Christmas Shopping Surprise!

Bumped: Question du jour... (Updated for Neid's Dead Horse!) Updated for Reality Cheque

Update three: The WaPo has this article about Hamtramck.  Go, RTWT

Update two: Well, it's starting to happen. Hamtramck, Mi. (home of the Painless Pole dentist, played by John Shuck) now has a Muslim majority on their city council.  So far, it doesn't look good:

The nation’s first, but certainly not last, majority-Muslim city council has just been elected in Hamtramck, Michigan, a historically Polish city. But before anyone could break out the sparkling grape juice and toast our new diversity, Ibrahim Algahim — a Muslim activist in Hamtramck – crowed at a victory party:

Today we show the Polish, and everybody else.

Multicultural euphoria, meet Islamic supremacist reality. Algahim, at least, was not ready to link arms and sing “Kumbaya,” as the diverse peoples of Hamtramck marched towards multicultural harmony. Randy Wimbley of Fox 2 Detroit reported:
[H]istory [was made] in Hamtramck as voters elected the first majority Muslim city council in the country.
But rather than ease racial tensions, the comments from a Muslim organizer threaten to divide. [Algahim’s comment] may create or widen the rift between the growing Muslim and shrinking Polish community in Hamtramck.

RTWT at PJ Media.

Original post:

Serious question - under the Constitution, why should it be OK for Catholics to forbid birth control and abortion, OK to allow Jews to practice Kosher, but forbid Muslims from following Sharia?

This is a law question, not a "Muslims are evil question". (They may well be, but that is another discussion...)

Update - As always, ask a question, get an answer, of sorts:  Nied's Dead Horse ‏(@mflynny)  seems to think I'm advocating for Sharia.  I'm not  At.  All.

But, as I proposed to her... Dearborn Mi votes in Sharia as the law of the town.  Chaos ensues.  (You know it will.)  Suits are brought against it by the few sane people left there.

What are the legal grounds for overturning the Will of the People?

Or, to put it another way, what keeps them from turning our laws against us?

It's starting already - "If you put up a Nativity scene, you have to let us put up an anti-nativity scene!!!"

I think it's an important question, and I haven't seen much about it.

Oh. And I guess I should always expand some on why I'm asking a question.

My apologies to @mflynny.

We Are All Israelis...

As noted, via DougM at SondraKistan.com

11/14/2015

(h/t American Digest and @Van_der_Leun)

11/13/2015

My Two Favorite Veterans

Dad and Uncle Jordan:

Capt. Jordan Webber, USAAF, and SSgt. George Webber.

Thank you veterans, everywhere.

Who Were...

...POTUS and SECSTATE back then?


In plenty of time for the election.

Litigators

Fount this at Popehat:

If you know what you're doing, you bring in the litigators before you start running your mouth. The litigator is there to tell you, in the most supportive and affirming way possible, to shut the fuck up.

That is all.

Education

I posted a response to this article at the Daily Caller a while ago, and got a response back.  My response to the response started turning into a blog post, et voila'.

My personal experience leads me to the conclusion that the whole for-profit education industry is one giant Chas. Foxtrot. I was working at an F.P. in the Baltimore MD. area when the Senate report came out. We were told that because of it, there would be no more performance evaluations, therefore no more performance based raises, just COLAS.

Our numbers had dropped due to the economy, and they were cutting corners madly. Changed all the degree programs so they only needed people with Bachelors degrees to teach, not Masters. They also found ways to let the (expensive) full time faculty go, and replace them with much cheaper adjuncts.

Good times...

This was the response, from FoxnewsisaTrojanhorse:

Was it your intention to sing the praises of for-profit school?

You did. Quite nicely.

Abolish all not-for-profit schools. Let the free market work it out.

To which I replied:

Don't see how you got that I was "singing the praises of for-profit school".  I wasn't, in this case.  None the less, I agree with you about letting the market sort it out. That would start with getting Fed and state gov't out of the student loan and "standards" biz.

And let NFPs compete. In the same market. My education was "private" (Catholic), and a good one, worth the money. Of course, that was pre-gender/enviro/deconstruction nonsense.

