Wednesday, April 02, 2008
What would you do if you could do anything?
If you were independently wealthy, where in the world would you live and how would you spend your time?
It’s nice to think about having multiple homes in this place and that place, but I know me (and Donna) and we’d just stay wherever we liked it the most. Plus we freaking love hotels, so we’d miss that experience. Love hotels for about ten to fourteen days. Then I want to go home, real bad.
As a permanent house, I’d like to say probably somewhere in Arizona, in a house we helped design. It would have to have a big-assed pool/gym/sauna/steam/hot tub area, and be loaded to the gills with technology. Just tech and networking and blinking LEDs *everywhere*. With a big disembodied robot voice that greeted me at the door. You have to have the robot voice. It’s mandatory in a tech-filled dream home. Why AZ? Aside from the one or two murderously hot months, the climate is easier to deal with. Those two months where it’s an oven? That’s what air conditioning is for.
I would miss seasons. I like fall in the Northeast, but AZ has a climate that I think would do us both good most of the year. Plus all that open desert would be great for so many things I would like to do as I get into better shape. We’ve also talked about the Southeast, but far enough inland to avoid hurricanes. :)
I don’t think I could live in another country permanently. Long visits, maybe, but not permanently.
What would I do with my time? That’s easy, I’d learn stuff. Any and everything. I would take so many classes, training seminars and degree programs that it would turn my brain to mush. I would pay people to teach me everything from basket weaving to the basics of aircraft design to how to strip, repair and re-assemble a Bradley. I’d learn how to throw clay, and how to extrude aluminum, and how to design levels in whatever Unreal engine is on the market. I’d learn to cook properly, with knife skills and a brain full of ingredients and flavors and I’d learn why stuff happens the way it does, and why that flavor and that flavor work but these other two don’t. I’d read and go to classes and practice whatever it was I was learning *all* the time.
Of course we’d travel. I assume Donna and I would go wherever we got it in our collective head to visit, and I would want to visit historical and cultural sites all over the world. Hit every tourist trap we can find, take the requisite pictures, then try to find the local stuff that is always much more memorable.
After ten years of all that I would go on Jeopardy. :)
Posted by JimK at 03:56 PM on April 02, 2008
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Categories: Personal, Things To Ponder
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
RIP Arthur C. Clarke
We have lost a truly great mind. Arthur C. Clarke died Tuesday at age 90. Look around you. Everything you see is in some way shaped by Clarke, Heinlein and Asimov.
Sometimes I think that our best days - as creative and enterprising human beings - are behind us. Then I remember what men like Clarke have done, and how far we’ve come in just 50 years. I think about what it will be like to have technology allow me to be a fairly fit 175 years old. I’ll sit in a chair, on a porch somewhere warm, sipping something cool and reveling in the fact that I may be too old to get on the ship, but I’ll be damned if you can’t book a flight to the nearest inhabitable system now as easily as you used to be able to grab a cheap seat on an airplane. You know, way back in olden times.
We’re going Out There. One of these days, we’re going Out There. Men like Clarke will have made it possible.
Posted by JimK at 04:44 PM on March 19, 2008
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Categories: Entertainment, Technobabble (Technology), Things To Ponder
Tags: Arthur C. Clarke
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Global Warming strikes again!
Remember all that noise about how the polar ice cap is melting, and how we were all gonna die? The ice is back.
NEW evidence has cast doubt on claims that the world’s ice-caps are melting, it emerged last night.
Satellite data shows that concerns over the levels of sea ice may have been premature.
It was feared that the polar caps were vanishing because of the effects of global warming.
But figures from the respected US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that almost all the “lost” ice has come back.
Ice levels which had shrunk from 13million sq km in January 2007 to just four million in October, are almost back to their original levels.
Figures show that there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than is usual for the time of year.
Oops.
Posted by JimK at 04:04 PM on February 20, 2008
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Categories: News, Politics, The Stupidity Of Man, Things To Ponder
Tags: global warming Election 2008 Politics
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Gift cards are not gifts…my ass they aren’t
I kinda wanna punch this chick.
