrats, 2 Republicans

Only one of the eight worst states holds a Republican majority for senate, and I'd imagine the House would follow mostly the same (perhaps more for Democrats simply because they've owned the GOP for two elections in the House).

From this, I'd draw a couple of points, and these are reinforced by recent history. The states with the worst economies in recent history are all strongly blue states: California, Rhode Island, Oregon, and Michigan. These are all single party states, controlled by Democrats for decades, and among the least bipartisan states in the country by representation -- only outdone by Massachusetts, the least balanced state in the Union.

First, I would like to see how appropriation of this $900,000,000,000 "economic stimulus" package is being shared amongst states. I'd wager that we'd probably see it mostly go to states with the poor economies, that not coincidentilly, also happen to be the most Democratically controlled states in our lifetimes.

Second, and this is more of an idle thought, I wonder to myself what comes first in this case. Do the bad economies preceed Democratic leadership being chosen out of these states, or is it reversed, is their Democratic leadership, which then opens up for economic malaise. Finally, and this is more a point of anger with the buzz words and one-liners I've heard the last few days out of the House and Senate about this stimulus bill, but supporters of the bill constantly harp on how "Americans are hurting." Well, why haven't they -- Harry Reid, Barabara Boxer, Jack Reed, Lindsey Grahamn (Token R who supported the initial bill in the senate) -- do anything about it in their own states? Now, surely, every state in the country is in economic decline, but why is it that New Hampshire has a 4.5% joblessness rate -- and is a moderate state -- while states within an hour's drive that lean heavily Democratic are all suffering by much worse (Vermont 6.4%, Maine 7.0%, Massachusetts 6.9%, Rhode Island 10%, Connecticut 7.1%, New York 7.0%)?

In politics, we won't settle what comes first -- the chicken or the egg -- but, perhaps we should be weary about supporting economic bills presented by senators from states that continually have the worst economic records in the country.

I'm a sceptic now, says ex-NASA climate boss • The Register

I'm a sceptic now, says ex-NASA climate boss • The Register

"As Chief of several of NASA Headquarters’ programs (1982-94), an SES position, I was responsible for all weather and climate research in the entire agency, including the research work by James Hansen, Roy Spencer, Joanne Simpson, and several hundred other scientists at NASA field centers, in academia, and in the private sector who worked on climate research," Theon wrote. "I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that global warming is man made.”

The Facebook Status Donation: Standing with our Muslim Brotherhood in Arms

Few things turn me sour more than the philanthropic "Facebook Status Donation," which left-minded individuals (and some right-minded) "dedicate" to various causes when they feel the political or social bug. Many people will recall the "I have donated my status to Barack Obama," or John McCain, back in early November. The latest that I've seen in several status messages has been some 100-character tirade against Israel followed by something like, "I have donated my status to Gaza," which is, of course, actually a donation to Hamas -- an internationally recognized terrorist organization. It's not that those donating their status messages support "Gaza," they don't, they support the withdrawal of Israeli troops from occupied Gaza and handing the sheep back to the wolves (although, in war-torn Gaza it is increasingly difficult to differentiate between sheep and wolves). Perhaps many of these donors don't remember what happened over the summer when Palestinians in Gaza blew a truck-sized hole in the wall that separated Egypt from Gaza to escape Gaza from Hamas rule. The left has suffered from a myopic memory loss as to why exactly they were against Israel building the wall to separate the Palestinian occupied territory from the rest of Israel: Palestinians have been murdered more so by Hamas than any other group in the Middle-East; they want to escape the war zone that is Gaza under Hamas. Or, at least, that was one of the reasons they were against the wall (other reason's may include, but are not limited to, some liberal idea about uniting communities and not building walls and the ever-yearning leftist desire to watch Jews be murdered).

