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My Ramblings

The greatest athletes

Posted on | December 18, 2008 | 1 Comment

There is a story in the American Spectator today entitled Good Sports, Great Sports. It is an excellent reminder of who the real atheletes are and that the “..NFL can’t shine the boots of U.S. fighting men.”

From the article:

…Yet my enthusiasm for the NFL stars’ athleticism has been overshadowed this year by reports of far more prodigious athleticism demonstrated last April by the members of something called Operational Detachment Alpha 3336 of the 3rd Special Forces Group. Their contest took place in Afghanistan’s Nuristan province, far from the television cameras and the garrulous commentators. This twelve-man Green Beret team fought a seven-hour battle uphill in a freezing mountainous valley after being pinned down by a couple of hundred or more insurgents. They and a few dozen Afghans, whom they had trained, got out after killing between 150 and 200 of the enemy. Half of the Green Berets were wounded — four critically

Many have said that the greatest generation was the one in which our parents and grandparents fought World War 2. While I know this to be true, I also can’t take away anything from the current generation of US fighting men. While Terrell Owens and Payton Manning may be some of the greatest NFL atheletes today, they can’t compare to Staff Sergeant John Wayne Walding, of Groesbeck, Texas:

“We were pretty much in the open,” Staff Sergeant Luis Morales of Fredericksburg, Virginia, told the Washington Post, “there were no trees to hide behind.” In the course of the battle he was shot in the thigh while tending to a wounded team member. Then he was shot in the ankle. He kept on fighting. They all did, even Staff Sergeant John Wayne Walding, of Groesbeck, Texas, who saw a bullet nearly amputate his right leg below the knee. Walding is quoted, “I literally grabbed my boot and put it in my crotch, then got the boot laces and tied it to my thigh, so it would not flop around. There was about two inches of meat holding my leg on.”

With all due respect to Mr. Owens, he isn’t even in the same class.

Last December, my family decided we would go the airport and welcome home the troops who were enroute to their R & R leave from the war. I wrote about it in this post. While we have made several trips to the airport this year, maybe I can talk my wife into going again. I need to be reminded of greatness again.

May we one day call todays fighting men, one of the greatest generations.

Category: Soap Box

The Parowan Prophet

Posted on | December 14, 2008 | 1 Comment

Many of you know that I was born in Cedar City, Utah. And while I will always consider southern Utah to be home, I will not miss the Parowan Prophet. Well, maybe just little.

Parowan is a town about 20 miles away from Cedar City and when I was a kid, this guy would write letters to the editor of the local paper, he would go on radio, and would predict the end of the world. I remember him coming into the halls at school and preaching the end of the world while all the students laughed. (OK, so we weren’t nice at that age.) Since moving away from home 14 years ago, I haven’t even thought about Leeland Freeborn in all that time.

Until today. The LA times has a story about him making another “prophecy” about President-Elect Obama. According to the story, he doesn’t think he’ll ever be president.

“I think that you should hear what my opinion about the Obama election is: that he will not be the next president. I said on my home page in August that if he lost to expect to see the ‘riots’ that 2 Peter 2:13 tells us about. He didn’t lose. But the story is not finished yet. I still think they may begin the riots before Christmas 2008, as I said.”

Since Mr. Freeborn is so familiar with the scriptures, he might recognize Matthew 24:11 which says “And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.” And Matthew 7:20 which says “Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.” If Mr. Freeborn is measured by his fruits, he is not only off the beaten path, he is in the twilight zone. He has never been right yet. You would think that with the laws of probability that he would at least guess right by dumb luck.

So if you are reading this article by the LA Times and you’re thinking, “this guy is a fruitcake”, then I am here to confirm your suspicions.

Category: Soap Box

Suing Spammers

Posted on | December 8, 2008 | 1 Comment

Several years ago, congress, in their infinite wisdom, passed a law which enabled the producers of SPAM, or UCE (Unsolicited Commercial E-mail) to be held liable for sending crap to our e-mail boxes. Out of legislation, several websites sprung up that teach you how to do this. If you type “how to sue a spammer” into Googles search box, you will most likely see a link to http://www.angryox.com/vaspam/. The author lists several “steps” to take to sue the people who send you SPAM. There are several other sites as well such as www.suespammers.net

Don’t believe a word of this

Apparently, the law is really written for Internet Service Providers. In a story by PC World, one of these people making a living suing Spammers has to pony up $111,000 in legal fees for the defendants. The story, in part says:

..the court ruled against [the plaintiff], saying that he and other recipients of spam have no standing under the federal CAN-SPAM Act because they have not been “adversely affected” within the meaning of the law. The court said the recipient of the spam must be adversely affected in the same way that an Internet service provider would be, meaning he would have problems such as network and bandwidth slowdowns, greater demands on personnel or require new equipment.

So before you start getting lawsuit happy, you had better make sure that you can prove real damage done. Judges are becoming more critical of this practice and they don’t like their time wasted by people just making a living off the legal system.

Category: Computer Related

When video games go to far

Posted on | December 5, 2008 | 3 Comments

I loved playing video games as a kid, and I still indulge with my son from time to time as an adult. However, this video shows someone who never quite managed to grow out of it.


MARIO KART (REMI GAILLARD)
by nqtv

Category: Fun Stuff

The myth of bipartisanship

Posted on | November 25, 2008 | No Comments

I have observed that the main stream media and many of our politicians talk of bipartisanship as if it were a glorious virtue in which to aspire. Many headlines are prefaced with “bipartisan effort” or “bipartisan legislation” as if that somehow makes it more valuable or even holy.

What is bipartisanship? Technically the definition is that two separate parties agree or support something. It seems that the definition has somehow been slightly changed to be equivalent to the word compromise. While both words are related, they do not mean the same thing. Compromise involves both parties conceding by degree to come to an agreement. That doesn’t mean that either party supports the same thing.

For example, I have a fundamental or core value that murder is wrong. Suppose that I have a peer who has the opposite core value, that murder is not wrong. Let us then attempt to make a policy regarding murder. I would propose that anyone who commits murder should go to jail. My peer would propose that since murder is not wrong, that no such punishment should be imposed. We now have two fundamental opinions that are opposite in nature. Since bipartisan means that we would both support or agree, then by definition, one of us would be required to cave in and “go along with” the other.

Therein lies the the problem with bipartisanship. In practical terms, someone must sacrifice their core value in order to support the other party. Why would they do this? It seems to me, that the goal of bipartisanship is to avoid hurting someones feelings, or “to get along”. Thus, the result of bipartisanship is nothing more than sacrificing a core value for some perceived civility.

I would like to see less bipartisanship in Washington DC, and more principle driven leaders that are willing to “not get along” while standing by their core value.

Category: Politics
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