It’s nice and all that football is back, but is it hockey season yet? Please?
Update: Okay, it’s really nice that Brady threw for 500+ yards.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Hockey, Thought of the day | 1 Comment »
Thought of the day
Posted on September 12, 2011 by Michael
Thought of the day
Posted on September 10, 2011 by Michael
Let’s review: The Republicans hampered the success of the stimulus, they increased the deficit without benefit (again) by giving rich people more money (which will not be used to hire anyone without demand), they caused world volatility by causing gridlock about something as routine as increasing the debt limit, and now their very nature of being the Party of No has contributed, in part, to the world markets performing poorly because no one has any confidence they will pass President Obama’s jobs bill (something most economists say will be a great success).
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Republicans, Thought of the day | 5 Comments »
Thought of the day
Posted on September 9, 2011 by Michael
I found out today that my tentatively planned trip to Haiti (it depends upon things getting approved on my university’s end) will involve the study of cholera as well as the two types of starvation in children, kwashiorkor and marasmus (the former involves a distended belly whereas the latter is emaciation). I don’t know much about either one, but I figured I would throw it up here in a post so I could at least have an easy way to get to the terms – “kwashiorkor” is not the easiest word to recall, after all.
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Thought of the day
Posted on September 5, 2011 by Michael
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.
~Mark Twain
And for a more complete post, here are my major travel plans over the next several years: Haiti (2012), Italy (2012), Aconcagua (2013 or 2014).
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Thought of the day, Travel | 1 Comment »
Thought of the day
Posted on September 2, 2011 by Michael
What we need to do to spur job growth – especially given the reports for August – is to give big corporations more money. I know what you’re saying, “But that’s retarded. They already have trillions of dollars on hand and they aren’t using it to hire anyone. At all. It’s the consumer who needs to be given more money. They will then go out and spend, thus giving businesses a reason to hire in the first place. And if you don’t believe me, just look at the fact that giving corporations more money has been a dismal economic failure for the past 10 years, save the times when we enjoyed a few bubbles.” To that I reply, let’s slash everything in the budget so that overall growth will immediately shrink.
…
Remind me again why we listen to a damn thing Republicans have to say?
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Thought of the day, Trickle down economics | 26 Comments »
I found that exercise
Posted on September 1, 2011 by Michael
Awhile back I made a post about weight lifting exercises. In it I wrote about a particular exercise my grandfather had taught me, but I couldn’t find a video of it. I found something similar, but with some caveats:
The difference between that and what I do is that I don’t hop and split my feet. Instead I press and squat all in one motion. (Unfortunately YouTube searches for “one arm press and squat” either yield kettlebell exercises or simple one arm presses coupled with separate squats.)
Well, I took another look at the picture I have of my grandfather doing the exercise and in the caption underneath it, it actually says what the exercise is. (I didn’t have the picture with me when I made that post and it must have slipped my mind to look later on.) It’s called a cleave and jerk. Unfortunately, any search with those terms tends to yield undesirable results. You know, the sort of results the Internet is more well known for. In fact, I’m sure if I did find the actual exercise, Rule 34 would somehow manage to apply to it.
But there you have it. The one-arm cleave and jerk. Don’t search it.
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Damn you, Irene
Posted on August 30, 2011 by Michael
So as I drive home, I come across detours and downed lines. I see trees leaning heavily on lines directly in front of homes which still have power. I continue and the lights a few hundred mere feet up the road still work. I go further and more trees on more lines in front of more homes with more power. Surely not all these people have generators. And then I get to my road. There are no downed trees (except the neighbor’s willow – to my personal disappointment – but that’s by the lake). The lines are all in fine condition. There is still a bit of debris on the road, but I think everyone is hoping it gets pushed into the potholes. By all visual accounts, there is no reason why there should be no power, especially considering all the power just up the road. Yet, here I sit, laptop transported to the Barnes & Noble cafe, so I can get back to the Internet for a spell. Most of my food has gone bad and the majority of the cookware is too dirty for cooking and impossible to clean without water (though we have utilized many gallons of lake water for the back of the toilet – necessities, you know). In short,
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Edison, Family Guy, Irene, Power | 5 Comments »
Thought of the day
Posted on August 29, 2011 by Michael
No textbook is worth $251.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Textbooks, Thought of the day | 5 Comments »
Thought of the day
Posted on August 25, 2011 by Michael
Bigots will often argue that homosexuality is a choice. It isn’t, but let’s pretend it is. Then heterosexuality must also be a choice. So what convincing reason do we have to give marital protections to one choice over another? It surely has nothing to do with children. Gay people have kids, too. And besides, we know straight couples over, say, 80 cannot have children, yet no bigots are clamoring to deny them the right to marry. So what other distinctions do we have? Any? Any at all?
Bueller? Bueller?
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: gay marriage, Thought of the day | 1 Comment »
Thought of the day
Posted on August 24, 2011 by Michael
One of the great accomplishments of the New Atheists has been to tear down the idea that faith is a good thing. Pay attention to anyone involved in religious debates that has become familiar with what atheists have been saying. They do all they can to distance themselves from faith – something the Bible pushes as a good thing. (It’s almost like people cherry-pick what they want to take from their holy books, huh?) This is largely due to the New Atheist emphasis on the need for evidence.
Of course, go to any church with an average congregation that is unfamiliar with these sort of debates and it will not be difficult to find people who still highly value faith. That’s sort of religion’s thing.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: faith, Thought of the day | 11 Comments »
For the Sake of Science 