Tuesday, November 27, 2007

California Peeing


I always thought that the water in southern California tasted like crap, starting the end of this month this will be literally the case.
... here in Orange County, pulling the lever will be the start of a long, intense process to purify the sewage into drinking water — after a hard scrubbing with filters, screens, chemicals and ultraviolet light and the passage of time underground.

Avoiding blogging today

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Happy Turkey Day

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.




We got our first real snow last night that has stuck to the ground. It won't be melting anytime soon with projected daily highs only of 30 and 32.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Buyers Remorse


This month has brought two of my coworkers little bundles of sleep deprivation and anxiety - all costs of having a new born. It amazing how much new parents complain about their choice now, but within a year have absolutely no memory of what you're talking about.

On a related note Amelia Tyagi has a provocative book called the The Two-income Trap where she argues that changes in society have created a situation where having a child has become the greatest indicator of who will file bankruptcy. MJ has an interview with Amelia Tyagi discussing the finding in her book.

Definition leCondel

Hebrew slang created by Israeli government officials. Derived from the name of the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, meaning to come and go to meetings that produce few results.

More Colorado Insanity

Colorado, like California, ranges politically from the lunatic authoritarian Christan ring-wing nuts of Colorado Springs to the whacked out self-absorbed people's republic of Boulder. Usually both groups are kept contained within in their respective reservations, but recently the christofascists emerged from their caves to annoy the rest of us.

The Colorado Supreme Court cleared the way Tuesday for an anti-abortion group to collect signatures for a ballot measure that would define a fertilized egg as a person.


While I see where they are going with this, their lack of understanding basic human biology means that the law would define nearly every sexually active woman as committing murder when one of her fertilized eggs doesn't implant. So even if it passes, it will clog the courts and waste everyone's time getting it overturned. When the left uses the law to harass business the right has a fit, but when they do the same thing, they turn a blind eye.

Thanks to Brilliant at Breakfast for pointing this out.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Ask500People Poles

Ask 500 People is an online community Poling site. By adding their script to your site, anyone who visits your site can vote on the question of the day. One hundred of the votes are taken at random to be used for the survey. The attempt here is to create a meaningful survey by using random selection. Unfortunately since the online community isn't itself random, there is a built in bias. Still the results can be interesting. The potential survey questions are submitted by the community and ranked. If enough people vote for a question, it becomes part of the pole.


First Snow

Well technically at least. Woke up to a thin frosting of the white stuff in our back yard. It only took a couple hours of day light to make it go away, so it didn't disturb Kelly one bit.

Thursday, November 08, 2007

What Fantasy Character Are You?

Take the quiz to find out.

Strange little quiz. I'm a Neutral Good Half-Elf Barbarian.

Alignment:
Law and Chaos:
Law ----- (2)
Neutral - (3)
Chaos --- (3)

Good and Evil:
Good ---- (2)
Neutral - (1)
Evil ---- (-1)

Race:
Human ---- (8)
Half-Elf - (9)
Elf ------ (5)
Gnome ---- (4)
Halfling - (1)
Dwarf ---- (4)
Half-Orc - (8)

Class:
Fighter -- (7)
Barbarian- (12)
Ranger --- (10)
Monk ----- (7)
Paladin -- (8)
Cleric --- (8)
Mage ----- (7)
Druid ---- (8)
Thief ---- (-5)
Bard ----- (9)

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Chinese offshoring to less developed parts of US

The up-and-coming Chinese solar power manufacturer Suntech, is considering building solar cell manufacturing facilities in the United States.
"We are currently in discussion with the governors of three different states who have been recruiting us to build factories," said Roger Efird, president of Suntech America, the company's U.S. subsidiary, on a Solar Energy Industries Association conference call. "And we have actually begun looking at sites..."

Canine Humor


From the Nov 6, 2007 Overboard.

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Who to vote for?

Presidential elections have a tendency to degenerate into popularity contests. So to help voters select a candidate consistent with their world view, Glassbooth has just introduced an online survey that matches you with a candidate.

The survey proceeds in two steps. You begin by distributing points among priority issues, such as drugs, trade, social security, Iraq & foreign policy, and so forth. Then based on your answers in the first part of the survey, a series of questions are generated to match you up with a candadate.