Subscription TV is the wave of the future

I think Netflix and services like that will change permanently the way we watch episodic TV. We plowed through the whole Breaking Bad series in a couple of months and now we're watching Weeds, several episodes at a time several nights a week. I can't go back to 13 weekly episodes once a year, season after season.  

It's like waiting in line at Six Flags when you've enjoyed a no-line pass before. It's intolerable. 

We're spoiled rotten.

America conquered from within by dhimmitude

As Muslim hordes metastasized across southern Europe during the early Middle Ages, only the Christian's stood in their way. Finally Pope Urban II realized that the best defense is a good offense, thus the Crusades were begun to purge Europe of the infestation of Islamic savages. 

Fast forward to present day and you'd think the Muslims had won the Crusade wars. A small Christian college in Wisconsin used the nickname "Crusaders" for their sports teams for the last 50 years, but not any more. According to the dhimmi administrator who explained the change, that name had "become outdated in a more global society”.

Gag me with a spoon!

I'm sure the historical irony is completely lost on that smarmy bureaucrat that the word "Islam" means submission as she submits her Christian school to our sworn Muslim enemy without even a fight.

Hat tip to Moonbattery. 

The count down to Amanda Knox posing in Maxim starts in 3...2...1

A kangaroo court in Italy found Amanda Knox guilty, then not-guilty, then guilty once again of the murder of her roommate Meridith Kercher. If I were Amanda's adviser, I'd tell her to abandon any thoughts of ever returning to Italy or traveling to any country with which Italy has an extradition agreement. The US won't send her back because of our double-jeopardy law. The US cannot, by law, extradite a US citizen to another country if that citizen wouldn't serve time for the same thing here. Amanda Knox was found not-guilty and she cannot be retried here for that crime, so she cannot be extradited to Italy.

Still, it would be a shame to see Amanda go to jail for like 25 years. She's just too cute for jail. I mean isn't that the standard by which we decline to jail our prettiest, but misbehaving female teachers? And every guy in the US secretly knows that Amanda will run out of money at some point and start doing photo spreads in FHM and Maxim. She can't pose for pics from jail in Italy.

George Lucas' wife is a shameless hypocrite

Mellody Hobson went on MSNBC this week to shill for Obama's ridiculous income-inequality meme from the SOTU speech on Tuesday. She bleated about how unfair it is that America's CEO's make 354 times more than their employees.(if it weren't for the idiotic minimum wage, they'd be making a lot more than that.) 

Without a hint of shame or embarrassment she omitted the glaringly obvious, which is that her husband, George Lucas, is worth $7.3 Billion. He makes tens of thousands of times more than his employees. But I guess that's ok with bimbo, hypocrite, arm-candy Mellody because she's got access to $7.3 Billion.

But it's not ok for any other CEO's to make a lot of money, just her husband. 

George married a black woman and voted for Obama.....in the eyes of liberals, he's forever blameless for being a rich white guy, having ruined the Indiana Jones series with the dreadful "Crystal Skull" movie notwithstanding.

Snowstorm 2014 looked like a Hollywood production of a zombie movie

Hwy 280 is one of the main roads exiting Birmingham to the south and east. Thousands of abandoned and wrecked cars still litter all roads leading out of B'ham this morning. My work is closed for the day, but my wife is a nurse at Children's Hospital so she had to come in. The neighborhood roads were still dicey to drive on, but we made it in safely.

I thought this picture was hilarious because as these cars were being abandoned during the snow on Tuesday, I'm sure the people walking away from them looked exactly like zombies ambling around aimlessly looking for a way home.

Heh heh, if we can't laugh at the suffering of others, what's left to live for?

First-world problems

So my wife and I are still stuck at Children's Hospital in B'ham where she works. We spent a mostly sleepless night on her office floor. Last night everybody gathered in the conference room and watched American Hustle on the overhead projector, ate Subway $5 footlongs, and stayed warm.

The roads are still dicey to drive on and traffic on the "closed" interstates are gridlocked with people trying to finally make it home today. We'll be leaving on our trek within the hour. Not sure how far we'll make it.

