Conservatives preaching dangerous rhetoric.

Listen carefully, to what this speaker, Kitty Werthmann, tells the audience, "So, keep your guns, and buy more guns, and buy ammunition. Take back America. Don't let them take the country into Socialism." She also attacks the Equal Rights Amendment, which was never ratified by the states, "was used for two things; to equalize the country's wealth....and then we had a guaranteed income, that everybody was entitled to a guaranteed income, and if your income had not matched up what the government decreed, you got subsidized housing, you got food stamps...until the income of everyone was equalized."

Well, not to get argumentative, but that's not what the ERA stated. Quoting directly from the ERA:
"Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification."

So I implore people to consider, that most individuals follow group-think. Their leaders are taking this country down a dangerous road of violence.



Via Think Progress

Sunrise last Friday morning, USC football and transforming bots.

Item 1: Red Skies?

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Item 2: USC football.
USC football still in the BCS NC hunt, albeit still not looking all that good after that win at home against a really weak WSU team. They've moved up to #7 in the AP press poll, the Harris Interactive poll, and the USA Today Coaches' poll.

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Item 3: Real transformer bots are coming.

Ikea closing out the Lack series?

I couldn't help but notice the past month, that the Lack series of tables and bookcases are slowly disappearing from the stocks, and they are not being replenished. The most popular colors - black-brown and black - have all but disappeared.

Earlier this year, the Traby series was discontinued in the US, which was extremely inconvenient as I was trying to build my furniture around it. Now, I have no way to get any glass fixtures for my existing furniture. What's really bothersome, is that this practice of discontinuing products means that I will eventually have no choice but to buy newer furniture and replace my existing ones completely.

It would be unfortunate if Ikea discontinues the Lack series.

Went to Astoria for dinner.

Sister and brother in law came into town, and they wanted to go to Astoria for a seafood dinner. Long way to drive, just for dinner. Saw a cool cloud in the waning sunset, up in Astoria, and got to see the Pacific Ocean and the close up of the waterfront. Loved it.

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Perhaps it was because I knew what was going to happen, but when USC scored a field goal in the 4th quarter, I turned the TV off and we left for Astoria. It was probably a good thing that we didn't watch that last portion where UW drove down the field to score a field goal with 3 seconds left and win the game. It felt like something bad was going to happen, with USC failing to score a TD on their drive. The team seemed to have a huge letdown after settling for a field goal.

However, the portions of the game that I watched, I saw Aaron Corp do boneheaded things that no quarterback at USC should be doing, including throwing into multiple coverage. He made so many mistakes, I don't know how he'll be able to start another game at USC (yes it was that bad). Coach Carroll will need to have a lot of confidence in the kid, to let him start ahead of Mitch Mustain, the 3rd string QB that started 8 games while at Arkansas, two years ago, if the true freshman Matt Barkley is still sore this coming week.

Geese don't share.

I couldn't help but snicker, when I saw this last evening. These geese, clearly together, each perched themselves on their own stoop, unable to share. Looked like a scene of life-size checkers.

Bad Boy Chuck Todd.

Poor guy; an improper sneeze and he got called out by Kathleen Sebelius, HHS Secretary.
"I mean, what is that about? Geez!"

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"Elmo knows how to sneeze!"

A new and improved light source?

A new type of light bulb, called an Electron Stimulated Luminescence (ESL) light, manufactured by a company called Vu1 is set to come out for $20. Sounds and looks very intriguing, and potentially a very nice replacement for my fluorescent cans which take too long to warm up, and has a poor CRI.



via Cnet

Racism coming to a head?

A day of reckoning could be at hand soon, as the tenor of the health care debate and all things against President Obama begin to build up over time. Some time next year, could we may be in for an explosion of race-based attacks and/or out and out race riots? There is a lot of tension brewing below the surface, and as was seen by Sotomayor's nomination process. There is a lot of anger and fear on the part of ultra-Conservatives as expressed by Joe Wilson's outburst.

I'm not saying that this will actually happen, but something has to give. The explosiveness of the health care debate is ridiculous. Nothing like this happened when we were debating Social Security reform during the Bush Administration, or the Medicare Drug Benefit bill. Heck, there was no matching animus during the Patriot Act reconsideration the last year of the Bush Administration.

I just have this feeling that the cork is about to be popped, and all the underlying racism will explode into the open, with just as equal of a violent reaction.

Does it make sense to rip Blu Ray discs?

There is commercially available software out there called AnyDVD HD, which allows you to either rip to disk or rip to image (.iso file) of your movies, including Blu Ray. Not exactly cheap at around US $93, but it is extremely powerful software that defeats most every encryption. Of course, I would be remiss to mention that it is illegal in the United States to circumvent the encryption methods employed to protect against copying. The gray area is that you're generally allowed to copy things for personal use, but to circumvent the copyright protections is illegal. Funny eh?

Anyway, most Blu Ray discs contain 25GB of info. Even if your movies are only 20GB, that's still a lot of data to move around and store. If you bought a 2 terabyte drive for around $190, you would only be able to store 100 movies (assuming average 20 GB/movie). Of course, you could burn an .iso file to a BluRay disc. But do you really want to spend an unbelievable amount of time (23 minutes minimum each, to read and burn a movie, adding up to nearly an hour's worth of work) and $4 per blank disc, just to save a few bucks?

Consider that the trilogy Pirates of the Caribbean series costs $63.61 for 6 discs, or $10.60 a disk. By burning your own movies (assuming you rent from Netflix), the cost difference isn't that big when you add it all up. If you consider the amount of time (nearly 1 hour) it takes to process a single disk, I think - at least for the time being - that it's not even worth ripping and burning Blu Ray movies, legal or otherwise.

4th Q - USC v SJSU / final.

Well, the game was over a long time ago, but they've sent in the back-up quarterback - who would have started if he hadn't fractured his fibula three weeks ago - to mop up and get some field time. It's just not fair for opponents, since Aaron Corp is actually better prepared, having been on the sidelines for 2 years at USC already. Just one series and he's 4 for 4, 45 yards and a touchdown.

Oh yeah, I think the team is ready to play in the horseshoe, with Ohio State. Barkley, in his first start, had a 79% completion rate with 233 yards total in passing. The offense compiled 620 total yards for the game, which says quite a lot about the offensive line; perhaps on of the best in the entire country, actually.

And the defense isn't too shabby, either. They locked up SJSU for 115 total yards with only 4 rushing yards, and sacked the quarterback 5 times.

So was Ohio State caught overlooking Navy? Talk about lucky to get away with a win. That would have been more embarrassing than Michigan losing two years ago to Appalachian State, given the expectations of Ohio State. This is nearly the same as last year, when Ohio State struggled against Ohio University, with only a 20 yard margin of offense separating the two teams, and in fact, down 12-14 going into the fourth quarter before scoring 14 points to win 26-14.

No doubt, Ohio State is concerned about next week's game with USC.

College Football season is here!

Tonight, college football kicks off with a bang, with Oregon visiting Boise State. Ugh, I hate that blue field. Can't wait...can't wait.

On a separate note, the current size of the main wildfire in the Angeles National Forest, is approximately the same area as from 185th between Hillsboro and Beaverton, to downtown Gresham going E-W, and from Vancouver, WA to the I-5/I-205 interchange going N-S. Now that's a HUGE fire.