The other problem I saw reminded me of the question of the 80s, when Japan was eating our economic lunch:

What do Japanese companies have that American companies don't?

Japanese workers.

The FPs here in Pa don't seem to have a great pool of candidates from which to draw. And that's the problem.

We need better students.

Buy A Nun A Book Day... Bumped as a Reminder!

...is approaching.  I'm consulting my nunnish sources, but all the evidence points to Real Soon - September 17.  Once again, I will be sending books to the good sisters who taught me in my callow youth.

I won't have time to consult this year (my bad), but I'm sure I can find a few books that might interest them!

It's a nice way to say "Thanks"!

Adjuncting

Doonebury pretty much nails it:

 

deVry in Long Beach was actually civilized.  But I discovered that, here in Eastern Pa, we seem to be considered as interchangeable parts. Plus, the students are more 'problematic'.

I don't really miss it. Which I find sad, because it used to be the most fun I could have with my clothes on.

Annoyance

So, the appliance dealer seemingly couldn't get a replacement door for my fridge, so he offered me $100.00 to close the 'ticket'. I accepted, and with that money, ordered a new motherboard, CPU and memory for the 'media' computer.  Amazon did their usualy spiffy job of getting it to me, it was here when I got home from work last night.  Just for fun, I thought I'd install the memory, CPU and heat sink last night. I didn't feel up to the challenge of doing the whole job, so I thought I'd gut the case and install the new guts today.

Or, not.

The heat sink attachment set up is a new one to me. Instead of the old spring loaded clamp mchanism, this one has two spring loaded hollow pins that fit through two attach points on the heat sink, then snap into the motherboard. They're held in place by a second pin that gets pushed through the first pin to anchor it.

So, no new media computer today. I pinged AMD (the CPU manufacturer), to get a kit sent out, and let Amazon know that the order was missing a part. I received a reply from AMD saying they had opened a trouble ticket.

 This is an automatically generated email, please do not reply.
Dear Customer,
Thank you for contacting AMD Global Customer Care.
We have created a Customer Care Support account based on the details you submitted with your service request.
A separate email containing your service request reference number will follow.
Thank you for choosing AMD!
Best regards,
AMD Global Customer Care

This is an automatically generated email, please do not reply.
Dear Customer,
Your Service Request has been received and will be processed shortly.  Depending on the nature of your inquiry, further automated messages with additional instructions might follow.
Service Request: {ticketno:[xxxx4114]}
We thank you for your patience.
Best regards,
AMD Global Customer Care

 We shall see...

Hometown Movies

Stumbled across this list in Timeout: Los Angeles called "Los Angeles movies: 50 films that best capture the essence of LA". While it didn't cause me to be homesick, it did renew my interest in having my own "L.A. Movie Marathon".

The list covers films from the 1940's up through2011, covering a broad range of directors, actors, and topics, from "The Big Sleep" to "L.A. Story", "Chinatown" to "Them!". If you are film junkie, it's a good quick read. Where ever possible, it has links stream and/or purchase the film.

My daughter and I bounced some emails back and forth about the list, and the aforementioned marathon. I told her I would put together a list of films that I have that would be covered under the umbrella of an L.A. Movie Marathon.  I just now finished the list, and voila':

2 Days in the Valley
Be Cool
Bewitched
The Big Sleep
Blade Runner
Buckaroo Banzai
Confidence
Contantine
Get Shorty
Heat
The Holiday
into the night (Yes, the title *is* lower case )
Disney's The Kid
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
L.A. Confidential
L.A. Story
The Player
Real Genius
Sunset
Salton Sea
Tequila Sunrise
(Italics == listed in the article)

Need to add Chinatown, The Big Lebowski, The Long Goodbye, To Live and Die in L.A., and maybe Repo Man, The Limey, L.A. Plays Itself, and Less Than Zero

DVD Archiving

If you are like me, and want to make back-up copies of your DVDs, but find that they are stubbornly encrypted, here is a free (for the rest of the month) tool to help you:

Passkey can run in the background, so when you insert a DVD into your computer, it will make it ready to be backed up. Once it's ready, you can use something like ImageBurn to either burn a new DVD, or write a DVD (.iso) image to your hard drive.