These aforementioned status donations mention civilian casualties in Gaza, usually either implying that these were the result of Israeli fire or explicitly blaming Israel for the casualties. The idea that Israel is causing these casualties, or is at least mostly to blame for the casualties, is patently absurd and we can look towards our own bastions of liberal ideology for explanations of this absurdity. In A Gaza War Full of Traps and Trickery published this morning in the New York Times, the ever ardent crusader of avoiding condemnation of terrorists, Stephen Erlanger perfectly describes the war crimes that Hamas is committing against Palestinians, against the residents with whom you would expect they would be interested in defending. As Erlanger writes, "Weapons are hidden in mosques, schoolyards and civilian houses, and the leadership’s war room is a bunker beneath Gaza’s largest hospital," tactics borrowed by Hamas under the tutelage of Iran and Hezbollah. The author of the article does his best to avoid condemning Hamas or holding the Palestinians to the same standard that his newspaper holds Israel, but this is nothing new -- ethical double-standards in war making are what typify Western press. This sort of implicit suggestion that Hezbollah, Iran, or Hamas is excused from the same standard of warfare that Israel, America, or Europe may be held to is zinging irony given the left's affection for Said's Orientalism -- perhaps there is no better indication of our implicit racism and xenophobia than the press' preferable treatment of Islamic terrorists.

Erlanger's article is still illuminating, with descriptions of the counter-tactics taken by the Israeli Defense Force as a response to Hamas' war crimes. Hamas "placed a mannequin in a hallway off the building’s main entrance. They hoped to draw fire from Israeli soldiers who might, through the blur of night vision goggles and split-second decisions, mistake the figure for a fighter. The mannequin was rigged to explode and bring down the building." Also described are IDF making holes in interior walls to prevent exposure to snipers and suicide bombers dressed in civilian clothes. In fact, Hamas has ordered all military, and even police, to not wear their uniforms and look as much like civilians as possible. Civilian use is not merely relegated to military and police, civilian buildings like schools and hospitals are intentionally used to not just plan military actions or house combatants, but also to launch rockets and murder Palestinian civilians. As Noah Pollack describes in Commentary,

"Hamas used a UN school as a weapons cache and base of operations for launching mortars at the IDF, and the IDF’s return fire killed the Hamas cell along, tragically, with a yet-unspecified number of civilians, then he is behaving responsibly. If he wishes to be particularly scrupulous, he might additionally note that Hamas had rigged the school with explosives which detonated after the IDF took out the mortar team, killing a large additional number of civilians. And he might add that you can go to the IDF’s Youtube channel to view footage from 2007 of Hamas using the very same school as a mortar-launching base."

Irresponsible journalists, the very ones who are contributing to the donated Facebook status messages, report this as "civilian casualties from IDF attacks." Hamas' most potent weapon is the Geneva convention: they look up as many rules that they hope the IDF will abide by, and then use them not only to murder Israelis, but also to murder Palestinians to garner international support, media empathy, and young-leftist sympathy.

Yet Israel persists in fighting as ethically as they can, even while surrounded by nations that are vow to their destruction. Erlanger mentions how "[c]ivilians are warned by leaflets, loudspeakers and telephone calls to evacuate battle areas" -- sent by the IDF --while also employing a "new Israeli weapon, (...) tailored to the Hamas tactic of asking civilians to stand on the roofs of buildings so Israeli pilots will not bomb." The Israeli weapon is a "missile designed, paradoxically, not to explode. [The IDF] aim the missiles at empty areas of the roofs to frighten residents into leaving the buildings, a tactic called 'a knock on the roof.'"

And yet, there is still relatively little mention of what provoked this conflict or even how Hamas launches its counter-offensives. Hamas has launched rockets from Gaza into Israeli civilian settlements for decades, but the offensive was heightened as 2008 drew to an end -- with as many as 80 Gaza-fired rockets landing in Israeli civilian neighborhoods a day. The rockets, however, aren't intelligent and are mostly the same sorts of weapons fired by Hezbollah into Israeli neighborhoods (something to note: the rockets coming from Lebanon over the last few weeks are likely fired by Hamas, not Hezbollah) -- so while Israeli missiles and rockets are made with a pinpoint accuracy and cunning design to reduce civilian casualties, Hamas rockets are specifically used to cause as many civilian casualties as possible, both Israeli and Palestinian. It was estimated in 2006 that for every one rocket that landed successfully in an Israeli neighborhood, killing a Jew or Israeli citizen, as many as five land in Arab settlements, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and so on. This strategy is effectively employed because Western press rarely reports Arab casualties as being caused by Hamas or Hezbollah, they are either reported alongside an IDF strike or without any cause: as if the rockets fell from the sky without anybody lighting a fuse.

