Science vs Idiocy!

What is it with people and hating science?

You have a whole slew of idiots who completely reject the Theory of Evolution (btw, Happy Darwin Day!) and "back up" their ideas with completely unrelated, false, or otherwise unscientific reasoning, or just downright lie about it. Then they complain they're not given a fair amount of time beside Evolution. This is sort of like saying that Geocentric view deserves as much attention, thought, and teaching time as does the Heliocentric view of the universe. Yet, people cling to their outdated, deceitful, and idiotic views, just because they find the truth of science to be incompatible with their faith. (Also, you can't use it as anti-religious, because plenty of people accept the truth of the Theory of Evolution while practicing their faith, including the Catholic Church).

Then you have the morons who waste our time and tax money in court cases based on Evolution vs. Creationism (or Intelligent Design more recently). However, at least their following their faith. Albeit blindly and idiotically. But they do at least have some excuse.

Unlike these idiots. The anti-vaccination movement promotes the idea that modern vaccinations, such as the MMR for children, actually cause Autism, along with other Neurological Disorders, such as ADHD or Asperger's. Most scientists say otherwise, as does the research.

They claim they know better than basically every major health related organization and study that has been done on the subject. And all because "my kid called me mommy until they got this vaccine." Classic case of post hoc ergo propter hoc (and if you don't know, that's Latin for "after this therefore because of this). And a classic case of good ole fashioned American stupidity at work. I'm not saying the Food & Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, Institute of Medicine, and the World Health Organization are perfect and never make mistakes, though I do doubt they all make the same mistake very often, but I'd tend to trust them in matters of Health & Safety long before Jenny McCarthy. Yes, the former Playboy model happens to be one of the spokespeople for this idiotic anti-vaccination movement with her Generation Rescue organization, a couple of books, and several painful to watch interviews. She seems to think she knows more than the experts in the field who do research on the topic. I guess posing nude on camera gives you some advanced intelligence in matters of health and science that years of training and education at universities doesn't afford.

Yeah, that's likely. And I think I'll stick to listening to the scientists on the matter, instead of some glorified ex-stripper.

Jim Carrey seems to stay a little more silent about the whole thing. I get the feeling that it's more of a "whatever you say honey" type approach.

And here's the kicker on all of it. The 1998 paper by Andrew Wakefield that is credited by many to have got the "anti-vaccination" movement started, and at the very least sparked a large recruitment for the movement, was most likely faked. That's right, Wakefield made it all up, and these idiotic people are still carrying his torch of lies. Way to go morons.

The Media Blame Game

For the last 6 months, it's been anybody's turn to guess wrong in how the market will act that day. It's up, it's down, it went left? Though, it has mostly gone down, unfortunately. The point is, it has been volatile and, for the most part, unpredictable.

Geithner gets up on stage Tuesday and delivers a very bland, anti-climatic layout of the proposed actions for the 2nd half of the TARP funds. Layout is very kind, let's say, he has a very basic idea of some things to do with the money, and no real plan to speak of, which is far from what we were promised by Obama the previous day. And on this day, major stock indexes fell roughly 4%. Including the Dow Jones Industrial average falling 382 points.

So, in this turbulent time, when stock prices are completely wacky to begin with, let's just throw all the blame for the latest market tumble at Geithner. It's all your fault!

Now, don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm not upset and worried about the fact that there is no real plan for the funds, as was promised as late as the previous day. I just find it a bit pretentious to focus all the blame on one man. You can't even put all the blame on the administration. You want someone to really blame? Start looking at bank executives. Start with the people who really let this current recession and financial crisis develop.

That said, Obama, Geithner and the rest of the administration really needs to flesh out a real and working plan quickly, like within a week. Maybe I'm a little demanding, but they did promise we'd have it on Tuesday, then botched the attempt, after all.

Rush Limbaugh: Anti-American?

Of course he is.

Limbaugh: "I hope Obama fails."

