The-Asterisk

I just participated in a short thread on Facebook about childhood diseases prompted by a tweet from Donald Trump and a Mother Jones article . It got me thinking about how many diseases I contracted as a child (measles, chickenpox, mumps, influenza, mononucleosis, etc.) and how many I was inoculated against (polio, smallpox, tetanus, diphtheria, yellow fever, typhoid, etc.) If one were to listen to modern day experts, I should be dead by now. It seems that every technological advancement fixes 99% of the problem, but then there pops up an advocacy group to wear us down over the final 1%. Remember how filthy and stinky our air was back in the 1950s and 1960s from car exhaust? We got rid of almost all of it with catalytic converters and changing gasoline formulation, but now there are still groups that go apoplectic over the last .01% of any tailpipe emissions. Look at our water quality. Rivers used to catch on fire ! So, now, we have rivers so clean you can almost drink out of...

My local newspaper recently ran an opinion piece by Paul Krugman  concerning Paul Ryan's report on the 50th anniversary of the war on poverty. The Fiscal Times also ran a piece on the same report. In my response, I reference a column by Coby Dillard which is linked here . I wanted to share my response to the newspaper. Paul Krugman is the undoubtedly the most arrogant pundit to grace your pages. In “The Hammock Fallacy” he criticizes Rep. Paul Ryan’s House Budget Committee’s new poverty report for twisting the conclusions of research cited so voluminously in the report. In spite of, or perhaps because of his Nobel Prize in Economics, Mr. Krugman makes no such citations himself, relying solely on his own unassailable version of facts to rebut the Congressman.   Research properly done produces statistics and figures commonly referred to as facts . Reports, based on these figures, produce opinions. Like the story of the six blind men and the elephant , a set of facts han...

A day at the office At one point on Friday, there was a NINE AND A HALF MILE BACKUP at the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel ! To Norview Avenue! NINE AND A HALF MILES! Every time I hear someone wanting to give the government more power and to let them spend more money on this program or that program, I think about our traffic situation in Hampton Roads. A backup of that magnitude in our metro area is inexcusable . Highway traffic (especially on our interstates) is the lifeblood of our region. Unless a bomb went off in the tunnel or a ship crashed into one of the bridges, there should NEVER be a tie-up like that. If you owned a business and someone dropped a big messy jar of something at the only door in and out of your establishment, what would you do? Take four or five hours to clean it up, or would you swoop in, scoop up what you could, mop up the rest, and worry about who to blame afterwards? NO ONE seems to care about the effect of these government indecisions on ...

Progress is a funny thing. You can walk into a brand new house, or a house that is 50 or 75 years old, and fundamentally, it is the same. You have your electric outlets, pipes for water, drains for the sinks, ducts for the air conditioning and some sort of heat. Lights haven't changed much, Sure, your phone lines feel a little lonely, your TV antenna wires have been replaced with cables and you have a lot more junk that you don't need, but really... thing haven't changed that much in a house. But think about how your life has changed, how you entertain yourself, how you eat differently, how you communicate and where/how you work. That has changed monumentally, but from the outside it all looks hauntingly familiar. So, what about education? Lots of change, there. Modern elementary and middle schools look like colleges, staffing levels are through the roof, the cafeteria serves all three meals and school has become as important for its day care function as it has for its ...

Strassel: Harry Reid's Senate Shutdown The Senate didn't pass a single appropriations or jobs bill in 2013. by Kimberley A. Strassel ( From wsj.com 1/10/14) The popular judgment that Washington's dysfunction is the result of "partisanship" misses a crucial point. Washington is currently gridlocked because of the particular partisanship of one man: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. And Republicans are warming to the power of making that case to voters. It's often said the 113th Congress is on track to become the "least productive" in history—but that tagline obscures crucial details. The Republican House in fact passed more than 200 bills in 2013. Some were minor, and others drew only GOP votes. But nearly a dozen were bipartisan pieces of legislation that drew more than 250 Republicans and Democrats to tackle pressing issues—jobs bills, protections against cyberattack, patent reform, prioritizing funding for pediatric research, and strea...

Outrage. That sense of being incredibly, vein-poppingly angry about something you have no control over and that you feel is totally someone else's fault. The sort of outrage that residents of Ft. Lee, NJ are expressing this week over the discovery that members of Gov. Chris Christie's staff ordered lane closures as alleged retribution for Ft. Lee's mayor's unwillingness to endorse Christie's bid for reelection. I get it. It sucked being backed up in traffic for close to an hour. Normal rush hour gridlock extended into the mid-day time frame. Heck, people are even calling it a "public health issue" because ambulance service couldn't get across the bridge. But what about non-Governor-caused traffic tie ups? Those where there is a bad accident and a major highway is shut down for hours with no regard for those involved in the tie-up? Where is the outrage? Where is the class-action lawsuit when you have been held captive in a traffic snarl for 90 min...