I do not find it vexing that leftists or young people like myself are so quick to be misled into thinking that it is Israel attacking civilians, rather than Hamas. We like to be misled, it may be the essence of youth. Being able to "donate" a status message to civilians in Gaza feels good, but of course, it is a donation to the very weapons that Hamas is using against both Jews and Muslims in the Middle East. Moral relativists in the donor crowd are quick to point that this is the only effective strategy for Hamas -- murdering civilians, appealing to the Western press, appealing to Western higher education, and launching their attacks on Israelis and fellow Arabs -- has worked in recent times. However, this is inherently flawed in the logic of sympathizing with the collateral damage of conflicts: if it is morally or ethically null to murder civilians, then there is no ethical grounds with which to "donate" your status to those casualties -- we may as well donate them to a pile of rocks or some lifeless subterranean ooz. This, of course, isn't the point.

Donating a status message to those suffering in Gaza, or those murdered civilians, or what have you, is to proudly stand on the side of Hamas -- to declare an allegiance with terrorists and their destructive ideology. It is fueled not by politics or empathy or humanism, but rather, the opposite: ideology, racism, and anti-semitism. It isn't an opposition to Israel, although it publically takes that face, it is the cosmopolitan face of the common Western anti-Jewry movement. Hamas doesn't murder Jews as an accidental result of the goal of destroying Israel, they murder Israelis because goal of destroying Jews. As Daniel Finkelstein writes in the Times of London, "it is difficult sometimes to avoid the feeling that Hamas and Hezbollah don't want to kill Jews because they hate Israel. They hate Israel because they want to kill Jews."

A Mideast Glick Check - Kathryn Jean Lopez - The Corner on National Review Online

Kathryn Jean-Lopez interviews Caroline Glick about the Israel-Gaza conflict and its media attention. Like usual with media reports of Israel, all of the news focuses on Israel defending itself, rather than the year of Hamas attacking Israel, and the recent massive increase in rocket attacks that started about a month and a half ago. Of course, you only hear about it once Israel does something back, those aggressors...

Q: What exactly started this latest flare-up?

A: The fighting in Gaza today started about three weeks ago when Hamas renewed its rocket, mortar, and missile assault against Israel. Last June, Israel foolishly agreed to a six-month ceasefire with Hamas. Hamas used the time to have Iran double the size of its missile arsenal and double the range of its missiles, and to build up its Iranian-trained, armed, and financed Hezbollah-style army of 20,000 men. Hamas called its renewed offensive “Operation Oil Stain.” On December 17, Hamas attacked Israel with more than 80 missiles, rockets and mortars.

It took Israel ten days to finally respond to Hamas’s assault, which for the first time put Israeli major cities like Ashdod, Yavne, Beersheva, and Gedera under assault.

What is interesting about this latest round of fighting is that the world paid little attention to what was going on when it was only Hamas attacking Israel. People only started paying attention when Israel’s government said enough is enough and started defending its territory and citizens.

A New Year's Wish

I wish that all of my friends would use Gmail's chat feature over AIM, or integrated with AIM.  Because its so much better to everything else and it actually works.  The auto-archiving and searchability right then and there, not to mention, the offline emailing system, just works.

"Benjamin Button" : Triumph of the Human Spirit

We just got back from seeing The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which seemed interesting, despite my reservations against moves that use an excessive amount of alliteration in their titles... and, well, despite this movie being a triumph of the human spirit ... uhh.. a celebration of life... and... uhm, any other stupid film review cliches that I can come up with... it is really one thing: bad. Well, it is more than just bad. It is bad and boring. Why? It has no plot. See, "plot" doesn't mean just like "this happened, then this happened, then this happened," plot means, "this happened, and then this happened for this reason related to this, and then that happened because this and this both happened." Nothing in CCoBB happens for any reason other than that it just happens. This was identical to "There Will Be Blood," which, for four hours, events not related to anything else in the film just happen, and then, oh, look, hour 3, minute 47, there is blood -- woo, "TRIUMPHANT!"

