Bayou City Ramblings

Miss USA

2010-05-17T16:31:00.003-05:00

The Miss USA pageant is back in the news again this year. The Arab-American Muslim winner was asked the hard hitting question of whether or not health insurance should pay for contraceptives.

Meanwhile Miss Oklahoma was asked the softball question of if Arizona's new immigration law should be mandated by the state or by the federal government given that critics claim it amounts to racial profiling.

Seriously? In what world are these questions remotely equivalent? There's really no right or wrong with Miss Michigan's question. People might disagree that insurance should pay for birth control but no one is going to get really worked up about it. On the other hand, whatever side of the question Miss Oklahoma took, someone was going to be angry. How about asking Miss Michigan a harder question on the order of the one asked of Miss Oklahoma? Something like this?

Now I don't think Rima Fakih is a Muslim extremist. I mean not only is a burqa nowhere to be seen in her Miss USA photos but the woman won a pole dancing contest back in 2007. I just think if you're going to ask one contestant a loaded question that you should ask all contestants a loaded question.

The Untold Story: Hollywood Gets It Wrong

2010-05-16T20:15:00.002-05:00

It's 80 degrees in the house and I'm drenched in sweat. Every time my mother sees me she urges me to sit down and rest. She's afraid I'll hurt myself and she has a point. I weigh in excess of 350 pounds and am severely out of shape but I do not stop. Up and down the stairs I go, over and over. This is not part of a plan to get in shape and lose weight. It's about protecting my parents.

Middle aged men who still live with their parents are losers. Middle aged men who are close to their parents and take care of them, particularly their mothers, are spineless milquetoasts. When they're not psychopathic killers that is. Children who place their parents in nursing homes are cold, callous, and uncaring. Their only desire is to be rid of the burden of caring for those who raised them and showered them with love their entire lives. These are the views presented in countless movies and television shows by people who clearly have no experience with the things they are writing about.

Turn the hands of the clock back a few months. I'm reading a forum attached to a slice-of-life semi-autobiographical web comic that I like to read. Another poster is lamenting that his romantic prospects are null because he's a loser who still lives with his parents. Questioning reveals that his parents lost their house so he took them into his home and now supports them. This makes him a loser. It shows what a corrosive effect the entertainment industry has. He owns his own home. Financially he's doing well enough to support a family. He cares enough about his family to take them in even though he clearly feels doing so comes at significant cost to himself. And he's convinced this makes him someone no woman would want to date because that's the message he's heard over and over in movies and on television. Loser.

My own path to living with my parents wasn't quite so noble. Like many people I was laid off and haven't been able to find steady work since. I tried my hand at being self-employed but frankly, while I'm good enough at what I do, I don't have much of a head for business. Eventually having gone through my non-retirement savings and finding myself at the end of my apartment lease I decided to move back in with my parents. Loser. Of course before my parents retired they were homebuilders and one of the last houses they built is the one they live in right now. It's a nice little 5 bedroom/4.5 bath house and I'm living in the master bedroom because they've never used it, except for guests, and my old bedroom is filled with papers and other assorted junk so no basement for me. Did I mention the 60+" widescreen HD television?

Still I wasn't happy moving back in with my parents. It was the ultimate symbol of what a failure at life I am. I knew this because Hollywood told me so. Over and over and over again. But I was to discover that Hollywood was wrong. With the passage of time I've come to realize that I'm where I need to be. As a religious man I've come to see the hand of the Divine in my moving back in with my parents. Living with them I've come to discover they've reached a point in their lives where they can no longer take care of themselves. They took care of me, now it's my turn. If I hadn't lost my job and been forced to move back here, I might never have seen the warning signs until it was too late.

The first anniversary of my moving back in is approaching. Ironically it is my birthday. In the year that I've been back I've had to learn how to help an elderly person get back on their feet after falling down because they've both fallen multiple times. Mom has been laid up a couple of times, first due to illness and then because she hurt herself in a fall. Dad's mental state has rapidly deteriorated. I've had to take over the grocery shopping, the laundry, the housecleaning, and the cooking because they're not capable of doing it themselves anymore. I take them to church and the bank and out to eat.

Today was spent hauling newspapers out of Dad's room and taking them to recycling. It's a daunting task because he's been accumulating papers almost from the day they moved into this house almost 30 years ago. You see, my parents are hoarders. They believe in letting nothing go to waste. Dad was a workaholic. He often had no time to read the paper but he wasn't about to throw out a paper that he'd paid for without reading it and so he piled them up in his room until there was just a path from the door to his bed, the little attic office that he worked in, and the bathroom. Recently he's fallen twice in his bedroom. The first time I discovered him lying on the floor next to his bed. The second time Mom woke me up at 2 AM to tell me that Dad had fallen again. I ran upstairs to discover that he had managed to get himself wedged between a couple of stacks of old newspapers and a card table on which more papers were piled. He actually wasn't in an uncomfortable position, he just couldn't get up. So I had to dig him out and it wasn't as simple as just taking away the relevant newspaper stacks as I had to make sure that other stacks weren't going to fall over on him when I pulled the confining stacks out. Plus I discovered broken glass on the carpet, covered with paper, that I had to clean up so that I didn't get broken up further and ground into the carpet where someone might step on it. The whole process took about an hour during which he kept yelling about how the situation was hopeless. I kept trying to explain to him what I was doing and reassure him but with his current mental state I don't think he could really understand me. All I could do was keep working on it and as soon as I reached a point where I could finally start removing the stacks that were penning him in he calmed down and shortly afterwards I was able to get him back into bed.

So today I worked on his newspaper hoard. It wasn't particularly fun but I'm sure his two recent falls are related to stepping on papers and then slipping. I also did some laundry because in a separate incident he soiled his clothes. Then I get to go scrub Mom's bathtub thoroughly with bleach because she thought it would be a good idea to wash his clothes out there before putting them in the washing machine. I've also had to sterilize the kitchen sink because she thought it would be a good idea to use the cooking tongs to wash his clothes so she wouldn't have to handle them directly and then she put the tongs in the sink because they needed to be washed. What can I say? I'm the very image of Hollywood's definition of a loser.

Of course if I put my parents in a nursing home instead of taking care of them myself, Hollywood would say I'm a bad son who doesn't love his parents. Yet love is why I find myself thinking more and more about putting them in a rest home. I don't think it's possible to imagine just how physically and emotionally demanding it is to take care of your parents. People might think that it's about the same as caring for a child but it really isn't. There are profound differences between the two. For example, with every day that passes your child becomes more able to take care of themselves. Caring for your parents it's the exact opposite. Every day they're a little less capable of taking care of themselves and you, as their caretaker, have a front row seat. My father was once the most intelligent man I knew and this morning he told me mother and me that he had no idea who we were.

Despite that, despite all the unpleasantness, I don't consider caring for them a burden. I'm glad I can be here for them. I'm glad that I'm getting to spend this time with them. And every day I wonder if they wouldn't be better off in a nursing home where they can be taken care of by trained professionals who know what they're doing and are better able to see to my parents needs.

Loser. Bad son. Cold. Callous. Unfeeling. Just ask Hollywood.

Illegal Immigration Pt. 4: Papers, Please!

2010-05-05T20:36:00.003-05:00

Only the Nazis want to see your papers. At least that's what the Open Borders crowd claims. Fact is that they're wrong. Law enforcement officers have been asking to see people's papers for years and not just immigrants.

Have you ever been pulled over while driving in your car? The first thing the officer does is ask to see your papers, i.e. license and registration. He wants to verify that you have a license to drive, that it's your car, and that you have the requisite insurance and so he needs to see your papers. Here in Texas, if the officer finds you carrying a concealed weapon he's going to want to see your concealed carry license as well. Papers, please!

Though people are not required to carry a driver's license or other photo identification, provided they're not engaged in an activity that requires such things like driving a car, about half the states have laws allowing police officers to require suspects identify themselves if the officer has reasonable suspicion they are engaged in a criminal activity.

It's not Nazi-ism. It's just law enforcement. And guess what? Federal law already requires foreign nationals to carry proof that they're in the country legally so it's not like AZ SB 1070 is forcing anyone to carry any extra paperwork.

Illegal Immigration Pt. 3: The Illegal Founding Fathers

2010-05-05T08:00:00.002-05:00

Here's a big one with the pro-Open Borders crowd. They claim that the European colonists who founded the United States were illegal aliens. It's based on the flawed assumption that the Native American tribes had similar laws governing immigration that we do.

The reality is that prior to the appearance of the Europeans, the Native Americans had no real immigration issues to deal with and so no real laws governing them. They weren't ocean-going so they had no real concept of what lay over the horizon; how many people were there, what their culture was like, or what they might do if they gained a foothold in the Americas.

When the Europeans reached the Americas they were frequently welcomed by the natives. Sometimes this was because the Europeans brought them presents, trade goods they couldn't provide for themselves. Sometimes it was because the Europeans offered to be valuable allies in wars with neighboring tribes. The Europeans weren't illegal aliens because the native tribes largely had open border policies and those policies ultimately lead to their being forced out of their homes and confined to what lands the European immigrants deigned to give them.

The founding of the United States actually provides a perfect example of why open borders are a bad idea. If a nation fails to control its borders it will ultimately be overrun by people who do not have the nation's best interests at heart.

Illegal Immigration Pt. 2: Guilt

2010-05-03T21:51:00.006-05:00

One argument that the pro-Open Borders crowd uses is that we should allow anyone to freely enter the country out of guilt for what we did to the Native Americans. I'll admit I feel bad about what happened to the Cherokee and the Cheyenne and the Sioux and the other native tribes. Thing is, they're not the ones demanding we open our borders to everyone. The people demanding we give them free access to our country are the descendants of the Spanish conquistadors that crushed the Aztec, Mayan, and Incan civilizations among others. Because someone feels guilty about what European colonists did to the native tribes they're supposed to open their borders up to the descendants of other Europeans who committed similar atrocities only on a much larger scale? I don't think so.

If anything I'm amused by the irony of Mexicans being upset that the Anglo colonists they brought in to help them take Texas away from the Native Americans then proceeded to take Texas away from Mexico. Now that's funny.

Illegal Immigration Pt. 1: Stolen Land

2010-05-03T19:47:00.003-05:00

With the debate raging over Arizona's SB1070 I thought now might be a good time to take a look at some of the arguments offered up by the pro-Illegal Immigrant side of things. I'll start with the claim that the United States stole the southwest from Mexico.

The interesting thing about this claim is that Mexico didn't even exist until 1821. Before then it was known as New Spain. New Spain was founded in 1521 after the Spanish conquered the Aztec, Olmec, Toltec, Teotihuacan, Maya, and other cultures who lived in the area.

I live in Texas. If anyone can make a claim that Texas was stolen from them it is the Apache, Comanche, Caddo, Wichita, Kiowa, and Karankawa tribes, among others, that lived here prior to the region being invaded by Mexico. In fact, the word Texas is a Spanish corruption of the Caddoan word taysha which means "friend." The Spanish and Mexicans stole Texas from them. In New Mexico, Arizona, California and the rest of the southwest this was repeated with Mexico taking the land from the native tribes that lived there first.

Now members of these tribes may complain about their lands having been stolen from them but they don't generally do it in the context of an illegal immigration rally. Probably because they're natives who aren't in any danger of being deported but also, I suspect, because the ones who are angry about their land being stolen aren't likely to rally in support of the Hispanic culture that stole it from them in the first place.

Make no mistake, despite the fact that they aren't lily white Caucasians, Hispanics are just as much a product of European imperialism and colonialism as the North American WASP. The very word "Hispanic" tells you that by denoting, as it does, a relationship with Spain. There's a reason that Hispanics speak Spanish or Portuguese rather than any native tongue after all. In fact, an argument can be made that of all the European powers, the Spanish were the worst when it came to their approach to the New World. While everyone else was sending colonists, people who were looking to build new lives for themselves in the New World, Spain was busy sending conquistadors or conquerors. Soldiers whose job was to claim territory and plunder riches for Spain. That's why the English and the French and the other European powers only managed to lay claim to part of North America and some islands in the Caribbean while Spain and Portugal managed to lay claim to the rest of North America and the Caribbean along with all of Central and South America. And the conquistadors weren't particularly nice people. This isn't that surprising when you consider that while they were busy conquering the Aztecs and the Mayans and the Incans, etc. the Spanish Inquisition was at the height of its power back in Spain. Greed and avarice coupled with religious intolerance that says its okay to do anything you want to pagan heretics is not a good combination. A lot of natives died very unpleasant deaths in the quest to fill holds of ships heading back to Spain with treasure.

So when Hispanics complain that the United States stole the land from them remember that they, in turn, stole the land from the original inhabitants. They are thieves complaining that what they stole was, in turn, stolen from them. That doesn't make me feel particularly sympathetic to them.

Why Newspapers Are Failing

2010-01-25T06:39:00.002-06:00

Yesterday's Houston Chronicle provided the perfect example of why newspapers are failing in the age of the Internet. On the first page of the City & State section is an article by Rick Casey titled High Court kills wise Texas law. As you might suspect from the title, the article is about the Supreme Court's recent ruling overturning parts of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. The article starts by excerpting a speech that Gov. Rick Perry gave at a Tea Party rally on Thursday. After this goes on for several paragraphs, Casey admits that Perry never actually said this things and Casey just made them up. He then slams Perry for not accepting federal money for unemployment or education. At this point I had to double check what section of the paper I was reading because I thought maybe I'd picked up the Op/Ed section by mistake but no, it was still the City & State section.

Here's the thing. Fake quotes have no business in a news story unless it's a news story about a reporter being fired for making up fake quotes. The same goes for a reporter's personal opinions of a politician's political positions, especially when those positions have nothing to do with the story. Yet Mr. Casey thought these were appropriate things to include in his article. Clearly his editor(s) also thought it was appropriate and presumably so did the Chronicle's publisher.

