Deb was working a 'scheduled' off-shift last night into this morning, meaning I was sleeping alone last night. (I don't sleep nearly as well when she isn't beside me. Go figure.)
All I was up to was the monthly dump run, cleaning house, taking care of laundry, and moving more firewood from the garage to the wood box next to the Official Weekend Pundit Woodstove. In other words, my usual winter weekend line-up.
***********
With a third lawsuit about bedbugs filed against the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, one would think “Maybe [Mayor] Bloomberg should focus on sanitation instead of transfats,” says Glenn Reynolds.The problem has gotten so bad some people are losing everything they own as measures are taken to deal with the problem.
Of course there is a means of dealing with the bedbug problem without the need to take such drastic measures, but no one dares mention its name: DDT.
***********
By way of Maggie's Farm comes the 10 Dumbest Tech Predictions Of All Time. The one I'm most familiar with is number 2:Blew that one, eh?
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” — Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943. “The world potential market for copying machines is 5,000 at most,” IBM executives to the eventual founders of Xerox, 1959.
***********
It took me a while to decide which NFL playoff game to watch, considering the New England Patriots have a bye during the first round of the playoffs. But in the end I took in the Green Bay Packers/Philadelphia Eagles game.The Eagles have been my favorite NFC team for years. (At one point in my youth we lived near Philadelphia and I had the opportunity to meet Eagles quarterback Rich Arrington and wide receiver Ben Hawkins.) The best outcome would be a rematch between the Eagles and the Patriots in the Superbowl. (They last faced each other in Superbowl XXXIX.)
One shocker: Both the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts are out of contention as they both lost in their playoff games yesterday.
***********
Dr. Joy Bliss links to two timely pieces about the War on Doctors.This phenomenon has been seen in other countries adopting socialized medicine or parts thereof, where health professionals are marginalized, every decision is scrutinized by bureaucrats who then go on to override the decisions, in the end forcing those professionals out of practice. You'd thing the Obama administration would have learned that lesson, but no, they'll have to learn it the hard way. Too bad it's all of us who will end up paying the price.
***********
Some good news for a change.Global spam levels have fallen dramatically. A number of spam botnets have been taken down or are otherwise inactive.
The not so good news – the volume has fallen from 200 billion spam e-mails per month to 50 billion but is not expected to stay that way long as new botnets are established by spammers.
On the other hand, the e-mail filtering system where I work and here at home does a pretty decent job keeping that crap from reaching my Inbox.
***********
I think I have mentioned more than once that I am a former pilot. (I don't fly these days due to a problem with vertigo...and the fact that aviation gasoline is very expensive!) While I miss flying, I don't miss what's happening now, namely the shift in the magnetic poles.One problem this shift is causing is the need to renumber runways (the runway numbers are based upon their magnetic compass headings). Runway/taxiway signage has also had to be redone because of this shift.
While not all airports are affected, enough of them are that it's causing disruptions of air travel because runways have to be closed while they are remarked. Aeronautical and marine charts will also have to be updated to show the new magnetic deviations from true north.
***********
In regards to the shootings in Tucson, it seems the foreign media is taking a less confrontational view of the nutjob shooter, wondering why the rush by the Left to blame Sarah Palin, the Tea party, and Republicans for the actions of a paranoid loner.Folks here have got to get a grip on reality.
And then there's this.
***********
Skip Murphy has his own take on the Left's reaction to the shooting, lambasting them for blaming the whole thing on the Tea party, the GOP, and the Right in general. Never mind the shooter was a Left-wing head-case.***********
As many on the Left must constantly be reminded, there's no constitutional right to not be offended. One of the tenets of the First Amendment is that even offensive speech is protected.It's time the Left understood that.
The right to offend is also a reason I am so opposed to politically correct speech, it being nothing more than a new term for Orwell's Newspeak (from his novel 1984). If my my words, spoken or written, offend you, too bad. You can either stop reading them or close yourself away so you will never be exposed to them. But do not try to stifle my right to offend. If you do, you're likely to see how well I exercise my Second Amendment rights.
(H/T Maggie's Farm)
***********
Eric the Viking goes over the numbers of ObamaCare and shows us the claim it will cut the deficit is bogus on the face of it.***********
Verizon is hoping to put 4G everywhere. It would certainly help provide more broadband to rural locales where there is no DSL, cable, or FTTH. (Don't get me started on HughesNet as there are latency problems associated with it with certain online activities.)The WP Mother-in-Law had only dial-up in her rural New Hampshire abode. Then a couple of years ago Verizon put up a new cell tower nearby she availed herself of Verizon Wireless broadband (3G), which required her to plug in a USB modem to her laptop. The Verizon set up gave her up to 1.5Mbits/second (speed was dependent on the number of users on the cell site at any one time). It was a huge improvement over her (sometimes) 56K dialup modem. Then last year FairPoint brought DSL to town and she switched, which gave her better than 3Mbits/second bidirectional data speed at a much lower price than Verizon Wireless.
If Verizon goes to 4G across the board (which is supposed to offer much higher data speed than 3G), then I can see more rural users making the change as long as the costs are reasonable.
***********
Is it time to rein in rogue federal agencies? I think the answer to that is an unqualified “Yes!”Both the EPA and FCC have decided they don't need to abide by the laws of this nation and can ignore court rulings with impunity. It's time to prove them wrong.
***********
By way of Instapundit comes this demonstration of an EMP (ElectroMagnetic Pulse) bomb. If you want to grasp the possible widespread consequences of such a device being used over the continental US all you need to do is watch the first few episodes of Dark Angel.***********
Jay Tea over at Wizbang gets into the "Liberals think conservatives are evil, conservatives think liberals are stupid” meme. While he believes it has run its course, there are still times when he falls back into that mindset.I have to admit to being tempted to do likewise, but realized it would be counterproductive and fought to suppress the urge to do that.
I find myself wanting to grab certain folks by the shoulders and shake them, shouting in their faces. I want to yell "[Your] theories don't work! They never have, and they never will! That's been proven time and time again, each time with a huge cost in money, freedoms, and even lives! Stop saying that this time will be different if we just try a bit harder! Grow the hell up and learn how to deal with the world as it is! You're too goddamned smart to be this stupid!"