Ron Paul on Jay Leno

A video of Ron Paul on Jay Leno on 30 October 2007.

A Question For All Of Us

The Greatest Generation?

I am a baby boomer, born July 1947. Of course that means that my parents were part of what is called the greatest generation. Every time I hear that title, I turn over in my mind what it means. They survived the great depression, they won WWII, they put a man on the moon. I have to admit that those are great accomplishments. Maybe even great enough to qualify for the title of great generation, but greatest? Greatest implies best ever and to be the best ever, you almost think that they would have few faults and no resounding failures. Well they did not mess up too often, but the one uh oh that comes to mind is a big one. They brought into the world and raised the baby boomers. For that, I am eternally grateful, but lets face it, the fruit of their efforts is pretty pitiful. Sure they did fine on quantity, but look around you, the quality is lacking. The boomers are now running the country and we stink. Nope, the greatest generation came close, but I fear that their child rearing efforts will relegate them to being a great generation instead of the greatest generation.

Watch This

Always Has Been, Always Will Be

This old world has been around for awhile. Even if you are one of those folks who believes that every minute of time since the world began is accounted for in the bible, that is still a long time. I'm not an accomplished student of history or of human nature but I've read enough to realize that ever since the world began, there has always been some one that wanted to tell other people what they should or should not do. I suspect it will always be that way.

In our age, most of those types have managed to get themselves into government. Now there are a lot of them so it takes a lot of government to provide enough places for them. They generally fall into two categories, aggressive or passive aggressive. The aggressive ones get into law enforcement and the military. The passive aggressive ones get elected to county commissions, school boards, zoning boards, state legislatures, congress, etc. All of these passive aggressive types are constantly making new rules. A lot of average people have come to believe all these new rules are some how necessary for us to run the world. They are not.

For example, mother nature took care of things quite nicely before the EPA or ADEM were in existence. A lot of folks will tell you that mother nature worked in the past because we did not have all these man made toxins, radioactivity and the like. Well, I read recently that a new kind of algae or fungus has sprung up in the Chernobyl ruins and that it is eating away at the radioactive waste and should mitigate it's effects sooner than anyone could have predicted. No agency of the former Soviet Union is responsible for that, just mother nature.

Yes, this old earth can pretty well take care of itself. I believe that God designed it that way but if you prefer to think it evolved, no problem, the results at Chernobyl are just some more of that nifty evolution. Either way, things work out.

So, if all these rules and regulations are not necessary to hold terra firma together then what are they for? They are for all these 'bosses' to get off on. The passive aggressive types make and enforce rules for the same reason that dogs mate. It feels good to them. They are biologically driven to it. No dog is thinking of making puppies to further the species when it mates, it just does it cause it likes it. Same with rule makers. The next time the town council of your home town has an open meeting where they are gonna debate and vote on some proposed ordinance, go and watch the process. When you leave, ask yourself if what you saw there reminded you more of what happened in the first two chapters of Genesis or of what you saw those two antelope doing on Animal Planet last week.

Blog Keeping

Kind of like house keeping, but in your blog instead of your house. OK, tonight it came to me that I had a lot of links in many of my blog posts. After all that is one of the great advantages of the internet, right? You find something that interests you, you think it might interest the friends and family (one of each) that frequent (make semi-annual visits to) your blog. So you link to it, but links expire so every so often you verify the links. Being a good cybercitizen, I decided to go back tonight and check all my links to make sure they were still valid. A lot of them were not good. In fact so many so that I did not take time to try to find the old info in a new place, I just marked the bad links and will go back later and fix what I can.

It is obvious to me that some of the old postings will have to be removed as I put very little info in the post, just a link to a now nonexistent article. The worst offender is Yahoo news, apparently they only leave their info up for a few days. I found one link from last month that had already expired. In the future if I find something of interest on Yahoo, I will paraphrase, not link. Kinda takes away the main advantage of the internet doesn't it?

Sometimes I think We Might Be Doomed And Then...

I read an article like this and I know damned well that we are doomed. I've said it before and I'll say it again, if God doesn't kick our ass to the curb pretty soon, he is gonna owe Sodom and Gomorrah an apology.

