Month: August 2011

A strategy to restore sanity – Updated

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Some of you probably won’t like what I’m about to say, but think about the consequences.

In an article titled “If Boehner Got Everything He Wanted the Bottom 99% Would Be Out in Food Lines Now”

I have a few comments on this. I’ve seen the little tent cities, and the increase in homeless here in my own city. I’ve watched as governments move to cover it all up lest people get irked by a society that cannot take care of ALL its citizens.

But the Lamestream (An appropriate reference to the mainstream corporate media!) media doesn’t report it, most of us never know about it lest we see it with our own eyes. The reason I call them lame is because the ‘news’ they report is really nothing of the sort.

But it’s true that if we don’t increase revenue this country is headed down an unsure path. I also love how the S&P report calls out the Republican obstinacy in their report on downgrading the U.S. debt rating.

The article does make an interesting observation though. It’s the Tea Baggers that are causing Boehner to tack to the extreme right.

Note my use of the term “Tea Bagger”. I mean it. In fact they meant it too, as evidence:

Tea Bagger and tea bags

I refuse to call them anything but Tea Bagger. And in doing so I’ve been accused of using sexual innuendo when referring to those of that persuasion.

We need to ridicule and denigrate the Tea Baggers. That’s the best way to deal with their bovine effluent. Call them out on their crap on a regular basis. Make it so they cannot hide, they cannot run.

And apparently, their song is playing off tune to most Americans too. Even Tea Party darling Christine O’Donnell only got FIVE people at her book signing. Five!

How the Democrats could beat Gov. Rick Scott in FL

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You’ve got to read this.

I’ll give you the synopsis:

Florida Republican (Tea Party) Governor Rick Scott signed legislation requiring urinalysis for all welfare recipients. The recipients have to pay for the testing out of pocket and if they pass, it’s re-imbursed in their welfare check.

Well, turns out that only 2% of recipients tested, test positive for drugs. And what’s more interesting is this quote from the article:

“…the state is effectively being forced to pay for 11.5 gallons of welfare applicants’ drug-free urine every month, to the tune of around $34,000.”

If the Democratic party can’t take this and run with it, then I’ve given up all hope. How easy would it be to create an ad that utilizes this abject failure of Tea Bagger policy and toss Scott out of office next election cycle and replace him with someone a bit more sane.

I’ll give a hint. “Governor Scott spent half a million more for welfare recipients and in essence all we taxpayers got was several warm buckets of piss and a bigger bill.”

Oh Really?

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So I just found out the City of Providence is tearing down what remains of the Grove St. School.

i have written about this before. The person in question who authorized the destruction a couple years back, in direct violation of a court order is now none other than State Representative for the 8th district, Michael Tarro. Tarro has long wanted to tear the property down because he wants a parking lot for the funeral home.

I find it very odd that the city now wants to complete the teardown of the building because they say it represents a hazard with the approaching tropical storm. Yes, tropical storm because the hurricane appears to be losing enough energy that it’ll be little more than a nuisance to us.

Yet there are other properties in the city that represent as much a threat as Grove St. School.

I just know Tarro has his fingers in this. He leaves an immediately detectable trail of slime wherever he goes.

Can you tell I don’t like him? Good, I don’t. I can’t wait for the next election cycle so we can toss his ass the fuck out!

Oh Silverlight, how I hate thee so!

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I’m getting rather annoyed by Microsoft Silverlight.

Apparently it’s a dead product within Microsoft. But they forced Netflix into using it and I must say it’s even WORSE than Netflix’s Flash based player of old.

And now that they’re quietly sweeping it under the rug I hear they are doing so because of HTML 5’s video capability. That would be fine and dandy except there are very few fully HTML 5 compliant browsers out there. Sure, Firefox supports a limited set at the moment.

So please, please, speed the development on HTML 5 compliant browsers and to Netflix, get your web site coded up for HTML 5 and be done with that CPU hog Silverlight. It should be called Red Light because that is the color I see when your player stutters along.

NOM is losing and they know it

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I’m always interested to see how far down the path the National Organization for Marriage is going. There is the obvious oxymoron; if they were for marriage would they be saying such patently false, hurtful and ludicrous things to repress and dismantle LGBT marriage rights.