Holidays have rapidly devolved into what amounts to an exchange of cash. A gift card says nothing about the personality of the recipient—but it says lots about the giver.
Gift cards are incredibly popular. They’re also an oxymoron.
Think about it. Would a lover, in the flush of romance, lean close to the object of his affection and present . . . a gift card? Would proud grandparents present the latest addition to the family with . . . a gift card? Would your best and closest friend, the one you’ve known for years, who’s stuck with you through the roller-coaster ride of life, walk into your hospital room and give you . . . a gift card?
(If the answer to any of those questions is yes, by the way, you need to start hanging with a better class of people.)
That immediately made me think of a four-letter word that rhymes with “bunt.” Fuck you, you judgmental bitch. I happen to like getting cash or gift cards. No one knows what I want better than me. I enjoy shopping as much as anyone without a vagina can, and I enjoy it all the more if it’s not my money I’m shopping with. I also enjoy one or two surprises, like a book someone thinks I might like or a piece of kitchen gear. For example, the best gift my mother-in-law got me ever was a saucepan with a strainer lid on it. Heavy cast bottom, non-stick, I frigging use it for everything. It;s not what I asked for, but she saw it and thought “He’ll be able to use that” and she was right. However, my favorite gift that the in-laws ever got us was cash to help us buy our Series 3 TiVo. I think that for my birthday this past year, I didn’t even pretend I wanted a gift. Cash please. I know what to spend it on.
I assume Liz Pulliam Weston (Jesus, could that name be more pretentious? I suppose if she went by Elizabeth Pulliam Weston it would be more pretentious) would be horrified at cash. Surely that is far more gauche than even the lowly gift card?
This year I asked Donna to get me one specific thing. If she ONLY buys this one thing, I will be happy as a clam. Are clams happy? Hard to tell. I certainly will be happy, and if I didn’t have Amazon to which I could point her, I would simply tell her that I was going to go buy it myself and she could stick her name on a card. I’m sure Ms. Manners would be aghast at such thoughtlessness. Not only is my rude wife not spending hours and weeks agonizing over a gift, here I am depriving her of the act of potentially getting me something I don’t give two figs about!
I may be wandering off the point a bit. Gift cards rock, is what I am trying to say. I know better than anyone else what I want.
Some people, apparently, would be delighted with that prospect. While researching party themes for my daughter’s upcoming celebration, I stumbled across a posting by a woman who proudly included the horrifying words “monetary gifts would be much appreciated” on her 3-year-old child’s invitations. She went on to explain that “I wanted money as gifts for my daughter’s savings and for us to buy bigger toys, like a big kitchen and a Barbie Jeep that she wanted, instead of guests giving her small toys.”
It’s official. Shame is dead.
Yeah, fuck those parents! How DARE they assume they know what their child wants! How DARE they not want their home littered with useless shit the kid won’t care about a day later! How DARE they teach a child about saving for a larger want! THOSE SHAMELESS BASTARDS! They must be shunned. Shunned I tell you!
I say you give a person what they want or need, not what you want them to have. That says a lot about a person, in my ever-so-humble opinion. Liz Pulliam Weston seems like the kind of person that gives you what she think you ought to have, not something you want or need.
Screw her. If gift cards make your gift recipients happy, then do it. Don’t ever listen to some pretentious old (in thought if not in years) biddy trying to make herself relevant by butting in to your holiday.
(I tried to continue this post, as I am quite sure I would have more to say to this busybody pretentious cow, but the site refuses to load page 2 of the article. Here’s a tip for all you commercial sites out there; STOP PAGINATING EVERYTHING JUST TO RAISE PAGEVIEWS. Unless of course your site actually frigging works.
Maybe someone needs to send a few gift cards to the webmaster at MSN.)
*UPDATE*
Page 2 finally loaded. More of same.
If you find yourself purchasing gift cards, maybe the solution is to buy less and think more.
Maybe the real solution is you stop trying to make everyone feel inferior and just shut your face before someone kicks you in it, Jackie Chan style. HIYAAAAAA! Bitch.