It occurred to me as I typed this that I might sound like I'm complaining, but whining about being stranded in a warm, safe hospital office, being well fed, and entertained by no less than 7 forms of media (texting, Facebook, email, blogging here, radio, TV, and watching pirated movies with snacks) strikes me as definitely a first-world problem. So I'm not really complaining about being stranded still, just updating our status for you. It could be a lot worse.

US military doing everything except winning wars

I just read where the Pentagon spent $200 million over the last 5 years to teach the completely illiterate Afghan army to read and perform math, both on a first grade level.....and they failed. These guys can't read their own names and apparently don't know how many hookah pipes they'd have left if you took one away from the two they had.

What were we doing, teaching them in English? And why do they need to know how to read? All they need to know for our purposes is how to kill terrorists. Who cares if they can calculate the 10% tip on $10?

The US military isn't a meals-on-wheels outfit. It's not a Reading is Fundamental program. And it's not a program for boosting the self-esteem of our enemies by acknowledging their imaginary contributions to western civilization.

If they aren't killing people over there in the pursuit of some worthwhile goal, bring them home.

Conditions worsen in the Tragic City

The motto of Birmingham is "The Magic City", but for many reasons we denizens call it something else

This has been the scene out in front of my building here at UAB in Birmingham for the last 3-4 hours. Nothing is moving. There's a traffic jam in my parking deck because there's no place to exit into traffic.

The temperature is in the low 20's already and dropping so none of this will melt, it'll only get more slick. I've heard that the roads are treacherous enough that people are abandoning their cars....heh heh, I know at least one weatherman, James Spann(the most prominent weather man in town) abandoned his car and is on foot. He tweeted a picture of it. To have missed the forecast this badly and then to have gotten stranded by your own incompetence is probably not a good argument for a raise this year.

I might have to spend the night in my lab if this doesn't improve before dark. Bummer!

Southerners don't know how to act when it snows

For those of you outside the US south, it rarely snows here so we don't really know how to act when it does. Well, right now it's snowing like crazy here in Birmingham and literally everybody in the city has decided to race home at the same time, creating a hilarious city-wide traffic jam where nobody gets home.

We don't have salt trucks or scrapers and the infrastructure to deal with any accumulation, so we do the next best thing, drive like lunatics on icy roads on the way to buy absurd amounts of milk and bread. Why we consume more milk and bread when it snows is anybody's guess, but the shelves in area grocery stores are barren already.

Anyway, get a good laugh at us while you can.

"Brain dead" means you're dead, mine as well pull the plug now

So before all of you wigged out moms out there stop having your kids' tonsils removed because you're convinced it's an inherently dangerous surgery because of what happened to Jahi McMath, let's review her case:

First, at only 13, she was already morbidly obese to the point that she had already had two throat surgeries to open her breathing passages. This girl slept with a continuous positive airway pressure "cpap" machine to keep her ventilated.

The surgeries were in the immediate vicinity of her tonsils and there was lots of scar tissue in the area. Her problems, which were described to her family when they signed the risk waiver, included uncontrollable bleeding due to the scar tissue and obesity.....and sadly that's what happened. The hospital or surgeons are not liable for her demise, sad though it may be.

Which brings us to the condition of "brain death". Every cell in the body contains organelles called lysosomes. They are responsible for killing the cell when it is sick or damaged so that the rest of the body doesn't get affected. When the brain ceases to be electrically active, as Jahi's did, within a few hours the lysosomes start destroying the brains cells and the brain quickly turns to a liquidy pudding-like gel. It is 100% unrecoverable. Any "functions" her family observed were brain-stem in origin or simply reflexive, not cognitive responses to stimuli. How her family failed to understand this is weird, they can't be that dumb.

They should have said their goodbye's and let her go. I'm sure the lawyers are circling the family to compete for the right to cash in by suing the hospital and its insurers. They know that nothing appeals to a jury of twelve dumb people like a dead 13 year old minority girl dying in the care of a deep-pocketed corporation.

Her tonsillectomy would probably have been routine had it not been for the complicating factors associated with her obesity......that's her family's fault.