When I want the news, I want the news and not some reporter's personal opinions. If I wanted Rick Casey's opinions on things I'd be looking in the Op/Ed section to see if he has a column there, not in the City & State section. I'm sure as hell not going to pay for some reporter's personal opinions dressed up as the news, particularly when I disagree with those opinions. If I want to read some liberal's opinions I can just got to the Huffington Post or Daily Kos or even Democratic Underground and read liberal opinions to my heart's content for free. If I'm reading the newspaper I want news and not opinion.

Some time back I went to the grocery store and there was a Houston Chronicle salesman there giving copies of the paper away for free hoping to get people to subscribe. I told him I wasn't interested in paying for such a biased news source. Instead of trying to defend the paper he merely asked where I got my news if not from the Chronicle. When I told him I got my news from the internet he tried to argue that the Chronicle was the only place I could get local news. The thing is even that wasn't true. When someone literally drove their car through one of my favorite restaurants, the Chronicle didn't carry the story. To find out what had happened I had to go to the internet where I found the story on a local TV station's news page. On the internet I was also able to find the personal account of someone who had been in the restaurant at the time of the incident along with pictures of the aftermath that they had taken with their cell phone. Far better information than the Chronicle's non-existent coverage.

Note for newspaper reporters, editors, and publishers. In case you haven't been paying attention to recent elections, the country is fairly evenly divided between liberals and conservatives. When you bias your news coverage towards one side you alienate the other. There was a time when you could get away with this bias because people simply didn't have any other real options for where to get their news. In the Information Age this is no longer true. If I don't like your news coverage I can log on to the internet and get my news from the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times or the Miami Herald or the Cleveland Plain Dealer or the Times of London or the Guardian or any of countless other newspapers that have gone online as well as ABC, MSNBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, the BBC, etc. Welcome to the age of competition. If you want my business you're going to have to give me what I want and what I want is news without the bias.

Debra Medina for Texas Governor

2009-11-09T15:34:00.003-06:00

I've been conflicted about who to vote for in the race for Texas Governor. Though I have defended Kay Bailey Hutchison in the past, I'm not real crazy about the job she's done as a Senator. In my opinion she's something of a RINO, pursuing liberal policies when she believes they'll be of benefit to her whether they are good for her constituents or not. The problem is, I've felt much the same way about Rick Perry. I prefer him to Hutchison but he's pretty liberal in his own right. He says a lot of the right words but his actions don't really show him to be someone I'd like to reelect.

This morning the Walton & Johnson radio show introduced me to Debra Medina. I'd never heard of her before but browsing her web site I like the positions she takes on a lot of the issues. If you're looking for a conservative candidate for governor you just might want to check her out.

Question of the Day

2009-09-17T19:03:00.003-05:00

I was just wondering. Why is it acceptable to protest jobs going to foreign nationals in other countries but racist to protest jobs going to foreign nationals in this country illegally? Do the poor in India and China not have as much need to eat as our neighbors south of the border?

You Keep Using That Word...

2009-09-17T18:05:00.003-05:00

Liberals and the mainstream media keep using the term "teabagger" to describe people who participate in the Tea Party rallies. The most recent example is Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif) who used the term in a plea to the media to begin acting as thought police. This bugs a lot of members of the Tea Party but personally I find it kind of amusing. You see, I don't think they've really thought things through.

Just what is a "teabagger?" The term originated as slang for a man who likes to lower his testicles into his partner's mouth. It is this definition that annoys people. The thing is, as someone who plays massively multiplayer online video games I know that the term has other connotations as well. Of course these days teabagging goes beyond humiliating video game opponents as anyone who fallen asleep at someone else's house only to wake up and find pictures of themselves asleep with a scrotum pressed to their face posted online can attest. And this is what I think of whenever I hear someone call me a teabagger.

You see, if I am a teabagger then who is the teabaggee? Who do I want to humiliate by dangling my testicles in their face? If you really want the answer look for me at a Tea Party. I'll be the guy with a sign dangling tea bags in the faces of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid. I really must thank the Left. Without them for inspiration I might never have figured what I want to put on a protest sign.

Going Postal On Health Care

2009-08-12T07:08:00.002-05:00

So President Obama was addressing a town hall and in trying to address claims that a government plan will drive private insurers out of the market he admitted that the government doesn't do things as well as private industry. Specifically he said that UPS and FedEx do a better job than the USPS.

Here is my question. If the government plan isn't going to be subsidized by tax money, as he appears to be claiming here, how is it going to provide health insurance to people who can't afford it now? That is the whole point of this thing isn't it? To provide health insurance to people who can't afford it? The money has to come from somewhere. If not from the people being insured and not from taxes, where is the money going to come from? Surely they aren't going to charge other people astronomically high premiums to subsidize those who can't pay. That would make the government plan a lot more expensive than any private insurance and so destroy it's competitiveness.

There's only one way the government can come up with the money to provide insurance to the 47 million uninsured. They've got to use taxes to subsidize the insurance. There's no other place for the government to get the money. The second the government plan is subsidized by tax dollars there will be no way for private insurers to compete. Private insurers have to make a profit or they will go bankrupt and out of business. The government doesn't have to make a profit because they can just seize the money they need through taxes. Which means the government can seriously undercut private insurers prices driving them out of business.

I'm a Night Elf Mohawk!

2009-08-11T17:54:00.002-05:00

I was talking with a friend this weekend and it came out that he hadn't seen Mr. T's World of Warcraft commercial so I thought I'd post it here along with some of their other celebrity spots.

Don't Tread On Me

2009-08-08T19:48:00.002-05:00

Civilized Debate

2009-08-07T19:03:00.006-05:00

An unemployed man goes to a health care town hall meeting to try and make an honest buck selling "Don't Tread On Me" flags while learning something about the issue. Want to guess which side's supporters assaulted him?

Wisdom from the Village Elders

2009-08-06T16:59:00.001-05:00

Seems an AARP meeting to promote Obama's health care plan didn't go quite the way the organizers planned...

Government Health Care Story of the Day

2009-08-03T17:53:00.002-05:00

Here's a heart warming tale of government health care. A woman in Oregon was informed that the state health care plan won't pay for her chemotherapy but they will pay for her physician assisted suicide.

Here is an inconvenient difference between private and public health care providers. For a private health care provider, a dead patient is a lost revenue stream. For a public health care provider, a dead patient is a cost savings.

Government Health Care?

2009-07-16T07:32:00.004-05:00

As we rush towards turning our health care system over to the government I find myself wondering something. Why do we keep looking at what Canada, Britain, and other countries have done with their health care systems? We already have several health care systems in this country that are run by the federal government. The Canadian government isn't going to be running our health care. The British government isn't going to be running our health care. Our government is going to be running our health care. If we want to know what we can expect from them we should be looking at how well they've done with the health care systems they already control.

Way back in 1787, the federal government made an agreement that resulted in the creation of the Indian Health Service to provide Native Americans free health care on the reservations. So how's that working out?

On some reservations, the oft-quoted refrain is "don't get sick after June," when the federal dollars run out. It's a sick joke, and a sad one, because it's sometimes true, especially on the poorest reservations where residents cannot afford health insurance. Officials say they have about half of what they need to operate, and patients know they must be dying or about to lose a limb to get serious care.

Then there's the Veterans Health Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. You may recall a couple of years ago when the VA's crown jewel, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, was exposed as a cess pool.

Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.

Now it's just recently come out that the VA isn't doing a particularly good job looking after our female veterans either:

The five veterans said women sometimes aren't properly informed upon discharge that health benefits are still available. They described how dealing with government is frustrating and confusing, and that often their unique needs, such as child care and sexual assault counseling, aren't understood by government officials.

Do you really believe the federal government will do a better job taking care of you than it has taking care of it's existing obligations? I don't.

The Economics Of Wealth Envy

2009-07-13T19:45:00.004-05:00

My mother has decided she needs hearing aids. In the process of gathering information she asked me to look online for details about Lyric Hearing Aids. It's basically a disposable hearing aid that fits completely in the ear canal and which you leave in until it's time to replace it with a new one. They have to be replaced approximately ever 120 days when the battery runs down and they have to be inserted by a trained professional. Consequently you don't buy a hearing aid so much as a yearly subscription which provides a set number of replacements per year, 5 or 10 depending on if you need hearing aids for just one ear or both.

Curious about the pricing as well as what people were saying without the information being filtered through Lyric's marketing department I Googled them and found a message board where people were talking about Lyric hearing aids. Reading the thread two messages just sort of jumped out at me, both by the same person:

I think the 3000 dlrs per year is a robbery. I'm ok with a 3000 initial pay and then a lower yearly payment, like 700 or 800. They are really not targeting the common person and the middle class. This is for rich people.

This was followed a few messages later by:

Fair? at least not for the working class wallet. As I said earlier, it would be ok to pay thousands for an initial fee, and then... 500 per year sounds reasonable... But do you know the toll it takes on us the consumers to spend such amount? 3,500.00 per year is what you spend yearly on a car payment. By 5 years, you'd make this doctor/thief $17,000.00 richer. I repeat, this product is being sold to suburban high-middle class yuppies, not to anybody below that social/economic class.

Two things are fairly obvious from these posts. First, the poster has a case of wealth envy. Second, he has absolutely no clue the economics of running a business.

Notice that he believes that at $3,500, which is the price for 10 Lyric hearing aids a year, you'll make your doctor $17,000 richer over a period of 5 years. Given the fellow's obvious poor grasp on economics I can't tell if he's just rounding the $17,500 subscription fee down or if he actually believes that 50 (10 hearing aids per year x 5 years) Lyric hearing aids will only cost the doctor $500 or $10 per hearing aid. The alternative, if he's rounding the subscription fee down, is that he believes the doctor gets the Lyric hearing aids for free.

I'd really like to know his rationale for charging a high price for the first year and then radically dropping the price in subsequent years. What aspect of this program makes the first year so much more expensive than the following ones? The only difference that I can see is that before you get your initial set of hearing aids, you'll need a hearing exam and the price of that exam isn't included in the price of the subscription. It's a completely separate item that has no effect on the doctor's costs for providing the hearing aids.

This is something that the poster and other members of the wealth envy crowd don't seem to understand. Businesses have costs. If they sell their product or services for less than it costs to produce them, the business loses money. If the business loses enough money it goes bankrupt and fails. For a business to survive it must charge at least as much as it costs to produce its product. For a business to thrive it generally must charge more than production costs so that it will have money to look for ways to improve its products and services.

So what sort of costs would be involved with providing a subscription for Lyric hearing aids? Well for starters how about 10 hearing aids? I mean the doctor isn't just pulling the old hearing aid out of your ear, replacing the battery, and putting it back in. No, he replaces the old hearing aid with a brand new one that incorporates any new technological advances that have come out since the old hearing aid was inserted. Dividing $3,500 by 10 yields a price of $350 per hearing aid. That's a pretty good price for a hearing aid.

The price can't go down in subsequent years because the costs don't go down. You're still buying 10 hearing aids a year. If you can't afford to buy 10 hearing aids per year then maybe the Lyric hearing aids aren't for you. That's not really Lyric's fault or the doctor's fault. That's just the reality of the thing they're selling.

Sorry that the poster can't afford to spend that much money on hearing but that's just life. We can't always afford the things we'd like. I'd like to drive a Lamborghini Reventon, eat lobster for dinner every day, and have a personal staff that takes care of all the drudge work that I don't want to do but I can't afford any of that stuff. That's life. Fairness has got nothing to do with it.

People with more money than you, and there will always be people with more money than you, will always be able to afford nicer things than you just as you will always be able to afford nicer things than people with less money than you. Deal with it.

Socialized Healthcare: Equal Time

2009-07-13T17:43:00.002-05:00

We've heard a lot about how great and wonderful a nationalized health care system will be. ABC even ran an hour long infomercial for it recently from the White House. Not only did ABC choose to exclude anyone who wanted to offer an opposing point of view but they even refused to run paid ads before, during, or after the infomercial that would have presented the other side of the argument. So here is Steven Crowder with a look at how well Canada's socialized medicine program works:

How Do You Kill A Political Career?

2009-07-08T17:43:00.002-05:00

Since Alaska Governor Sarah Palin announced that she was resigning I've heard a lot of pundits say that her political career is over with no chance whatsoever of reviving it. I thought it might be interesting by way of contrast to see what sort of things won't kill a political career.

You can be caught red-handed on drug possession charges, including being videotaped smoking crack cocaine, and serve time in federal prison without killing your political career.

You can be caught red-handed accepting bribes with $90,000 in bribe money stored in your freezer without killing your political career.

You can be a former Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan who spouts off about "white niggers" on live television without killing your political career.

You can delay ordering your city's evacuation in the face of an oncoming natural disaster until less than 24 hours remain because it would hurt the local tourism industry and, while you're at it, decline to use available school buses to aid in the evacuation, resulting in hundreds of deaths, without killing your political career.

All of these things are acceptable behavior on the part of our politicians but resigning your position because you can't get anything done due to a constant onslaught of frivolous lawsuits filed by political opponents is unforgiveable. And people wonder why we are so poorly served by our politicians.

Heard On Twitter

2009-07-07T08:35:00.000-05:00

"Michael Jackson is a shovel-ready project."

July 4, 2009

2009-07-04T07:18:00.002-05:00

Today we celebrate Independence Day with hot dogs and hamburgers and fireworks and I hope everyone has a fun and safe holiday.

Recent events in Iran and Honduras remind us that freedom isn't free. It comes at a price. Sometimes it comes at a very high price (content warning). So today as we celebrate the freedoms so many of us take for granted let us pause for a moment to remember those who sacrifice so much to protect those freedoms.

Goopy Is As Goopy Does

2009-07-03T17:33:00.012-05:00

Gwyneth Paltrow is a cultured intellectual which is why she loves living in Europe so much more than the United States. The mistress of GOOP.com recently explained while talking about Spain:

"It is so different from the United States. It seemed to have a history, and the buildings are years and years and years old. Here in the United States an old building is about 17 (years old), and over there it's from 500 B.C., it's incredible," she said.