Posted by JimK at 03:09 PM on December 12, 2007
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Categories: Shopping, Personal, Things To Ponder
Tags: holidays Liz Pulliam Weston
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Moore, Social Security and patriotism
Originally posted at Moorewatch. Re-posted here for those of you that don’t want to visit that joint. :)
In the middle of a conversation we were having with my in-laws about how they receive their SS payments, something occurred to me: Moore has told another little lie, and keeps telling it over and over again.
Fact: 80% of the people who receive Social Security do so via Direct Deposit. 80% of the people that receive Social Security do not receive checks every month, but rather automated wire transfers. Using that example to prove that a single-payer healthcare system is easy to run in America is absolutely ludicrous.
Supplemental Fact: Those same 80% never see a piece of mail that “arrives on the same day every month.” Of the 20% who do get a physical check mailed to them, you can find hundreds - if not thousands - of examples of checks arriving late, for the wrong amounts, etc.
Sure, it’s a small detail, but one Moore has been relying on heavily to “prove” that Special Free Super Cheap Universal Health Magic For All can be done, done well and done by our federal machine exclusively. He’s using a half-truth and a small lie to try to convince America to enact the largest socialist program in the history of the nation.
By the way...the next time you hear Moore say he loves America, here’s some proof, by his own words, that he’s lying. Mikey took part in a Q&A (heavy on the Q, very very light on the A) over at Crooks & Liars. Here’s what he wrote that, in my opinion, proves he has never and will never love the United States of America as it was founded and exists today. First, when asked about his next project, he said:
If you look at the other films in order, you can see a theme and pattern, but much more I can’t tell you yet.
Later, in response to someone asking him to clarify, he wrote:
The theme i referred to that exists in all my films is the economic system that we live under. It’s unfair, unjust, and not democratic.
And there you have it. Moore believes that our entire economic system is wrong. Of course, it’s the reason we exist as a separate nation - we wanted a free market, and we were sick and tired of our market being controlled by one dottering old madman thousands of miles away. We fought a war to establish, among other things, our right to have a free market economy. It’s one of the cornerstones of this great country, and Michael abhors it.
His desire has always been to see socialism established in the U.S. in any way possible. It’s the central theme to every film and most of his television and written projects as well. It’s why he overlooks Castro’s horrible abuses and murderous past to champion him as a man of the people. In Moore’s mind, human rights can only be abused by those of a right-wing persuasion. Anything to the left is inherently good, and the further left you go the better. Unions should be able to bankrupt a company. Guns belong only in the hands of the state. Government should dole out your healthcare. F911 was the aberration, and that was about capturing lightning in a bottle. The radical hatred of Bush wasn’t going to be marketable for very long.
Moore wants to literally destroy one of the cornerstones of the United States of America. It’s not just about healthcare. He wants the government - or rather, a far left government - in charge of everything. I do not believe Moore loves the United States of America. I believe he’s in love with the idea of turning it into the People’s Republic of America.
Posted by JimK at 07:12 PM on July 25, 2007
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Categories: Michael Moore(on), News, The Federal Government, Things To Ponder
Tags: Michael Moore Sicko healthcare America patriotism socialism
Monday, June 11, 2007
I’ve seen a million faces…
...and I’ve rocked them all.
Bon Jovi was my intro to an interesting meeting today at physical therapy. They keep a radio on very softly at the pool; you can barely hear it when in the water. Somehow over the gurgle of the filters and the splashing, those bell-like acoustic notes that open “Wanted (Dead or Alive) “ carried across the pool and the guy next to me says “Is that Bon Jovi?” “It certainly is,” I responded. “I can’t hear the damn song, but that guitar is unmistakable.”
We started chatting as we bobbed about in the water and I learned too much about him. For example, he was, before he started therapy, a 556 pound crackhead.
Five hundred and fifty-six pounds, ON CRACK. Smoked it. Through a pipe. Hundred bucks a day or more. 556. I didn’t think you could stay fat on crack, and especially be massively obese. I kind of figured crack was the next best diet after starvation itself. Learn something new every day.