The actual state of the union

Ahead of the SOTU speech tomorrow night, I thought I'd share this telling graphic that highlights the actual state of the union. Obama will focus on income inequality and probably use lots of thinly disguised euphemisms for income redistribution, but he cannot deny that on his watch, not George Bush's, all these economic indicators have gone horribly in the wrong direction, affecting low income Americans more than those with money.....read it an weep,

CNN just doesn't get it

Over at the hyper-liberal fever swamp known as DailyKos, their headline today was, 

In quest to 'redefine the news' CNN lays off more than 40 journalists

Heh heh, who knew there were actual "journalists" still employed at CNN?

Apparently they'll try to gain back some market-share from dominant FOXNews by sticking different news readers in front of the cameras. The only way that'll work is if the news readers are naked chicks. 

Price gouging in times of trouble is a good thing

[Regular reader David sent this story in. If I've been over it once, I've been over it a dozen times, the price of commodities during emergencies should be allowed to find where ever the equilibrium exists. The needs of everybody are met far sooner than with price controls or laws making gouging illegal.]

So NPR ran a very predictable story about how a renegade cab company in Manhattan is gouging riders during peak demand times, charging as much as $192 for what should be a $65 fare. As I understand it, these UBER cabs are just individuals who've signed up to give people rides. They can work as much or as little as they like when the dispatcher reports a fare request.

During high-demand times such as torrential rain, heavy snow, extreme cold, etc., regular cabs may not be available so that's when the UBER people swoop in to meet the demand. The catch is that the price for a ride might jump as high as 200% during these high-demand times.

Of course NPR thinks it's gouging, but when the prices are what we think of as outrageous, dozens of drivers grab their cars and race to the high-demand neighborhoods to make profits by providing rides to people who're willing to pay the extra price. Sounds like capitalism to me, doesn't it? With the extra cabs in the area, the demand is met sooner, therefor the price must fall through competition, and the cab fares return to normal far sooner than they would have. Everybody's happy.

If prices are controlled, as they are with regular cabs, then cabbies aren't motivated to brave the elements to sell people rides. When prices are allowed to adjust to demand, then cabbies from all over town move to the area and the demand gets met.

This is the same phenomenon as the price of bottled water in tornado damaged towns, for instance. When the water supply is compromised and the price of bottled water is held low, by law, then the first people into the store hoard the water for themselves because it's so cheap, leaving very little for others. If the price were allowed to rise with increased demand, people would only buy what they really needed and there'd be more left for others. Plus, with higher prices, suppliers outside the area would swoop in to take advantage of the high prices and through competition, the supply increases, therefore the demand decreases, and the price falls back to what it was originally.

This is basic supply/demand/price economics. Every 5th grader should understand this and recognize the stupidity when the government meddles with the system.

Abortion is back in the news

So the abortion issue has been coming up a lot lately in the news cycle, what with the Gosnell verdict, Wendy Davis' filibuster in Texas, and the pro-life demonstrations in DC this week. I just have a couple of things to say, actually more than a couple:

-regardless of your position on choice, should a particular religious doctrine play a role in public policy in a constitutional republic? I would argue no, but you might argue that it's not a religious question but a moral one, but is it any more moral to condemn hundreds of thousands of unwanted babies to a lifetime of poverty, abuse, and dependency?

-on the other hand, the pro choice crowd bleat constantly about a woman's right to do what she wants with her body, as validation of the supposed right to abort at any point during gestation. I totally agree with that statement in theory. If a woman wants to exchange sex for money, it's her body. If a woman wants to enlist the help of a doctor to end her life on her own terms from a terminal disease, I support that too. But at what point does her baby's body belong to it rather than her? Birth? Certainly. Conception? Probably not. So when does that baby have individual rights that supersede the rights of the mother? That's the big question.

Does that point occur as a floating point in gestation after which the baby can survive on its own outside? Medical science moves that gestational date up closer and closer to conception every year. What happens in 50 years or so when they can fertilize and incubate a human baby entirely outside a maternal carrier? Then what?

There's also the economic consideration in a society with limited resources. Should the moral argument always outweigh the economic one? Is it moral or amoral to burden society with the upkeep of hundreds of thousands of unwanted children, perhaps for their entire lives, so we can feel moral as a society? I don't know the answer to that.

And finally, is human life so precious that it must be preserved no matter the cost?