And now NOM is showing their true colors. Their President, Brian Brown (I left out Pumpkin Face for the moment) is now linking homosexuality to pedophilia. I hate to link to their site and if you want to read the whole stinking mess follow this link.

Here’s his attempt to link the acceptance of gay marriage to the acceptance of pedophilia. He’s using the slippery slope argument here:

NORMALIZING PEDOPHILIA

When you knock over a core pillar of society like marriage, and then try to redefine Biblical views of marriage as bigotry, there will be consequences. Will one of the consequences be a serious push to normalize pedophilia?

The Daily Caller raised the question by pointing us all to a high-level academic conference in Baltimore this week, “Pedophilia: Minor-Attracted Persons and the DSM: Issues and Controversies.”

The DSM is the diagnostic manual that defines mental illness. You probably recall that a key moment in the gay rights campaign was the 1973 decision by the American Psychiatric Association, the organization that produces the DSM, to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses.

How do I explain this, we’re not asking to knock down a core pillar of society, but trying to enhance and improve it, to make it stronger not weaken it by creating a second class of citizens.

Brown tips his hand when he mentions the Biblical views. Hate to tell him but marriage even pre-dates the Bible, and I’m talking the Old Testament or Pentateuch. What of the Babylonians before them, or the Pagans? As usual, Brown commits the sin of omission when he says things like this.

Interesting that he now enumerates one of the feared ‘consequences’ of marriage equality as being an increased acceptance for other stigmatized practices that society frowns upon. But greater society is coming to the realization that they an no longer frown upon the LGBT community.

The words of Brian Brown only serve one purpose, to fan the flames of anti LGBT sentiments. Hate to break it to you Pumpkin Face, but somewhere out there is a mentally unbalanced moron who will hear your words and act upon them, either seriously wounding a member of the LGBT community, or killing them all because they read your disgusting twaddle on your ‘blog’.

The point is, the bigotry of NOM is becoming plainly evident as time progresses and they realize that they are on the losing side of history. So they’ll start showing their true motivation. If for example Mr. Brown wants us to adhere to Biblical standards, I say he should read the damned book first.

Because like it or not, NOM is losing.

One interesting thing about Zipcar

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They tend to use a lot of economical vehicles. So far I’ve gotten a Scion Xb, a Honda Insight Hybrid, and a Toyota Prius.

The Honda Insight is an interesting vehicle. One of it’s gas saving measures is to shut the engine off at stops. Once you take your foot off the brake there’s about a half second delay before acceleration begins. It’s noticeable. But it also has full regenerative braking. That’s a nice featured and one shared between

The Honda indicated your driving economy by turning the speedometer blue or green or some shades of each. You could also see if you were on a charge or boost cycle. Very basic displays.

The Toyota Prius on the other hand is a VERY evolved vehicle. It’s a much quieter vehicle, and has a very exotic dashboard. But it’s all logically grouped. And the information center is fantastic. It shows a gauge that tells you your approximate MPG rate, and shows the average thus far. You can change the display so it changes the method used to display the engine, battery and motor.

If I was in the market for a hybrid I’d definitely go with the Toyota. They’ve had a LOT more experience building such vehicles.

Did it again!

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My keyboard on my laptop is now missing the right hand control key, and now the ‘g’ key is gone. It still works, just don’t have that nice cap on it to indicate the key.

So time to order ANOTHER keyboard. This will be the third on this laptop. I’m a bit brutal on keyboards in general. So it’s no surprise.

A step too far for the Koch Brothers

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This makes me incredibly angry. Of course I know the reason WHY the Koch Brothers and their Americans For Prosperity group are doing.

They are dismantling the system because an uneducated populace is easier to mislead than an educated populace. The Koch brothers are COUNTING on this.

But what is happening in Wake County is sad. I see a strong racist component to this too. In essence the Koch brothers are saying they don’t want an uppity black people in their way. Fucking racist bastards.

Unlike the Koch brothers I want to see our countries children well educated, able to apply critical thinking skills. The people of Wake County certainly have those skills because they can see through the bovine effluent pushed by the Koch brothers and AFP.

