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May 27, 2007
On Something Different
| Japanese Human Art - Why Is My Girlfriend Mad? Video |
Posted by at 06:48 PM | TrackBack
May 17, 2007
On A Possible Explanation
As a follow-up to my last post here's a bit of possible history according to some Biblical Scholars. Before you send me hate mail, I DID NOT make this up, I just report it.
Setting: A small building in early Biblical times. Abraham kneels praying to God for a son, as he's been doing for many years now.
Abe: God, I'm faithful, please honor me with a son.
God: Okay. Yea, you're right, you've been faithful. You'll have your son. As a bonus for making you wait, your son will be special. Revered above all other faithful. How's that sound.
Abe: Sweet. Thanks, God.
Abe to himself: Wait a tick, I'm REALLY old, and so's my wife. How can we have a son? God must have made a mistake. I think I've still got it in me to have a son but I doubt she does. I gotta find someone younger.
(Abe spots a maid nearby)
Abe: Hey there! Wanna come to my place and view my etchings?
(She follows him home, there are no etchings)
(A bit later)
God: Abe!
Abe: Yes God?
God: When I said you could have a son I meant you could have a son with your wife, who you promised to honor forever, foresaking all others. You remember that little bit right?
Abe: Well, yea, but I figured I'd hedge my bets with a younger gal. Hope you don't mind.
God: I mind. A little tip: When the Creator of the cosmos tells you to do something a certain way, you do it that way, without your own private spin on things. Got it?
Abe: Yea I got it.
God: Further, your son by this maid will not be honored. He'll be cursed, and his offspring will be cursed, and their offspring will be cursed, and down the line for all eternity. They'll be warlike and never know the true faith of God, though they'll think they do. But to show I'm not completely heartless when it comes to you, I'll give you another shot at a son. With your wife this time!
Abe: Seems kinda harsh, but thanks for the second chance. What are you going to call this race of peoples my accursed son will create?
God: Muslims.
Posted by at 08:11 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 16, 2007
On One Man's Take On Islam
Posted by at 06:18 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
On 99.9%
Recently at a large conference of major food manufacturers (Hormel, Kraft, General Mills, etc) one company, I won't say which, stood up to boast their 99.9% food purity rating. Food purity refers to the fact that it's not contaminated with E. Coli, Botulism, or some other nasty that'll make you sick. The chairperson then stood up and informed the group of how dismal a number that was. See, considering the mass tonnage of food that this company produces, that 0.1% of food that slips through still equates to several tons of contaminated food that this company packages and sells. The company spokesperson stood up again and stated that their food purity was actually much better, that she had used 99.9% as an figure only to prove her point, that she had no actual hard data. Everyone in the room belived her, and so do I. If 99.9% had been true then someone probably would have noticed the several tons of food produced that was making people sick.
This story got me interested in what other industries are doing better than 99.9%. Here's some examples:
At 99.9% the airline industry would have had 431 crashes last year.
At 99.9% 1200 babies would have been given to the wrong mother.
At 99.9% 26,000 surgeries would have been performed on the wrong limb.
At 99.9% over a million major medication errors would have occured in hospitals.
At 99.9% a fatal car wreck would happen every 11 second is California.
At 99.9% I would have been involved in 2 helicopter crashes in the past year while at work.
These are just a few numbers but they illustrate my point. 99.9% seems like a great success rate until you look at how many incidents are involved in that 0.1% failure rate. Most of our major industries enjoy a safety and success rating much higher than 99.9%. Despite that fact it's still a major media event when they make an error and someone gets harmed.
Posted by at 07:42 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 15, 2007
On A Fun Game
There's an on-going game in the Susanville/South Lassen County area that I like to call "Lanes are for Wimps". Here's how the game works. As people move their vehicles from one place or another they see how lanes they can use up at once. This extends to parking lots, only the rules change slightly to see how many parking spaces can be filled by the smallest of vehicles. The winner will be declared when a motorist is drug from his vehicle and beat about the head and neck by another motorist or pedestrian who doesn't feel like playing that day. Once the winner is declared the game starts again immediately without any lapse in play.
Main Street, Susanville is two lanes in either direction all the way through town. They're narrow lanes, and really poor quality streets, so I can understand touching the line now and again, but what I describe here is a literal strattling of the center line. I can excuse the huge trucks and things doing that, there's really not enough room for them in one lane, and when you're hauling an Abrahms tank through town out to Sierra Army Depot you can pretty much do whatever you want, but is there any reason why a Miata needs two lanes to cross town? I think they like the beatings!
The parking is what's really amusing. People just scoot into the parking lot and stop their car. Maybe they're in one space, maybe they're in six....maybe they're still in the thoroughfare, it doesn't really matter. When the voices say "it's time to turn off the car" they turn the key and get out. Sometimes they even put the car in Park and set the brake, sometimes Neutral is good enough. That really adds to the excitement, considering there's not one inch of flat ground in all of Lassen County.