From the folks at DVDFab.

Welcome (Back) to the 1950s

After reading this,

I had to:


Good advice in the Instapundit article, and great nostalgia for us boomers in the latter.

Remember the 10 AM last Friday of the month drills? The air raid sirens would wail, and we would duck and cover under our desks.

Daily fallout levels as part of the weather forecast.

A very graphic article in the L.A. Times Sunday edition about what would happen if a 10 or 20 kiloton A-bomb were detonated in the L. A. Coliseum. (My house was almost, but not quite on the edge of not being FUBAR'd.)

The Home section at the L. A. County Fair featuring fallout and bomb shelter displays.

Good times.

Investment Opportunity

Almost too good to be true!

Maybe send this to the Greeks??

Pibgorn

A Flag is, After All, Just A Bit Of Cloth...,

...and a word is just a sound.

Most of us really don't understand that it is what we tell ourselves about our perceptions that is our reality, not the perception.  For example, back in the last century (1973), my first job after college was working as a part-time pool teller for a state-wide bank. The "Central Division" primarily served the black community in the area bounded by Adams to Slauson on the north and south, and  Sepulveda to Vermont on the east and west.

I spent probably more than a month at the Santa Barbara and Vermont branch, which was located just a couple of blocks from the L. A. Coliseum in Exposition Park. This is the picture you see in the encyclopedia for the entry "Predominantly Black Community".   As usual, I showed up in suit and tie, carrying my briefcase.  I parked my car, walked to the door, and knocked. I was admitted, and taken to meet the startling Charles, the Operation s Officer. He was a black man, about my size.

"Startling", because he sported a well-kept and moderately large Afro. He was also wearing a bright orange Dashiki, and had very well-done gold star implants on his two front teeth. Being the young, white-bread guy that I was, I wondered if I was going to get out of the neighborhood alive.That was start of what I told myself (the "conversation") when I walked in the door. The conversation continued with, "Well, I call in and leave, so I guess I'll just hang in. go to work, and see what happens.

What happened was, over the month or so I was there, I developed  good working relationships with Charles, June, the assistant  manager, and the other employees..  (I also met Mo, whom I worked with at the Culver City branch.) I even learned what I will call the then current "Black Bro Greeting (BBG)." My wife told me later that many of the white guests at the division Christmas party seemed shocked when I went over to Charles and Jue, and greeted them with the BBG. Bottom line, I had more fun in that branch than in any other, and made temporary friends there that I find myself missing as I write this.

The take-away... have that first conversation, whatever it may be, don't fight it, but don't hold on to it. Let it pass. That clears your brain so you can have the rest of the conversation, which in my case, now sounded like, "Well, that *may* be so, but lets step back and see who this person really is." I said on Twitter that getting over racism is easy. "All" you have to do is continue with the conversation that starts "Omygod, I'm gonna die!", and let yourself be open to what might actually be in front of you.

The greatest benefit of have that complete conversation with yourself is that you are more relaxed, and more apt to treat the person in front of you with respect and courtesy. I find this approach works for me with anyone, regardless of the appearance of the person in front of me, be they black, white, hispanic, gay. straight, other LGBPBJ or any other subset of the human race you care to define.  I strongly suggest you try it sometime, and see what happens. Back in the day, we called it "Tricking your brain". It works. Or, what you feel depends on what you think.

That said, I present a flag, and a word, below the fold. (One guess each which flag and what word.) Have the complete conversation with yourself. Give it a try, and enjoy.

Happy Father's Day, Guys...

For Father's Day, Grif and I are going to the Petco/Vetco clinic to finish up his shots and get his heartworm test (4DX).

 
Found this, thought I'd share:

Keep loving those kids, and keep giving them all the advice they can ignore. (I have *yet* to pick out any clothes that my daughter would wear. "Oh, Dad..." was the usual.)

Love you, kiddo!

Money Can't Buy Happiness,

...but it can be used to tickle your brain!

Randall Munroe, the genius who runs XKCD is putting out a book, in the style of Up Goer Five:

It's in pre-order now, due to ship in November.  Click the ad on the left for more info!