I see it here in my own city. Schools have an 80/20 rule where 80% of their students come from the surrounding district and the other 20% come from outside that district. In essence this is segregation of schools and I’m constantly astounded when I hear people at public meetings over school closings and relocation embrace a program that at its heart embraces segregation of schools. It’s insanity.

But the people of Wake County aren’t taking this lightly and more power to them for standing up!

I find it interesting but the first I’d heard of this is via the email I received from BraveNew. Sure, it ran locally in Wake County but this needs to be seen all over the U.S.

Because the ultimate goal of the rich is to return to feudalism, you know: vassals and serfs. To the point where we are OWNED by the rich. Sorry, I’m not going to go down without a fight on this one.

ClustrMaps upgraded

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So now they give breakouts not only among countries but states in the U.S. too!

California (CA)
Rhode Island (RI)
Massachusetts (MA)
New York (NY)
Ohio (OH)
Texas (TX)
Illinois (IL)
Florida (FL)
Pennsylvania (PA)
Virginia (VA)

They’re ranked in order of frequency of visits. Surprisingly I get more visits from California than I do from Rhode Island, my home state. Texas and Virginia kind of surprise me, being red states and all. But apparently even in the red states there are some of you who are more blue than red.

My top countries are interesting too.

Canada (CA) with Ontari and British Columbia my top spots. Thanks guys!
U.K. (UK) with London and Surrey leading the pack.
Australia (AU) with the states of New South Wales and Victoria being well represented.
Germany (DE) Baden-Wurttemberg and Nordrhein-Westfalen. I believe the U.S military has a presence in those districts.
Kuwait (KW) with Al Kuwayt leading the pack. Again another spot of heavy U.S. military involvement.
India (IN) with Delhi and Maharashtra in the top spots, followed up by Tamil Nadu.
France (FR) with Ile-de-France and Rhone-Alpes being the top followers.
The Netherlands (NL) bring Noord-Holland (Is that North Holland?) and Noord-Brabant and I guess that’s North Brabant. Welcome guys!
The Philippines (PH) present Cebu City and Rizal.
Spain (ES) represent with Madrid and Catalonia.

I love how ClustrMaps now expands the visits by state/province. Too cool.

Breaking it in

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Breaking it in by kd1s
Breaking it in, a photo by kd1s on Flickr.

I thought you all might want to see it in action so I took this with my cell phone. Kind of an overcast, gray day but that won’t ever stop me from grilling.

I’m made of pretty sturdy stuff, all weather so to speak though I much prefer spring/summer. But this grill will get a LOT of use. I only paid $118 for it but I’ll get more use out of it than that.

For example, the steaks. Preheated the grill for about fifteen minutes then put the steaks down. I love ribeye steak. Seared them for about four minutes per side and then put the vegetables down. Took about ten to twelve minutes to get it all cooked.

Keyron isn’t a fan of radicchio, but on the other hand I love it. I’ve always loved the bitterness of some vegetables, for me the radicchio starts slightly bitter and then breaks out in sweetness. All part of being Italian-American I suppose. Also did some zucchini, just a little olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic powder and they are marvelous.

I’m looking up some other suggestions for grilling. And I have to break in the side burner on this baby. Good for sauteing vegetables that’s for sure. Burgers with caramelized mushrooms and onions, this grill can do it. There is a 33lb weight limit on the shelf but I could more than likely modify it to be able to support even more by adding detachable legs to the outside edge of the side burner. Then I could boil water in the 16qt. stainless steel pot and steam lobster in it!Or better yet, I could actually deep fry a turkey on this rig. The possibilities are endless.

And now of course, as I have been for some time, I am cooking with gas, propane to be precise.

Propane has an interesting looking chemical representation, in essence a ring of hydrogen surrounding carbon. C3H8 to be precise.

It’s derived from natural gas processing. In essence a byproduct but a powerful one, 46.4 kJ/kg isn’t too bad. It’ll cook meat in record time.

Natural gas processing by the way produces some interesting gases in addition to propane.

And to those of my readers who think this is butch, well okay, maybe I am. Fire, food. It’s fascinating. And you’re not doing it right unless it can be classified as a four alarm fire going on.