The key to parking around here is to park AWAY from everyone else and walk to where you're going. You'll know where to go when you get into the parking lot. Off in the distance, in the farthest, most obscure section of the lot is a group of cars and trucks parked normally, usually accompanied by a few nervous looking drivers looking back at their cars like it's the last time they'll see it in that condition ever again.
Posted by at 07:53 AM | TrackBack
May 11, 2007
On A Must See
The following is the hottest thing on the internet and on Fox News today. Lizzie Palmer who put this YouTube program together is 15 years old. There have been over 3,000,000 hits as of this morning. In case you missed it, here it is.
http://www.youtube.com/v/ervaMPt4Ha0&autoplay=1
I, personally, think every member of congress should be made to watch this video at least once daily.
Posted by at 07:22 AM | TrackBack
May 09, 2007
On Words
Lately I've been feeling that we as a society are misusing our language to the point where many words are losing their impact. These "big" words are used to describe such mundane things, or are used so often, that they lose their power. Here's a few that I see abused a lot:
GIGANTIC/ENORMOUS/HUGE: We see these words used to describe everything from a used car lot to "huge savings" on an item that really only adds up to a few dollars.
TRAGEDY: The news stations love this word. Everything's a tragedy. Now, I agree that the VA Tech shooting was a tragedy, but Sanjaya being voted off American Idol was certainly not.
FAIR: I hate this word. It gets used a lot in arguments. "That just isn't fair". Guess what, life isn't fair! It's never been fair. It'll never be fair. Besides, what's fair and what's not is entirely subjective. To the rabbit being eaten by the eagle, life's not fair. From the eagle's point of view life is wonderful. Unless of course he'd rather have had squirrel.
EMERGENCY: A friend of my wife's recently said she had a shopping "emergency". What she meant was that she felt an urgent need to go shopping because shopping makes her feel better. I've seen real emergencies, and they involve dead and horribly maimed people.
GINORMOUS: A cross between Gigantic and Enormous. Created because the other two words got over used, this word has now been so over used that it has no meaning either.
There are others, of course, but these are the ones that really bug me. A broad grasp of the English language is a fine thing to posess. It allows us to more effectively communicate and say what we mean without using the same over used words.
Posted by at 10:01 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 01, 2007
On American Extreemists
There's a lot on the news about Islamic Extreemists lately. So much so that Speaker Pelosi (all bow down before her greatness) has suggested that the term should be illegal, along with Muslim Extreemist, and Islamic Militant. That's another story though.
What has been little discussed is the subject of American Extreemists. I think the reason the main-stream media has been ill at ease to discuss the subject is that it suggests that citizens of this country are in the same camp as the crazies in the Middle East that walk into a market and detonate themselves. Don't get me wrong, if they want to all stand in a circle and explode, I'm for it. I'll buy the DetCaps even, but don't involve anyone else. Again, I digress.
More than the fact that American Extreemists are, well American's, is the fact that they are the ones running the country. Yea, our elected officials. Many, not all, lets be fair here, there's a few good politicians, but they're tough to find. Most of our elected officials are Extreemist Americans. They're extreemly to the left, or extreemly to the right. The funny thing is the vast majority of Americans are somewhere in the purple haze that falls within the vivid blue and the deep red. Yet, despite our lavender hue, we continually elect these nuts to REPRESENT us.
Now, countries that have free media can educate themselves and probably know that most Americans are rational, even keeled people. But for nutty countries that keep their people like mushrooms (in the dark and fed bullshit) the populace only knows what their media tells them. And what their media tells them is that we are all either granola eating, limp spined, tax-and-spend wimps or meat-headed, militaristic, corporate pushovers. Why not. That's what the people that WE HIRED to represent us portray us as.
Don't be in such a rush to blame the politicians though. While they have to accept responsibility any fair person with half a pound of brain in the skull will have to accept the fact that the blame lies mostly with the rest of us. We hired them, after all. Every election we're faced with the choice of a number of qualified candidates, liberal and conservative, and repeatedly we narrow it down in the primary to either the "death by a thousand cuts" candidate or the "water torture" candidate. Then we hire one of them to rule the free world. We do this in every election, not just the Presidiential. Look who we just hired! Can any lib out there really tell me that Nancy Pelosi (all bow down before her greatness) represents their views? I certainly won't confess that Georgie represents my views as a Republican (I'm an Independant, really, I just play a Republican on TV).
I guess the point of my story is this: If we as American's don't want to be pegged as American Extreemists by the media of our enemy then we need to quite hiring people to represent us as such. There are a number of qualified politicians in the Presidential primary that's coming up here next year, and not a one of them has the last name of Clinton (God help us), Obama, McCain, or Guilliani. I encourage you, as a person who's not as dumb as politicians make you look, to quit hiring American Extreemists and start looking into representatives that actually represent who you are as an American.
Posted by at 06:44 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack