Land of Oz

Land of the Free?

What the hell? I knew it was bad, but this is amazing apalling. Thank goodness Congress is covering its ass covering Clement's ass instead of important stuff like 1 out of 99 adults is in jail! If you're a young guy, that rate triples and if you're young and black, basically you're screwed. If you are a 20 year-old black man and you have 9 friends, one of you is heading for the clink. But thank god, that baseball will be positive steroid test free - yeah, do we live in a great country or what?

The nationwide figures, as of Jan. 1, include 1,596,127 people in state and federal prisons and 723,131 in local jails - a total 2,319,258 out of almost 230 million American adults.

The report said the United States is the world's incarceration leader, far ahead of more populous China with 1.5 million people behind bars. It said the U.S. also is the leader in inmates per capita (750 per 100,000 people), ahead of Russia (628 per 100,000) and other former Soviet bloc nations which make up the rest of the Top 10.

"For some groups, the incarceration numbers are especially startling," the report said. "While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine."

Using updated state-by-state data, the report said 2,319,258 adults were held in U.S. prisons or jails at the start of 2008 - one out of every 99.1 adults, and more than any other country in the world.

Labels: crime, freedom, government

Coffee, Tea or Dead Body

There was some deal on an American Airlines flight - the details are being contested - that ended up with a dead passenger.

Desir was pronounced dead by one of the doctors, Joel Shulkin, and the flight continued to John F. Kennedy International Airport, without stopping in Miami. The woman's body was moved to the floor of the first-class section and covered with a blanket, Oliver said.

Sometimes, crowded coach isn't that bad after all.

Labels: misc

Warming/Cooling

I just read an article in a conservative web site that notes that snow cover for the northern north American continent is higher than any times since the sixties. Naturally, the article implies that because of that, global warming must be wrong. Here's my take on that. Honestly, I don't know. I've seen a lot that supports human-powered global warming, but there's also a lot of evidence that the climate is highly variable historically, and even more so pre-historically. I've also read some articles that climate warming can (and will) suddenly collapse into a major freeze.

Now, having no scientific evidence for any of the above, I can see how a global warming period could increase snowfall in the northern climes. First, if the average temperature of winter is 25 degrees (rough non-scientific Fahrenheit degrees for my 45 degree latitude) a five degree climate warming is still going to give an average temperature under freezing. That means the snow won't melt when it hits the ground. On the other hand, like now, it means the Great Lakes probably won't completely freeze over. This gives you more water to evaporate, which means more water in the air, which since it's below freezing, means more snow. And the more snow, the more the sunlight is reflected away, thus making it colder and keeping more snow. I don't know for sure, but I'm thinking it's not impossible for the dark lake waters to absorb a bit more heat than the glaringly white snow and ice, which would tend to raise the temperature of the water a bit more, leading to more evaporation, etc.

This mechanism by the way, is what in some stories I've read, triggers the next ice age. The wide-spread highly reflective snow covers more ground, causing more heat to be reflected back, lowering average temperatures, causing more snow to cover more ground, etc. Eventually there's enough snow covered ground for the reflective infrared heat to be bounced back so that summer never quite makes it. Boom, an ice age in a season. Who knows?

Labels: tech

Detroit schools grad rate: 32%

That is the number of ninth graders who graduate in four years in Detroit's schools. For males, it's 25%. I'm pretty sure Saginaw isn't far behind - or for that matter may be leading. That has to be one of the major problems not only in Michigan, but any other state as well. If education was improved, I think that much of the bad stuff in Michigan would decrease. You just don't get that many college, or even high school grads, knocking over 7/11 stores.

More jobs for the state? Why are companies going to come to a state where the majority of kids in its biggest city can't complete high school? If they can't figure out how to make it through high school, how can they be expected to hold a job any more complicated than flipping burgers? (How often have you seen that person behind the counter befuddled as you hand them a twenty, a one and three cents for a $6.03 bill - or if you do mess up a penny, they hand you 4 singles and 99 cents in change?)

However, check out the Detroit News or the Detroit Free Press and more often than not, you'll find sports news the number one or two article in the front page. For a month, the headlines should read, 34 Dropouts Today! instead of some steroid-using baseball player and his bazillion dollar salary who's unhappy with his team's treatment of him. Nothing promotes education like some drug-using baseball player who makes $1.7 million a season throwing a ball around.

Labels: crime, government, michigan

50s Movies

Yo - Gort!

There's some stuff lately that has me thinking about some of our more paranoid (in a good way) movies of the fifties. The Day the Earth Stood Still brings to mind our recent satellite shoot down. Along with our satellite the Chinese did the same last year ago (when we griped at them a lot for doing it). And then a couple of years we splattered a friendly asteroid with a 800 pound chunk of copper. Anyway, all this brings to mind Klattu's posthumous speech just before he left:

It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder.