Does the man not understand that if Obama "fails" this country and most everyone in it is doomed? He is all but cheerleading for the demise of this country he claims falsely to love so much. He loves his failed ideology and the sound of his own voice far more than this country or anyone else in it.

And as far as Bush not getting a "free pass" his first year.  Well, let's think. He was on Vacation, at his ranch, or just plain doing nothing for nearly a third of the time before 9/11, and then he got his "free pass" for his first year, and the next 3, even though he didn't deserve it then, or now. So cram it.

Limbaugh has long been the voice of the Conservative Right.  So now, I guess their message is "WAHH! WE LOST SO I HOPE THE WHOLE DAMNED COUNTRY GOES UNDER!" Real mature you hapless fanatically religious kooks.

Fox News, onenewsnow.com, Limbaugh, Hannity, and O'Reilly, and every dingbat who follows them blindly, this is directed at you:

The United States of America is no longer a country for your 

hatred, no matter how "righteous" you think it may be. We no

longer want you attempting to poison our politics, children, and

lives with your crazy ideas, inane commentary, and falsified 

biased news. We never want to hear from you again. Go away 

and find a new place to spew your bile.

Who honestly listens to these hate peddlers now anyway? 

Whoever you are, you should be ashamed of yourself!

Victimization

I've become the latest victim of the right-wing propaganda machine. NOOOOO!!!!!

During President Obama's swearing in, the lines got mangled and the pace was an atrocity. I thought "Wow, his nerves are going so crazy, he's having trouble with the swearing in." initially.  I thought of it as the first Obama goof (we all know he will make some during speaking, it's inevitable). No big deal, kind of funny actually.

As all the news outlets talk about it (as if they talked about anything else all day on 1/20/09), they kept saying that Chief Justice Roberts was the one in error. I thought it extremely odd the first time I heard it, but by the 10th time, I was thinking "Wow, the media is really going to extreme lengths to not say Obama screwed up at all, even though it wasn't a big screw up."  I created a "conspiracy" of the news media in my own head.

Today, I heard the pace and wording from Bush's 2005 swearing in. It was the exact pace Obama tried to follow.  And where Obama stumbled on the words, it was because they were the incorrect words for the actual Oath of Office. He paused, as if pondering if he should say the correct oath, or repeat Chief Justice Robert's incorrect directions.  He did opt to go with the latter.

As soon as I heard it all... FACEPALM!!!

Victimized by the Right-Wing. Then again, what else is new after 8 years of Bush.

Economics 101 at Harvard...

Must be a complete waste of time.

I know, I know. Who the hell am I to make such a claim?

Well, I apparently know more about economics than a senior Economics lecturer at Harvard.  He says to cut taxes but not increase spending in order to end or moderate the current recession.  And anyone who has taken even a basic Economics class at any university (or possibly even in High School) will be able to tell you that both methods are effective at minimizing recessions.

I understand he's saying not just to spend on insane projects, which I completely agree with, but his idea of what is an insane project seems to encompass everything.  Instead of increasing spending to repair failing bridges, highways, and roads, he wants to implement more tolls and higher tolls during rush hour.  Yes, this is definitely a good help for a battered economy where millions are struggling to survive as is.  New & Higher tolls will definitely help those people.  Oh, and how about we repeal some wage laws for construction and dangerous jobs too.  Make sure those poor people get poorer by both lowering their salary and increasing their expenses.

Spend some money on research for renewable fuels.  Who could argue with such a thing?  Well, Jeffrey A. Miron for one.  He says the appropriate policy is not increased research for renewable fuels, but raising taxes on fossil fuels, which will enhance the private sector's incentive to do the research on renewable fuels themselves.  The private sector in this case would be mostly oil and energy companies.  Do they really care if you raise the taxes? Nope.  They just pass on the taxes directly to the consumer.  Another case of adding to all American's expenses. Oh, and this won't increase any research at the same time it does this.  This is a horrid idea.

