Monthly Archives: August 2008

I love this movie…

Posted on by

The Royal Tenenbaums

This scene is definitely in my top 10 favorite movie scenes of all time (the ‘needle in the hay‘ scene in this same movie also probably makes the cut–as does the ‘green line‘ scene–speaking of which, this might be the most beautiful thing I have heard in a long time). Maybe it’s Gwyneth Paltrow… but whatever it is… The one person we’ve always wanted… is the one person we just can’t have. The more I think about it… the more this movie reminds me of one of Shakespeare’s tragedy’s… it hits me on so many fundamental levels.

which percentage is worse?

Posted on by

D. Lloyd-Morgan has a great piece over at The Liberty Sphere. Obama criticizes McCain for voting with Bush 90% of the time but HIMSELF is more liberal than Bush is conservative. It’s like voting with Dennis Kucinich 100% of the time… (speaking of which, I think the McCain camp should run an add with this statistic just for kicks).

Along with San Francisco extremist Nancy Pelosi, he votes with environmentalist extremists who have hamstrung this nation’s ability to provide for its own energy needs.

With Carolyn McCarthy and John Conyers he has called for the outright ban of handguns in America, essentially rendering the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution null and void.

But, surpassing all of the Leftwing Democrats mentioned above, Obama has gone far beyond the normal liberal mindset of insisting on abortion-on-demand. Obama supports infanticide. While an Illinois legislator, he voted against a bill that would have mandated medical care for infants that survive botched late-term abortion attempts.

The bill that was introduced in the Illinois legislature was a response to an incident wherein a newborn infant that survived a botched abortion procedure was placed in a darkened closet without food or water, and simply left to die unattended.

This was just fine with Barack Obama, and he put his vote where his mouth is, voting against providing medical care for other babies in similar situations.

Clearly this vote shows that extremist liberals have moved beyond abortion to baby killing outside the womb–a position that even Pelosi and Kennedy don’t support.

The Liberty Sphere.

wind energy has problems??? NOOOO.

Posted on by
flickr post

Windmills of Change, originally uploaded by red321.

Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands.

The dirty [little] secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.

Politicians in Washington have long known about the grid’s limitations but have made scant headway in solving them. They are reluctant to trample the prerogatives of state governments, which have traditionally exercised authority over the grid and have little incentive to push improvements that would benefit neighboring states.

The Energy Challenge – Wind Energy Bumps Into Power Grid’s Limits – Series – NYTimes.com.

You know… where has this story been the past 5 years NYT??? There WERE ALWAYS problems with the green, wind-driven agenda and this is just one more of those problems that are easily recognizable to anyone of reasonable intelligence… yet only NOW does the NYT run stories about how all these millions of dollar investments aren’t really working because of FUNDAMENTAL LIMITATIONS of the system??? after it has been CHAMPIONING these very solutions for the past decade or so???

How much will clean energy cost anyway??? I guess we’ll never know because there will always be another bank-breaking technical hurdle in the way after we invest in whatever environmentalists demand we invest in… they don’t have a clue… the fact that the Grid CANT SUPPORT wind-mills SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE FIRST THING YOU IDOTS took a look at!

You know, this is just one more example of Liberalism’s fundamental problem: the law of unintended/unexpected consequences. A MARKET-DRIVEN approach to energy would have uncovered these kind of problems and put investment dollars where it would be more useful. These poor saps in Maple Ridge, N.Y. just took the word of a few self-proclaimed expert politicians — who assured everyone that THEIR plan would magically make our lives better — and now have nothing to show for it. This kind of top-down market decision-making causes NOTHING but problems… and this is exactly what Obama is suggesting… that HIS ideas will save us all.

the utter arrogance…

Back in the USSR!

Posted on by

Medvedev

About 2 years ago I read a book by John Lewis Gaddis entitled: “The Cold War: A New History“. The Cold war was, at the time, a very vague, amorphous concept; I neither knew who the players were nor the reasons why the war ended. I walked away from that book both excited and educated–excited about the tension and drama that had occurred, educated about the seriousness of the times and the unique personalities that were so dominant during that era. I recall wishing I could have lived through that era–not because it was a great time to be alive–but because of the value a perspective of the events, news coverage, and debate surrounding that era would be in understanding the world TODAY. We can’t, of course, re-live a bygone era… or maybe we can…

“We are not afraid of anything, including the prospect of a Cold War,” Medvedev recently stated according to the lastest article at the TimesOnline.

Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, accused Washington of “battleship diplomacy” and insisted the presence of the warships “does not make the situation more stable”.