Stupid In America - A 20/20 Documentary

I don't get network tv so I missed this when it was on, but I watched it today on the internet and felt that I had to link to it. If you have children or grand children that are or are about to be school age, you need to watch this documentary.

Let He Who Is Without Sin...

As I have said before, I live in North Shelby county. To say that North Shelby is Republican would be like saying the Pope is a Catholic. When you live in North Shelby everyone, including the Alabama Republican Committee assumes you are Republican. If you have a zip code that falls in North Shelby, you get the ARC mailings, if you have an email that they can tie to North Shelby, you get their emailings. I admit that quite often I do vote for the Republican candidate, sometimes just like citizens of the old USSR voted for the communist candidate but that is not what is on my mind this morning.

Lately the ARC emails have been making a big todo about double dipping. Seems a lot of, according to the ARC, Alabama Democrats are drawing money from the state from two different sources i.e. double dipping. Can't say I am too surprised. Of course the implication is that double dipping is crooked. What? A politician do something crooked?

I don't correspond with the ARC, they send me emails, some I read, some I delete without reading. If I were going to respond to the ARC emails, I would have to say that to me, double dipping is like double murder. Is murder any less of a sin than double murder? Is stealing any less of a sin than double stealing? If you are a member of an organization that forceably takes money from people, wastes most of it, but splits the remainder up among the members, is your crime any less because you only receive one share instead of two?

Is it just me, or is there something wrong here?

OK, the whitehouse tells us that habeas corpus can't be restored in this country because it would be a threat to national security but we must let blackwater employees commit murder with impunity in Iraq because it is vital for national security.

I'm Gonna Have To Set Up Another Computer System

I already have several working. I've got one that I use as my primary machine, one that I use as a phone server, one that hosts an ipcop firewall, one that runs Ubuntu Linux and a couple of laptops, one of the laptops is for use when I travel and the other one runs an OBII automobile diagnostics programs. Now some of you may be asking yourself what in the hell does he need so many computers for and how could he possibly need another. Well I need them cause I need them, so there. As for needing another, really I don't, but sometimes it seems like pretty soon I might, just to keep up with passwords.

Thats right, passwords. I've got a spreadsheet that grows everyday that does nothing but track passwords. Mind you, I don't enter the exact password, just some mnemonic device or clue to help me remember the real password. It is rapidly becoming too long to print on a single sheet and now many of the websites are throwing additional stuff in there like passphrase, secret question, secret image, pin, secret handshake or crap like that. Used to be things like your mother's maiden name. That won't do any more. Now you have to choose a picture and a phrase and a pin. Or some question like what was the name of your first pet's veterinarian's receptionist?

A while back I tried to get into my account on a site and it asked me where I would like to go on vacation. I answered, it balked, I answered again, it balked again. One more failure and I was dead in the water. I called customer service. The lady asked me for every thing except my underwear size and finally she gave me the correct response to where I wanted to go on vacation. It was neither one of my original answers, I suppose I was in a different mood when I had provided the original answer some time back and optimistically thought I would recall it. On top of that, I had used an abbreviation. Listen, if you tell the computer you want to go to NYC, don't expect it to understand and accept New York City.

Does all this increased security work? I doubt it. Back in September, I was visiting in Florida and I got an email from a credit card company. They had noticed some suspicious activity on my credit card and wanted to know if it was me. Turns out it wasn't. The credit card company in question is one of the ones with the multiple level security to get into their online system. That was no problem for the gang of thieves that was using my card illegally. In fact I'm sure they did not have access to my online account and I know they did not have the card. They just spoofed a number and got it to work. Thank goodness the credit card company had a full time unit looking out for strange activity.Then again, maybe the online security does work. Maybe it made it too hard to get account numbers that way so the crooks found another soft spot. Either way it looks like increased security is the wave of the future. I've not set up a password, passphrase, secret santa sever yet, but I do have an old Dell machine sitting in the corner of my bedroom just in case.

Environmental Effects of Increase CO2

This paper is not a quick read, but if you take the time to read and absorb it, I think you will find it very interesting.