So don't forget how to say: Gort! Klaatu barada nikto!

POWs and Mom

While I'm on the subject of fifties movies, Republican nearly candidate John McCain brings to mind another movie, The Manchurian Candidate, from the early sixties. If you haven't see it, it's about a group of American POWs, from the Korean war, not Vietnam, who get brainwashed by the Chinese. Sometimes afterward one of the POWs is supposed to assassinate the USofA president after being triggered by the Queen of Diamonds - and whose mom just happens to be the agent who controls him. We all know of course, that this could never happen. But McCain did spend about five years in the control of VietCong/Chinese military as a POW. So how much better than assassinating a USofA president would it be to be the president.

Labels: government, movies

Messy

As much as I dislike the paparazi, I glad they didn't follow the deputies' requests. Can image what a mess two disassembled photographers would make on the sidewalk?

From CNN: The two men did not comply with deputies' requests, [Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department spokesman] Whitmore said.

"They were repeatedly asked to disassemble in front of the entrances and they were obstructing traffic as well, going into the street," he said.

About 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, in front of the nearby Villa nightclub, deputies arrested photographers Christopher Gonzalez and Vagn Rauch, who were there along with 20 other photographers on the sidewalk, Whitmore said.

Labels: celebs, crime

Microwaves at Work

You would think that by the time a person becomes a worker in an office, they'd have some experience with microwave ovens. Why do people mess up microwave ovens so much? Today, I brought some leftovers for lunch and went to warm them up in the microwave. Sounds simple, except for the people around the office.

How many times have you gone to use the office microwave and find something cooking in it and no one is around? The bell dings. Do you take it out and start cooking yours or do you wait for someone to show up? The idiot I was waiting on was no where to be found, and his hot pocket had leaked cheese all over the turntable. The janitor keeps paper towels on top of the microwave to stop this kind of stuff. He knows it's too hard for someone to reach more than 12 inches to grab a paper towel. He also keeps a plastic cover to prevent spattering the oven. This guy didn't, so hot, melted cheese was all over the oven. At least it hadn't splattered all over the inside of the oven. At that point I wandered off to find another microwave in the building.

When I came back after eating to clean my container, there was another guy using the microwave who had taken out the item that had been in there. Naturally whoever put it in there wasn't around when it finished. She came in as he was heating his, and rather pointedly asked him if her's had finished before he'd taken it out. If she wouldv'e have waited the entire three long minutes it took to heat her food up, she wouldn't have had to ask.

These are some serious microwave ovens too. You don't have to wait long before they heat up (and spill) whatever you stick in them. I think if you're not around when the bell dings, the next person waiting should take yours out, start heating theirs, and you have to wait until they finish (unless they leave too).

Labels: food, gripes

Our Government at Work?

Let's see now, what's going on in the USofA:

Foreclosures are at an all-time high

The budget is over $1 trillion (honestly, I have no idea how big
that number is)

The war in Iraq is coming up on 4000 USofA dead, and no one knows
how many Iraqis

Gasoline just keep going up in price

The Soviets, oops, Russians are overflying our carriers with bombers

Afghanistan, Pakistan, Myanmar, Sudan, Nigeria, Venezuala, and on
and on

Crashing satellites

The biggest beef recall in history

Monthly mass shootings

need I go on?
And what is Congress worrying about? If a baseball player took a steriod
shot in his ass six years ago...

Labels: celebs, government, gripes

// posted by Jim-of-oz @ 2/19/2008 09:35:00 PM

$ports and Lif€

Baseball, steroids, football, video spying, NASCAR, fisticuffs, million$ of dollar$. Does anyone really believe professional sports are some kind of fairy tale land of good sportsmanship and clean living? Come on, billions of dollars are involved here. A tenth of a second faster or slower, a foot longer or shorter can make the difference between a multi-million dollar star's contract or a hundred-grand player's contract. Try figuring the advertising dollars or ticket sales difference between a 15 and 2 team and a 3 and 12 team.

With all that money involved how can anyone honestly believe that all the participants are going to be constrained by using just their natural talents. Can you really tell me that you wouldn't swap a couple years off the end of your life versus making a few million more bucks during the prime of your life if you had a chance. If you can, you are a much better person than I am.

Sure, not everyone is on the take or taking some kind of performance booster. There are honest folks out there. But I have the feeling there are a lot of shades of honesty out there. Are you going to tell me that those players who hobble around like an old man on Friday didn't take something so they can run like the wind on Sunday? Maybe they're not pumping illegal steroids or stimulants, but they gotta be doing something. And I think whatever they did will come back to haunt them in later years. But then again, so what.