Sometimes you tell a day by the bottle that you drink indeed…
Posted by JimK at 04:14 PM on June 11, 2007
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Categories: Personal, Things To Ponder
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Patriot’s Journey 2007 - Secularism and faith
In the previous post, I ask people to ask any question they like of me. Christian, speaking as an agnostic that believes in a higher power, asked “How does a person balance secularism with faith?”
It took me many years to figure out what to do with that part of myself that wants to believe in something. It must be hard-wired in our genetic code, because with rare Unabomer-ish exception, people have always wanted to connect and co-exist in groups and be part of something. I’ve always believed, since I was young, that religion wasn’t the opiate of the masses, but rather that most religions were guidelines for civilization. Remove all the hate, war, instructions on how to eat or when to beat your slave from any of the holy texts (all added at various times by guys putting their stamp on what came before them) and what you are left with are some pretty good rules. Show respect. Be nice. Love your family. Protect your neighbors. Share. Don’t take any wooden nickels. Basic, simple rules. They all have a list of basic rules, not including the crazy stuff like cutting off the head of non-believers and not sleeping in the same house with a menstruating woman (gee, could that rule have possibly been thought up by a man?).
I’m getting away from the point. The way I see it, if you respect those who are keeping peace with you, treat people with kindness, have love in your life and limit the damage you do to others, you’re doing very, very well. If you are truly sorry when you do make mistakes, and we all do, then you’re on the right track. That’s my belief system - humanity’s own worth, right here on this planet, in this realm, on this plane of existence. It’s my opinion that any sentience that could possibly care about the rules by which we live can only be interested in the universal ones...not insane dietary restrictions, worrying about who uses a condom or who says “Jesus Christ” as a swear word.
Be good to each other. If there’s someone watching, they’ll know you were good. Like Santa. :) If no one is watching, you still helped make the world a little bit nicer.
Religion doesn’t even have to enter into it if you don’t want it to. Life is choices, and these United States are a place where you can choose to handle snakes, face Mecca, rub burned palms on your face, rub beads, chant and dance, you can worship in virtually unlimited ways. We even put up with Scientologists. Barely. :)
Ultimately, I think the secular world should be guided by belief, but not governed by it. I don’t mind anyone using their belief system to reach decisions, what I despise is forcing that system’s individual rules onto others and calling it the will of $diety_name_here. I know freedom of religion does not equal freedom from religion. What I mean is codifying a specific religious rule into law, for example what if the government outlawed all pork products? First of all, Emeril Lagasse would simply drop dead. Secondly, would that be in any way fair to those of us that don’t follow one of the “cloven hooves are baaaaad” religions? No. It wouldn’t. It would be stupid and outrageous on it’s face.
I think I’m off the point again. Did any of that make sense? It seems so much clearer in my head. Believe in your own ability to be a decent person, be sorry when you make mistakes, do right by your friends and family and try to leave the world a little better than it was when you found it. Wow, my entire life’s philosophy sounds like how you should behave at a KOA campground. :)
To sum up - this is a Patriot’s Journey post because we get to do this kind of exploring free from oppression. It’s hard-coded in the very documents that founded our country. Awesome.
Addendum: my brilliant wife just informed me that it’s even more simple. My life’s philosophy is “Be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes!”
I try to live my life like Bill & Ted. That’s gotta be wrong. Should I call a priest or something? :)
Posted by JimK at 08:28 PM on June 03, 2007
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Categories: Things To Ponder
Tags: religion humanity philosophy
Everybody’s talkin’ at me. I can’t hear a word they’re sayin’
Only the echoes of my mind...
Are we looking out the window too much? Car windows, TV, your living room windows, the glowing box that connects you to the network like a window on the world...are we so busy looking out that we’ve somehow forgotten why we looked that first time?
Are we too nosy? Do we have too much information about how every little thing in the world works? Is the disillusionment one sees in culture the world over a symptom of some larger sickness brought on because we simply can’t process it all? Have we trivialized the search for knowledge into a non-stop flood of useless information posing and intellectual or social stimuli? I think I might know too much about every damn move Lindsey Lohan makes, and almost nothing about what Senator Lindsey Graham does every day. I know everything you can possibly know about every pore on Tricia Helfer’s body, but my own machine is a broken mess.