Leftover Grits

Since the later part of last week, I have been pretty sick. Apparently I had the flu because I had most of the classic flu symptoms. Linda's mom asked her about me going to one of the "doc in a box" places. She told her mom that there wasn't much point in asking, that I would not go to a doctor. Of course this is a prevalent misconception shared among my family and friends. It's not that I won't go to a doctor. I will. Its just that I have not been in quite some time. My contention is that you go to the doctor when you are sick. By sick, I don't mean you feel bad. I mean that you have assessed your situation and said to yourself, this has gotten to the point that I need some outside intervention. Fortunately, for most of my life I have been blessed with extremely good health but there have been occasions when I had to have medical attention. There have also been some close calls. This flu episode was not one of them. In fact, by the second full day I had experienced a slight improvement.

Some times when I feel bad, I will push myself a bit to try to get back to a normal life as soon as possible. The flu is an exception. When I have the flu, I try to resume my normal lifestyle with due diligence. I suspect that is because of the stories I was told as a child about my fathers flu experiences. When he has around 12 or 13 years old my father had a case of the flu. The worst seemed to be over after a few days and he was back up running and doing the things that a young boy does. The story was that he got too hot and relapsed. He became gravely ill. So ill that my mother's grandfather took her over "to visit him one more time before he died." Fortunately he did not die, but instead grew up to marry my mother and produce me and my sister.

Since I have been laying low, recovering, I have not made a trip to the grocery store. I usually keep a fair stock of staples on hand and I have not wanted much to eat as my appetite has not exactly been great. Linda has repeatedly offered to bring me anything I needed but I had enough to get by and I did not want to expose her to the flu in case I was still contagious.

The one area where I was a bit short was breakfast food. By yesterday, I was down to my last egg and my last two strips of bacon. Over the years I've gotten into the habit of eating hash browns as I keep potatoes on hand all the time and the skillet is already hot from frying the eggs, bacon, sausage or whatever. Yesterday, I decided that I had time so I would fix myself some grits. I looked high and low in the cabinets, pantry, shelves and refrigerator and all I could come up with was an old bag of real grits from the side shelf of the refrigerator. Most people I know use instant grits. A few hardy souls use "quick grits" which still take about 15 minutes, but no one, I repeat, no one cooks regular grits. I can cook a 5 pound beef roast in a pressure cooker faster than you can cook regular grits. Had I not been staying in recuperating from the flu, I would have either broken down and settled for hash browns or jumped in the pickup and gone and bought a package of instant grits. But I was laid up anyway with plenty of time on my hands so I decided what the heck.

About 45 minutes before I started cooking the egg and bacon, I brought a couple of cups of water to a boil in a pan and then spooned in several tablespoons of the grits. I stired them up good and then turned down the heat for them to simmer. I checked them along and added water as needed. When about 45 minutes had past, I checked the grits, they still needed some time but I figured that when I finished the egg, bacon and toast, the grits would be ready.

You can check package instructions, search the internet, and talk to anyone you like but let me tell you, regardless of what you read, see or hear, there are really three immutable laws of grit preparation: (1) It always takes more water than the recipe states, (2) The amount of grits you put in always produces more finished product than the recipe states and (3) The cooking time required is longer than the recipe says it is.

Needless to say, when the egg, bacon and toast were ready, my real grits were just barely getting there. I severed up a helping, put on some butter and salt and ate breakfast. When I had finished breakfast, I went back to the kitchen to check the grits which were still simmering on the top of the stove. They were in need of water and nearing the point of being completely ready to eat. If this had been some instant grits or even quick grits, I would have probably just dumped the whole mess in the garbage, but when you spend so much time on a dish, you get invested in it. So I added some more water and let them continue to simmer. Later in the morning, I remembered them. They were in significant need of water this time but when I added the water and tasted them, the grits were just right. I allowed them to cool for awhile then put them in a covered bowl and stuck them in the refrigerator.

This morning at breakfast time, I was out of eggs , out of bacon and still laying low from the flu. I examined my choices and decided that a few strips of fried bologna , a piece of cheese toast and the bowl of left over grits warmed in the microwave would serve the purpose. I was right. Leftover grits heated in the microwave and seasoned with the appropriate amount of butter and salt are not bad at all.