OK, you might be one of those who lives to be 93 and still goes jogging. More than likely, if you make it to 75, you'll drooling into your bran fortified oatmeal. Go to an assisted living home someday and remember that the folks in there are lucky enough to be able to afford to be taken care of. Dinner time looks like an outtake from "Night of the Living Dead" as the folks who can still walk hobble their way to dinner. And you really wouldn't swap a few years of that for a few million more in your paycheck?

Labels: celebs, freedom, gripes

Berkeley

Money talks? Berkeley was once again in the news for threatening to boot out the military, specifically Marine, recruiters. While I disagree with that, I do support Berkeley's right to do so. And they can kick them out of their city if they decided to do that. However, it seems they've changed their mind about that. Now they have decided that the military recruiters aren't such a bad bunch of guys afterall.

I wonder why they changed their mind? Do you suppose it was because the government threatened to recall more than $2 million in federal funds as well as federal monies for the University of California-Berkeley? And that is action I also support. If you don't want to support your country's endevours in some places, don't expect your country to support yours. It's the same all over. Everything you do has repercusions. If you vote to cut back on city taxes, don't gripe about losing police and firefighters and bus service. If you buy a 300 horsepower 4X4 pickup truck to drive back and forth to 7/11 don't gripe when gas is $3.10 a gallon. And if you don't want some government services, don't gripe when all government services are gone.

Labels: freedom, government, gripes, military

Foreclosures

Big, big news lately. And today, yet another government program to save those in foreclosure has been announced. Now I don't mean to sound cold-hearted, but some of those folks shouldn't get saved. They were greedy and stupid. We recently went through a bout of home looking. It's amazing the kind of house we could've bought. And I don't mean because we could've gotten a much higher mortgage - although we could have. And I also think that getting a mortgage too big is what put a lot of these folks in the hole in the first place.

Because the housing market is so bad in this area, there are a lot of low-cost (relatively) and foreclosed houses on the market. We looked at a couple over 3000 square feet that probably could have been bought for under $200,000. We also looked at some real nice homes near $200,000 that we could have easily purchased.

It's not all price and square feet (or meters) that should be included in the purchase plan. One of the things I thought of when looking at the +3,000 sq. ft. of empty rooms was what I'd have to pay to heat and maintain it. The realtor said $140 a month for utilities - right. My wife thought about how much we'd have to pay to furnish that castle. Let's face it; a 3000 sq. ft. house is going to take about twice as much furnishings as a 1600 sq. ft. house (which is what we ended up with). Cathedral ceilings are nice but why pay to heat those upper ten feet or so where no one is.

So I wonder just what kind of ideas were going on in the minds of the folks who are looking at mortgage payments they can no longer afford. Do that many people get into a mortgage not knowing what they will have to pay in three, or five, or seven years? Or did they just figure, since I can get the mortgage, I must be able to afford the mortgage. To be honest, the house we are now in, a nice 1600 sq. ft. normal house, is definitely cheaper than we could have ultimately bought. But it is also definitely one that we can afford.

Labels: government, gripes, michigan, scams

Michigan Woes

If Michigan doesn't have enough problems, the biggest city has a mayor who also figures on creating a theocracy. This is the same mayor who was just exposed as lying to a grand jury about his extramarital affair with his chief of staff (who has resigned). I just read an article that states "The mayor said that he believes he is on assignment from God to run the city of Detroit and he has no plans to resign."

Man, who's god is this guy praying to? It must be a new god who support playing around on your wife and the chain of command. I haven't seen any ethic regulations from city hall, not that it seems it matters, but usually screwing around with your underlings (and yes, take the sentence however you wish to) isn't normally considered one of the better business practices. These god quoting hypocrites piss me off to no end.

Labels: government, gripes, michigan

19 - 0

I think the Patriots are getting a bit of a bum deal out of this Super Bowl stuff. They did after all go 19 and zip. Unfortunately, instead of being known for 19-0, they are now known as the team that lost the Super Bowl.

Honestly, I'm not a big Patriots fan. Before this season, I knew almost nothing about them - and still don't, really. But you know, 19 and 0 is something to be proud of. I wish they could've taken it all, but their season is something that very few have done or will do. Good job Patriots.

However, my team has always been the Packers - there's a real football team playing in a real conference - the black and blue conference. And you know, even if they didn't get to the Super Bowl, old Favre and his bunch did pretty darn good this year. So, congratulations Patriots, and watch out for the Packers next season.

Labels: celebs, rave

Theocracy

THIS week [Jan 19] the Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee proposed that the US constitution be brought more in line with God's law in the Bible.