Mr Medvedev said that the port of Poti was open to shipping but accused the Americans of trying to smuggle weapons to the Georgians. “And what the Americans call humanitarian cargoes – of course, they are bringing in weapons.”

“Battleship Diplomacy???” Really! And what, may I ask, do you call rolling hundreds of tanks into Georgian territory Meddie? Aggressive negotiations? Yup, Russian tanks at Georgian ports are the epitome of stability. Spare me. Oh, and all of a sudden you don’t like weapons transfers to countries you are at odds with? Well, you should have thought about that BEFORE you sold IRAN a bunch of surface-to-air missiles! NOW YOU KNOW WHAT IF FEELS LIKE MEDDIE! Get used to it. I’m not about to have my chain yanked by a couple of corrupt dictators threatening nuclear war because they’ve got an power inferiority complex… it’s like a diagnosable condition shared by all Russian elite, i swear.

And another thing… what the hell has soft power and negotiations gotten us with respect to Russia? It’s gotten us NOWHERE… they bade their time until the moment the west let its guard down… became overly-dependant on foreign oil, cut their defense budgets, dismantled their nuclear weapons… and now Russia rears its ugly head again ! Somehow I’m not surprised.

Charles Krauthammer rocks

Posted on by

via thewashingtonpost.com

Worry about the press? His FISA flip-flop elicited a few grumbles from lefty bloggers, but hardly a murmur from the mainstream press. Remember his pledge to stick to public financing? Now flush with cash, he is the first general-election candidate since Watergate to opt out. Some goo-goo clean-government types chided him, but the mainstream editorialists who for years had been railing against private financing as hopelessly corrupt and corrupting evinced only the mildest of disappointment…

I have never had any illusions about Obama. I merely note with amazement that his media swooners seem to accept his every policy reversal with an equanimity unseen since the Daily Worker would change the party line overnight — switching sides in World War II, for example — whenever the wind from Moscow changed direction..

Why, the man even tossed his own grandmother overboard back in Philadelphia — only to haul her back on deck now that her services are needed..

Charles Krauthammer – The Ever-Malleable Mr. Obama – washingtonpost.com

Pretty hard-hitting if I say so myself. Krauthammer is right in this: the media COULDN’T CARE LESS about Obama’s record… they excuse it, they try to justify it, they cover for him… it’s just who these people ar.

Were the Coke adds REALLY that great?

Posted on by

Ok… something hit me today as I was washing my car.  Remember those Coke adds during the Olympics?  Remember the one that said, “if you have bought coke in the past 10 years, you have helped support an olympic athlete”…?  My brother, upon first seeing that commercial, relayed to me something about how great he felt for buying coke… knowing that he supported these olympians–many of them in the special olympics.  His response was, I think, a pretty normal response; the marketing people who put that TV spot together were really reaching a personal nerve… connecting the purchase of the product to changing someone’s life… kudos to whoever thought that one up.

However, it got me thinking; is this really cool for Coka-Cola to be doing???  Basically, they donate some small percentage of their total profits to help a few mentally and physically challenged athletes and then try to use that fact as a marketing tool to sell a product.  One could argue that Coke is using the special olympians as a tool for profit… playing the heart-strings of their audience to increase sales… in a cruel and calculating way.

I don’t really want to point fingers and assume some sort of moral depravity… but it does set off a few warning bells when I see this kind of corporate behavior.

SNAP!  Exxon did the same thing with their malaria/mosquito-net story!

Is this ethical?  Should corporations be in this business???  Using the plight of the less fortunate to try to increase brand loyalty???

What do you think?

new jquery project

Posted on by
flickr post

new jquery project, originally uploaded by jrossol.

so… havent’ been blogging in a while…. well… there is a GOOD REASON. Just finished teaching myself some basic jquery so I can be more marketable as a web developer. FUN STUFF.  Basically, I built an interactive library of ALL the music I own so people can take a look at what I like, read my reviews… etc.  I used a very powerful yet surprisingly simple-to-use javascript library called jquery, and also implemented some asynchronous database calls that populate the meta-data without requiring a page refresh.  It’s still a work in progress, but I’m excited about its potential.  I will continue to update it with more cd’s, better effects, and more of MY OWN reviews (not the stock Amazon filler that’s currently there).  I’m probably breaking some copyright by doing this but what the hey… FAIR USE!

Check it out @ http://www.blogstitution.com/CD/index.php.  Click on an album to see the effects.

*** YOU will NEED safari or Firefox 3… or else you will have rendering problems.