Batless Batter

By: Mr. Wilson on April 28, 2005
Random fact: the Official Baseball Rules do not explicitly state that a batter must have a bat in his possession while he is in the batter's box.

Johnny Be Good!

By: Mr. T on April 28, 2005
More bad news for poor Johnny Bolton (and Bush) - the senate foreign relations cmte is expanding the investigation into this sick bastard. His "serial abuse," ideology, and horrible haircut aside, I find one good reason NOT to promote this guy (I am assuming that being named UN Ambassador is a "promotion"): reforming our OWN intelligence service! After the whole WMD debacle, its pretty clear to everyone that there were some serious problems going on and a lot of group-think and political pressure. This guy has not only played a part in exagerrating the WMD threat, but he tried, on several occasions, to get people fired who didn't agree with him. Talk about some serious "political pressure" - is that any way to run an intelligence agency? What kind of message does that send to actually promote him? And promote him to the UN of all places???? George Jr. and his buddies made a seriously bad mistake in nominating this joker.

Latest Media Bias

By: Mr. Wilson on April 28, 2005
The AP is at it again:
The House passed a bill yesterday that would make it illegal to dodge parental-consent laws by taking minors across state lines for abortions, the latest effort to chip away at abortion rights after Republican gains in the November elections.
The mainstream media often wonder why they are perceived as biased. Phrases like the one I emphasized above are one reason. [Edited to add: Oh by the way, I think the law in question is a pile of Republican dung. But that's for another post.]

Lincoln Neighborhood Alliance Grades City Council Candidates

By: Mr. Wilson on April 28, 2005
Today the Lincoln Neighborhood Alliance released its report card for City Council candidates. The grades were based on a survey (PDF) distributed to the six finalists. The grades are:
  • Terry Werner: A
  • Dan Marvin: A
  • Shawn Traudt: B
  • Ken Svoboda: C
  • Robin Eschliman: C
  • Mark Koller: D
Even a cursory glance at the grades makes one thing clear: the Lincoln Neighborhood Alliance is biased toward more liberal candidates. That isn't at all surprising. The political scene in Lincoln has for several years been painted as a battle between "business" and "neighborhoods," with "business" acting as a proxy for Republicans and "neighborhoods" for Democrats. It's a false dichotomy, of course, but it remains a popular division. If I get more time I'll try to fill out the survey on my own. I glanced at it, but I haven't had time yet to actually write in my responses.

Imagine What This Would Do to the Southpark Movie…

By: Mr. Wilson on April 27, 2005
President Bush today signed legislation legalizing technologies that enable users to skip or mute sections of DVDs. Most often these technologies are targeted to parents who want to control what their children watch. Hollywood and other media companies opposed the legislation because they argue that the government is enabling companies to distribute technologies that violate Hollywood's copyrights. That would be a fair charge if anybody were actually altering the content (and especially if they were distributing the altered content, which is illegal). But that isn't happening. The content isn't being altered at all. The technology enables users to automatically skip certain sections of movies. It's no different than if a reader were to skip a couple pages in a book or a track on a CD -- except in this case it's automated, and the skipped portions are very carefully selected. Although this legislation is driven by an ideology of censorship, the outcome is more consumer freedom. That's a good thing. And it's typical that Hollywood would oppose it. (As an aside, I got a kick out of the URL for this article. The URL includes the phrase "bush_sanitizing_hollywood". That's beautiful. It sounds just like what an [impartial and objective!] AP editor would title this piece.)

Rising Rates

By: Mr. Wilson on April 26, 2005
LES wants to raise rates by an impressive 9%. That's a pretty hefty rate increase, if you ask me. LES has rightfully accumulated a nice stash of customer satisfaction capital over the years due to its excellent customer service and low rates. I wonder how much of that capital will be wiped out by this announcement.

More Home Improvement?

By: Mr. Wilson on April 26, 2005
Lowe's might be coming to 66th & Highway 2. Home Depot is already at 70th & Highway 2, while Menards and Tractor Supply Co. are down the road at 87th. Do we really need another monster home improvement store along that stretch? How much home improvement can one city do?

The Wheels On the Bus

By: Mr. Wilson on April 26, 2005
I saw a hilarious sign this morning. It was one of those signs on the side of Lincoln's buses promoting StarTran that area schoolchildren have drawn. It said:
Save gas. Save money. Save time.
Save gas? True. Save money? For most people, true. Save time? ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?! I'm a big mass transit fan and I use StarTran buses to get to work most days. I ride the bus for a lot of reasons, one of which is that I once calculated it is about 1,500% more expensive for me to drive to work than to take the bus. But time is one of the biggest reasons not to use StarTran. StarTran is one of the most pathetic excuses for a mass transit system in the country for a city of Lincoln's size and demographics. It is an incredibly inefficient system, which is one of the reasons why so few people use it. It takes me 40 minutes to get home using the bus (including walking time), compared to 15-20 minutes in my car (including walking time to the parking garage). And don't get me started on all the time lost because you can't run errands on the way to and from work. No, little fourth grade student from a Lincoln elementary school, saving time is most certainly not a good reason to ride the bus. But two out of three ain't bad.

A Robot Named Stinky

By: Mr. Wilson on April 26, 2005
Four high school students from Phoenix, all illegal, beat a corporate-funded MIT team in an engineering competition? Yeah, right. Only in a cheesy Disney movie. Or not. (I also came across a brief follow-up article.

Chaos on the Diamond

By: Mr. Wilson on April 25, 2005
I spent seven hours yesterday on the ball diamond, and I have the sunburn to prove it. (Three year-old sunscreen just isn't as effective as you might hope.) What a beautiful day to be outside. And then...

Read more…

Chucky’s Dilemma

By: Mr. T on April 24, 2005
C-Span, the only TV channel that matters anymore for news, again replayed the Senate Foreign Relations Cmte meeting of last week this morning. I caught parts of it last week but had an opportunity to watch the whole thing today, including Dodd, Biden and Kerry go ballistic over John Bolton. A synopsis of all the Bolton allegations from an anti-Bolton perspective can be found here and here. To recap, Bolton has alleged problems about exagerating WMD claims, overstepping bureaucratic lines to get people fired who disagreed with him, patterns of "serial abuse" (most recent allegation here), and overall credibility problems - debate over his ideology notwithstanding. Republican Senator Voinovich made a lot of headlines for voicing his initial opposition to Bolton during the meeting, which would deadlock the nomination 9-9. Since then Voinovich has been been the focus of a lot of hate mail recently, for example see Malkin's latest take on it. Where will Nebraska's favorite politician weigh in on the nomination? During the meeting, the Chuckster said that he wanted to move the nomination out of committee but that he wasn't necessarily going to vote for Bolton on the senate floor and that the allegations "demanded" further review. In fact, the Chuckster is being targeted by liberal groups to vote against Bolton and has yet again opted to depart from the party line and voice concern over Bolton. In anycase, you can send the Chuckster's constituent office an email if you support, or oppose, the appointment of this crazy man as UN Ambassador.

Because We Know You Can Never Get Enough Information, Here is Some More For You

By: Mr. T on April 20, 2005
The new USDA food pyramid is now here! However, instead of a one size fits all pyramid, the feds have gotten “internet-savvy” and allow you (member of the unwashed masses) to enter your age, gender, and activity level online at their new website to obtain your own personalized pyramid. Some of the information on the website is useful, but after repeated attempts to get my personal pyramid, the site timed-out. Apparently so many people are trying to get their personal pyramids that its overwhelming the system or something like that. Its a pyramid overload!!! Anyway, why the hell didn’t they ask you to enter your weight as well?
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