Am I trying to figure something out in my head by applying these questions to everyone when the fault lies with me and me alone?
I don’t know. What I do know is I haven’t slept since yesterday and this is what is going through my head. I’m thinking that we’re not looking inward enough. The scale of everything is getting larger, but what the world is made of is not any stronger, nor have we planned well for the scaling up, as it were. All I can think of to do is to look inward, examine my immediate surroundings and find a way to positively impact them. Is that isolationist? Is it some strange contradiction in philosophies that I am asking you, a sea of friends, family and perfect strangers, to help me examine the question and find an answer?
Hmm. That leads me to an idea. I want anyone - friend, foe, family or casual reader - to ask me something. Anything. The question can be about you, about me, about comedy, about art, WW2, politics, Bosnia, Japanese tea ceremonies, it doesn’t matter. Whatever you want to talk about. What I ask from you is pure, unadulterated honesty. If that means your question needs to be blunt and mean, then be that way. I asked for it. If it means you may have to share a piece of yourself in order to ask your question, then all the better for you and for those who be asked.
Ask me anything and we’ll see where we go from there. I want to try to slow this down every so often and make it about people again.
Posted by JimK at 10:45 AM on June 03, 2007
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Categories: Personal, Things To Ponder
Tags: personal
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Cartoons are terrorism - How we got here
This is not good. Webcomic artist Matt Boyd was discussing buying a .22 bolt-action target rifle with a co-worker at his day job. He specifically mentioned, with a bit of a sarcastic snark, that choosing such a rifle would make it damn hard to kill someone, it was expressly to plink at paper targets, so no one had anything to worry about.
Only some biddy, or group of nosey busybodies, decided there was something to worry about, complained, and Matt was fired. Police showed up to check him out and everything. It seems his jokes in the webcomic were taken as terroristic threats. What. The. Hell?
So how’d we get here?
Thank you favorite gun control advocate. 30 years of demonizing guns and gun owners has led us to this. The Violence Policy Center, the Brady Campaign...they’re the biggest contributing factor here in my humble opinion.
Thank your favorite lawyer. A hundred-plus years of lawsuits for any and every little irritating thing has led us to this.
Thank your favorite Human Resources officer. 50 years of bastardizing the useful (and needed) rules and laws about sexual harassment, then turning it into a ruthless campaign of attempting to eliminate virtually any and all natural human interaction in the workplace has led us to this.
Most importantly, thank your favorite Democrat politician. In order to get elected, they’ve been simplifying these issues, reducing them to “with us or against us” (the irony!), demonizing anyone who doesn’t agree (on both sides of the aisle), and pushing for more and more and more governmental control over the whole mess. They coddle the lawyers, they despise the gun owners, they turn good ideas into a quagmire of workplace etiquette that feels no more natural to a human than the set of an old episode of Star Trek. They don’t do it to help you...they do it to get elected and stay elected, simple as that.
Oh, Democrats get help from plenty of Republicans too...take George Bush for example. He’s no friend to gun owners. He’s no fan of reducing the number of hoops one must jump through just to get through the day. He’s no fan of reducing the...enthusiasm...with which law enforcement responds to nay given situation. He’s no champion of personal responsibility.
This all comes full-circle back to what is wrong with this country - we all want our nanny to take care of every tiny little thing that brings us the slightest discomfort. We can’t just let things go anymore. We can’t laugh anything off, or use sound judgment to determine that someone isn’t a threat. We just don’t use common sense anymore. We’ve gotten so used to the government, or the HR department, or the cops or anyone else taking care of everything that we’re no longer able to do it ourselves. Bad day? Take a pill. Offended by something? File a lawsuit. Don’t like some part of the culture? Get a law passed that outlaws it.