Fuck this movie was terrible. And I'm going to ruin the ENTIRE thing for you in this shitty review because nobody sees it.

Okay, so the movie begins with this blind guy having a baby and the blind guys baby grows up to be a man and he goes off to World War I. Man-baby dies in war. Blind guy, who is a clock maker, decides he wants to be clever and he's making this clock that ticks backwards so that everybody's kids can come back to life... It's cute and all, and you say, "Oh wowz, I wish I could do that now so that the 4,000 boys and girls who died in Iraq could come back to life.." And so, you're content with that. The movie could end then: Minute #11, and I would have been happy; $7.50 well spent. But it doesn't end there.

Okay, fast forward to the present day. There's this old lady who's dying in Louisiana just before Hurricane Katrina... why? Nobody knows why, it just seems cool to do it that way. She's in a hospital and she's going to croak and so she tells her daughter to grab this journal and start reading... This is the journal of Benjamin Button who, you learn at about minute #141 that she is the former lover of the dying old lady and the father of the old lady's daughter. The story is about Benjamin Button's stupid life, and you'd think that it would be different. See, the name of the movie is "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," obviously, you would think that this would be about "his case," the "curious case" at that ... y'know, something that reveals the odd affliction that he has. But it isn't, it is about his stupid life which is pointless and stupid. So, the title is a lie. But anyway.

So the movie picks up at the end of World War I, with the blind guy making his backwards clock and Benjamin is born and he's born ugly to some lady who dies in child birth. Father promises to give the kid a life, and leaves it at the door step of this black lady -- mammy -- who takes care of Benjamin [giving him the name]. Some stuff happens, nothing important. Even though he's only a baby, toddler, young boy, etc., he's aged like an old man. Yeah, sure, it makes no sense... but it's like Big Fish and you're supposed to think that it's actually a "Triumph" and "EXUBERATING!" The movie is told through the journal and the dying old lady, who they flash back to every 17 minutes and 31 seconds for her to croak out a few stupid phrases, half-dimensia, half-human, and then they tell more of the story. Of course, despite that the old lady ages the way people normally do and Benjamin gets younger, they meet again at some age, fall in love, fuck at least 400 times, there's also about 45 seconds phallic references. This is when you learn that the old lady's daughter from present day is the daughter of Benjamin. He leaves the old lady at some point saying something as if he were some old sage passing off wise words to an ignorant young shepard, and then he disappears, and so on.

At some point, yes, Benjamin becomes a child and gets delirious (for no reason, it never says why he starts to lose his mind when he becomes 15... just like how it never says why he also ages in reverse, you're just not supposed to question these things that are "triumphs"), and then he becomes a baby, and then the old-lady-who-he-was-in-love-with-who-is-also-dying-and-semi-narrator-in-the-present-day cradles him in her arms as he dies as an infant... I don't know why this happens. Why doesn't he become an embryo? The movie could have done one central thing: It could have solved the abortion debate. See, the Abortion debate is centralized around the question of what a human being is. If Benjamin ceases to exist once he is in the embryonic stage, then by-golly, the pro-lifers would be right; if he ceases to exist in some amalgamous stage of cells arranged by some arbitrary period of weeks or months inside the uterus, then, well, go pro-choice. The movie doesn't do this, however, and to its detriment in the opinion of this critic.


OH, but you object those who saw the movie, Benjamin actually "dies" when the clock that ticks backwards is arbitrarily replaced by a modern digital clock (SLAM MODERNITY!). But fuck why the hell would that make any sense? I mean, I know I shouldn't ask such things of "INSPIRING" films, but if they're going to be relevant to reality in some ways (ie, having humans who can't fly, go through walls, uhm, be super human, etc), why can't they be relevant in other ways? I don't really question anything about "Star Wars," even though I don't really like it, but because Star Wars has a relevant physical existence, it has rules and things that generally make sense in the Star Wars universe (and if anybody says anything about like, Lando Corinthean and/or Han Solo shooting first I will personally drive to your house and tinkle in your mailbox -- no lie). CCoBB just has no consistent physical universe, it drives me crazy. But anyway.