Where I am right now, is that if a knocked-up brood mare cannot figure out that she doesn't want her baby within the first trimester (12 weeks) then she forfeits the right to abort it. I mean how stupid do you have to be to not be able to make that decision in 3 months time? Too stupid to be breeding, that's for sure.

Dawn Zimmer is probably a Hillary operative

This is Hoboken, NJ mayor Dawn Zimmer. She's an incompetent mayor and in all likelihood, a Hillary Clinton ass-kisser. She came out of the blue, almost a year after hurricane Sandy, and accused Chris Christie of withholding redevelopment funds if she didn't approve a development project that one of Christie's donors wanted.

Apparently he story has changed a few times, as the stories of liars often do, and the books show that she received like 70million in relief funds with no strings attached to the governor's office.

It's curious also that her "revelation" happened just as campaign fund raising season is picking up.

My bet is that Hillary's people got to her after the "bridgegate" scandal broke and told her to pile on Christie with another corruption scandal, even if phony, and she would receive a plum administration position in a Hillary white house.

You watch, if Hillary becomes President, Zimmer will end up in her administration either as a smarmy bureaucrat, a low-level cabinet person, or a sweet ambassador to the country of her choosing.

Ohio finds an alternative lethal injection drug

Meet Dennis McGuire. He was found guilty of the 1989 rape and fatal stabbing of a pregnant newlywed, Joy Stewart. In Ohio, the company that supplies the potassium chloride, or whatever drug they used for lethal injections, declined to allow Ohio to use it for that purpose. 

Undeterred, Ohio decided on a cocktail of heavy sedatives and pain killers instead. Apparently this particular combination causes immense terror and agony known medically as "air hunger" as the condemned gasps for air. Who cares? Not me. 

I anesthetized rats for experiments in the early days of my career in science. We used similarly lethal doses of sedatives too, and in my experience, the rats, or Mr. McGuire in this case, would have been so deeply anesthetized that any gasps or sounds would have been totally reflexive and not conscious reactions to pain or agony. The rats' diaphragms would heave involuntarily as they entered respiratory arrest and their hearts would stop beating a few minutes later, but at no time were they conscious for or aware of any of it. 

Besides, his temporary discomfort was nothing compared to Joy Stewart being raped and stabbed, knowing that her baby was dying also. I don't give a damn about this guy or how uncomfortably he went to hell. 

Ann Coulter eviscerates the despicable retard Ed Shultz

Over at MSNBC, the hosts, specifically Ed Shultz and the oddly androgynous Rachel Maddow, love to yell about how no conservatives have the guts to come on their shows. Ed and Rachel apparently think they're exceptionally talented debaters. So in response to Ed Shultz' tweet, esteemed counter-moonbat Ann Coulter responded thusly.......

"Lying pussy." That's strong, heh heh!

Ann specializes in going on liberals' shows and eviscerating them with her superior intellect and wit. They want no part of her on their shows. Milquetoast republicans won't go on MSNBC because they don't have the brains or convictions to effectively debate fever-swamp liberals, but Ann will kill them.

No doubt Ed and Rachel are busily filling up their calendars with liberal guests as an excuse to not have Ann on any time soon.

Who eats food off the floor?

We've all seen friends or family drop food on the floor, scoop it up really fast, look around to see who's watching, and stuff it in their mouths anyway. The question is, can you really eat food off the floor and not expose yourself to who-knows-what kind of germs and does the 3 or 5 second rule really make a difference? 

I have a modified 3-sec rule in my house. Dropped food may be blown on and then eaten within 3 seconds, if and only if, it is dry, e.g. popcorn, pretzels, crackers, M&M's, or chips, etc. Wet food that is dropped on the floor is immediately classified as waste and only an idiot would eat it at that point. Cheese, pizza, soft chocolate, fruit, or anything that you'd call "sticky" falls within the broad definition of "wet" in my book. 

I'm in favor of eating food off the floor under those conditions because I think our society is too obsessed with a germ-free environment. We never let our immune systems do any work because we've sterilized our whole world. I believe this has contributed to the explosion of ridiculous food allergies we've seen as well as made people get sick easier and sicker when they do get exposed. Doctors are all too eager to prescribe antibiotics to patients who probably only have a virus, because a patient who's too dumb to know the difference doesn't want to be told to go home and "ride it out" for a few days. 