I wondered if that were so. Finally I decided to have a look around and see if I could find some buildings here in the U.S. that were more than 17-years-old. First I looked in my backyard…

Nope, no old buildings around here, certainly none with any significant history attached to them. I'd better keep looking. Maybe over here…

Darn, still nothing. Hey, there are some people. Maybe they can help me! "Hey, you guys! Anyone seen any buildings that are 'years and years and years old?'"

Nope, no one has seen anything… Oops, I must have taken a wrong turn and wound up in this cave somehow. Certainly nothing to see here…

Hey, look down there! That looks like a nice tree. I'm surprised no one has ever built a house beside it.

I'm getting kind of hungry and I was hoping this new shopping mall would have a decent food court but it's empty.

Darn it, I bet there'd be a nice view here if people didn't leave their trash lying around to clutter up the landscape.

Well, I'm stumped. I just can't find any old buildings…

I guess I'd better give up. Clearly I'm not as smart as old Goopy. She certainly is more knowledgeable about history than I am. I mean, I was under the misconception that we had archeological finds here in the U.S. of people such as the Anasazi that go back to 1200 B.C. and earlier. Of course I was also under the impression that the best way to appear cultured and intellectual was to actually be cultured and intellectual. Thanks for setting me straight, Goopy.

CoX vs. WoW: Character Creation

2009-06-30T14:35:00.005-05:00

In comparing two MMORPGs such as City of Heroes/Villains and World of Warcraft what better place to begin than the beginning, i.e. character creation.

As is common for these sorts of games, World of Warcraft has a fairly simple character creator:

First you pick your race which controls which faction, Alliance or Horde, you belong to as well as where you start in the game geographically and what classes you can take. Each race also comes with three minor benefits to differentiate them from the others. For example, humans are natural diplomats and earn reputation with game characters faster than other races while tauren are better herbalists. Next you pick your class. Are you a warrior or a rogue? A priest or a warlock? A hunter or a paladin? Class defines your character's abilities, what armor you can wear, what weapons you can use, and what spells are available to you. Not all races can be all classes so if you want to be a specific class you may find your choices for race limited. For example, the only Horde race that can be paladins are blood elves so if you want to play a Horde paladin you've got to be a blood elf.

Finally there are cosmetic decisions to make; male or female, what skin/hair color, do you wear earrings, do you have facial hair, and so on. The exact choices you get vary by race and gender. Trolls, for example, get to choose from a variety of tusks. You'll notice that aside from gender and skin color, all of WoW's cosmetic choices center on the head. That's because the look of your clothing is determined entirely by what you wear in the game.

City of Heroes has a bit more complicated character creator.

First you choose your archetype (AT) and your origin type. Archetype is analogous to World of Warcraft's classes. Heroes and villains have different ATs available to them but NCSoft is about to implement a system that will allow heroes to become villains and villains to become heroes so that won't be true for too much longer. Origin type defines how your hero or villain got his superpowers. It affects what missions you will receive at the beginning of the game and later on will control what sort of enhancements you can use to modify your superpowers. There's no real game advantage to taking one origin type over another as you probably won't have any trouble obtaining enhancements for whatever type you choose.

Next you choose your character's primary power set and select one of the first two powers from it to start with.

The original design for CoX called for players to have a free hand in choosing superpowers for their characters much like pen & paper role playing games like Champions. CoX's developers quickly discovered a serious design flaw in that approach. In a game like Champions there is one player known as a game master or GM who creates the adventures the other players go on and is responsible for overseeing how the players develop their characters. If a player makes a bad decision, the GM can tell him so and have him change it. In CoX that's not possible and it was quite easy for players to choose powers that would make their characters ineffective, i.e. gimp themselves. So the CoX devs redesigned the game to limit players' choices, making it hard to gimp their characters. Part of this redesign was introducing archetypes that describe general game roles, for example scrappers are hand-to-hand damage dealers, and then giving each AT a set of power sets to choose from that all do basically the same thing but do it in different ways. For example a scrapper could use martial arts, a broadsword, a katana, or claws among other things. Then within each power set there are a variety of powers to choose from. You start out with only one or two powers available to you and as you advance in level more powers are unlocked so that you can choose to take them if you want.

This is followed by choosing a secondary power set. This is sort of a secondary thing your character can do though it's not your primary focus. Since it's your secondary power set only the first power is available to you and the others become unlocked more slowly than your primary power set.

Now we start getting into the meat of CoX's character creation. The comic book genre that the game emulates is marked by highly individualistic costumes. Few superheroes and villains dress alike. CoX strives to capture this and does so admirably well. First you choose a general body type, male, female, or a huge male. Then you choose a general build and finally you have sliders that allow you to modify aspects of it.

Finally comes the actual costume designer. As you can see from the picture, you have many options for customizing your character's appearance. This part has absolutely no effect on the game aside from how you look. Of course final results tend to vary according to the player's design sense. I've seen some really beautiful costume designs and some really bad ones.

Though not pictured here there is one final step where you choose a name and have a chance to enter a battle cry and background for your character. These things have no effect on game play and are there purely for role-playing reasons.

That pretty much wraps up the differences between the two games character creation process.

City of Heroes vs. World of Warcraft: An Introduction

2009-06-30T12:55:00.002-05:00

For many years now my primary form of recreation has been playing massively multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs). Such games offer a large amount of content to play through coupled with thousands of other players to potentially interact with. The first MMORPG I played was EverQuest (EQ). I tried Asheron's Call (AC) for a little while but my friends weren't interested in it and I wound up going back to EQ. Currently I play City of Heroes/City of Villains (CoX) and World of Warcraft (WoW).

Currently WoW is one of the most successful MMOs on the market while CoX…isn't. As is so often the case, this seems to inspire a bit of jealousy on the part of some CoX players and it's not uncommon to see flare-ups of WoW Derangement Syndrome on the CoX forums. In fact there's one going on right now as I type this about WoW ripping off CoX because Blizzard has indicated they are looking at allowing players to change factions much as CoX is looking at letting heroes and villains switch sides. Though I should note they actually aren't looking at doing the same thing. Apparently what Blizzard is considering doing is allowing people to exchange existing characters for equivalent new characters of the opposing faction. So you won't see orc and troll members of the Alliance but rather someone would exchange an orc warrior for, say, a human warrior of the same level with the same gear.

Anyway, since these threads generally consist of players who lack much experience playing the game they are putting down, I thought it might be both useful and interesting to make a series of posts comparing the two games from a more neutral vantage point.

Comcast: June 26, 2009

2009-06-27T09:55:00.002-05:00

It's Friday afternoon and I'm trying to play World of Warcraft. The problem is that I keep getting disconnected from the internet. Finally I complain about it to a couple of guild mates. One of them immediately responds, "Comcast?" I reply in the affirmative and he proceeds to explain that Comcast frequently likes to reset internet connections for some reason. My guild mates want to go to Kharazan for fun. It's a "raid" instance designed for 10 level 70 players. My friends are very well geared level 80 players. Though not as well geared I have several level 80 characters who could accompany them but decide not to due to the frequent disconnects. After the fifth disconnect I finally give up on playing WoW and go watch television instead. I am not happy and decide that I might as well blog about any bad service I receive from Comcast, hence the sudden flurry of Comcast postings.

Comcast: Signing Up

2009-06-27T09:47:00.002-05:00

I called Comcast on a Thursday to get information. The customer service rep (CSR) that I talked to told me internet service would be $23 per month for the first year and then $43 per month after that. I could install it myself or I could have them send a technician out to do it for me for $50. I could supply my own cable modem or they would provide one for $3 per month. I would need to supply my own networking equipment.

The very next day, Friday, I went to Best Buy to price a wireless router and adapter and wound up buying those plus a cable modem as well as a splitter and some coax cable so I could do the install myself. I then called Comcast to tell them to sign me up. The CSR, a different one than the previous day, proceeded to quote me a price of $19.95 a month for the first year and then $42 per month after that. I thought it was odd that their pricing had changed from the day before but since it was cheaper I told her to go ahead and sign me up. She proceeded to put the order into the computer or rather she proceeded to try to put the order in but she didn't know how to do it and finally had to call her supervisor over to do it for her. I thought this kind of odd given that her job was to take orders but whatever.

She then asked me when I wanted to schedule an installer to come by and I explained that I'd been told the day before that I could just do the install myself. So she tried several times to put it into the computer but couldn't figure out how to do it and rather than call her supervisor back again instead insisted that we had the wrong kind of services for a self-install and said that we would have to have an installer come out. So I said alright and set up an appointment for Monday figuring I could have the installer look at the cable outlets scatter throughout the house and see if they were usable instead of having to have the cable modem with the television which is at the extreme opposite end of the house from where I want to put the computer.

So Monday rolls around and the installers show up. They're nice and professional and quickly determine that the other cable outlets aren't hooked up and consequently can't be used without doing a lot of work so I tell them to just put the cable modem with the television and I'll deal with it. They then proceed to connect a splitter and hook up both cable box and modem. The only thing they do that I couldn't have done for myself is install a Comcast cable modem since I didn't have one. They explain that they can't use my cable modem because I bought it from Best Buy instead of Comcast and so I'll have to call Comcast tech support and give them information from the modem and after about three or so days they'll put the modem information into their system and then I can use it. In the meantime I've got to rent a modem from Comcast.

There's absolutely no reason why I couldn't have done the install myself as the first Comcast CSR told me I could. The second Comcast CSR just didn't know how to enter stuff into the system despite it being her job.

Comcast: AT&T vs. Comcast

2009-06-27T09:27:00.002-05:00

About a week after Hurricane Ike I called both AT&T and Comcast to inform them that their lines going into my parents' house were physically down, having been taken out by a falling tree. The AT&T customer service rep (CSR) that I talked to was polite and helpful. I called on Saturday afternoon and an AT&T technician showed up at my parents' house bright and early, around 9 am, the next morning to hook them back up.

By way of contrast, Comcast had apparently configured their voice mail system to hang up on anyone trying to make tech support calls. After laboriously working my way through their voice mail system to the tech support only to be told to try again later and then be disconnected, I decided to try Comcast's online support instead since I already had internet access back at my apartment. After sitting in a Comcast chat room for 15-20 minutes a Comcast CSR finally showed up. She was rather rude and her attitude could be summed up with the phrase, "Why are you bothering me?" So I explained that I just wanted to make sure they knew they knew the lines to the house were down since I didn't know if their equipment could detect that or not and was told, and this is almost verbatim, "We'll get around to it when we get around to it."

Well it took Comcast about a month to get around to it and when they did get around to it the technician made a half-assed job of it. My parents repeatedly called Comcast to let them know there was a problem but the CSRs would just tell them to unplug their cable box, plug it back in, and wait 20-30 minutes and that would fix the problem. Even when told that my parents had already tried that and it didn't fix the problem, the CSRs would insist they do it again. It took another two months before Comcast finally decided that maybe resetting the cable box wasn't going to work and sent a technician out who then fixed the problem.

Add in the fact that every person I know that has Comcast has complained about the quality of their service and several have recently switched from Comcast to AT&T U-Verse and I was definitely leaning towards signing up with AT&T to get my internet access.

So armed with the knowledge of how much my parents already pay for Comcast cable I went down to an AT&T store to price their U-Verse service. I inquired about internet coupled with the second tier of their television service and it wasn't that much more than my parents are currently paying for Comcast's bottom tier. For more channels plus a free DVR plus internet I didn't see how Comcast could match the price but, to make my parents happy, I called Comcast anyway just to compare.

AT&T offered $10 off a month for the first 6 months plus $100 cash back, free installation, free cable modem, free wireless router, and a free adapter. Comcast offered $23 a month for internet for the first year then $43 month, I was told I could do the install myself or they could send a technician out for $50, I could supply my own cable modem or I could rent one from them for $3 per month, and they didn't supply routers and adapters so I would have to buy those from someone else.

The way it broke down, AT&T was cheaper for the first six months. Comcast was cheaper for the first year unless you had to buy networking gear, as I did, in which case AT&T was still cheaper for the first year. After than AT&T was about $7 more a month but for that $7 I would be getting more channels and a free DVR so I was all set to go with AT&T.

It was at this point that I discovered that my parents have reached an age at which they don't handle change well. Since just the idea of switching them from Comcast to AT&T was clearly causing them a lot of distress and remembering how much trouble they had learning to operate the Comcast remote and navigate the Comcast menus, I decided that it would be best to stay with Comcast despite AT&T being the better deal.

Comcast: 10-1 BC (Before Comcast)

2009-06-27T08:58:00.002-05:00

Since I seem to be stuck with Comcast for cable and internet I figured I might as well blog about the experience.

To give you some idea of where I'm coming from, when I moved into my apartment I had to get my cable service from OpTel and I had a choice of phone service from OpTel or Alltel. At the time I was working for a division of MCI so as a benefit I was receiving a monthly long distance credit but I had to have MCI as my long distance carrier to use it. Since OpTel insisted on being both local and long distance carrier if I used them I went with Alltel instead. When OpTel proved to be extremely bad at providing cable I dropped them in favor of DirecTV. (Amusing story, when I went into the apartment office to ask if we were allowed to have satellite the apartment manager told me, "No, but if we don't see the antenna we don't see the antenna if you know what I mean." I did and shortly thereafter I was a DirecTV customer.) To give you an idea of just how incompetent OpTel was, shortly after I cancelled my OpTel service I discovered that my television, through no action of my own, was suddenly receiving more premium movie channels from the OpTel cable coming out of the wall than I had ever gotten as a paid subscriber and continued to do so for about a year before they apparently figured out that instead of disconnecting me they had hooked me up with more channels and finally cut me off. It didn't really matter to me at that point since I'd been a DirecTV customer the entire time.

When Alltel offered DSL I signed up and when they sold their broadband service to Windstream I went along. After being an Alltel/Windstream customer for over 10 years with no real complaints about the quality of service I had received from them it was with a certain amount of sadness that I called them to cancel my account. Same goes for DirecTV. I was happy with their service but they just aren't practical at my parents' house unless we want to cut down a bunch of trees, which we don't.

Saturday Weigh-In: June 27, 2009

2009-06-27T08:41:00.003-05:00

Weight: 367 lbs.