You are sitting in 23B, a middle seat near the rear on a packed Southwest 737-700. On the second leg of your flight to Las Vegas, you try to get as comfortable as you can, considering the circumstances. You usually book Early Bird so that you can board in the "A" group, but you screwed up and forgot to check the box when making your reservation, and to make matters worse, you didn't log on 24 hours ahead to grab the earliest boarding number you could. So, there you were. Getting on the winged bus holding a C27 boarding pass which meant 146 people had boarded before you. The overhead bins were already full, but you were able to push and squeeze your carry-on bag in the bin six rows back. Well, at least you found a free space. You made eye contact with the big guy sitting in 23C on the aisle. He gave you that "Damn, you had to pick this row" look, unbuckled his seat belt and tripped into the aisle. You guiltily slipped into 23B and shoved your shoulder bag und...

I don't consider myself a crotchety old man (well... maybe a tad bit, but whatevs). Am I the only one that gets really tripped up when companies go and significantly change their avatar or icons after years and years with one we have all become familiar with? I never thought of myself as a "visual keyer" but I really noticed it when Microsoft changed their Outlook 2013 icon from a yellow/orange-themed O-clock-design to a blue envelope-thing with a flying 5 1/4" floppy that looks more like a Word icon than Outlook. Here's the deal. I'm sitting at my PC. I want to use Outlook. I have Outlook open, I glance down to my task bar, I see the yellow/orange blur, I click on it and voila! TweetDeck opens up. I swear it has taken 6 months for my memory muscle to forget orange and look for a blue envelope-thingy. That is one reason I haven't changed my Twitter or FB avatar in a very long time. When we are on our iPad, iPhone or in a hurry on our PC, I think most of...

From the federal Department of Renouning, "It isn't a cancellation notification, it is a non-renewal notification." For more detail, check out this USA Today article entitled, "Q&A: Insurance cancellation controversy explained." Yes, it is true. People have purchased crappy health insurance policies and some of those folks thought that they were good policies until they actually had to use them. But, think about it, people make crappy decisions all the time. They have crappy cars, crappy houses and crappy spouses. They send their crappy children to crappy government schools where they hang out with their crappy friends. They buy crappy cell phone plans and drink crappy beer. They live in crappy neighborhoods and listen to crappy music on their totally awesome iPhones. They make crappy decisions about what to eat and how to stay in shape and when a huge storm hits, they don't have even crappy insurance to help pay for the damage. So, now, when the...

There has been a lot of talk recently about bullying. Because of the 24/7 news cycle and the need to fill air time on so many TV and radio talk shows, one or two incidents suddenly become a national epidemic. Now there is talk in Virginia about making bullying because of one’s sexual preference a crime. Well, what about bullying because one is short? Or because someone is super smart, but frail? Or because one is mentally challenged, or fat, or the worst possible sin of all… because someone is really ugly. Yes, it happens to ugly people, too, and it is relentless. Bullying takes many forms. When I was in school in the 60s and early 70s, bullying was mainly verbal harassment, being shoved while walking down the hall, occasional wedgies, but the most painful form was attempted alienation of your friends. At the heart of the problem is that the ones who bully are trying to show their strength and prowess in front of their friends. It is all about being the top dog and setting u...

Just saw an ad on my Facebook screen that Ken Cuccinelli doesn't trust women to make their own decisions. So, that is the only reason to vote for McAuliffe? C'mon, Virginia voters. Don't let these people play you like a cheap Walkman! Think for yourself. Think about what would be best for the state as a whole. Gov. McDonnell has left the state in pretty good shape. Did McDonnell take away anyone's rights? Our governors are not emperors or kings and cannot change law with the wave of a hand. Let's not screw up our state by electing a professional fund raiser. We don't want Virginia to be run like Washington and it will be if Terry McAuliffe is elected governor. Sorry to be overtly political (who, me?) but I fear the results of this election like I feared the night that Carter was elected and I feared when hope and change took over DC. Neither one worked out so well. Cuccinelli is not my perfect candidate and neither was Romney, but rarely do we get to ...

As I write this blog post, we are less than three hours away from "shutting down the government". As you know, the Republicans in the House, led philosophically by the "Tea Party" caucus, want to de-fund or delay the Affordable Care Act (better known as Obamacare). I am among those who believe that Obamacare will cause much more grief from unintended consequences than any good it will do. As I have stated in previous postings, our health insurance market in the US was badly broken. High annual premium increases, Nazi-like intimidation concerning pre-existing conditions (even if you had unbroken coverage from your previous policy), illogical groupings and rating experience based upon a small cohort of employees on a plan, little competition and huge profits made for an all-around distrust of the insurance companies. Even though I don't think that the Congressional Democrats were smart enough to craft legislation to do this, I feel that President Obama and m...