So the movie, classically, ends with Hurricane Katrina flooding some house where the giant-backwards-ticking-clock is stored... prompting me to exclaim in the theater, "oh, so it was all George Bush's fault." I thought that it was a clever remark, one smart enough to reproduce in print, but you wouldn't think it was funny unless you actually sat through a solid three hours of the most pointless movie of 2008. Err, I mean, if you sat through the hanging moments of the glorious story of retribution, matriculation, and something else that I should describe it as that makes no fucking sense.

Plain as day: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button SUCKED. The first fault was not actually being about "the case." The second fault, and a lethal fault of any movie and something that has been getting more and more common, is that it had ZERO plot -- just things happening. Plot does NOT mean "things happening," it is some sort of overarching story connecting these events. At one point, the film unknowingly makes fun of itself by describing this event in a sort of "chaos theory" way, where the main female character gets hit by a car and it traces all of these seemingly unconnected things to show how it's all connected to this car accident. The fact is: the movie does not do this itself. One event is not connected to the next. When Benjamin goes to fight the Japs in World War II, it has no relevance to what happened 20 minutes before then (when he was banging this OSS spy's wife who also happens to swim the English Channel later in the movie -- yes, I am serious), and it has no relevance to what happens 20 minutes after when he meets up with the love-of-his-life-narrator-old-dying-woman-in-modern-day-Katrina-riddled-Louisiana... nothing shares any relevance with anything else. "There Will be Blood," had the SAME fucking problem, but at least it was only for half the movie not the whole goddam thing.

Not only did this stupid movie waste $7.50 (I got a senior ticket), but worst of all, it wasted three freaking hours of my life, on CHRISTMAS day! The day that my Lord and savior is being born and I'm at Showcase North with the rest of the Jews and the Sodomites watching what may have been the worst movie of 2008.

A Triumph. The Year's Best. Benjamin Button moves.

Fuck-all, it moves a revolver from my holster into the back of my sorry mouth.

Baby, it's cold out there.

Just to remind everybody, 2008 was the coldest year on record, of course, making this decade one of the cooler decades of the last 150 years (since scientists have been collecting data).

As serious scientists repeatedly explain, global cooling is here. It is chilling temperatures — if not the climate alarmists’ fevered expectations of so-called “global warming.”

And what of the melting ice caps?

Alaska’s glaciers are thickening in the middle. “It’s been a long time on most glaciers where they’ve actually had positive mass balance,” U.S. Geological Survey glaciologist Bruce Molnia told Medred October 13. Similarly, the National Snow and Ice Data Center has found that the extent of Arctic sea ice has expanded by 13.2 percent over last year. This 270,000 square-mile growth in Arctic sea ice is just slightly larger than Texas’s 268,820 square miles.

But what of CO2 levels obviously rising?

“Global Warming is over, and Global Warming Theory has failed. There is no evidence that CO2 drives world temperatures or any consequent climate change,” Imperial College London astrophysicist and long-range forecaster Piers Corbyn wrote British Members of Parliament on October 28. “According to official data in every year since 1998, world temperatures have been colder than that year, yet CO2 has been rising rapidly.”

But is this surprising to anybody? Not if you follow the credo of the leftist community, where according to Al Gore in 1993, we "must not allow science to intrude on public policy," what Princeton Physicist Will Tapper was told after being fired from his post of director of energy research for the Department of Energy.

Minnesota Senate recount: Latest Coleman-Franken results

Check this out --
Al Franken, the idiot comedian who dabbles in failed political projects, is contesting the very close Minnesota senatorial election and while he lost the original race, he's gained significant votes in the recounts. The Minnesota Star-Tribune has a story showing some of the ballots that have been dropped after being "contested" by Franken... claiming that while voters circled in Norm Coleman's name (Franken's opposition), they don't show enough "intent" to count for Coleman.