So feel free to eat dropped dry food off the floor as long as it doesn't fall in anything nasty and the floors are relatively clean to begin with.   

Why Muslims don't adopt much, if at all

Ever wonder why Muslim adoption is rarely practiced? Well, look no further than the Qaran for the answer. You see, adoptive parents are forbidden by the Qaran from treating their adoptive children the same as their real children....they cannot inherit from the parents and are seen as "less-than" the biological children because they are not blood related. Why would this be forbidden in Islamic culture? Why are the non-blood related children set apart religiously?

The answer is simple.....Mohammad, the deranged inventor of Islam, was a degenerate pedophile who wanted to have sex with every female he saw regardless of her age or relation to him. Mohammad wanted badly to have sex with Zainab, his daughter-in-law, the wife of his adopted son Zayed, but Arab culture forbade it. So what's a lecherous old prophet to do? Why rewrite the Qaran of course. 

Mohammad pretended to have a "revelation" from Allah and declared that because adoptive children aren't blood related, they and more importantly their hottie wives, are available for sex and marriage. 

Must have been nice to be the self-styled prophet to a world of Arab hillbillies who'll believe anything you say.  

What difference at this point, indeed Ms. Clinton, what difference?

Recently declassified documents reveal what everybody in the modern world already know, that is that the administration knew within minutes that the Benghazi attack was terrorist in nature rather than a spontaneous demonstration over some stupid Youtube video.

This proves that each and every time President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Jay Carney, Joe Biden, or anybody else who advanced what is now known to have been a lie, they were lying directly and knowingly to the American people.

You'd think the media would be furious over being lied to, but all I hear are crickets. The ass-kissing media in this country are as deplorable, verminous, and shameful as I can possibly imagine. That they shill for Obama and Clinton is practically constitutional treason since they are supposed to be America's government watchdogs.

These people, specifically Obama and Clinton, aren't fit to be hired county dog catchers, much less President's of the US.

How democrats and the media react

I expect politicians to behave in a corrupt and morally bankrupt manner......they are all corrupt to the core and morally bankrupt after all. What disappoints and dismays me is that the media behave in a similar manner where their politicians are concerned.

If George Bush had been guilty of Benghazi, the IRS intimidation scandal, Solyndra, NSA spying abuses, etc., the media would be demanding impeachment for each scandal, but because it was their personal black savior who committed these atrocities, they dutifully look the other way.

But then the one republican who might be able to compete with Hillary in 2016 for the white house gets involved in a silly political-payback traffic jam and you'd think he'd committed murder on the front lawn of the governor's mansion based on the media's demand for the feds to get involved.

I have literally no respect left for the main-stream media. I despise them all and assume every word from them is tainted with partisanship, because it demonstrably is.

The Finland education model for the US?

This system would work here as long as we take care of the two biggest obstacles: the federalization of education and the teachers' unions.

Finland is a relatively small, homogeneous country where everyone is basically similar. The US is huge and infinitely diverse. Although one could argue that every parent wants the best education for their kids regardless of ethnicity or socio-economic status.

Still, if the responsibility for funding and setting curricula for the schools was a local one, the districts could decide to pay teachers what ever they like. The higher the salaries offered, the more highly-qualified people would compete for those jobs and you could choose the best possible teachers.....that is assuming the unions were abolished, as they should be anyway.

The predictable argument would be that some districts are rich and some are dirt poor and we can't leave education up to the randomness of where you were born. I agree with that. That's why in the US, we institute a federal voucher program. Rather than wasting billions a year on the education lobby with its absurdly top-heavy administrative positions, we assign each student a certain amount of money and parents can spend that money where ever they want their kid to go. Schools then have to compete to get that money by being better schools.

Democrats totally take blacks for granted

Labor force participation among blacks has dropped to a record low of 60.5% under Obama. Fewer blacks are working than at any time in recent history. Yet, the democrat candidate for President will still enjoy 95% voting loyalty among blacks. Why is that?

Craven liberal politicians have successfully convinced generations of blacks that they are incapable of making it on their own, that the game is rigged by whites against them, and that republicans are racists.

