The $50 lesson

A good friend of mine (who happens to be a conservative republican) send this email to all his friends, wisely using bcc for the recipients:

The $50 Lesson

I recently asked my friends' little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up.

She said she wanted to be President of the United States .

Both of her parents, liberal Democrats, were standing there.

So I asked her, "If you were President, what would be the first thing you would do?"

She replied, "I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people.."

Her parents beamed.

"Wow...what a worthy goal," I told her.

"But you don't have to wait until you're President to do that.

You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my driveway, and I'll pay you $50.

Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house."

She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, "Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?"

I said, "Welcome to the Republican Party."

...............Her parents still aren't speaking to me................

And here is my reply:

I like you (a lot actually) and I appreciate what you are trying to say here, but I find myself painfully conflicted and I wish to respond in a way that is meant to get the conflict off my chest and also to try to help you understand my position, and how I see the world. E.g. My version of the truth. I hope you will not take offence, as none is meant and that you will simply see my reply here as a friendly challenge.

Although I generally agree with the idea of the post, I see two logical fallacies, to which I would enjoy hearing your reply:

1. This assumes the homeless person is capable of performing the work. Besides the mental health issues that could easily prevent the average (long term) homeless person from knowing /how/ to do the work, there are issues of physical strength and logistics which could also stand in the way. The most obvious of these is how does the homeless person get to the work place?

2. You also assume that anyone would be willing to employ a homeless person even if they could possibly do the work. Frankly, that is the fallacy I find most annoying about this. One the one hand, republicans will say "oh, the homeless should just work to earn a living" when in reality, those same republicans would NEVER hire a homeless person to do any work... no work at all... period. Ever.

So let me challenge you to answer those two fallacies to the same list of people to whom you sent this first email, and further, let me challenge you to hire a homeless person to do ANY work AT ALL!

Until you have risen to either of those challenges, I call hypocrite.

Remember, your real friends are the ones who will, hopefully politely, tell you when they think you are wrong. I could just forget about it, or ask you to simply not send me republican based emails, but I enjoy debate, and I like to try to bring everyone, myself included, to a middle ground.

I hope you don’t mind that.

Yes, we will all die, but HOW? When? And how long can we avoid it?

The National Safety Council has released it's 2010 list of "what's gonna get yah" based on data from the 2006 census and health statistics:
http://www.nsc.org/news_resources/Documents/nscInjuryFacts2011_037.pdf

So here is the break down:

0. Dying from Death. You have a 1:1 chance of dying from something. Get used to the idea. Your only hope is putting it off as long as possible.

1. Heart Disease will take 1 in 6 of us. Tick Tock. It's more common in Women than most people think. There are lots of simple things you can do to reduce your risk of dying this way:
http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/HeartAttack/PreventionTreatmentofHeartAttack/Lifestyle-Changes_UCM_303934_Article.jsp

2. Cancer, The Big C, is a close second, taking 1 of every 7 of us. Eat organic, avoid irritants, injury, the sun, and the amazing number of products containing possible carcinogens.
http://cancer.about.com/od/causes/tp/topreventcancer.htm

3. Stroke gets 1 in 28. Note that stroke (blood not flowing) is different than heart disease (blood not pumping). Avoid long periods of not moving followed by sudden activity, keep regular aspirin on hand.
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/stroke/preventing_stroke.htm

Which brings us to my personal favorite, which is UP this year from 5 to 4:

4. Motor-vehicle Accidents kills 1 out of every 85 of us. Think about that. If you love 85 people, one of them is going to die on the roads at some point. I personally know 2 people already who died in cars, but lucky for me, I didn't love either of them. The first spun out on "black" ice in a car going WAY too fast on a windy road in Oregon and was hit by a flat bed truck. They had just passed our school bus and all us kids got to see a good lesson on the consequences of unsafe driving. Jay was an ass, but it was still sad that he died. The second was my old bosses daughter... he was also an ass, but no one deserves to loose a daughter. Actually, technically, she wasn't killed; but brain dead is dead in my book. They held on to her body for a while before they unplugged her.

Airplanes kill 1 in 5,862, Lightning and earthquakes are down in the 1 in 100,000 range. Terrorism doesn't even make the list this year. It was in the 600,000's last time if I remember correctly.

One terrorist attack changed our laws, personal freedoms, and way of looking at the world forever. 9/11 killed less than 3,000 people. About 60,000 people die on the roads every single year. More than 40,000 per year on the freeways and then an unknown additional number on surface streets. And unlike heart attack, cancer, and stroke, cars kill young people more often than old.

Have any of us checked out any of these sites?
http://www.safercar.gov/
http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/
http://www.nhtsa.gov/

You may notice a bias in those .gov websites: They concentrate on the behavior of the driver, and give second place to the safety of cars. Why? Industry pressure? Pocket Politicians? Perhaps; but I think the truth is more interesting: As cars become safer, drivers adapt and take greater risks, eliminating the life saving effect of the industry regulations. Don't agree? Ok, but read these before you decide:
http://www.be.wvu.edu/divecon/econ/sobel/NASCAR/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed#.22The_Peltzman_Effect.22

Guess what? Despite all the improvements in car safety since the '60s, the death rate has stayed within a percent of the current number! When it comes right down to it, the 4th biggest killer in our country is:

YOU (and me)

...when we drive.