"I [Huckabee] believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards."

Now this scares the hell out of me. It's bad enough the Middle and Near East are full of religious fanatics who are trying to get rid of the secular government and replace it with one they feel supports their vision of religion. Now we have an American who is thinking about the same thing.

If Huckabee gets in, I can see the next couple of years making the medieval crusades look tame. A weapon of mass destruction back in those days was a big rock - today it's a nuke. Can you picture the American flag now being the cross-spangled banner? The amount of religion in today's politics is getting very scary, especially when one of the front runners is already calling for Constitutional amendments to better match the bible. Once they - there's that infamous they again - get their hooks into that, how much longer before we'll be teaching that man played with dinosaurs and the earth is stationary (poor Galileo is probably moaning, oh no, not again...).

Labels: freedom, government, religion

The Right Hand...

I just read a recent article about yet another secret prisoner camp in Cuba - one of ours, not Castros and some officer made a statement that displays a disturbing amount of single-minded thinking. While I certainly understand not needed or even wanting to know about some stuff, I worry about his total exclusion mode of thinking. Not knowing where Camp 7 is admirable in some ways, plausible deniability being one, but staying exclusively in one lane is a bit scary. It makes you wonder how many more times we're going to get hit by someone not driving along in their proscribed lane?

While some military personnel have reportedly grumbled about being kept out of the loop, others don't mind.

Army Col. Larry James, whose team of psychologists assists interrogators, said he does not want to know where Camp 7 is.

"I learned a long, long time ago, if I'm going to be successful in the intel community, I'm meticulously - in a very, very dedicated way - going to stay in my lane," he said. "So if I don't have a specific need to know about something, I don't want to know about it. I don't ask about it."

Labels: freedom, government

22 Years

If you've seen this before, you might know I went through an arduous time of trying to get an OLPC laptop. I finally got it and it is pretty cool. What is amazing is that it is around 22 years since I bought my first laptop. That was a TRS (Radio Shack) Model 100, a computer that is pretty much recognized as the first successful laptop. I bought my Model 100 back in early 1986 and here it is, 2008 and I'm buying another. It's interesting to see how they compare.

It's interesting in that the sizes are pretty close. The weight is almost the same while the OLPC is significantly smaller. However, that makes a big drawback for the keyboard. That is one place the Model 100 shines. The OLPC wins hands-down for software with browsers, text editors, programming, games and more. Battery-wise, the Model 100 also wins. It used to run for a week or two on just 4 AA batteries.

I've been using the OLPC for about a week now and am getting a little more familiar with it. I finally got it to connect with my Apple Extreme wireless yesterday and have been able to connect using Macdonalds and Barnes and Nobles wireless. I think the OLPC guys have really come up with a pretty cool little system for kids to learn on. Good job.

Labels: computers, tech

Lucky Me! #2

Sorry, Dr Frank PHILIP, but I need to betray your trust. I'm forwarding this email to my cousin who, since he must also be related to your long deceased customer will be sure to take advantage of your generosity. On another matter; Since you're reading this, I'd like to let you know that I have recently come into possession of the Mackinac Bridge here in Michigan following one of the many foreclosures I'm sure you've read about. Since you have been so generous in offering me your funds, I thought you might be interested investing some of the $7-odd million left in your bank after my cousin gets his 30% of our inheritance. Please send me your bank account details so that I can quickly get to work on stealing, er investing your money into our bridge. Did I mention that every car going over the bridge has to pay a $2.50 toll, and that as co-owners, we can increase that toll quite a bit?

From/Dr Frank PHILIP
Dear Friend,

I know that this mail will come to you as a surprise. I am the bill and exchange manager in Bank of African Development Bank. I Hoped that you will not expose or betray this trust and confident that I am about to repose on you for the mutual benefit of our both families. We need your urgent assistance in transferring the sum of $10.5 million immediately to your account. The money has been dormant for years in our Bank here without any body coming for it.

We want to release the money to you as the nearest person to our deceased customer (the owner of the account) who died a long with his supposed next of kin in an air crash since November 1999. We don't want the money to go into our Bank treasury as an abandoned fund. So this is the reason why I contacted you, so that the bank can release the money to you as the nearest person to the deceased customer.

Please I would like you to keep this proposal as a top secret and delete if you are not interested. Upon receipt of your reply, I will send you full details on how the business will be executed and also note that you will have 30% of the above mentioned sum if you agree to transact the business with me, 10% will be set aside for expenses Incurred during the business, I will not fail to bring to your notice that this transaction is hitch free and that you should not entertain any atom of fear. I expect that your reply for more details immediately you receive this letter.

Yours Faithfully
Dr Frank PHILIP

Labels: computers, scams