Not sure if I'm losing weight or just breaking even. To avoid feeling discouraged I'm not going to start tracking weight loss until I'm sure I'm losing weight.

Going into this week I was planning to go to the store to pick up frozen tilapia filets and single-serving microwave packs of frozen vegetables. The idea was that every day around noon I could bake a filet and zap a vegetable pack for a light mid-day meal that would tide me over until my parents decided to eat, making it easier for me to make healthy choices at whatever restaurant we go to. I should just clean up the kitchen and start cooking for the three of us but Dad seems resistant to eating home cooking these days, they'd both probably want more variety than I'm likely to want to make, and I'll admit I enjoy eating out.

Anyway, when I got to the store I decided instead of getting the fish and vegetables I should just get some frozen entrees since it would be less work, not that we're talking a lot of work to begin with, and provide more variety. Now if you're trying to lose weight there are three basic frozen entrée brands to consider; Stoufer's Lean Cuisine, Weight Watchers, and Healthy Choice. Though it's been quite some time since I bought any, I remember Lean Cuisine and Weight Watchers to both be decent choices. Healthy Choice, on the other hand, tends to have about as much flavor as the cardboard box it comes in. The only Healthy Choice product I've found to be edible are their hot dogs. Everything else is pretty tasteless. So I picked up a mix of Lean Cuisine and Weight Watchers. So far I've had one Lean Cuisine, a tortilla encrusted fish, and it was alright. Nothing to get excited about but not terrible. Unfortunately the three Weight Watchers entrees I've had have been pretty vile, largely consisting of low quality chicken meat smothered in various sauces that try to overpower your taste buds so you don't notice how bad the chicken is. So it looks like I'm down to eating Lean Cuisine. We'll see how they do this coming week.

Of course the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray and mine certainly did this week. I was able to get a couple of grilled chicken dinner salads this week but mostly my parents wanted to eat at places like Taco Bell where there aren't really any good healthy choices on the menu. We'll see how this next week goes.

Saturday Weigh-In: June 20, 2009

2009-06-20T10:19:00.003-05:00

Weight: 369.4 lbs

I was afraid of something like this. I'm either gaining weight or, at best, breaking even. The optimal eating schedule for weight loss is to eat 5-6 small meals a day. My parents only eat twice a day. They have breakfast and then a lunch/dinner that can be anytime from 2:00 pm until around 5:00 pm. Of course they're in their 80s, they have significantly less muscle mass to support, and they spend a lot of their time sleeping. Their caloric needs are a lot lower than mine. Eating twice a day is fine for them. I, on the other hand, am usually starving and frequently have a headache from low blood sugar by the time they get around to having their lunch/dinner. This leads to between meal snacking and when we do eat I tend to go for high calorie dishes with high carbs and fat. Even when there are healthy choices on the menu, such as a grilled chicken salad, I'm hesitant to get them because they are relatively low in calories, compared to the others things on the menu, and I'm worried about not eating enough. Keeping calories down is good but you don't want to make your body think you're starving or it becomes a harder to lose weight.

My goal this week is to come up with some light, healthy meals I can eat in the early afternoon and late evening to keep me from getting overly hungry during the day. Right now I'm thinking a baked tilapia filet with some steamed veggies would make a good mid-day meal and might make it easier to eat a lighter meal when my parents do go out for their lunch/dinner.

Attack on the Basij

2009-06-17T17:04:00.003-05:00

This is video out of Iran showing protesters attacking a building controlled by the Basij.

Supporters of the Second Amendment often cite the need of the People to have the means to resist a tyrannical government. Supporters of gun control tend to scoff at this argument because the firearms that we allow private citizens to own don't come close to matching the military's firepower. To those people I saw watch this video.

The Basij have assault rifles and a fortified position while the protesters have nothing but rocks and other improvised weapons. The protesters would be much better off with some semi-automatic handguns and I guarantee you the Basij wouldn't be walking around on the roof of their building taking potshots at people if the protesters had a few high power hunting rifles at their disposal.

Gone Green

2009-06-16T17:07:00.001-05:00

I've temporarily changed the blog to a green template as a show of support for the people of Iran.

It's Just A Joke?

2009-06-16T11:37:00.003-05:00

Lately I've heard a lot of liberals try to defend David Letterman by saying that his remarks about Governor Palin and her daughter were just a joke and that conservatives should just get over it. To them I have one thing to say...

"A nigger, a wetback, and a fag walk into a bar..."

It's just a joke, right? Sure it's in poor taste and highly offensive to boot but it's still just a joke. But I'll bet you the vast majority of Letterman's supporters would be clamoring for his head, and rightly so, if that was the joke he made instead of calling the Governor and her daughter sluts.

What Letterman said was highly offensive and saying it was just a joke is no defense.

Welcome to Houston, Madame Speaker

2009-06-15T12:03:00.000-05:00

White Trash Buy Movie Tickets, Too

2009-06-15T10:57:00.003-05:00

A friend of Michael Jordan told Jordan biographer Sam Smith that Jordan had declined to endorse Democrat Harvey Gantt's 1990 challenge to North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms because "Republicans buy shoes, too." If true, this would make Jordan a lot smarter than a lot of people.

For example, Megan Fox recently said, with regards to keeping Megatron, the villain of her new film Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, from destroying the world that she would "barter with him and say instead of the entire planet, can you just take out all of the white trash, hillbilly, anti-gay, super bible-beating people in Middle America?" I'm pretty sure that the studio is counting on those same white trash, hillbilly, anti-gay, super bible-beating Middle Americans to buy tickets to her movie and without them it will be a lot harder for the movie to turn a profit. I'm not anti-gay but I'm sure I'm still one of the people that Ms. Fox would like Megatron to take out and I won't be seeing the movie because after her comments I'm not real inclined to put money in her pocket. I was on the fence about whether to see the movie or not, I wasn't a huge fan of the first one, but I was leaning towards seeing it until she shot her mouth off so now they can do without me.

Personally I think Megan should be careful about calling others white trash when her most memorable scene from the Transformers trailers is a ¾ rear shot of her in cutoffs astride a motorcycle with her ass stuck up in the air. That's not your acting ability that the studio is promoting, dear.

Someone else who could learn from Michael Jordan is David Letterman. Letterman, of course, recently referred to Governor Sarah Palin as looking like a slutty flight attendant and then made a joke about that statutory rape of her 14-year-old daughter, Willow. In one fell stroke he managed to insult conservatives and women. When even NOW, which has a history of ignoring misogynistic attacks on conservative women, called him out on his behavior he didn't apologize but instead explained that he had meant Palin's 18-year-old daughter, Bristol, instead of Willow. So apparently in Letterman's world the rape of a 14-year-old is bad but the rape of an 18-year-old is funny. In this case Letterman should have taken a cue from Texas businessman Clayton Williams who managed to scuttle his own run for Texas Governor by remarking to reporters that the weather was like rape, you couldn't do anything about it so you might as well lie back and enjoy it. Female Texas voters were not amused and Williams' chances of being elected went down in flames.

Would Letterman have made a crack about Michelle Obama looking like a slutty gym bunny and then make a joke about the rape of Malia or Sasha? I'm inclined to think he wouldn't. In fact, I rather imagine he'd be appalled by such a joke. Perhaps in the future before making political jokes he should try applying them to his own party and see if he still finds them funny. But since Letterman apparently can't find any humor in the President getting the number of states wrong or giving the British Prime Minister DVDs that won't play on English DVD players or banning the press from a press awards ceremony, I suspect that would mean Letterman wouldn't be doing any political humor at all. And that would probably be a good thing.

Take a lesson from the Dixie Chicks who shot their mouths off, insulted their audience, and were then dismayed when their CD sales plummeted.

If you insult the people who ultimately pay your salary, don't be surprised when they suddenly decide to give their money to someone else instead.

Flag Day

2009-06-14T14:58:00.006-05:00

Seeing as today is Flag Day and just two days ago I read an article by someone who thinks we need a new national anthem I thought I would post not one but two awesome renditions of the Star Spangled Banner.

The first is from the movie "Heart & Souls" and features Robert Downey, Jr. singing with B.B. King backing him up. The second is a guitar instrumental by a former paratrooper with the 101st Airborne.

The E Word

2009-06-13T09:41:00.002-05:00

Bear with me a moment. This is a post about losing weight, not politics.

Since joining Facebook at the end of last year, I've made contact with a lot of old college friends. It's been an interesting experience to see that many of them are liberals and that's fine. I may not agree with their politics but then we don't spend a lot of time talking politics. However, it rapidly turned out that one woman, we'll call her J, wasn't just a liberal but a barking moonbat. As in when she found out that one of her "friends" was a fan of Ann Coulter she couldn't wait to trash the woman behind her back on Facebook and in very short order all of J's moonbat friends were chiming in with all sorts of vile things including one man who expressed the desire to whack this woman, that he didn't know, in the kneecaps with a baseball bat. All this J took in stride as if it was the most natural and reasonable thing in the world. When I, however, posted in her thread that Ann Coulter was just the conservative version of Bill Maher she had a meltdown. I mean you would have thought I'd literally walked up and pissed in her Wheaties while she was eating them from the way she reacted. It was then I realized that whatever our history was, were I to meet J today for the first time, we could never be friends and so I removed her from my friends list.

So what does this have to do with losing weight? Well, J's moonbattery wasn't limited to just politics. Even back in college she was struggling with her weight. During the week we were talking to each other on Facebook she posted a link to an article she'd found on the web claiming that exercise had nothing to do with weight loss. The article claimed that it was all about what you ate and that exercise had no effect at all on weight loss. To give you an idea of just how thoroughly the author had researched his/her claim, he hadn't done any actual research but instead settled for hypothesizing that anyone who has ever experienced weight loss while exercising was also probably watching what they ate and thus it was what they were eating that caused them to lose weight instead of the exercise.

Based on my own experience I can tell you that hypothesis is worth the paper it's written on. What's that you say? It's not written on paper? It's just words on a screen that will vanish as soon as you click on the next link? Well, there you go.

Even as a child I lived a relatively sedentary lifestyle. I was never really into sports. While I might occasionally go out and hit a ball around or go swimming or play with friends, I also spent a lot of time sitting in front of the television or reading or working puzzles or building models or some other activity that didn't exactly burn a lot of calories. Except in the summer when my parents would send me off to camp where I would be fairly active with a variety of scheduled activities like boating, nature walks, trampoline, and swimming. Of course what I ate at camp was different from what I had at home. At home Mom tried to make us balanced meals. At camp they, generally, tried to make meals that kids would eat with minimal fuss. At home Mom would never have given my brother and me donuts for breakfast but at camp they did. At home I never got a soft drink and candy every afternoon for a snack but at camp I did. And yet every summer I would lose weight and then put it back on during the rest of the year.

Then came college. I attended Georgia Tech where the PE requirements included a course on either aerobic conditioning or weight training, a swimming class called Drownproofing (You, too, can get college credit for letting someone tie your hands and feet together, hang a brick around your neck, and throw you in the pool. Seriously.), and a lifetime sport. First quarter I took aerobic conditioning. Every class we would engage in some aerobic activity. At the end of the quarter our final grade was determined by how fast we could run 1 ¾ mile. I did it in just under 12 minutes, earning an A for the course. Outside of class we were expected to earn 30 "aerobic points" a week by engaging in various activities. We had to keep an activity diary and that also played a part in our final grade.

Winter quarter I took Drownproofing and I wasn't kidding about having someone tie your hands and feet together, hang a brick around your neck, and throw you in the pool. The course was a holdover from WWII when apparently the Marine Commandant toured the school, which had a large ROTC contingent, and decided the cadets needed a class that would teach them what to do if their transport was torpedoed on the way to Europe. The tying of hands and feet was used to simulate the loss of an arm or a leg. A rubber brick simulated carrying the weight of an assault rifle. Personally I think if I've just had an arm and a leg blown off and have been dropped into the water of the North Atlantic I've got bigger problems than holding on to my rifle but that's just me. Dubious usefulness of the course aside, swimming is one of the best aerobic exercises you can do.

Spring quarter brought Bowling. A fun course but not real high on the list of good workouts.

What was I eating while I was getting all this exercise? Let me put it this way. It was the first time in my life that I had complete control over everything I ate and I wasn't the least bit worried about my weight. So I ate a lot of burgers, fries, pizza, soft drinks, whole milk, cookies, cake, candy, etc. As an example, a favorite breakfast was scrambled eggs with cheese, grits, breakfast sausage, and a biscuit or two smothered in sausage gravy. Definitely not the diet of someone trying to lose weight and yet lose weight I did. Despite my horrible diet, my freshman year of college was the leanest year of my life.

If I wasn't eating right, why did I lose weight? Because I was getting a lot of exercise. Remember the golden rule of weight loss. You will lose weight if the number of calories you burn in a day is greater than the number of calories you consume. Dieting restricts the number of calories you take in but its exercise that burns the calories. Both diet and exercise are important parts of any weight loss plan and anyone who tells you differently is probably trying to sell you something.

I've heard a lot of people say they can't help gaining weight because they have slow metabolisms. Did you know there's a way to speed your metabolism up? It's called exercise. Aerobic exercise will burn calories while you're working out. Weight lifting will help burn calories 24 hours a day. A 6 pack seems to be the Holy Grail of weight loss for a lot of people. Guess what. If you want a 6 pack you've got to get some exercise. Want to get rid of that "chicken wing" that hangs down whenever you lift your arm? Exercise is the key. Ever see a flabby thin person? I have. You want a firm body, you've got to exercise to get rid of the flab.

Here's a fun little test. See if you can think of anyone, outside of sumo wrestlers and the like who deliberate work at maintaining bulk, who leads a physically active lifestyle and yet is fat. To give you an idea of the sort of person I'm talking about, I used to work with a guy who played basketball every morning with a friend before work and the first thing he did after work was go to the gym, when he wasn't organizing a softball league or the like. The guy was constantly in motion and there wasn't an ounce of excess fat on him. He didn't do all this stuff because he was worried about his weight. He did it because it was fun to him.