We have too much help in avoiding life, and not enough help in learning how to deal with living in a society that is immensely diverse. There’s another one...diversity. To me, that means variety, with distinct differences that are celebrated and enjoyed. To others it means crushing any sense of individuality until we all think and look and talk the same. Diversity is not homogeneity.
I suppose ultimately I’m saying we’re no longer a nation of adventurers and builders and discoverers and dreamers. We’re now a nation of simpering, sniveling pussycats who cry every time a dog walks by. We chose this life and now we’re stuck with it.
Or are we? Can we fix this before we end up like ancient Rome?
Posted by JimK at 04:59 PM on May 05, 2007
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Categories: Humor, News, Politics, The Federal Government, Guns - 2nd Amendment, The Stupidity Of Man, Things To Ponder
Tags: Matt Boyd guns firearms Second Amendment politics
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Last year’s wishes are this year’s apologies
As I was listening to Fall Out Boy’s “I’m Like A Lawyer With The Way I’m Always Trying To Get You Off,” two lines jumped out and sparked a runaway thought. The lines were the title of this post, “Last year’s wishes are this year’s apologies,” and “We’re the new face of failure.”
The song is in no way about politics, but it occurred to me: both of those things are so very true. Why? Because George W. Bush and his entire hand-picked team, from the Cabinet to the White House Staff, are living life like it’s 1974.
They are playing 70’s public relations games in an instant-on, internet-connected, citizen-journalism, you’d-better-have-a-good-answer-before-the-question-is-even-asked world. It’s like they don’t even understand how fast information travels in today’s world.
Not every decision Bush and Co. has made has been awful. The problem is, not a one of them knows how to market anything they do. Furthermore, when someone starts creating a narrative in the press that is 180 degrees opposite of the truth, - or worse, is designed to do damage to the Bush Administration with no thought to the damage it does to the country as a whole - Bush and Co. have zero skill at fighting back, at getting in front of a story, or of even explaining in basic terms just what they hell it is they’re doing at any given moment.
This is the least media-savvy administration that I can remember in my 36 years on earth...and what’s the ultimate result of this complete and utter inability to sell Americans even on the good ideas?
We are the new face of failure. Ask around - perception is everything, and we are being perceived as a nation of failures. Our government fails us at ever turn. Each party fails itself and the nation on a daily basis. Our president fails us, Congress and the military upon which he so heavily relies. They all fail us on issues of immigration, budgets, civil liberties...I could go on and on.
But what is worse is that regardless of what is going on in Iraq at any given moment, we are perceived to already have lost. I don’t believe it, but then I don’t limit my reading to only those who are beating that drum. If I were the average American reading my local paper and watching the news at 11...what else could I believe? If I am from another country, my God, the once and powerful United States is being beaten by goat herders and dung farmers with homemade bombs and a few AKs! How could I believe anything else?
Every good domestic agenda idea Bush has had stalls and dies because he’s the worst pitchman to ever hold office. he allows the media and his opponents to define the idea, then allows them to destroy it, and never steps up to explain, defend or counter the opposition. Every domestic emergency since 9/11 has been laid at the feet of an administration that in truth, cannot possibly be held accountable for all of it; instead of doing something to explain himself, Bush leaves it to frigging bloggers to uncover and try to disseminate the truth. It’s absolutely ridiculous that the White House is so unbelievably incompetent in this area.
I believe in giving this administration credit when due, defending it from false allegations and most of all, being accurate and honest in my criticisms. This is but one area in which I feel we can all agree - Bush and everyone he has personally chosen are miserable failures at communicating. They’re no Clinton, who could and did charm the pants right the hell off a nation. They’re damn sure no Reagan, who inspired our sworn enemy to change it’s ways.
How I miss the days when, even if you didn’t love the guy, you could at least say that your President was a hell of a speaker and you had to respect the way he put his ideas out there for everyone to talk about.
Today? Perception is everything, and Bush has failed to make his case when necessary. “We’re the new face of failure. Prettier and younger but no better off.”
Posted by JimK at 06:46 PM on April 10, 2007
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Categories: News, Politics, The Fourth Estate, Things To Ponder
Tags: Bush Administration White House politics media
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