Please consider these possibilities:

1. Try to find a job that allows you to telecommute or just work from home. It's green, it's frugal, it's safer. It took me 10 years of working on my boss to do it, but I finally got to telecommute, and he is as happy with it as I am.

2. On the freeway, don't bunch up with the other cars; find the empty space between the lemming packs and stay as far away from the other cars as you can. Leave more space in front and look for the "escape routes" you can aim for to avoid a collision. If someone tailgates, just speed up or move over if it's safe, otherwise tap your brakes three times; the goal is space, not enforcement or "teaching anyone a lesson".

3. Driving is a full occupation time. No talking, texting, eating, primping, dreaming, or raging. (yes, I know I'm a hypocrite) To help stay focused, make a game out of playing "what if" and thinking about your response to unexpected dangers. Be afraid every time you drive. You should be.

4. Mass transit is many times safer than individual commuting. Take a train, bus, etc... Even in California, it can be done. The extra walking is healthy.
http://maps.google.com/help/maps/transit/index.html

I'm preaching to myself as much as anyone else here... I hope we listen.

Another "Beautiful Mind": Nikola Tesla

Another "Beautiful Mind": The one man who invented our power grid, AC, generators, the electric motor, radio, remote control, neon signs, hydraulics, and so on. He controlled his tortured mind by force of will and used it to change our world in so many positive ways. Yet we remember his nemesis, Thomas Edison, who tortured animals trying to stop the AC power grid, and forget the real wizard: Nikola Tesla. The clip below is accurate, with one clarification: wireless power would be free in the sense that anyone could tap into it, not that it was "free energy". Worth a few minutes for those who want "the rest of the story"

Yea! Our heath care is ranked #37 in the world

Having said that, all the health care reforms I've seen so far amount to corporate welfare or will certainly cause rate hikes. It's going to be yet another screwfest with the American Sheeple happily bending over and asking to be... plucked...

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/category/y-2009/ Project censored tracks stories that are from reliable, peer reviewed sources that are being ignored by all major news media outlets. Very interesting... "And now you know... the REST of the storys"

Sustainability = frugality over the long term

here is the big secret:

Actual sustainability = frugality over the long term.

If it costs more over its lifetime, it is NOT sustainable. So, when gas is at $2.50 a gallon, the Prius is NOT always sustainable.

Proof: The cost of any item, in the end, is the energy required to make it. All the metal, plastic, glass, etc.. needed to make a Prius is just setting in the ground, free for the taking. The real cost of making it into a Prius is the cost of the energy required to dig it up, ship it to the foundry, refine it, ship it to the parts factory, form it, ship it to the car factory, assemble it, ship it to the lot, and sell it to you. All of the equipment and people involved in those processes are, again, the cost of the energy required to make and operate.

Just about ALL of that energy is fossil fuels. So how does it make sense to spend $22,000 (http://www.toyota.com/prius-hybrid/trims-prices.html) worth of fossil fuel to get 51/45mpg, when you could spend $12,000 (http://www.toyota.com/yaris/trims-prices.html) worth of fossil fuel to get 29/35mpg? You are saving about 20mpg, or 12.5 cents per mile, for an expenditure of $10,000. You would have to drive 80,000 miles to make that worth doing. Given a 5 year average vehicle life, you would have to drive 16,000 miles per year or an average of 45 miles per day. So if your commute is less than ½ hour each way, a Prius actually HURTs our Mother more than it helps.

Of course, the numbers REALLY make a jump when you consider a USED car vs a NEW Prius. A 25mpg 2001 Camry for $10,000 with an average useful life of 20 years turns out to be a much more sustainable choice than a new Prius for that same 30 min commute.
http://www.truedelta.com/models/Camry.php

The REAL green people drive old cars and support their local mechanic until the repair bill exceeds the savings.

The first thing I've heard about this financial crisis that has made any damn sense...

Chickens

A friend asked how hard it is to raise chickens. I answered as follows, based on my research into the subject (not based on personal experience since I'm not allowed to keep chickens where we live inside the city limits *wink*)

Chickens must be the easiest and most productive animal to raise. They need a run, a coop, food, and water. Other than the materials and labor to set up the run, coop, etc... The only maintenance required (assuming the run is big enough and you setup the coop correctly) is refilling the feeder, and cleaning out the water dish on a regular basis to keep disease at bay. A poorly designed coop will require regular cleaning, and a run that is too small or poorly placed will require hay or other composting material and semi-regular mucking out.

A rooster is NOT required for eggs, although some people claim that only fertilized eggs are worth eating.

