Mr. Sullivan’s hand-carved rooster
Ξ January 30th, 2008 | → 1 Comments | ∇ Things I like |
Cheria and I have a good friend who loves to whittle, carve, and create all types of wooden crafts, including decorative roosters like the friendly fellow pictured above. We had the opportunity to take my 80 year old mom to visit them a few days ago, and before we left Mr. Sullivan presented this fine specimen to her.Well, Cheria and I stopped by to see mom tonight before heading to church, and while we were there I snapped this picture.
Mom has always been quite the craftsperson herself, so I grew up watching her “magically” turn stack after stack of raw materials (what some people might refer to as scraps) into country works of art. Although not one bit of her talent rubbed off on me, she certainly managed to instill the love of handmade craft items deep down into my soul.
That’s why I like this little wooden rooster so much. It reminds me of all those precious moments in my past when I would watch mom create her masterpieces, one by one, until she had little room left in our home for anything else. Well, except for her abundant love.
And now we know that Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan are skilled craftspeople themselves (she creates all kinds of intricate paintings, including the coloring on those rascally roosters). Not only are the Sullivans wonderful people, but their hobbies remind me a great deal of my amazing mom.
The 2008 presidential race gets a little less crowded
Ξ January 30th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ My thoughts on... |
The field of candidates in this year’s Presidential race has gotten a little thinner after yesterday’s Florida primaries. John Edwards has already announced that he is ending his futile bid to be the Democratic party’s nominee, and Republican Rudolph Giuliani is expected to follow suit later today.
Of the two, Edwards had perhaps the best chance to win his party’s nomination because he at least competed in the early primaries, garnering a respectful number of delegates while Giuliani inexplicably chose to sit out all of the contests that took place before Florida. Giuliani’s decision to put all his eggs in the Florida basket proved to be a huge mistake, and after coming in a distant third last night he made the wise decision to simply give it up.
The electorate is so split this year that I expect the races for the nominations of both parties to go right through to their respective conventions. At this point it’s way too early to predict who will be at the top of the tickets come November, but whoever it turns out to be, they can certainly count on having to put up a hard fight for the White House.
Flat panel televisions are taking over the market
Ξ January 30th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Technology |
If you haven’t paid a visit to your favorite home electronics retailer lately, you just might be surprised what you’ll find over in the television section. Over the course of the last year or so the once ubiquitous “Tube TV” has been more or less replaced by flat panel models. In fact, that’s all you’ll find in many stores nowadays.
Thanks to recent large price drops in LCD and plasma display screens, the prices of flat panel TV’s have fallen to the point where they are now pretty close to those of high-quality tube models, making the bulky icons of yesteryear little more than a fading memory. It is already virtually impossible to find a new computer monitor that doesn’t sport a thin, cool-looking LCD screen, and it’s just a matter of time before the television industry follows suit.
Of course we can thank the amazing advances being made in digital technology for this historic shift, and within a year or two virtually all new television sets will be High Definition models - and they will likely be available at amazingly low prices.
Wireless memory cards
Ξ January 30th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Technology |
A few months ago a company by the name of Eye-Fi released an SD memory card that can transfer the image files it contains directly to a PC attached to a wireless network without removing the card from the camera. In fact, it can even transfer those files over the Internet to over a dozen online social networking and photo sharing sites.
The Eye-Fi card became so popular, so quickly that several other memory card manufacturers are forging ahead with their own versions of wireless storage devices. This of course includes Sandisk, the 800 pound gorilla in that market.
The 2GB version of the Eye-Fi card is priced at right at $100, but now that competition is entering the marketplace that price is sure to drop like a rock, and as larger capacity devices become available the 2GB units will eventually be fairly inexpensive.
Yet another unconscionable lawsuit
Ξ January 29th, 2008 | → 1 Comments | ∇ My thoughts on... |
Here’s the scenario: In 2004 a man was driving his Audi A8 through the La Rioja region of Spain at over 100 miles per hour (the speed limit was 55) when he struck and killed another man who was riding a bicycle. The ensuing investigation revealed that the cyclist was partially at fault for the accident because he was riding at night without reflective clothing or a helmet, but the speeder was primarily at fault due to his blinding (and illegal) speed.
I suppose you can guess what’s happening now. Yep, the abusive driver is suing the parents of the young man he killed for almost $30,000 to repair the damage the impact from the victim’s body did to his precious luxury car. I kid you not.
From a legal standpoint, perhaps there is indeed grounds to sue. After all, the deceased was found to be partially at fault in the accident. But from a moral point of view, I would rather spend the rest of my days walking rather than add insult to injury by suing the family of a man I had struck and killed while driving twice the legal speed limit. Call me crazy…
“Seat belts”
Ξ January 28th, 2008 | → 3 Comments | ∇ My thoughts on... |
I absolutely refused to wear “safety belts” when I first started driving. After all, they were completely optional then, and as a strapping 16 year old I was invincible, completely immune to even the possibility of becoming involved in an auto accident.