We, as a society, have become more sedentary. With 100s of cable and satellite channels to choose from there's always something to watch on the television. If there isn't we can always put on a DVD. Or maybe browse the Internet and read some guy's random ramblings. Or we can play video games. I mean who wants to take the trouble of rounding up enough friends for a game of football when you can play from the comfort of your couch with a soft drink and potato chips at hand?

Exercise is good. Go out and get some.

Saturday Weigh-In: June 13, 2009 – Starting Over

2009-06-13T08:29:00.002-05:00

Weight: 268.4 lbs

It's been about 4-5 months since I last posted a weigh-in. I've just been through a rather stressful experience as I had to give up my apartment and, at the age of 47, move back in with my parents. They've reached a point in their lives where they need the extra help around the house but at the same time I really hated to give up my own place. Anyway, I figure now is the perfect time for me to get back on track with my weight loss plan.

I find it interesting that I'm a few pounds heavier than I was when last I weighed myself. During the month of May I didn't eat right but I was very active physically. Lots of running up and down stairs and moving heavy objects, mostly running stuff out to the dumpster. I didn't eat right partly because I was stressed out and wanted comfort food and partly because I was just too tired to make anything. Nevertheless I've had a couple of people tell me I look like I've lost weight. I'd put it down as a placebo effect from them knowing I've been getting a lot of exercise except I've also taken my belt in another notch and I've noticed some of my clothes have gotten a little looser. So I'm hoping I've exchanged some fat for muscle.

The good thing about living with my parents is that their house is in a nice residential area so I can get up and go walking first thing in the morning without having to worry about cars constantly whizzing by. This week I've walked a mile every morning and I intend to gradually increase that distance. I should get some exercise videos to work with on days that I can't go walking because of the weather. Since my floor is no longer someone else's ceiling there's no reason I can't jump around in front of the television.

The bad thing is that my parents only eat twice a day. They have breakfast and then sometime mid-afternoon they go out for lunch/dinner. I suppose that's fine for someone in their 80s but for me it's not working as well. I need to find something to healthy to eat around lunch time, not a full meal but just something to tide me over until they're ready to eat, and then again around dinner time. As it is I've been getting into their candy and potato chips which I need to stop. This morning I bought some peanuts as a healthy alternative to the potato chips so we'll see how that goes.

Remembering the Duke

2009-06-11T18:04:00.003-05:00

Seeing as today is the 30th anniversary of John Wayne's passing I thought I'd post a clip from one of my favorite movies of his, The Cowboys.

Random Thought For the Day

2009-06-09T00:16:00.003-05:00

Bill Maher once infamously said the muslims involved in 9/11 were brave because they were clearly willing to die for their cause. I have to disagree. If they had believed that they would spend an eternity in Hell paying for their sins then I might call them brave but that's not what they believed. What they believed was that all sins would be forgiven, and they apparently took advantage of this by committing a lot of sins involving booze and strippers before the big day, and that they would be rewarded in Paradise with 72 virgins. That's not bravery. All that is is proof that comedian Larry Miller was right when he observed that you can get men to do anything as long as you end your description of the activity with the phrase, "...and then you meet women."

Memorial Day 2009

2009-05-25T17:54:00.002-05:00

I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to everyone that has served or is currently serving in the armed force.

Stimulating the Dead

2009-05-15T08:20:00.002-05:00

Are you dead? Were you never part of the Social Security system? No problem! The government will still be glad to send you a stimulus check!

Aren't you glad to know the government is being so careful with your tax money? Don't you look forward to when they can provide the same level of professionalism to your healthcare?

Maxim Magazine Is Dead To Me

2009-05-13T19:47:00.003-05:00

In their 2009 Hot 100 Maxim.com places Michelle Obama at 93. This places her higher on the list than Yvonne Strahovski who plays sexy superspy Sarah Walker on Chuck.

It also means she's ranked higher than model/actress/Top Chef hostess Padma Lakshmi as well as model/actress Olivia Munn, actress Marisa Tomei, and former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader Melissa Rycroft.

In short, this list is full of fail. Who made up this list? Perez Hilton? Whoever it was needs to turn in their man card.

Movie Review: Star Trek

2009-05-09T17:05:00.002-05:00

Rating: 3 out of 5

I'm not a big fan of J.J. Abrams. I don't think I've ever seen anything from him that I've enjoyed. I really hated his Mission: Impossible III. If not for all the good reviews that Star Trek has received I wouldn't even have bothered to see it in a theater. So going in my expectations were really low.

So how was it? Not as bad as I was expecting but also not as great as the reviews I've seen would have you believe. I would rank this movie somewhere in the middle of the pack when it comes to Star Trek movies. My personal favorite would be The Wrath of Khan followed by The Undiscovered Country, First Contact, and The Voyage Home. Then the reboot and then the rest of the Star Trek movies which means, for me, it borders on being unwatchable but doesn't quite reach that point. I won't be buying the DVD or seeking it out when it comes to cable but if there's nothing better on I might tune it in instead of just turning off the television.

The cast do a decent enough job with the material they're given. Chris Pine is a little bland as Kirk but still does an acceptable job. Zachary Quinto and Karl Urban are perfect as Spock and McCoy, nicely capturing the characters while making them their own. Zoe Saldana and John Cho do a good enough job as Uhura and Sulu even if they don't particularly shine. Simon Pegg steals ever scene in which he appears. Unfortunately his character, Scotty, has been reduced to a comedy relief goofball. Anton Yelchin is alright as Chekov but he's also been reduced to comedy relief. All of the supporting cast do good jobs and I've got no complaints there.

Mild SPOILERS will follow. You have been warned.

The plot itself is decent enough in concept but leaves something to be desired in actual execution. If you're the sort who might wonder why Nero spends 25 years upgrading his ship's weapons when he could spend the same 25 years upgrading the Romulan Empire's technological base and turn them into the most powerful force in the galaxy, well, you may have some problems with the movie. If, on the other hand, it doesn't particularly bother you that in one scene a character wants to ride in a shuttle's bathroom because it has no windows and ten minutes later he's now in a different shuttle in a window seat eagerly staring out the window with no sign of his previous anxiety, well, then you'll probably enjoy Star Trek.

Externally I like the latest version of the Enterprise even if it does look more like the Enterprise class ship of the movies than the Constitution class ship of the original television series. I did not, however, like the internal redesign of the ship. The iBridge, as some people have dubbed it, is too bright and too cluttered. Engineering, on the other hand, looks like a 20^th century chemical plant with a large, transparent water pipe that winds all around the room for no apparent reason other than for loveable goofball Scotty to get sucked in and whisked about while Kirk frantically dashes about trying to figure out how to get him out of the thing. (Did I mention that Scotty has been reduced to being the comedy relief?)

I found the action sequences to be a confusing. Abrams is apparently a big fan of using close ups with lots of stuff flying around so you can't tell what's going on. It seems to be a popular style these days but I hate it. I've been told it's supposed to convey how chaotic combat is but all it does, in my opinion, is make action sequences unwatchable and convinces me that the director has no idea how to handle an action sequence. Abrams and other directors of this ilk would be well advised to watch Danny the Dog aka Unleashed and take notes as its fight scenes do an excellent job of conveying how chaotic the combat is while allowing the viewer to follow the action quite easily.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that I don't like the story is done because not only is it a J.J. Abrams film but the screenplay is by Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman who also wrote the screenplay for Mission: Impossible III which, as I've already noted, I really hated.

MAJOR SPOILERS ahead.

Now to go through all the problems I had with the story.

When we first meet McCoy, he's been hiding in a shuttle's bathroom because he's afraid to fly. When he's forced to sit next to Kirk he goes into a rant about all the horrible things they can expect. It's a funny scene until you start wondering why someone so scared of catching some horrible disease went into the medical profession. I have some phobias of my own and strangely enough not once have I been tempted to seek out a profession that would expose me to the things I fear on a regular basis.

Are we really supposed to believe that officials of the Vulcan Science Academy think it's appropriate to make racist remarks, illogical ones at that, about the parentage of an applicant and that after making said remarks they would be surprised that the applicant changed his mind about attending the academy?

In explaining the purpose of the Kobayashi Maru scenario, Spock says the intent is to see how cadets handle the fear when they realize they are facing a no win situation. To which I say that's a pretty stupid test because the cadets know they're in a simulation and there are no consequences for failing the mission. No one is going to die or even get hurt and it's probably well known that no one has ever beat the simulation so, at best, it's going to test how the cadets handle the frustration of being given a task to complete that can't actually be completed.

When an emergency arises on Vulcan while almost the entire fleet is off dealing with another emergency, Star Fleet has to crew 8 ships with cadets and instructors from Star Fleet Academy causing me to wonder how it is that Star Fleet just happens to have 8 ships lying around with no crew.

Why is Spock in charge of deciding which cadets get assigned to which ship?

Why is the navigator given the task of making a ship wide announcement instead of the communications officer? Why does the PA system require a verbal authorization code? Do they really have to tell their password to the entire bridge crew whenever they want to make an announcement?

Why has Nero spent the last 25 years upgrading his ship's weapon systems when he could have been sharing technology with the Romulan Empire?

Why does Nero's mining ship have a "drill" that has to be lowered into a planet's atmosphere? Even in the original series they had energy weapons capable of hitting the surface of a planet from orbit. Having a drill that must be lowered into the atmosphere seems like an unnecessarily complicated bit of technology. And is it really more efficient to drill the surface of a planet from orbit instead of from the surface?

Why does Nero bother drilling into a planet's core anyway? A "red matter" bomb dropped on the surface of a planet is going to take out the entire planet. It's not like it's going to take a big chunk out of one side of the planet and leave the other side unscathed.

Why does Pike have Kirk, Sulu, and the red shirt make a highly risky space drop onto the drill to plant explosives when the Enterprise could just shoot it?

Why does Sulu say he's a fencer but then whip out a katana instead of a rapier?

Why does Spock order Kirk to be kicked off the Enterprise? The ship has a brig for a reason. It can't be standard Star Fleet operating procedure to stuff mutineers into escape pods and send them off to the nearest habitable planet instead of locking them up in the brig. Why doesn't anyone protest this obvious breach of regulations? You would think at least McCoy would object to marooning Kirk.

Why doesn't the Enterprise inform the Federation outpost on the ice planet that they're sending Kirk? You'd think they'd at least want to warn them that they're sending the outpost a mutineer. But they must not have done so because Scotty and his assistant are taken by surprise when Kirk shows up. Good thing that Kirk didn't listen to the escape pod's computer when it told him to wait for someone to come get him because obviously no one was looking for him. Even if the Enterprise didn't alert the outpost, shouldn't the escape pod have some sort of emergency beacon to alert them?

Given that the ice planet is in almost the same orbit as Vulcan, it must be given how large Vulcan is in the sky, how is it possible that it's covered with ice while Vulcan is a desert planet? Shouldn't they be close to each other in terms of temperature?

Wouldn't natural selection tend to eliminate red creatures in an arctic environment?

How is it possible that in the time it takes Kirk to travel 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) on foot in an extremely harsh environment while avoiding predators that Scotty and his assistant haven't noticed the destruction of Vulcan and the sudden appearance of a black hole in their backyard. Have they received no distress calls at all? Or is Scotty really more interested in food than the deaths of several billion people?

How big a psychopath does Scotty have to be to have tested a new type of transporter on a living subject instead of an inanimate object? And how stupid does he have to been to have chosen an important official's pet for the test?

Why does Spock Prime, who once told us that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, put billions of lives at risk by making Kirk think bad things will happen if the two Spocks ever meet in the hopes that Kirk and Spock will bond over Kirk making Spock lose his emotional control in order to remove him from command of the Enterprise?

They said that Nero had the faster ship so how does the Enterprise beat him to Earth when Nero headed straight there while the Enterprise headed off to rendezvous with the rest of the fleet first?

Again why doesn't the Enterprise just shoot the drill instead of relying on the risky plan of beaming Kirk and Spock onto Nero's ship so they can disable it from the inside? And, again, why does Nero even bother using the drill?

Pike lost 87% of his fleet and turned himself over to the enemy so he could be tortured into revealing the access codes for the Federation's defenses and for this he's promoted to Admiral?

Kirk hasn't graduated from Star Fleet Academy and was facing a disciplinary action for cheating but they promote him straight to command of the Enterprise anyway?

Irony

2009-05-09T07:32:00.003-05:00

Irony is a sailing ship being used to demonstrate the viability of "green" technology getting into trouble and having to be rescued by an oil tanker.

Faces of Government Healthcare

2009-05-08T14:16:00.001-05:00

Those who think letting the government take control of our healthcare system may wish to visit http://www.facesofgovernmenthealthcare.com/ for a sobering look at the reality of such systems.

Priorities

2009-05-07T08:56:00.002-05:00

We don't have $18 million to keep the DC school voucher program going but we do have $90 million for politicians to flood our mailboxes with junk mail telling us what a great job they're doing. Gotta have priorities, right?

Obama vs. School Vouchers

2009-05-04T20:18:00.002-05:00

With a $3,600,000,000,000 budget President Obama couldn't find $18,000,000 to fund the DC School Voucher program?

Message in a Bottle

2009-05-02T09:52:00.002-05:00

While demolishing a wall that once belonged to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, workers found a bottle containing a message written by Auschwitz prisoners 65 years ago.

About that tax credit...

2009-05-01T07:09:00.003-05:00

Seems there are problems with the IRS's new withholding tables that implement the Making Work Pay Credit which may result in people not having enough money withheld over the course of the year. Consequently you may wish to visit the IRS's Withholding Calculator to check and see how much you should be having withheld from your paycheck.

Are we having fun yet?

2009-04-27T16:13:00.004-05:00

How do you cause thousands of New Yorkers to panic for no reason at all? If you're the White House Military Office you approve a photo op in which a 747 buzzes the Statue of Liberty while tailed by a fighter escort and when you inform the local authorities of what you're doing you tell them the mission is classified and they're not allowed to warn anyone ahead of time. For some odd reason this made people think the city was facing 9/11 Part 2 resulting in widespread panic with people deciding on their own to evacuate the area while flooding 911 with phone calls.