Look at some of these...



How is that anything but a vote for Coleman? Check out the rest at the link:

Minnesota Senate recount: Latest Coleman-Franken results

Conscience Rule

Some talk has come recently about permitting a "conscientious objection" amongst pharmacies and health providers from performing acts or offering services that the provider considers morally objectionable.  It is another saga of the abortion debacle, a strict derivative of the Courts poorly handling the abortion debate in the first place -- and a problem that would not exist if it weren't for that mistake some 25 years ago.  The question is whether health providers should be permitted to object to providing services that they deem immoral.  Not surprisingly, I find that they should be able to.  My reasons are as follows:

The government should not have any right to force a privately owned institution to perform deeds that the institution deem morally dubious. If the institution receives significant (relative term, I know) funding, then the government can have a heavier hand, however, this should be limited to state governments who have a better gauge of the current moral or conscientious standards of a locality than the Federal government -- which is incapable of considering the individual opinions of different areas.

From a more libertarian perspective, it only makes sense that individual pharmacies and care facilities should be able to operate under their own standards, and the case was brought up of one such "Catholic Pharmacy" (I didn't think this existed at all) in Virginia where the Pharmacy only provided aid that they felt was morally appropriate. There were four other pharmacies within a mile of that one, CVS, Brooks, WalGreens, and so on, that could provide different forms of birth control than the "Catholic Pharmacy," and my position is that if the market can sustain these "morally conscious" pharmacies, then why not let them exist?

Now, of course, the obvious argument against that is this: What of in areas where pharmacies are sparse and a couple may need a form of birth control (abortaficient, contraceptive, or otherwise) that may be deemed morally inappropriate? Well, the courts have always recognized the contemporary standards of decency from area to area when considering cases of morality: it's the basis for which the courts approved sale and use of birth control in the first place. Effectively, faulting communities for having "morally conscientious" pharmacies would be tantamount to faulting communities for not having a pharmacy at all; in other words, if the market (derived by need) in a given area required a typical pharmacy that provided whatever products, then one would exist. If one does not exist, given lack of government intrusion (which it's very unreasonable to suggest that any governments are closing big-box pharmacies), then it is more likely a reflection of the contemporary standards of decency in a given area.

New HD Channels for Charter

Charter Communications finally added new HD Channels for the Worcester, MA area.  The channels are the following:

WeatherHD:  725
FoxNewsHD: 726
AnimalPlanetHD: 730
TLCHD: 731
FoodNetworkHD: 733
VersusHD: 767
GolfHD: 768
DiscoveryHD: 776
FXHD: 794

I am exceedingly happy about this.  I sent an executive email carpet bomb during the summer and was assured that they would be adding more networks by the new year, though, as Christmas approached, I doubted that.  However, here we are, December 23rd, 2008, and Charter has added nine new networks, in addition to the two new networks from the fall (Smithsonian HD and National Geographic HD), Charter is just a few networks behind the competition now.  AND, DiscoveryHD just intime for the reshowing of Planet Earth this weekend.  1080p Planet Earth on my new 46" Aquos?  Too much to handle

Well..

So, I have a pinched nerve in my left hand and its immobile.  Basically, its lilke my hand has been completely numb for ~14 hours.  I can only type with 1 hand and Im going to  a neurologist tomorrow.  Cant play guitar.  I can use four of my fingers from beyond the last finger joint, but I cant move them other tjhan that.  Its very odd.

So anyway, thats the news for me.  I'll show everybody how fucked up it is when I see them, but f I cant do something, then 'm just going to say that I cant do it... and its really frustrating to not be able to move muscles that you WANT to move.

Tips for beating Horde in Gears of War 2

Alright, brief videogame post.
So we've been struggling through Horde mode, basically usually three - five of us every night and have not been able to get past Level 20 on Hardcore.  I know, I know, laughable for anybody who has already beaten Level 50 on Insane, but whatever, we have jobs.  Blood drive was pretty good for us for a while, taking opposite sites of those two rooms on top of the stairwells (blocking the entrances with shields from time to time), but once the blood-mounts come out, it's all but impossible to get past it.  They kill you with one hit, they're insufferably difficult, and sweet Christ those guys with the chain thing just destroy you.