Tips:

Set the run up on a slight slope, with the high end having easy access to throw in compostable materials (food scraps, lawn clippings, garden waste, etc...) and the low end having an easily removable gate to shovel out the lovely rich compost / fertilizer they produce. The ideal setup would have a drop of a few feet from the low end into a compost bin where the mixture of chicken poop and compostable material would drop and cook into a rich but usable material for your garden. Chicken poop is to rich to use directly, so it must be mixed with other materials (they do that naturally in the run) and then let set for some time to cook.

Setup the coup OVER the run (or lifted up on stilts) with a chicken wire screen under their roosting perch and a very slight slope (darn near flat) from the nesting boxes down to that screen and just a strip of wood to keep the eggs from rolling out onto the screen. Then the nesting material (sawdust, etc...) will randomly migrate out and down through the screen, they will poop through the screen while roosting (which they do a LOT) and that poop will be mixed with compostable materials in the run as they scratch through it. Chickens have a close relationship with their own poo. They let bugs, maggots, etc... grow in it and then scratch those out an eat them.

If you build your garden beds high enough and surround each bed with a waist high fence, you can let the "girls" out once in a while to clean the back yard of snails, bugs, spiders, etc... They don't like to eat ants, and they DO like to eat your best garden greens in the most destructive and wasteful ways possible. E.g. just the main root from each pepper plant.

Downside:

Smell: Really not as bad as people think, assuming the run is large and either setup smartly or kept clean with manual labor. But there is a bit of a whiff on hot days...

Flies: No matter how clean you keep it, chickens shit, and you will get flies.

Spiders: Spiders follow from flies. We have more black widows per square foot than any place I've ever lived.

Garden and grounds: They WILL get out, and they WILL destroy something you lovingly planted. They like to scratch or dig up flowers, veggies, etc... Any area that they frequent will be laid baron by their constant digging for bugs and the overly rich power of their poop.

NAIS is a scam.

NAIS was designed by NIAA (the National Institute of Animal
Agriculture), a corporate consortium consisting of Monsanto,
industrial meat producers such as Cargill and Tyson, and surveillance
companies such Viatrace, AgInfoLink, and Digital Angel. The NAIS
scheme fits agribusiness, biotech, and surveillance companies to a T:

1) They are already computerized, and they engineered a corporate
loophole: If an entity owns a vertically integrated, birth-to-death
factory system with thousands of animals (as the Cargills and Tysons
do), it does not have to tag and track each one but instead a herd is
given a single lot number.

2). NAIS will only be burdensome and costly (fees, tags, computer
equipment, time) to small farmers which helps push them out of
business, thus leaving more market to giant agribusiness.

3) Agribusiness wants to reassure export customers that the US meat
industry is finally cleaning up its widespread contamination. NAIS
would give that appearance ... without incurring the cost of a real
cleanup.

4) NAIS will allow total control over the competition: Owners of even
a single chicken would be required to register private information,
the Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates of their 'premise'
and if any animal leaves its 'premise', the owner will be required to
obtain an ID number for it and have the animal microchipped. All
information, including 24 hour GPS surveillance would be fed into a
vast corporate data bank, allowing for ease of false slaughter to
hide true problems or to substitute biotech's genetically engineered
animals.

5) NAIS may allow plundering of farmers through required DNA samples:
DNA samples would be invaluable to Monsanto and biotech corporations
genetically engineering animals. Farmers who raise heritage breeds
would have no say in how their distinct DNA would be used and to the
sole profit of biotech companies.

6) The advantage for the surveillance companies is obvious:
Compulsory tagging of 6 million sheep, 7 million horses, 63 million
hogs, 97 million cows, 260 million turkeys, 300 million laying hens,
9 billion chickens, and untold numbers of bison, alpaca, quail, and
other animals -- and new animals being born, means a massive
self-perpetuating market.

Please take action now to stop this insanity. Our health and our
lives depend on it.

Stop NAIS Action Page: http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum942.php

Women shave legs and appear to be little girls.

When children grow, at a certain age, they start to grow more hair all over. We always have hair all over, but at some age, we grow thicker, stronger, more noticeable hair. This age is the age of puberty, when our bodies change. In the USA, the normal age for puberty is between 8 and 13^. At that age, girls and boys start to grow more noticeable hair on their legs. It is almost always before the age of 18.

So, when a women of 20 or 30 or so on, in order to appear more attractive, as our society defines attractiveness^, shaves her legs, what age is she attempting to appear to be? She is NOT attempting to appear to be 18. She is not thinking about what age she is attempting to appear to be at all, but she is attempting to appear to be 13 or so.

Why does our society, here in the USA, want women to appear to be 13?

My first thought was that it must be a marketing campaign designed to sell razors. And there does seem to be some proof of that. The first mention I can find of women removing hair for any reason started in May, 1915 with a fashion spread in Harpers Baazar showing a women in a sleeveless gown with bare armpits. Under it is an ad for a hair removal powder.

Razors for women didn't appear anywhere until 1917 and in the Sears and Roebuck catalog until 1922.^

Leg shaving seems to have started soon after that, but really became popular around WWII with rising hemlines and pinup girls "to inspire our boys."

