10 Thoughts for June 29, 2014

1. I drove a newer Honda CRV last week.  I've never driven a vehicle with this much oversteer.  It was terribly scary how unprecise its steering was.
2. This story about a dog named Toothless.  This reminds me a bit of my dog.  You see, he too, was a rescue dog and at age 10 months was severely underweight and in terrible shape.
3. Shame on Germany, the richest EU country, for its low commitment to NATO.  NATO members agree to spend 2.0% of their GDP on NATO defense.  But Germany, which averaged 2.1% of GDP in 1990-1994, averaged just 1.3% of GDP from 2005-2009 and 2010-2013.  Of course, you know who the big spender is.  The United States.
4. According to this website, I am shorter than the average American male, but my hands and calves are much larger than most men, and my feet are slightly larger than average.  That's all I'm saying about body measurements.
5. I wrote the other week that Apple was now blatantly copying Android.  Ars Technica has a full rundown of all the things iOS 8 has copied from Android.  I'm not complaining, though, because this sort of competition is good for all users.  Only thing is, Apple is still behind Google, and will probably always be one step behind.  No, this is not hubris.  The recent iPad Mini was a response to the Nexus 7.  The upcoming iPhone with an even-larger screen, is a response to the Nexus 5 and all of the Samsung Galaxy phones ever introduced.
6. I didn't mention this earlier, but I should have, from that Survey USA poll : "Voters who tell SurveyUSA that the failure of Cover Oregon has a major impact on their vote back Richardson 3:1. Those who say the failure of Cover Oregon is not a factor in how they vote back Kitzhaber 11:1."  This reiterated what I've been saying for months now, that Wehby and Republicans were pursuing a failed strategy of trying to use the ACA and Cover Oregon as their lead issue.
7. I previously wrote that Piper Chapman from OITNB had no redeeming qualities.  Piper knows what she shouldn't be doing but she can't stop herself.  Watching House of Cards, some would say that Frank Underwood is much worse than Piper Chapman.  Sure, he's a cold-blooded killer, but he has purpose -- to grab all the power he can get and make it to the top -- and he stands by his virtues (even if they're not worthy virtues).  The most useless people are those who know what is right and can't seem to do what's right, then feel sorry for themselves for not doing what's right.
8. If you understand that climate change is real, you probably don't need to watch James Balog's documentary, Chasing Ice.  But if you do watch it, it will scare you.  You see, back in 2012 when this documentary was released, Balog insisted that we were on the edge of change and we needed to respond rapidly.  However, we found out this year that we had passed one rubicon -- the melting of the Thwaite Antarctic glacier -- means that we've got a dozen feet of ocean rise built into the next century.
9. About the Thwaite melt: A day after scientists said that they had found evidence that underground volcanoes were melting the Thwaite glacier, conservative knuckleheads immediately seized upon this as evidence that climate change wasn't the cause.  I call these people knuckleheads, because you see, the volcanic melting mechanism hasn't just suddenly appeared, but the glacier retreat has.  It's sort of like when these same idiots explain to us that volcanic eruptions spewing out CO2 are the biggest contributor to greenhouse gases, irrespective of the fact that these volcanoes have been spewing out their greenhouse gases for millennium while global warming is a modern trend.
10. About 30 years ago, I tried diving down as far as I could go, with just a snorkeling mask.  I think I hit about 20~25 feet, which was the depth of where I had been snorkeling at Kailua Beach Park.  At that point, I had to surface.  It wasn't like diving in a pool -- the ocean pressure was a lot higher.  The lower you try to get, the harder it is to push deeper so you end up using more oxygen than you'd normally use up by holding your breath.  Doing this in a pool is easy.  Doing it in the ocean is considerably more difficult.  I was thinking about sit-on-top kayaks for rivers and lakes, and Oregon law requires carrying a PFD.  Naturally, this bugs me a little bit because it requires spending extra money on something I'll never need.  When I was a kid, I tried swimming in the ocean with a PFD...it was very frustrating.