Then one by one I started hearing about people my age and younger who had lost their lives in accidents, and the police on the scene usually opined that they likely would have survived had they been buckled up. It took a while for me to become convinced, but by the time the Commonwealth of Virginia enacted a mandatory seat belt law, I had already been using mine for several years.
I guess my initial stubbornness regarding the use of seat belts stemmed from my experiences as a child. Back in the 1960’s my family made frequent 300 mile road trips, and not a one of us ever buckled up. In fact, the first cars I can remember riding in didn’t even have seat belts! And what happened when we bought our first car that had them? My dad cut them out!
There the whole bunch of us would go, riding for hundreds of miles at a time down a busy two-lane highway, sitting in the seats, in the floorboard, on each other’s laps… and all without a trace of a safety belt. I can even remember sleeping up on the back dashboard where I would come rolling off into the seat below whenever dad slammed on the brakes!
Now I’m not criticizing dad and mom in the least. Times were different then because most cars didn’t have seat belts at all, and the ones that did were almost always driven by people who thought them to be more of a nuisance than a safety feature. Our family was just like every other family of the era. But as I grew older and wiser, I came to realize that we had all been wrong - just like every other family.
It’s hard to understand why some people still refuse to buckle up in this day and age, especially with the local TV newscasters providing the gory details of yet another traffic fatality virtually every day. I guess they’re a lot like the misguided folks who refuse to wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle. “Surely it can’t happen to me - I’m invincible!”
Why “Talk Radio” is a bastion of conservatism
Ξ January 23rd, 2008 | → 2 Comments | ∇ My thoughts on... |
Like it or not, it’s a proven fact that with the exception of the Fox News Channel and a relative handful of fair-minded newspapers and magazines, the majority of America’s print and broadcast news outlets report the news with a strong liberal bias, but talk radio is by and large a bastion of conservatism. Have you ever wondered why that is?
The answer to that question is pretty simple really: Print and broadcast news is for the most part a one-way flow of information. The New York Times, MSNBC, and other media outlets of their ilk can print or say anything they want without having to back up their “reports” with the facts. Once a story goes out, there is no practical way to refute it or present an opposing viewpoint to the same audience through that same medium.
Now, contrast that with talk radio and you’ll easily see where the differences lie. Virtually every successful talk radio show consists of two components: Commentary on the news of the day and a back-and-forth exchange of ideas and opinions about those stories between the host and a number of guests.
Some of those guests are “experts” who weigh in with their unique insights, but a large percentage of them are just ordinary folks from the heartland like you and me. You call up, wait on hold, and if you’re patient enough you’ll often get to offer your own views on the topic at hand to a national audience, even if they are in diametric opposition to those of the host - but be prepared to defend them.
There are a handful of liberal talk radio hosts out there, but my guess is you can’t name one of them. There was even a liberal talk radio network called “Air America” that attempted to compete head-on with the time-tested conservative shows, but it went belly-up after just a year or two - and that was with them actually paying radio stations around the country to carry their programming!
The downfall of liberal talk radio is the very thing that makes its conservative counterpart so successful: the free exchange of ideas and debates between the hosts and their guests. For the most part, liberal ideals simply fall flat on their faces when subjected to the twin pressures of critical thought and facts that prove them to be either impractical or simply plain wrong.
The fact of the matter is that the traditional “one-way” print and broadcast news outlets are the only venues where liberal ideas can be expounded upon with success, because wherever they are faced with active opposition they always collapse under the combined weight of common sense and the facts. But you have to give the liberals credit. They knew this years ago so they wisely bought-up the bulk of the nation’s traditional media outlets in order to gain control over them.
The Fox News Channel on cable is the one major television news outlet where conservative views are given a fair shake. Why? Because it follows the talk radio model in welcoming guests with opposing viewpoints, and plenty of them. And as with the talk radio shows, Fox’s liberal hosts and guests usually end up looking foolish after trying to defend their typically nonsensical views.
Diane Keaton’s cursing on live TV
Ξ January 22nd, 2008 | → 2 Comments | ∇ My thoughts on... |
By now you have probably heard about actress Diane Keaton’s use of a variation of the “F” word on ABC’s “Good Morning America”. Keaton’s so-called slip-of-the-tongue is just the latest in a series of foul-mouthed appearances on live TV, and thanks to a June 2007 ruling by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals it appears that the FCC won’t be able to do a thing about it.
The good news is that Congress is working on legislation to overturn the activist court ruling, but in the meantime the TV networks themselves need to take a very strong proactive approach towards stopping this type of nonsense. They should make it clear that any “guest” or TV personality who lets an explicative fly on live TV will be barred from ever appearing on that network again.
Even more effective would be a 10 second delay for all live television broadcasts, during which time the abusive word itself and the entire sentence in which it was spoken would be bleeped out. At that point the interview should be halted and the “guest” barred from future appearances on the network.
Incidents like this one are just the latest symptom of the coarsening of America which began with the social activism of the 1960’s, and if the good people of our country fail to stand up against this kind of trash, things will only get worse and worse until we no longer even recognize ourselves as a God-fearing and God-blessed nation.
Next Page »