At the start of the war, nylon stockings were popular, but the nylon was needed for the war effort, so believe it or not, some women would shave their legs, then draw a line up the back of the leg to imitate the seam that was always present in stockings of that time. This does not, however, seem to be the start of leg shaving; hair under stocking is uncomfortable and shows so the shaving of legs started first, nylons came after.

It has been said that leg shaving was promoted by a razor company reeling from the lack of men buying razors since so many where "over there" fighting WWI^

Women in europe didn't start shaving until years later. After WWII one woman I spoke to came to the USA from Holland. She first noticed that American women had "weak" legs. They looked thin and frail to her. It was pointed out to her that her legs looked "stronger" because they were hairy and the women here were shaving. Her friend said she shaved because if she didn't, she would "look like an ape." My friend from Holland wasn't going to be a slave to fasion, but while at the denstist office, in the chair, she noticed that he kept lookin at her legs, and she thought: "He thinks I look like an Ape!" That's all it took; she started shaving her legs that night.

Leg shaving happens in Brazil, North America, Australia, Middle East, and Europe. Women in Europe, while they do shave their legs (even in France!) are not as religious about it as they are in the USA. It does not happen in Asia

Could it be simply related to the age old desire for women to look different from men? Since women generally have less hair than men, making a women have less hair, makes her less like a man and, supposedly, more womanly. There are certainly many examples of this, and not just since breast implants and high heels took hold; ancient peoples did everything from lopping off little girls toes (women have smaller feet) to stretching out necks (women have thinner necks). This tendancy for each sex to try to look less like the other is called artifical sexual dimorphism. Sexual dimorphism is very common, and there isn't anything wrong with helping it along. The problem is that in leg shaving, we have picked something that is not only makes women look less like men, it makes them look more like little girls.

As shaved legs became the standard of beauty in the USA, men became trained to find them attractive. As a result, men are no longer sexually attracted to the naturally hairly legs of mature women, but instead are attracted to a version of legs that are naturally found on underage girls. This doesn't excuse the actions of molesters, but it is one more small step in the wrong direction.

See also:

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1280795/origin_of_pantyhose_why_women_shave_their_legs/ the video shows some of the pictures of the original ads and photos.

20% better MPG from an electro-magnet? Must be a joke, right?

In the "are you kidding me" department, we find this report of a simple device consisting of an electrically charged tube that can be attached to the fuel line of a car’s engine near the fuel injector. Using power from the vehicle’s battery, the device creates an electric field that thins the fuel, reducing its viscosity, so that smaller droplets are injected into the engine. That leads to more efficient and cleaner combustion.

And who says so? Has to be a quack, a jerk, some backyard mechanic? Errr. no, actually, it's Temple University.

http://www.temple.edu/newsroom/2008_2009/09/stories/taofueldevice.htm

"Six months of road testing in a diesel-powered Mercedes-Benz automobile showed that the device increased highway fuel from 32 miles per gallon to 38 mpg, a 20 percent boost"

"Temple has applied for a patent on this technology, which has been licensed to California-based Save The World Air Inc., an environmentally conscientious enterprise focused on the design, development, and commercialization of revolutionary technologies targeted at reducing emissions from internal combustion engines."

I believe the patent application is for number 20080190771 It seems to be for a device that uses the electric power from the battery to create a magnetic field around the fuel.

So do those con artists who sell the perminant magnet thing you put on the fuel line actually have something going on? Mythbusters, and many others, proved that they don't. So what gives?

The patent application says: "It has been surprisingly found that if the applied magnetic field is a short pulse, the induced dipolar interaction does not have enough time to affect particles at macroscopic distances apart, but forces nearby ones into small clusters. The assembled clusters are thus of limited size, for example of micrometer size. While the particle volume fraction remains the same, the average size of the "new particles" is increased. This may lead to the reduction in apparent viscosity because the value of the crowding factor k, is reduced. "

So it's a pulse, not a continuous application, that makes the difference.

Pulsing a magnetic coil with a specific, adjustable, duty cycle and pulse width is taylor made for microcontrollers like the PIC or MSP430, and pretty easy to do.

A REALLY Different Christmas Poem.

A friend sent the "Different Christmas Poem" email that has been circulating the internet. You can read it in the snopes link below if you are an idiot. This was my response to it.

Nice poem. It would mean more to me if the war we are currently fighting had any actual basis in protecting our country from a threat. However… LCDR Jeff Giles didn’t write it
http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/glurge/different.asp and the soldiers in Iraq are NOT protecting us from any real threat. No WMD’s, no Iraqi’s involved in 9/11, Osama bin Laden is not now, and never was, in Iraq… Not to mention the fact that we don’t seem to be actively looking for him anymore.