None of that is true. It's just what democrat politicians know to say when addressing a black audience. Blacks WERE actually victims in the 60s and before, so it's not much of a leap to convince them that they still are. The crutch of victimhood is easy to accept because standing on your own two feet and being responsible for your self is difficult and requires hard work, determination, and responsible decision making.

If blacks participated in the work force at the same level as everybody else, for fewer of them would feel the need for the help of the democrat party and might decide to vote for their own economic futures rather than voting for more handouts from democrats. This cannot be allowed to happen if democrats want to keep winning elections.

Obama, dumber on economics than a fifth grader

President Obama lied when he said that extending unemployment benefits "creates jobs". Just as Nancy Pelosi lied when she said Obamacare would create "millions of jobs" and the administration lied when they claimed that the $850million stimulus would create millions of jobs. This is a version of the "broken window" fallacy of economics.

The broken window fallacy is the idea that throwing a rock through a shopkeepers window stimulates the economy because the shopkeeper has to replace the window, so the window repairman and window manufacturer make money from the broken window repair. What isn't stated is the missed opportunity for that money to be spent elsewhere.

Without the broken window, the shopkeeper might have spent that money hiring another employee, expanding his business, or spending it elsewhere. Likewise, Obama doling out unemployment checks to one group means that another group now has to do without that money. Contrary to what dumb democrat voters think, the government doesn't have money of it's own. Any money given to one group had to be taken by force by the government from another group. If you don't believe that, try withholding your taxes for a year.

Government handouts do not stimulate the economy or create jobs, it just buys you votes in the next election. The media understands this but they won't report it because it demonstrates the utter lack of economic understanding Obama has or more likely, what a self-serving charlatan he is.

I prefer a more limited government, even if it means I'm slightly less safe from terrorists

Rep. Peter King's nightly lamentations on Fox News about terrorism notwithstanding, this sort of sums it up for me. Until I see any tangible damage or lives lost that wouldn't have been otherwise, I think it's more important for our government to maintain constitutional strictness than for it to know what Angela Merkel ordered from QVC at 3 in the morning. Nor am I convinced that these data-gathering programs are vitally necessary to stop terrorism.

And it's not about what it's supposed to do with phone calls, or what it has done with phone calls and emails. It's what it could potentially do at some point in the future with that information given the right motivation of the right politician.

If you dangle a carrot in front of a hungry donkey long enough, he'll find a way to get through the fence to get it.

Likewise, if you dangle the power that comes with this much data on people, in front of the right corrupt politician, he will find a way around the Constitution to access it....like maybe via the Patriot Act.

Different media standard for Christie than for Obama

Chris Christie's denial that he had prior knowledge of his staff closing lanes of the GW Bridge in order to punish the mayor of the town at the NJ end of it for not endorsing Christie, is wholly believable to me. I mean, even if you believe Christie is a bully and plays dirty ball with political enemies, what does that gain him? How does that punish the mayor of that town? It's a stupid way to play pay-back and Christie may be a lot of things, but stupid isn't one of them.

Yet the media continue to dig to try to find the smoking gun that links Christie to the closings.....which if found would sink his presidential ambitions completely. Obviously the media want badly to find confirmation because Christie is the lone republican that can challenge Hillary for the White House in 2016.

All that said, why don't the media hold Obama to the same standard of knowledge of, or at least awareness of, what those immediately under him are up to. He claimed ignorance over Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the Obamacare web-sight build-up and roll-out, the IRS-TEA Party scandal, etc.

The media let him claim ignorance at every turn. By his own admission, he's the most ignorant President we've ever had.

Kim Jong Un......WOW!

As you know, North Korea's morbidly obese dictator Kim Jong-Un is at least as brutal as his father. Well, it appears his brutality has surpassed almost anything we've seen.

He accused his own flesh-and-blood uncle of plotting to overthrow the government and seize power, then sentenced him to death, but not by the typical firing squad. The uncle and 5 of his closest advisers were stripped naked and thrown into a cage full of 120 hunting hounds that had been starved for 5 days.

Kim and a couple hundred others watched the dogs maul the 6 people to death as if they were watching a World Cup match or something. They probably sold popcorn and soft drinks for the event.

I can't think of anything more barbaric. His own uncle!