Education? No, don't spend more money there either.  He does make some good points about eliminating policies that limit efficiency (No Child Left Behind, anyone?), but at the same time, more spending on education in this country would be a good thing.  That's investment in the future and a huge step forward in eliminating at least some of the crazy hate speech by everyday Americans we saw so much of during the campaign season this year.  Standardized tests and funding based on "graduation" levels needs to go away.  If you want a reward system, randomly selected students from each district take a short essay test administered by each state, and reward based on the scores.  This prevents the whole "we'll pass you even though you're a brain dead moron, because we don't want to take a hit to our funding" crap that happens constantly under the current system.

I do agree that spending definitely needs to be done outside the normal scope.  We don't need 10,000 new Zoos. But repairing our highway and interstate systems is not a waste of money, and does put people to work and will help our economy.  Renewable energy will create long term jobs and will help us move away from OPEC oil. Ending the Iraq war would enable quite a bit to be done here at home, and increase the troop and equipment totals in Afghanistan, where we should be to begin with.  And while spending can "lag" in its effect to the economy, there are many projects already scouted out that can be started immediately.  They are sitting around, waiting on the go ahead from the government.  The "lag" would be 2-3 months at most.  And who really thinks we won't still be in need of some stimulus in March or April?

Oh, and I don't know who Mr. Miron is wanting to give these tax cuts too, but if it's the rich (as the Bush tax cuts were) they are pointless.  Reganomics and the "top down" ideas work great on paper, but fail in the real world.  The real world has something that paper tends to forget.  Greed.  You give a man who's made his millions in the cutthroat business/corporate world, do you really think he's going to allow that money to "trickle" down? He didn't become a success and a millionaire by allowing his money to trickle away from him.  Oh yeah, you Regan fans should remember, he spent tax money like crazy, more than tripling our national debt during his Presidency.

drop = dead phone = new phone = new Apple fan.

Yesterday, I decided to be an idiot and basically ended up with my iPhone dropping off a table and landing screen down on a tile floor. I pick it up afterwards, and it's nothing but a white screen and some lines going down the left half of it. I was ready to cry.

I ended up finding out that the phone was still working, it was just the screen that was fried. I could still answer calls by sliding my finger across the white screen when it rang. Talked on it several times. Making calls out was basically impossible, since you could see nothing on the screen except white though.

24 hours I had to wait with my busted iPhone before I could get an appointment with the Genius Bar at my local Apple store.  I really didn't realize how much I depend on and use the phone until I was forced to be without it. And I was surfing the web looking for fixes, since the suggested idea of running a restore didn't work, not that I really expected it to. I found some people who had successfully traded their phones out after just such an occasion.  However, it seemed like there were just as many who had been told "no" by Apple. I was very nervous.

So tonight I walked into the Apple store hoping I wasn't about to have to shell out another wad of dough for a second iPhone, but basically resigned that I was going to end up throwing a fit, being told no anyway and settling on buying another phone anyway.  However, I walked in, and with minimal questions and in minimal time, I was walking out with a brand new iPhone that looked exactly like my last one.

With customer service being a dying art, I'm now a huge fan of Apple.  I can't say that I'll completely abandon PC however. I still like gaming and Apple is not the system for such a thing. However, I'm pretty sure that the next computer I buy will be a Mac.  I'm sure this will surprise quite a few people, as I've always been completely on the side of PC.  But this really sold me.  That's unbelievable customer service, and I know I'd never get treated like that by most companies.  I'll probably go desktop as PC, and Mac laptops from now on.  Especially that new green MacBook they have, but that's a topic for another time

Hard work equals?

So after much hard work, a whole lot of studying, and putting off of major projects, papers, and study time for tests, I can now say that I am a CompTIA A+ Certified PC Technician.  Sounds fancy, eh?

Unfortunately, that doesn't exactly translate into a job, especially in today's battered economy and job market.  But hey, I passed the certification exams, and in a couple of weeks, I'll have the certificate to hang on the wall.  I'll be spiffy then.