And from a purely humanitarian standpoint, while Saddam did apparently kill a lot of people (~600,000), we have now killed quite a few ourselves.
www.iraqbodycount.org/ says it’s around 90,000 at last count. And we have to wonder if we will leave the area (assuming we ever actual leave…) in a more or less stable state. It may just be that when working with a people who are insanely violent due to religious differences, an insane leader is the best possible match.

In fact, when you look at the deaths per day and compare days under Saddam’s rule with deaths during our occupation, the difference is less obvious. Saddam killed about 100 people per day (70-125), since we took over, it’s been about 40 or so per day (16-72). Just for comparison, on the average day in the USA, 119 people die in automobile accidents.

And even if (I say IF) our troops were protecting us from terrorists, the total death toll in the USA from terrorist action is less than 5,000… over ALL time. Less than 3000 in 9/11. Yet 9/11 was used to remove freedoms, change laws, justify torture, and send millions of our boys and girls into harms way.

In the USA, every single year, MORE than 60,000 people die in automobile accidents. Who at Firestone or Ford went to jail for knowingly putting inferior tires on a car with too high a center of gravity? Where was the service man protecting me from them? Where is the light rail line (Trains are THE safest way to travel, although airlines are safer than cars) for me to use going to work?

The point I’m trying to make here is that humans, and especially Americans, use emotion, rather than logic and statistics, to make decisions and justify actions. This poem, although lovely, plays to that fatal flaw. My logic and numbers may strike most as cold, and will never be repeated ad nauseam over the internet the way this poem WILL be, but they have a truth, clarity, and beauty that would better serve the USA.

http://techref.massmind.org/techref/other/911.htm
http://techref.massmind.org/techref/member/jmn-efp-786/MyLovelyCommute.htm
http://techref.massmind.org/techref/other/USAenforcesOPECprices.htm

Bail out the WORKERS, not the companies.

All I want to ask the people who are crying about the loss of jobs in Detroit is this ONE question: How many mortgate payments, full tuition college educations, free health care insurance policies, and meals could that same bailout money provide to those workers?

Let the crappy car companies FAIL. Do not reward failure. Reward the companies who make good cars by providing them with a better trained, happy work force.

How much are your kids worth?

Thanks to my friend Bill for sending me this in an email. This is a “nice” little wakeup call for civilians who don’t understand the point of Military R&D funding. Yes, it would be better to not go to war at all, but that isn’t the reality of life is it? As longs as we DO go to war (no matter how stupid and wrong the reasons are) I want MY kids and YOUR kids to have the best possible weapons technology on our side. This video shows a man firing mortar’s at our troops. Watch what happens.




I never like to see anyone die, but when it’s a choice between us or them, I pick them. There is no way to know how many Americans his mortars killed, but it’s good to know it won’t be any more. Of all the weapons systems I've seen, this has to be one of my favorites. It's morally ideal in that it is totally harmless except to the guy who starts shooting at you. "...if it shoots, shoot back."

http://www.syrres.com/stc/products_lcmr.htm The technology that stopped him is called the LCMR: Lightweight Counter Mortar Radar-Enhancement and is made by Syracuse Research Corporation, a non-profit whose mission is to “keep America safe and strong by protecting its people, environment, and way of life.” The Lightweight Counter-Mortar Radar (LCMR) detects and locates mortar firing positions automatically by detecting and tracking the mortar shell and then backtracking to the weapon position.

http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=249992 Hillary got them $5M to improve that system for use inside the USA. It is being updated to track not only mortar shells but also small arms fire. So the local police will know in an instant when a gun is fired, and in a few shots, know exactly where.

$5 million of the federal funding will go to the Syracuse Research Corporation for the development of Lightweight Counter Mortar Radar-Enhancement (LCMR). The
funding will create new opportunities to improve and enhance national security. The radar, developed for the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and currently in theater, provides the capability to automatically locate mortar-firing positions by detecting and tracking the mortar shell, then backtracking to the weapon position. Accordingly, this technology will allow soldiers in combat to more effectively take cover from mortar fire, locate its origin, and respond. LCMR systems have already been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Funding in this legislation would upgrade these systems. SRC received $2.5 million of federal funding for the LCMR in FY 05.

Support our troops: First, BRING THEM HOME, but failing that, give them the best possible tools to keep them alive while they are in harms way.

Silly 8rs, you need 2/3rds to revise.

Thanks to Blanca for sending me this news from the ACLU:

In an order issued Wednesday, the California Supreme Court agreed to hear the legal challenges to Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that would end marriage for same-sex couples in California. It passed narrowly on November 4th.

On November 5th, the ACLU, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit challenging the validity of Proposition 8 in the California Supreme Court on behalf of six couples and Equality California. The City of San Francisco, joined by the City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, and Santa Clara County, filed a similar challenge, as did a private attorney in Los Angeles.

The lawsuits allege that, on its face, Proposition 8 is an improper revision rather than an amendment of the California Constitution because, in its very title -- which was "Eliminates the right to marry for same-sex couples" -- the initiative eliminated an existing right only for a targeted minority.