Well, we finally figured out how to get through the damn levels, at least up to Level 25 before we called it a night, but this seems repeatable.  The map to do it in is Hail, which is the level with the busted train that runs a semi-circle around the map, and the bridge on one corner, with that circular market area on the elevated middle.  There are three train cars that are accessible, two of which you can only access if you hurdle into them.  These are the essence of the levels.  We motored through Level 20 - 24 using one of the trains that's closest to the bridge.  The blood mounts and giant guys can't leap into them, and whenever smaller bad guys jump in, it's a massacre with the chainsaws.

The only real challenge in this is that you run out of ammo, and you are left uncovered from just one side -- guys shooting you from a neighboring train car.  Luckily, there is a sniper rifle in this car and if you have a good sniper with you, he can pick off those guys as they fire at you.  Also flame thrower bad guys need to be delt with separately, as they can take down a whole train of you and your pals pretty quickly.

But anyway, we're up to Level 25 and shouldn't have any difficulty getting through the 20s, and hopefully, through the 30s using this strategy.  It seems a little cheap, perhaps, but it works.  I was so sick of dying to a single bloodmount over and over again that I'll take any way to win at this mode, which is a great mode, and I am glad that it is damn difficult.

Good luck.

The world has never seen such freezing heat - Telegraph

The world has never seen such freezing heat - Telegraph

Christopher Booker discovers why October 2008 wasn't the warmest month on record. In a year where temperatures are much lower and alarmists are calling for the possibility of another global freezing period, October 2008 stood out as a strange anomaly. What was the reason for the warmest month on record? Russia was repeating temperatures from August and September and not recording new temperatures for October. Result? Everybody runs to the newspapers, nobody notices that Russia's temperature reports have been identical for three months.

Win. And by win, I really mean loss.

BestBuy's Review System loses, Facebook, Kay.

I'm on BestBuy.com because CircuitCity is going out of business and I want to buy a big TV before Thanksgiving... Well, CircuitCity sucks as bad as anywhere but their site always had a review system which wasn't that bad of a system; it had some honest reviews by people who usually knew a few things.  It wasn't AVSForum or anything, but it was still alright.

Well, Bestbuy.com implemented this, except... I think that they filter their reviews for only 5 stars and 1 stars, because that's all you get.  Either everybody loves the product or it has a 1.  If you look at their TV's, 40 - 50", 1080p, every TV has either 4.8 stars or higher (out of five), nothing lower than that.  The 42" Dynex 1080p LCD TV, which is $600, and you know it sucks (Dynex has never made a quality product, EVER), and it has 5 stars, while an $1800 Toshiba, which is obviously a serious TV, also has 5 stars.  I'm sorry, but ... it just doesn't work that way.

Bestbuy has edited my comments before and not posted them (I wrote a very detailed review of the Dynex wireless USB dongle which made computers freeze, it was there for 2 days and then gone... Dynex is the electronics brand owned by BestBuy).

So anyway, yeah.  That's my gripe for today.  Kay Jewelers commercials are also back on TV, and while their slogan is clever ("Every Kiss Begins with Kay;" think about it... Kay, Kiss, the letter K, the word Kiss... man.  It's almost as good as Sleepy's), their Christmas commercials are the absolute worst, nothing is worse.  It reminds me though, of something that really perplexed me.  So, I'm "in a relationship" now, and everything is great, but I really didn't know how to ask girl to be in a relationship ... like, Facebook has just changed everything.  I almost wanted to ask, like, "So, should we be Facebook official," as the way of asking her to be like "official."  It really weighed on me.  The 1950s were so much easier, you'd just 'go steady' with somebody, which everybody knows what that means, but you just can't ask it.  So, then after we ... uhh ... settled that (see, I still don't even know how to say it), I had ot think like "Oh, well, should I update FB, should she?  What the hell do I do now?"  The internet has permanently ruined human interaction.