And the Democrats think President Bush was stupid?

Sugar Land TX Tax Day Tea Party

2009-04-16T04:52:00.007-05:00

I attended the Sugar Land, TX Tax Day Tea Party yesterday. Here are some pictures I took. I should have found a better vantage point to show just how big the crowd was. I'm happy to say there were a lot more people than I was expecting.

It was held from 6-8 pm, allowing people to attend without having to take a day off from work. Unfortunately for my pictures the late time also meant lots of shadows from the surrounding buildings.

There were a lot of good signs, I wish I could have captured them all.

The crowd was huge. Made me wonder how big the rally in Houston must have been.

Tea Party Smackdown

2009-04-15T17:02:00.004-05:00

I love it. One of the organizers of the Sacramento Tea Party smacked down the head of the California GOP for waffling on a massive tax hike. Maybe the politicians will finally get the message that this is a non-partisan issue.

What bias?

2009-04-15T14:46:00.003-05:00

Here's a little clip from CNN's coverage of the Chicago Tea Party. Very unprofessional and clearly biased, the reporter asks a man a question and then cuts him off mid-answer so she can argue with him. Love how the person who posted the video tries to paint the reporter as a victim being harrassed by the protesters.

We're having a Tea Party

2009-04-15T10:31:00.000-05:00

The Tax-man Cometh

2009-04-11T10:14:00.002-05:00

With April 15th approaching I thought I'd post a little video from reason.tv for those people who think the rich don't pay their fair share of taxes.

Thought For The Day

2009-04-01T20:40:00.004-05:00

Why is it that some people feel that corporate executives have absolutely nothing to do with the success of a company but deserve 100% of the blame when that company fails and why is it that none of these people have ever run a successful company?

George Orwell is spinning like a top

2009-03-27T18:27:00.002-05:00

Who's up for a little mandatory volunteerism? Coming soon to a Congress near you, H.R. 1444. Pay particular attention to sections 4.b.5 and 4.b.6.

But hey, it's not like compelling the young to serve the government in order to "strengthen the social fabric of the Nation" has ever gone horribly, horribly wrong.

The Teleprompter Behind The Curtain

2009-03-24T13:46:00.002-05:00

For 8 years the left insisted that President Bush wasn't smart enough to have won the election and that he was just a puppet for someone else, Dick Cheney being the most likely option but other sinister cabals also being in consideration. Now blogger iowahawk reveals who is pulling President Obama's strings. Pay no attention to the teleprompter behind the curtain...

Change You Can Believe In

2009-03-24T12:56:00.004-05:00

I've said it before and I'll say it again. When it comes to politics the only change I can believe in is no change at all.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up

2009-03-20T09:31:00.004-05:00

The National Newspaper Publishers Association has named Barack Obama the Newsmaker of the Year and will be presenting him with an award at the White House. The press award ceremony has been closed to the press. One wonders how long Obama will stand around the State Dining Room wondering where the people who were going to present him with the reward are.

Obama vs. Wounded Vets

2009-03-17T05:15:00.004-05:00

Here's a story that ought to get your blood boiling. Obama, that champion of government provided universal health care, has decided that the government shouldn't be picking up the tab for the medical treatment of our soldiers who have been wounded in combat. The service these men and women have performed for this country takes a back seat to generating more money for the government to spend. It is outrageous and yet not surprising coming, as it does, from the party that has long looked down upon those who voluntarily serve in the military.

Watching the Watchmen

2009-03-15T16:17:00.002-05:00

As it enters its second week in theaters, Watchmen has seen a substantial drop in box office and seems to be receiving a lot of negative word of mouth. I blame this on an advertising campaign that has led people unfamiliar with the comic book to expect a standard superhero movie when Watchmen is a far cry from a typical superhero movie. So I thought it might be a good idea to address some of the misperceptions as well as some of the more common complaints so that people who haven't seen the movie yet will know what to expect.

First of all you should take the movie's R rating seriously. The movie contains scenes of graphic violence including an attempted rape. The movie contains several sex scenes including one that's about as graphic as you can get without earning an NC-17 rating. The movie contains full frontal male nudity. Lots of full frontal of male nudity. If you don't want to see a guy getting a face full of hot grease or a woman being brutally beaten and then bent over a table or two superheroes getting it on or lots of blue wang then you should probably go see something else.

Secondly this is not an action movie. It has some action sequences in it but they are relatively few and far between compared to a typical action movie. Think of it instead as a murder mystery in which the hardboiled detective just happens to wear a mask. Even that is just a framework that the author uses to explore what sort of people would consider it rational to try and make the world a better place by dressing up in tights and running around beating criminals up. There is a lot more talking than there is fighting.

Now to address some common complaints I've heard:

Watchmen isn't kid friendly!

Just because a story involves superheroes doesn't mean its target audience is children. Watchmen is one such story. It is unfortunate that some of the movie's marketing has been aimed at children because it really isn't a story that kids are likely to enjoy or that their parents will want them to see. The average age of comic book readers has been rising as people who grew up on comics continue to read them into adulthood. Today there are many comic book readers in their 20s and 30s and even older. Watchmen was written with that adult demographic in mind.

Watchmen is too violent.

A strange complaint to make given that the genre is based around the conceit of people in costumes running around beating each other silly. The violence in Watchmen serves a point. It illustrates the brutality of the lives these people have chosen. In a comic book world superheroes get away with taking the most outrageous risks because the writers are on their side. The real world tends to be more unforgiving. If the heroes don't want to wind up like Dollar Bill, shot dead after his cape was caught in a revolving door while trying to stop a bank robbery, they can't afford to pull their punches.

The sex is too much.

As with the violence, the sex in Watchmen serves a purpose. Sex is part of the human experience and there's no reason to believe it would be any less important to superheroes than it is to normal people. Comic book fans have long speculated how their heroes might apply their superpowers to their sex lives. The Dr. Manhattan scene addresses that speculation while demonstrating that the use of superpowers during the sex act wouldn't necessarily be a rousing success. The two scenes with Dan serve to show that as himself he feels rather impotent but as Nite Owl he's a virile stud.

There's too much blue wang!

Some people seem to be really worked up about the fact that Dr. Manhattan spends a lot of time walking around with his junk on display. Again this is something that is done for a reason though it was handled better in the comic book. In the comics when Dr. Manhattan first gets his powers he wears a fully body suit. As the years go by the full body suit becomes a Speedo and then finally nothing at all. Manhattan's shedding of clothes is a representation of the shedding of his humanity. Consider the scene where Speedo Manhattan protests the Comedian's actions but does nothing to stop them. Full Body Suit Manhattan would have stopped it while Naked Manhattan wouldn't have protested. His powers make it hard for him to relate to humanity and so the more time goes by, the less human he feels and the less bound by human conventions he is.

The ending is too ambiguous.

Life rarely wraps things up with a nice tidy bow. The hero doesn't always get the girl. Sometimes the villain gets away. Sometimes the world ends. Sometimes it doesn't. Alan Moore didn't want to give his readers a pat answer. He wanted them to think about the issues he raised. Moore wanted to explore what kind of person might become a superhero and he does that well. All of the major comic book archetypes are here. The cop who wears a mask so he can operate outside the law. The man who wants to clean up the streets he grew up on. The idealist who wants to make the world a better place. The scientist who had power thrust upon him unexpectedly. The romantic who wants to be a superhero for the sake of being a superhero. The woman who is continuing the family legacy. Questions about the morality of killing millions of people in order to save billions is outside the scope of Watchmen. Instead we have to answer those questions for ourselves and, really, we should be the ones to answer those sorts of questions instead of letting someone else tell us how to think.

Hammer Time

2009-03-12T11:04:00.003-05:00

When I first entered the working world after graduating from college, I tried to be fiscally responsible. I didn't buy anything unless I had the money to do so and I paid my credit card bill in full every month so I wouldn't get hit with finance charges. Then one day I really wanted to buy a new hard drive for my computer but couldn't afford it so I put it on my credit card, figuring I'd pay it off eventually.

It was like a flip had been switched. I had the hard drive and while I was now in debt, nothing bad happened when I sent the credit card company less than payment in full. I started buying other stuff even though I didn't have the money and obviously I didn't if I was carrying balances over on my credit card from the previous month. Books, CDs, videos, computer games...whatever I wanted, I bought.

Around this time I was working with one of my best friends and we frequently went to lunch together, often eating in the food court of a local shopping mall. Consequently he saw how much money I was spending and whenever I bought something he'd say, "Hammer time." He was referring to MC Hammer who famously made a lot of money and then promptly went bankrupt because he blew it all on things he really didn't need. I just laughed and kept on spending right up until the day I got laid off and found myself drowning in debt with no income with which to make even the minimum payment. I won't go into the months that followed but suffice it to say that it wasn't pleasant and now that I'm out from under that debt, I don't ever want to be in that position again.

I explain all this because yesterday Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced that in the first 50 days of the Obama Presidency, the federal government has spent $1 billion per hour. And they're not done as they prepare to spend more money on a second "stimulus" bill and grant giant corporations billions more in fourth and fifth bailouts after the first three bailouts or so failed to take.

To President Obama and his administration I say, "It's Hammer time!"

Luddite At Large

2009-03-10T15:30:00.002-05:00

The guys at Penny Arcade have done a good job capturing how I feel about Amazon.com's Kindle and other such devices.

I love books. I take books with me everywhere. No matter where I go, if I have a reasonable expectation that I will have some downtime in which to read, it's a safe bet that I have a book with me. Books have gone with me to various relatives houses, to the beach, on camping trips, canoeing down various rivers, and many other places.

This has given me a great appreciation for the durability of leafs of paper bound together. I have dropped books. I have dropped them on the grass and I have dropped them on the concrete and I have even dropped them in the river. I have kicked them. I have stepped on them. I even have a Boy Scout Handbook that was set on fire (courtesy of the other members of my troop) and a copy of Sign of the Unicorn that, appropriately enough, was once impaled on the tip of a sword. Miraculously all of these books remain quite usable.

Something tells me that a Kindle would not react as well to such abuse. In addition you have to worry about such things as the batteries going dead and you probably shouldn't leave it sitting in the sun for too long. If I do accidentally destroy or lose a book, I've only destroyed/lost that book, not my entire library (yes, I know Amazon will allow you to redownload your previously purchased books for free but you still lose access to your entire library until you can replace your Kindle), and it will be cheaper to replace a book than a Kindle.

That's not to say that I see no use for a Kindle. I have a bunch of phone book-sized computer reference books that never leave my office and a Kindle would certainly be less bulky to deal with. But I really have to question if that convenience is worth the $360 price tag.

The Portsmouth Tea Company

2009-03-10T12:26:00.002-05:00

Tea drinking tax payers who are tired of the government wasting our money could do worse than to send some business the Portsmouth Tea Company's way. They have kindly donated 70 lbs. of tea to the Tea Party Revolution. I, myself, just ordered several teas from them and am looking forward to giving them a try.

Thought For The Day

2009-03-10T12:18:00.003-05:00

If Republicans are the party of big business and Democrats are the party of the little guys, why does Obamanomics largely consist of using the threat of force to confiscate money, i.e. taxes, from the little guys and turn it over to giant corporations so they can buy French luxury jets and sponsor golf tournaments and rock concerts with it?

Fair Tax Thought For The Day

2009-03-05T12:38:00.001-06:00

As yet another of President Obama's Cabinet picks is revealed to be a tax cheat I have to wonder if the Democrat's opposition to the Fair Tax stems from a fear that they'd finally have to pay taxes like the rest of us do.

Houston Tea Party

2009-03-04T12:20:00.002-06:00

Here are two nice little videos about the Houston Tea Party that was held last week.

Tea Party = Do Nothings?

2009-03-03T11:05:00.004-06:00

I've noticed in the past year that there seems to be a trend of characterizing political opponents as having no plan and wanting to do nothing about a problem. I've seen it applied to people who oppose blanket amnesty for illegal aliens even though they have proposals for enforcing immigration laws and have suggestions for ways of getting illegals to self-deport. I've seen it applied to the Drill Here, Drill Now movement even as they advocated fostering American energy independence by drilling for our own oil. Now I see it being applied to the Tea Party movement.

Does the Tea Party want us to do nothing? Not necessarily. They just have no faith that what the government is doing is going to help the economy. President Obama and the members of the House and Senate are lawyers and politicans. They are not, for the most part, brilliant economists or successful businessmen. Hell, many members of Obama's administration can't even figure out their own taxes. Yet we're supposed to blindly trust these people to turn the economy around?

Congress can't even run its own restaurant without losing millions of dollars. These are the same people who created a Capitol Visitors Center that actually makes it harder for people to visit the capitol. What makes anyone think these people can come up with good projects to spend our money on that will improve the economy?

Let's face it. Their record on the current crisis is pretty dismal. They gave $45 billion of taxpayer money to Citigroup which promptly spent $50 million to buy a luxury jet from the French. (I must have been out the day my economics class covered how spending $50 million in France stimulates the US economy.) Northern Trust didn't want bailout money but they took it anyway when the government insisted and then spent it on a golf tournament they'd agreed to sponsor before the economy turned bad. The list of abuses of bailout money goes on and on and its obviously come as a complete shock to the politicians when it really shouldn't have.

A business that is being run in such a way as to cause it to fail isn't going to turn around simply because you inject more cash into it. The business will continue on its path to failure as long as the factors that are causing it to fail remain. Throwing more money at the problem only serves to waste money delaying the inevitable.

Of course the government's own programs aren't doing much to help the economy either. Just recently in the Pacific Northwest there was a politician bragging about how the "stimulus" money she had obtained for the local power company was going to help people out by creating lots of jobs. Sounded really good until reporters asked the head of the power company how many new jobs were going to be created and how soon people could start applying for them. Turned out that their current projects were already fully funded and they already had all the people they needed for them. The stimulus money was going to enable future projects but before anyone was hired for them, the company would have to determine what projects needed doing, define requirements, do environmental impact studies, submit the work to the bidding process, etc. By the time they got through all the governmental red tape, new jobs funded by the stimulus money should start appearing around 2011. If you're out of work now, a potential job two years from now isn't going to be much help.