If permitted to stand, Proposition 8 would be the first time an initiative has successfully been used to change the California Constitution to take away an existing right only for a particular group. Such a change would defeat the very purpose of a constitution and fundamentally alter the role of the courts in protecting minority rights. According to the California Constitution, such a serious revision of the state constitution cannot be enacted through a simple majority vote but must first be approved by two-thirds of the legislature.

Ok, my "Yes on 8" neighbors, if you are going to change the law, learn how the law can and can not be legally changed. In the end, the will of the people will be done, but the people of today must follow the rules set down by our founders. If you really want to descriminate against a minority, do it legally.

Lets see, 2 divided by 3 is 0.666... OMG: It's the work of the devil!

We. Do. Not. Need. To. Invade. Iran.

There is another "invade Iran" eamil going around. It says:

"While Iran's low-enriched uranium is not quite weapons-grade, the Institute for Science and International Security, after reviewing the IAEA report, estimated that the further enrichment necessary could be done "within a few months."

That would give Iran a nuke right around Inauguration Day. "

Although the email provides no references, it seem to be quoting this report:
http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iran/ISIS_analysis_Nov-IAEA-Report.pdf

My response:

No references. Hear-say. Fear mongering. I smell FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. The standard means of manipulating the public into an action that benefits the authors).

"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along, whether it is democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country" -- Hermann Goering, Hitlers Reich-Marshal at Nuremburg after WWII. (This is true: check snopes: http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.htm )

As it happens, every country with about a square mile of dirt has “enough fissionable material to develop a nuclear weapon”. That isn’t the question. The question is: do they have the technology to extract and purify the fissionable material from that dirt to the point that it would actually fission… err… go boom. And then, do they have a way of delivering that bomb to a target. What they have now is LEU or Low Enrichment Uranium. It’s good for nuke power plants, useless for A-Bombs. Moving it to weapons grade material is quite the trick.

These links are as close as I could find to the stuff they say in the email,

http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iran/ISIS_analysis_Nov-IAEA-Report.pdf seems to be what this email is referencing at the end. And what they say IS scary. But who are “they”? I couldn’t find anything about their funding on their actual site, but I did find this:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Institute_for_Science_and_International_Security and for the most part, that funding looks pretty good. A lot of it does, however, have ties to the dreaded "Military Industrial Complex"... The people who scare us into paying them to build better weapons, and then into sacrificing our kids into using those weapons so they can get paid to build more.

http://www.isisnucleariran.org/nuclear-faq/ is a very informative document from the same I.S.I.S. outfit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_program_of_Iran is an even better document that tells both sides of the history. Very much worth the read.

http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Focus/IaeaIran/index.shtml is the International Atomic Energy Agency but I couldn’t find any mention of 630 Kilograms of ANYTHING on their site:
http://www.iaea.org/googleResult.html?cx=004828748078731094376%3Am_jpm98tdns&cof=FORID%3A11&q=IRAN+%22630+kg%22+OR+%22630+kilograms%22+&sitesearch=IAEA.org#241

I did, eventually find a document at I.S.I.S. that says it is from the IAEA and quotes the 630 KG figure:
http://www.isisnucleariran.org/assets/pdf/Iran_Report_11-19-08.pdf Note that just after that figure it says “All nuclear material at FEP, as well as all installed cascades, remain under Agency containment and surveillance.” So the IAEA is right there watching and holding on to that material. If Iran starts trying to turn it into weapons grade material, the IAEA will know.

And if we wanted to, our Tomahawks could easily hit the processing facility and remove that threat. In any case, and this is the important part, there is NO need for us to invade Iran as we did with Iraq. WE, and not they, have the technology for war at a distance. There is NO NEED for our boys to risk life and limb in Iran… other than to justify the increased funding of the Military industrial complex.

We own the air. We own space. We own the planet. There is NO NEED for us to set foot on every part of it. We have the aircraft carriers, the ICBM’s, the F117’s, the Patriots, and so on and so on. We already paid for all that. Asking us to pay with our children is monstrous.

In the end, the key point is that there is NOTHING wrong with Iran having nuke power and having LEU to run it. The fact that they now have enough LEU to make the weapons grade material for one bomb does not mean that they will. They don’t even have the equipment to do it, as far as I can tell. If they did pull all their LEU and put it into a new facility for making weapons grade material, we would know in advance and could easily stop it. Even if we didn’t stop it and they did make a bomb, there is no evidence that they would use it. Iran has never committed any terrorist act against US or our allies. The idea that they would hand over a bomb to a terrorist or allow a terrorist to steal it is… unlikely. If terrorists wanted a bomb, there are lots of other places to steal one; security in Russia isn’t exactly stellar right now. On one seems to be freaked out that Pakistan, another militant Islamic country, already has the A-Bomb. If we are going to invade Iran, why didn’t we invade Pakistan? They have more ties to terrorists than Iran ever has. And again, even if all the very worst is true. We can just blow up their enrichment facility. It isn’t like you can hide that sort of a plant…


We. Do. Not. Need. To. Invade. Iran.