I have a dream… Over the past several days I have listened to bits and pieces of speeches from all manner of “civil rights personalities” as well as numerous politicians and three Democrat Presidents during the memorial services up to and including the 50 th Anniversary Celebration on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. While a few of their words expressed a bit of honest self-reflection on why some in the black minority have not achieved the “big dream”, most of the rhetoric was a screeching litany of programs and cures that would magically fix everything if there was just enough money thrown at it. I actually felt repulsed listening to it all, realizing that Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech was about giving the “Negro” a level playing field and an equal shot at whatever they wanted to pursue compared to anyone else. No, I take that back… it was not about “giving” them a level playing field, but removing the barriers thereto. I think that an honest assessment of the past 50 ...

Google is releasing a new map program for tablets . Since the demise of the original mapping program that came stock with Apple iPads and iPhones until iOS 5, I have felt that neither the Apple replacement nor the Google free-standing app have been as good as the original. I look forward to trying the new Lat Long out. For the record (and I hope Google reads my blog!) there are a few peculiarities that I wish they would fix. Don't get me wrong, all of these popups for great restaurants and flags showing where your friends are sounds really cool, but I just don't need those features as much as I need features for great driving and getting un-lost experiences. Here are a few of my suggestions: When the big blue line covers a proposed route, don't let the line obscure the street names or route numbers. VERY annoying when driving. Very annoying. Allow the "traffic" view to be your default (I mean, why wouldn't it be?) When you zoom in to get a better view ...

Iranian centrist candidate Hassan Rohani From Vetted List, Iranians Pick a President .  That was the headline in the dead-tree version of the Wall Street Journal on June 15, 2013. The sub-head read " Voters in Increasingly Isolated Nation Seek Economic Boost From Slate of Candidates Approved by Clerical Council " As I read that, I kind of snorted to myself "Yeah, they get to pick the best from the worst", but then it hit me like a two ton heavy thing , that this is virtually the same situation that we have in the United States.  No, we don't have our prospective President picked by a Council of Elders from an established religion, but we certainly have our choices for President narrowed down by a very small group of activists, on both sides, who subscribe to the religion of the Left or of the Right. Between straw polls and conventions, only a rare few of "the folks" get to be involved in the sausage-making process of picking the party's...

Having broken through the 100,000 mile barrier several months ago, it was inevitable that things would start needing to be replaced on my 2009 Toyota Highlander. My last state inspection and oil change in May prompted a replacement of the 12v battery (no, not the hybrid battery, that would be disastrous...) Yesterday, while backing out of the driveway, I noticed in the reflection from the windows in the front of my home, that I had a burned out headlamp. The last time that I had replaced a headlamp (in my Isuzu Trooper), the experience had caused me to question the intelligence of Japanese engineering. So, I headed down to Pep Boys where a helpful parts desk lady showed me which bulb I needed and took me over to the rack where they were displayed. The proper lamp is the 9003. I purchased a pair of 9003/HB2 lamps which cost me around $25. These lamps are up to 30% brighter than OEM and since one had already burned out, it only made sense to replace both of them at the same time. I w...

What a week for a government entity who's initials not that long ago stood for "No Such Agency". The National Security Agency (NSA) is a part of the Department of Defense, not a part of the Justice Department like the FBI, nor is it an independent agency like the CIA. As such, its purpose is military intelligence gathering, not law enforcement and not explicit spying. Recently it has gotten into hot water because of leaks from former Booz Allen contractor, Edward Snowden. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported Snowden claiming that US intelligence had been hacking Chinese computers since 2009. Well, I certainly hope they did! C'mon, folks... spies spy, right? Haven't we been all up in a tizzy about the Chinese hacking everything we Americans do? Well, we should be hacking their stuff, too. The difference is what we do with the intelligence we gather. There is evidence that the Chinese use information gathered by spying on us to further their commerci...

As readers of this blog know, I hang, shall we say, to the right of center. In the past several months, I have tried to give the political discourse a rest, but after today's defeat of the National Instant Background Check Amendment, better known as the Manchin-Toomey Amendment, and hearing President Obama's impassioned comments about its defeat in the Rose Garden, I had to speak up. I just read the contents of the Amendment to see what the buzz was all about. Basically, in my not-so-legal opinion, this Amendment wasn't too onerous. It made specific points to disallow a national gun registry and to allow kin-folk to buy and swap guns without background checks. It mandated that all sales in and around a gun show, on internet commerce sites and (loosely speaking) advertised in print media, must be subjected to an instant background check. It also went into detail about how criminal convictions and mental conditions would be entered and maintained in a national registry. ...