The Tea Party doesn't favor doing nothing. They just have more faith in the people who currently employ over 70% of the people in this country than they do in the government. A lot of Tea Parties are fans of rebel economist Michelle Muccio. She has her own trillion dollar spending plan:

Of course a lot of liberals don't particularly care for her plan as seen in this interview with Bob Schieffer from CBSNews.com.

It's an interesting peek into the liberal mindset when Schieffer refers to allowing people to keep more of the money they earned with their own labor as "getting something for nothing."

Of course the politicians would never go for this plan for a couple of reasons. First, they're not willing to give up the power this tax money represents. Second, if they did suspend these taxes for a year it would be political suicide to reinstate them. Imagine how voters would react when the politicians started taking a significant bite out of their paychecks once more.

So the Tea Party isn't about doing nothing. It's about getting the government to get out of the way of the people who are best suited to turning the economy around and let them do their thing.

Update: Been trying to remember the details of that story about the Pacific Northwest and finally tracked it down. It was Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) who enabled the Bonneville Power Administration to take on another $3.25 billion in debt to pay for construction projects. Too bad it's not going to do much to help out her constituents.

Tea Party Update

2009-02-28T13:28:00.002-06:00

Just wanted to take a moment to point to some coverage of the Tea Party movement by the Christian Science Monitor.

Saturday Weigh-In: February 28, 2009

2009-02-28T08:59:00.002-06:00

Weight: 364.4 lbs

Total Weight Lost: 27.4 lbs in 42 weeks (0.6 lbs / wk)

It's really kind of depressing. I started out doing well on my weight loss plan but since Hurricane Ike I've been hovering around the mid-360s. On the plus side, that means I've adopted a way of eating where I'm happy with what I'm eating but I'm not putting on any weight. On the minus side, I haven't reached my ultimate goal of getting down to around 200 pounds.

So what has gone wrong? Basically when things have gone wrong I've used them as an excuse to indulge myself in foods that I like but that I shouldn't eat quite so much of. With Ike, of course, it was phrased as I didn't have much choice but to eat what food I could get. Then I got sick in January and again in February and that was a convenient excuse to stock up on lots of pasta. I mean, making dinner doesn't get much easier than boiling a pot of water and tossing in some spaghetti. It's something I'll have to watch out for in the future.

I'm better now and there's no excuse for not eating right. I've even got new shoes specifically for going out walking in so we'll see how well I do at getting back on track.

The Houston Tea Party

2009-02-27T18:50:00.005-06:00

As Congress prepares to pass a $400 billion spending bill filled with over 8,000 earmarks, i.e. pork, after having just passed a $1 trillion pork-filled "stimulus" bill that the Congressional Budget Office admits won't have any real effect on the economy for a couple of years, people in Houston and around the country decided the time was right to hold a tea party. Inspired by the Boston Tea Party, these citizens are protesting people who have been fiscally responsible being forced to subsidize those who have not been fiscally responsible. I think CNBC's Rick Santelli summed things up quite nicely.

If you haven't heard anything about this before now, that would be because most of the media has decided that thousands of people staging a tax revolt isn't newsworthy. Look for more non-coverage on April 15 and July 4 when more tea parties are planned.

Camille Paglia vs. the Fairness Doctrine

2009-02-16T05:57:00.004-06:00

I love Camille Paglia. Don't get me wrong. I probably disagree with her political views more often than I agree with her. I just admire and respect her intellectual honesty. Whether I agree with her or not, I know that she's put some real thought into the issues and come by her positions honestly. She doesn't just blindly parrot the party line like so many people do. Which is why I wish more liberals would listen to what she has to say about the Democrats' plans to revive the Fairness Doctrine.

Irony

2009-02-14T11:37:00.002-06:00

Irony is a Muslim man founding a business in Buffalo for the purpose of portraying Muslims in a more positive light and then beheading his wife who was in the process of divorcing him. Here's a suggestion. If you really want people to think better of you, not cutting someone's head off would be a good place to start.

Who Watches the Watchmen

2009-02-14T08:56:00.002-06:00

As March approaches I'm eagerly looking forward to Watchmen.

Watchmen was a very important comic book series from the 80s that helped comics gain acceptance as being acceptable entertainment for adults.

The comic book is set in a dystopian world in which there is a single superhuman, the god-like Dr. Manhattan.

In this world, superheroes have been outlawed as dangerous vigilantes.

The comic opens with the last remaining mask, Rorschach, investigating a man's murder only to discover that the murdered man was the Comedian, a fellow hero and member of the Watchmen.

There has been some concern about translating the comic to the big screen. I think the concern is justifiable. The comic was a piece of art. A lot of thought went into it's creation. Not just into the story but the artwork, the back up feature, even the layout of the panels. It will be interesting to see how good of a job Zack Snyder has done turning that into a movie.

Those not familiar with the comic book should be aware that many issues, as was common with many comics, featured a "back-up" comic called Tales of the Black Freighter. This pirate comic at first appeared to have nothing to do with the Watchmen story but as things progressed it actually proved to be fairly important. This story won't be included in the movie but will be released separately on DVD on March 24th.

Movie Trailers - Movies Blog

You probably don't need to see it to enjoy Watchmen, otherwise they wouldn't release it two weeks after the movie, but if you enjoy the movie you might want to check it out. Though I may wait until Watchmen comes out on DVD to see if they include Tales of the Black Freighter as a special feature.

Friday Funny

2009-02-13T10:44:00.000-06:00

Funny Videos | Funny Cartoons | More Video Clips

A Few Words about Gay Marriage

2009-02-07T08:07:00.002-06:00

Let me begin by saying I'm not gay and I'm not married and neither of those things is likely to change any time in the immediate future. That means I don't really have any stake in the gay marriage argument. That said, here are my two cents on the subject.

On the one hand, gay and lesbian couples want the same legal rights and protections as heterosexual couples. I can't say that I blame them. As far as I can tell, from my completely unscientific and rather limited observation, most people don't have a problem with that.

No, the problem seems to come in when religion gets involved. Most of the arguments that I've heard against allowing gay marriages stem from people's religious beliefs. Given that it's no surprise that one of the biggest sources of support for California's Proposition 8 was the Mormon church. Which I find rather ironic given that Mormon marriage practices are considered rather questionable themselves by pretty much every religion that doesn't practice polygamy. Just goes to show that being discriminated against doesn't preclude you from discriminating against others.

Now I'm not one to believe the Constitution requires total separation of Church and State. The men who stamped "In God We Trust" on all of our currency weren't afraid of religion. What they were afraid of was a church effectively taking control of the government with church officials governing the country instead of our duly elected representatives. This is what the First Amendment says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

That's a command to not establish a state religion and to not interfere with people's religious practices. Now obviously we do interfere in some religious practices. To use an extreme example, if you practice a religion that calls for human sacrifice you're going to be out of luck here in the United States. However, gay marriage is not human sacrifice.

There are a lot of religious practices that offend me. For example, I find it offensive that Catholics believe that it's okay to sin as long as you confess your sin to your priest and then do whatever penance they give you. (Yes, I know that's not the Catholic church's official position but it's how pretty much every practicing Catholic I know views things and it's a rather obvious mindset given the church's rules.) It doesn't matter if I find that offensive because the First Amendment gives them the right to believe whatever they want.

What I find far more offensive than gay marriage and isn't sanctioned by the First Amendment is using the Constitution to make religious discrimination the law of the land. This is exactly what people supporting a Constitutional Amendment defining marriage as being between a man and a woman want to do.

Your church doesn't approve of gays getting married? Then I guess gays won't be getting married in your church. If there's a church that believes it's perfectly okay for gays to get married, and obviously there are, then there's no reason they shouldn't be able to get married in that church and you can console yourself with the thought that they don't have a proper marriage just like you undoubtedly tell yourself that any religious practice you disagree with isn't a proper religious practice.

The government isn't supposed to support one religion over another but that's exactly what's happening here. The obvious solution is for that since marriage is clearly a religious institution the government should get out of the business of defining what is and what isn't a proper marriage. Instead let each religion decide for itself what constitutes a proper marriage.

Of course if the government isn't going to be sanctioning marriages then it shouldn't be attaching legal rights and protections to them either. Now it is in our society's best interest to confer those rights and protections so let's confer them through government sanctioned and completely non-religious civil unions with existing marriages being grandfathered in. Then people can get married in whatever church they want and just file a notice of civil union with the government. As an added bonus people who don't want to have a religious ceremony, such as atheists, but do want something a little more elaborate than standing in front of a Justice of the Peace could have some sort of civil union ceremony. It might even create a small industry around civil union ceremonies.

Seems to me like everyone would win except, perhaps, those people who can't stand the thought that not everyone shares their religious beliefs.

I Pledge

2009-01-23T07:57:00.005-06:00

President Obama's call for people to serve their communities has led liberals to suddenly discover their civic spirit. The most notable example of this is the "I Pledge" video produced by Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher. It is 4 minutes of C- and D-list celebrities pledging to do such substantive things as to smile (Be sure to pace yourself, Demi. Wouldn't want to pull a muscle.) and laugh more.

MySpace Celebrity and Katalyst present The Presidential Pledge

As might be expected, the video induced a lot of eye rolling on my part.

Things came to a head for me when a friend announced on Facebook that they were answering President Obama's call to serve. I had to strongly resist the urge to ask, "What do you want? A cookie?"

I have to wonder what was stopping these people from serving before now. You see, I've been doing volunteer work for my church for years. I didn't need the President to ask me to serve. All I needed was to know that the church had a need that I could fill even though it meant stepping outside my comfort zone and doing something I really didn't want to do. I can think of other ways I'd much rather be spending my time but the need has to be met so I do what I can instead of what I want.

In six months time, I'll bet that most, if not all, of these celebrities will have forgotten their pledges and moved on to whatever the latest cause du jour is. This is not to say that all celebrities only care about the needy when the cameras are on. Just the ones in this video. Others, like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, dedicate a lot of time and money to helping those less fortunate than themselves and, like myself, they didn't need the President to ask them to serve. Whatever else I may think of Pitt and Jolie, I have to respect the obvious dedication they have to the causes they support.

As for my friend, well, he's my friend so I'm naturally inclined to expect the best from him but we'll just have to wait and see if he sticks with it. If he was serving because he wanted to serve I would have faith that he'd keep up with it but as it is, he's just caught up in the moment so we'll see.

For many liberals this is obviously just a chance to make themselves feel good about themselves by reinforcing how much they care without actually putting themselves out. (Still smiling, Demi?) Clearly the pledge to serve didn't include policing their trash after the inauguration.

The comments on that video are rather enlightening as to the liberal mindset. Lots of people saying it was okay to litter because someone else, mainly the government, would clean the mess up. (Way to take responsibility, guys! Obama would be so proud of you.) One whines that they couldn't pick up trash because they weren't allowed to bring backpacks to carry it in. (If you were able to carry the trash in, you were able to carry the trash out.) Another notes that there's so much trash because the Washington Post told people to bring a newspaper to stand on so their feet didn't freeze. (Kudos to the Post for figuring out a way to increase their January circulation numbers but that doesn't explain why people couldn't bend over and pick up their newspapers when they were done standing on them.)

It really comes as no surprise to me that studies have found that while liberals talk a lot about helping those in need, it's actually conservatives that are the main donors of time and money to charity. Wanting the government to take care of the problem, as liberals do, is the ultimate form of passing the buck. They don't have to do anything because it's someone else's problem. Conservatives don't have that luxury. They know that if they don't do what they can to help out, no one else will either so they do what they can to get the job done.

Me? I pledge to keep on doing what I've been doing all along.

Saturday Weigh-In: January 3, 2009

2009-01-03T09:12:00.002-06:00

Weight: 363.6 lbs

Total Weight Lost: 28.2 lbs (0.8 lbs per week)

As expected I gained weight last week after Christmas but this week I'm down again. With the holidays over I should be able to get back to eating properly.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas

2008-12-23T08:17:00.002-06:00

Though this is not a particularly festive time of year for my family, I still wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. Now I realize not everyone shares my religious beliefs. All I can say is, if you are offended by my wishing you Peace, Love, and Happiness at this time of year then I suggest you deal with it.

Saturday Weigh-In: December 20, 2008

2008-12-21T07:14:00.002-06:00

Weight: 364.8 lbs

Total Weight Lost: 27 lbs in 32 weeks (0.8 lbs per week)

Thought I was doing well this week but in retrospect I wasn't. The recent bout of cold weather has brought an increased desire for hot food and beverages. Picked up a box of a hot apple cider drink mix that I thought would be just the thing but looking at the ingredients I see it's mainly made out of sugar. Other hot foods I've given in to the craving for this past week have included English muffins, pasta, and potatoes. All too much starch. I also still haven't really gotten into exercising like I should though with the weather it ought to be easier to get out and do it.

I'm going to work on being good this week but it will be difficult with Christmas. Saturday was the 10^th anniversary of my brother's death so my family doesn't feel particularly festive at this time of year but we'll still gather and Dad will want to go out to eat and the only place we know of that's open on Christmas Day is Brady's Landing over on the Houston Ship Channel. It's a long drive, the restaurant will be crowded, the service is usually poor, and the food on their Christmas buffet really isn't all that good despite it being rather expensive. But it will make Dad happy so we'll go and we'll enjoy each other's company and hopefully I won't do too much damage to my waist while I'm there.

Stop It, Evil Hand! Stop It!

2008-12-14T06:36:00.002-06:00

Wednesday it snowed here in Houston and as I was standing outside, in my capacity of usher at church, watching it snow I couldn't help but be reminded of the Angel episode where Angel cuts off Lindsey's hand and then Lindsey's bosses at law firm Wolfram & Hart arrange for him to receive a hand transplant only it turns out that his new hand is evil.