My buddy is afraid he might accidentally marry a guy.

There are apparently a large number of people in California, who are so unsure of themselves that they believe they need to government to keep them from accidentally marrying people they don’t want to marry. I have a neighbor, a man, (not the brightest bulb, but a nice guy) who is a Christian and feels that it would be wrong to marry another guy. So he voted YES on this prop 8 amendment to the state constitution that would prevent him from accidentally marrying another man. It’s amazing to me how people want the government to protect them from themselves…

He is a really nice guy and never tried to convert me to his religion, so I know that he isn't worried about OTHER people who might feel it is OK for a man to marry a man or a women to marry a women; he wouldn't be so pushy as to try to force his morals on another when it does him NO damage at all if a gay marriage happens.

His kids are all grown and out of school, so what they teach in school can’t be bothering him… and even if it was, the California Educational Code section 51240 specifically states that a student will be excused from teachings in conflict with the religious or moral code the parents. Any public school that failed to follow that directive is breaking the law.

And although he isn't all that smart, he does understand the separation of church and state guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution and agrees that having the government enforce religious ideals could be a real problem. After all we are one nation under whose God? I mean the Christians wouldn't want the government telling people they have to confess their sins on a regular basis. And the Catholics wouldn't want the government selecting only married men to lead their services. No, I’m sure he didn't vote for it as a way to make the government get into the business of religion.

My best guess is that he is worried about transgendered or hermaphroditic people. He might meet someone who he thinks is a women and then have it turn out that this is actually a man or someone who has both male and female organs. Like Thomas Beatie, the pregnant man. If my friend had a sister, and she happened to fall in love with Thomas, wouldn't it be horrible if the state didn't stop them from getting married, since he happens to have a womb and has given birth… twice… I mean, how would she know? He looks like a man, hairy chest and all. Of course, a background check would reveal that he used to be a she and was surgically altered to become man looking… so does that mean my male friend COULD marry him? Err… her… Or will the church/state decide that no one can marry Thomas since s/he brought all this on his/her self?

But then what about Lynn Edward Harris who was born with both sets of sexual organs. No surgery, no drugs, but today appears to be a man, after appearing to be a really cute girl (beauty pageant contestant at 18) through high school. If my friend had married her would the church/state annul the marriage when she turned into a he?

Anyway, the state law is now being tied in knots. Legal experts are expecting millions of dollars and years of lawsuits. The attorney general of the state of California has said that this proposition has pushed the state into a constitutional crisis with one part of the state constitution saying you can’t discriminate based on sexual orientation, and another part saying that only those of heterosexual orientation are allowed to marry.

I don’t think the government is going to do a very good job of protecting my buddy from accidentally falling in love and marrying a guy…

M.A.S.H.

I've cried, and laughed, and cried for 2 hours tonight. There was a show on about M.A.S.H. (the TV series about a medical unit in the Korean war, but really just about all war) that reminded me of so many things.

- The most important is that our boys are still going through that hell. They are ALL coming back wounded, if they come back at all. Either dead, wounded in body, wounded in their minds, or wounded in spirit. Another generation with scars instead of innocence.

- I grew up watching that show, 30 years ago. I watched them talking about the insanity. How everyone was wounded. How Hawkey encouraged the strangling of a child who wouldn't stop crying when the enemy was near and he was afraid they would be heard and found. How, when it was cold, the surgeons would cut open the soldiers at the start of the operation and steam would escape and they would warm their hands over it. How so many innocents were lost. And I still joined the Navy and helped to kill people in the Gulf. I hope you and your children and young friends are smarter, better able to learn.

- There are so many examples, in the show, in real life, in war, and in peace where you don't understand what you are doing until it is done. So many times when we forget to thing about the consequences of our actions. I don't mean the times when we couldn't possibly know. I'm talking about the times when we figure out that if we had just pulled our head out of our own ego for a few seconds and thought about what the things we were doing was going to screw up the rest of the world. And then it's done. And it can't be taken back. And it can't be made right. That's where we are right now. They 9/11 terrorists were Saudi, not Iraqi. No WMDs in Iraq. No ties to terror. They used our fear to get us to put our boys and girls in harms way.

I would trade all that stupidity for the answer to this one: How do we avoid those times when we just aren't sure and it eats at us. When we are thinking, learning, knowing, and we still aren't sure. What if? If only I had, then maybe?

I can accept that a soldiers lot is, well, not very good. I can accept that I'm apparently incapable of learning from the examples of others (and therefor doomed to repeat their mistakes) and I can accept that I get so wrapped up in myself that I forget what I'm doing to others.

What I can't accept is that there isn't anything else I could have done. All the people I've talked to, the letters to my congress people, the politicians I've voted for, the web pages I've written, the pictures I've collected... the signs I put on my car... the T-Shirt I designed.

Could I have done something else to stop this war?

Please?

A friend of mine sent me one of those emails that circulate every veterans day where they show pictures of our boys and talk about how good we have it and how they are suffering to ensure our freedom.

I was totally with it until this one:

"You criticize your government, and say that war never solves anything.
He sees the innocent tortured and killed by their own people and remembers why he is fighting."

And that is a total load of crap.

1. While war does solve problems (in the least competent, most violent, way) I strongly question what the hell this war was supposed to solve. It SURE as hell wasn’t about preventing the torture and killing of innocents. All we did was trade our own boys lives for the lives of forigners. No WMD’s, No Nukes, No terrorist support. We were, at best, missinformed, and at worse, LIED to. And if we are all about preventing torture and killing of innocents, why did we do nothing in Darfur? Sudan? Congo?

2. Anyone who tells me I should criticize my government needs to pull their head out of there ass. And using our boys to justify that should be a crime. The American Sheeple have been manipulated into giving over more power to the government than ever before by shear terror mongering on the part of the American Wolverment. Go check this out:
http://techref.massmind.org/techref/other/war-machine.htm Really worth hearing. The USA is using the same tactics the Nazis (and every other government) used on it’s people. Hearing it from Hitlers Reich-Marshal has an impact, though.

3. Yeah, those boys need an excuse to keep going everyday. I used that excuse in the first Gulf War:
http://techref.massmind.org/techref/other/incompetence.htm It was a lie. I lie I told to myself. There should have been better solutions. We are part of the problem.

4. If you just really get off on war pictures, see this:
http://techref.massmind.org/images/member/jmn-efp-786/war/index.htm

Damn it… Send this to the people you sent those pictures too…

And how about this last thought?

SUPPORT OUR TROUPS!
BRING… THEM… HOME!

Well, he got ONE right....

I do not support Brian Bilbray for congress... He has voted on the WRONG side of so many things: His racist attacks on the boarder issues and constant pandering to big oil make me sick. Which makes it all the harder to admit that on the bank bailout, he.. um... did the right thing. I was blown away when megavote emailed me that he had voted AGAINST the bailout. I wrote him an email asking why? This is part of his reply:

While I am in agreement with the Secretary that the state of the financial markets called for some form of government involvement, I held two serious concerns with his approach. First, I believe this plan would undermine the free market from promoting economic growth. Today, our system rewards innovators and entrepreneurs, but Paulson's plan subsidizes poorly managed companies at the expense of more responsible and competitive companies and the taxpayer. In so doing, this bill represents one of the greatest intrusions of the government into the free market in our history and it is a precedent I fear will be exploited to justify even greater federal intrusion into our own lives. Second, our government does not have the expertise or incentive to run Secretary Paulson's plan effectively or efficiently. Under the terms of the plan, our government would purchase thousands of mortgages and hold them for five years, or more, until the market improves. As it stands now we have neither the manpower nor the knowledge base to purchase, administer and sell mortgages on such a scale. For proof, we have to look no farther than the Recovery Trust Corporation from the Savings and Loan bailout of the 1980's which ultimately cost the taxpayer dearly because of mismanagement and private manipulation. Far too often in recent years people have looked to the
government for answers only to be met with waste and incompetence. We cannot allow that to happen again.

Ultimately, when the bill came before the House of Representatives on September 29, 2008, I joined with the majority of my colleagues to defeat the bill and it failed by a vote of 205-228. While I did not support the bill, I fervently believe that government should take some action to help restore accountability and stabilize our financial market. Not doing so would potentially risk that our credit markets would dry up and middle class Americans would be unable to receive car or home loans and small businesses would not have access to the loans they need to operate. To address these issues, I advocated for a mandatory insurance plan where banks would be required to insure their toxic debt with the government, which would have Wall Street foot the bill for much of their own bailout and greatly reduce the risk to the taxpayer. I also strongly supported raising the FDIC insurance limits to $250,000 to better protect the middle class from bank runs. Additionally, I fought to eliminate
mark-to-market mortgage pricing regulations for banks. This allows homes to be priced based on their long term value and not on recently imposed fair market accounting regulations that have turned mortgages whose owners have never missed a payment into toxic debt because the home is no longer worth the buying price. Moreover, I believe we need to update and more stringently enforce our financial oversight laws to reflect a twenty-first century economy and ensure that crises like this one cannot happen again.

Following the House's failed vote, the Senate passed the same measure, but only after adding more than $110 billion in pork to draw in additional support. These riders are laden with the type of wasteful pork-barrel spending Americans have come to expect, and fear, from Washington, including $192 million for Puerto Rico
and Virgin Islands rum producers, $128 million for auto-racetracks and $148 million for wool producers. Rather than working to forge a compromise that myself and many of my colleagues could accept the Congressional leadership added billions of handouts to Members of Congress as a way to buy their support. I believe that is a betrayal of the citizens we represent. As a result, when the Senate proposal came before the House on October 3rd I voted against the bill. Unfortunately, the bill did pass by a vote of 263-171 and President Bush has signed it into law.

Well, he nailed that one. Both the dems voted FOR it, Boxer doesn't get them all right.