What? You don't see the connection? Well, once Lindsey realizes he has this evil hand he also realizes that he can blame all sorts of bad behavior on it.

If I had an evil hand I'm pretty sure it would want to grab Stephanie Romanov's ass too.

Still not seeing the connection? Okay, it's like this. As I was watching one of Houston's extremely rare snowfalls I couldn't help but give thanks for global warming. Were it not for global warming, obviously Houston would have been in the middle of an intense blizzard rather than just receiving a light dusting of snow that kids could play in but which would be gone by morning. I'm being sarcastic for those who can't tell. I mean, all this catastrophic global warming is supposed to be going on but here we were having a slightly colder than average December.

Of course this is why global warming has been replaced by climate change. They can't accurately predict what's really going on with the climate and were starting to look foolish pushing global warming so now they talk about climate change instead. You can't count on things continuing to warm up but you can be pretty sure the weather is going to change from day to day. It's hot? Its climate change. It's cold? Its climate change. The sun is shining? Climate change. Rain? Climate change. Snow? Climate change. Like an evil hand, anything can be blamed on climate change. Me? I'm a bit skeptical of any alarmist claims that can attribute anything to a cause that can't be accurately modeled or predicted.

That's not to say that we shouldn't do something about trying to develop sources of clean energy or eliminate pollution. A clean environment is its own reward. But we shouldn't cripple our economy out of fear of a phantom evil hand that may not even be there.

Saturday Weigh-In: December 13, 2008

2008-12-14T05:39:00.002-06:00

Weight: 383.4 lbs

Total Weight Lost: 28.4 lbs (0.9 lbs per week)

As expected I gained weight over Thanksgiving, then dropped back last week and lost more weight this week. I made a couple of mistakes this week.

Wednesday night I had dinner with my parents. Because the weather has been cold, I was craving hot food. I normally don't order pasta, except on my cheat day, but since I was going to be standing out in the cold ushering at church I thought it might be nice to have something warm and dense in my belly. As an added bonus, pasta came with a bowl of soup so that was something else to raise my core temperature. Well, the French onion soup was as good as it always is. The shrimp scampi, on the other hand, left something to be desired. It wasn't particularly hot by the time it got to the table, the pasta was overcooked, and I really didn't need the starchy carbs.

Then the next day I was at the store and saw some sea salt and pepper cashews which I decided I wanted to try. Figured it would be okay as long as I limited myself to a reasonable portion a day but wound up eating most of the package that day.

I'd also like to point out that just because you have a cheat day doesn't mean you have to cheat. Last Sunday night I wasn't feeling particularly hungry but kept thinking about what cheat I could have for dinner. Fortunately I came to my senses and wound up not having anything bad for dinner. Why stuff yourself with food that's bad for you when you're not even hungry?

Saturday Weigh-In: November 22, 2008

2008-11-24T08:06:00.002-06:00

Weight: 364.6 lbs

Total Weight Lost: 27.2 lbs in 28 weeks (0.97 lbs/week)

Okay, this time I'm just being lazy. It was a good week for getting back with the program. This week I'm going to try to be extra good since I'm making Thursday an extra cheat day. (Hard to be good on a holiday built around a lavish meal.)

Saturday Weigh-In: November 15, 2008

2008-11-15T09:20:00.002-06:00

Weight: 367.4 lbs

Total Weight Lost: 24.4 lbs in 27 weeks (0.9 lbs/week)

I haven't been doing a good job keeping up with these entries of late. It's largely because I've been feeling ashamed.

One of the challenges that people trying to lose weight face is their own capacity for denial that a problem exists. I used to work with a woman who was significantly overweight and wanted to shed some pounds. She dieted and exercised but never seemed to make any headway. The thing was, she kept a candy dish of M&Ms on her desk and every day she had to refill it with a 1 or 2 pound bag. If you suggested that the M&Ms might be connected to her inability to lose weight, she'd deny it. The M&Ms weren't the problem, she'd say, because she only ate 4 or 5 at a time. She'd go on to insist that the only reason she had to refill it every day was because other people would come by and grab handfuls. The thing was, while she might only eat 4-5 at a time, as soon as she finished those she'd reach over and grab another 4 or 5 and she'd do that all day long. Yes, other people would come by and get some candy from time to time but she was eating most of it. You can't eat a pound of candy every day and expect to lose weight. It just isn't going to happen.

In my case, I've been letting myself get into the food that I buy for my weekly cheat day. When I first started this weight loss plan, I'd only buy "single serving" size food for my cheat day. For example, I would buy a pint of ice cream instead of a half gallon and I would buy it a day or two before my scheduled cheat day. It was expensive to do that since it's always cheaper to buy in bulk but I knew if I had the food on hand, I'd be eating it all the time. As time went on, I found that I'd built up enough self-discipline that I could start buying bad food in larger amounts and yet only eat it on my cheat day.

Since Hurricane Ike, that's changed. During Ike I broke discipline because there wasn't a lot of food around and it was best to eat what was available when it was available. Then I continued to break discipline because I was eating a lot of meals with my parents and I wanted them to be able to eat wherever they wanted to eat. Since then I've found I no long have the discipline to not eat bad food if it's in the house. If I buy a candy bar to eat on Sunday, it's gone the day I buy it. Usually within an hour of my getting home from the store. So I'm returning to the early stages of my weight loss plan to reestablish my self-discipline.

This is the first week I've been back on the plan and it's been a good one. Starting next week I'm going to start forcing myself to go to the park and take walks in the morning. Rain is the only acceptable excuse for not going. We'll see how that goes.

One Of Those Days

2008-11-11T17:40:00.002-06:00

Today has been the sort of day that can be best summed up by this video:

Election Day

2008-11-04T13:26:00.003-06:00

Nothing like a little election day voter intimidation...

Gee, wonder who they're voting for...

Change you can believe in.

Saturday Weigh-In: November 1, 2008

2008-11-01T10:27:00.002-05:00

Weight: 363.2 lbs

Total Weight Lost: 28.6 lbs in 25 weeks (1.14 lbs per week)

Felt like I made some progress this week. The bagels and cream cheese are gone and I'm mostly managing to resist the temptation posed by the ice cream in my freezer. Definitely got my exercise yesterday as I helped a friend move out of a third floor apartment into a second floor apartment in a different complex. Lots of schlepping things up and down stairs. I was worried that I'd be too sore today to want to mess with cooking anything but it doesn't seem to be a problem.

I think I'm in love...

2008-10-21T15:04:00.005-05:00

Okay, maybe not the foul-mouthed baseball fan bit but she plays World of Warcraft...

It's a pity that she's wayyyyyyyy too young for me. I need to find a cute geek who's my age.

Saturday Weigh-In: October 18, 2008

2008-10-21T10:11:00.002-05:00

Weight: 365.4 lbs

Total Weight Lost: 26.4 lbs in 23 weeks (1.15 lbs per week)

Saturday I had a job I had to get to bright and early so while I had time to weigh myself, I didn't have time to post a journal entry. I'm a little disappointed to have only dropped one pound but not too much. My eating is still a little off but I'm getting closer to being back on track with it. I really need to start getting some exercise and the weather here may finally be starting to cool down to the point where it's not too hot to go walking in the middle of the day so maybe I'll start doing that.

Celebrity Endorsements

2008-10-16T10:32:00.003-05:00

Finally a celebrity with something intelligent to say about the upcoming election...

Saturday Weigh-In: October 11, 2008

2008-10-11T07:31:00.002-05:00

Weight: 366.4 lbs

Total Weight Lost: 25.4 lbs in 22 weeks (1.15 lbs per week)

It continues to be a struggle to get back into the groove post-Ike. When it comes to bread these days, I eat a whole grain wheat bread but I find myself missing other types of bread, particularly sourdough. Which lead to my picking up a loaf of cinnamon brown sugar swirl bread. It's good stuff but not the sort of bread I should be eating and I've gone through it much faster than I should have.

Movie Review: An American Carol

2008-10-08T15:01:00.003-05:00

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Usually when a movie isn't shown to critics prior to its release, it's because there is an expectation that it will receive bad reviews. Such was the case with An American Carol. What's different about the movie not being screened for critics is that it wasn't because its a bad movie but because it was believed that movie reviewers' would find the movie politically unpalatable. Many of the reviews that have come out about the movie have shown those fears to be grounded in reality. Can we really expect an unbiased review that begins with:

Pity conservatives. They've got the lamest politicians and the lamest comics.

This is my review of An American Carol.

I went into the movie hoping for the best but expecting the worst. Hollywood has turned out a lot of really bad parodies in recent years and adding political commentary didn't seem like a formula for success. Though I've liked David Zucker's past work on films such as Airplane! and the Naked Gun series, the trailer for An American Carol seems kind of lame.

On the other hand, I was hoping the movie would be as funny as Zucker's past work so that it would do well at the box office and Hollywood might see value in doing more movies with a conservative bent.

That said, I think the movie landed somewhere halfway between my hopes and fears. It's got some very funny bits, such as Rosie O'Connell's film showing that radical Christians are just as bad as radical Islamists, but some other bits fall flat such as a joke about everyone in a terrorist group being named Mohammed Hussein.

Like most of Zucker's work, the movie is cheesy, cornball, and over-the-top. That's not a bad thing in this kind of movie but if you don't like that kind of humor, this movie probably isn't for you.

As far as I can tell, most conservatives seem to really like this movie and most liberals seem to really hate it. So where you fall on the political spectrum should probably be taken into consideration if you're thinking of going to see it. In my case, I found the movie to be very enjoyable. I certainly had more fun at it than I did at Tropic Thunder earlier this year. Judging by the laughter I was hearing from my fellow movie goers, I wasn't the only one.

If you do go see An American Carol make sure the theater box office gives you tickets to the right movie. There have been reports about some theaters trying to sabotage the box office by selling tickets to other movies. It doesn't effect your ability to see the movie but it does effect the reported box office and thus the perception of whether the movie is a success or failure.

James Gunn's PG Porn

2008-10-08T14:18:00.002-05:00

James Gunn has teamed up with the Spike cable network to produce James Gunn's PG Porn. It's pornography for people that like everything about porn but the sex. In other words if you like bad acting, bad scripts, low budget sets, and fuzzy guitars but no sex then it's just the thing for you. The first webisode, Nailing Your Wife, is up and stars Nathan Fillion (Firefly, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog) and Aria Giovanni.

Nailing Your Wife | Girls | SPIKE.com

It's funny stuff and I look forward to future webisodes which will follow the formula of pairing mainstream actors with porn stars. Though I do have to say that I think it's a sad commentary on our society that this is considered family friendly fare, and I've certainly seen worse on television during prime time on shows such as NCIS, but had there been any nudity or sex, even of the simulated variety, it would have become an R.

For he is Jeff and there is no cure.

2008-10-04T09:58:00.002-05:00

The last few weeks have left me needing a good laugh or two so I have turned to one of my favorite British comedies, Coupling. A hilarious look at how men and women view relationships and sex differently. Well worth at least renting the DVDs if you've never seen it before.

Last week was a friend's 50th birthday and his wife through a surprise party for him which reminded me of this scene from Coupling in which Jeff's girlfriend tries to throw a surprise party for his 30th birthday...

Saturday Weigh-In: October 4, 2008

2008-10-04T09:16:00.002-05:00

Weight: 367.6 lbs

Total Weight Lost: 24.2 lbs in 21 weeks (1.15 lbs per week)

My weight continues to bounce around in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. I'm still spending a fair amount of time at my parents' house and thus eating at the places they like to eat at the time they like to eat. Not the most ideal of circumstances but at least I've managed to steer them to places that have healthier choices. (It helps that one of their favorite places is currently closed while repairs are made to the roof.)

Saturday Weigh-In: September 27, 2008

2008-09-27T20:10:00.002-05:00

Weight: 371 lbs

Total Weight Lost: 20.8 lbs in 20 weeks (1.04 lbs per week)

Not sure what to make of today's weigh-in. I'm hard pressed to believe that I gained 6 pounds this week though I have been eating rather poorly.

Hurricane Ike continues to make itself felt. For several days after I returned home and restocked my fridge, I found myself feeling ravenous all the time. I'm assuming it was a side effect of my "starvation" diet during the previous week. I wasn't overly hungry when food wasn't available but once food became relatively plentiful again, my body wanted to replenish itself. At least that's my theory but not I'm not a physician or nutritionist or anything like that so I don't really know.

It also didn't help that stores tended to be short on a lot of perishable goods, such as fish and chicken, because loss of power for an extended period of time meant having to throw those things out. So instead of being able to buy the sort of foods I normally get I wound up eating a lot of peanut butter and other such foods. That didn't help.

Finally, since my parents had no power until this Thursday, I went over to their house every day this week and wound up eating lunch with them. Unfortunately not every place they wanted to eat at was conducive to eating in a healthy manner and this was aggravated by the fact that a fair number of places still aren't open, limiting our choices as to where to eat. It also didn't help that they tend to combine lunch and dinner into one meal eaten around 3:00 pm which usually meant I was really hungry by the time we ate and consequently tended to load up the wrong kinds of foods.

Things should get better this week. The freezer is finally restocked with fish, chicken, and frozen vegetables and my parents have their power back so I won't be going over there every day which means I should be able to finally get back on track.

Teaching Kids to Roleplay

2008-09-25T06:20:00.003-05:00

Wired has an interesting article on teaching your kids to play roleplaying games.

I discovered AD&D in high school and branched out into other games as I got older. As a strong introvert, such games helped me break out of my shell to develop social skills. In college I pretty much talked to no one but my roommate for the first couple of quarters. Then I connected with some other roleplayers and the number of friends I had blossomed. Even today I'd say most of my friends are people I met through gaming.

At the same time, the roleplaying aspect of games like AD&D has helped me deal with some personal issues. Not surprising given that some psychologists use roleplay, though in a different form, to treat their patients. It's a way of distancing yourself from issues while you work through them. Even today I notice certain similarities between the characters I play and myself that I've unconciously built into them.

Since RPGs have been a relatively positive influence on my life, I would certainly want to pass them on to my kids so this is a pretty handy article.