Bravo

Obama repeals stem cell research ban

One of many needed steps to get science out of the theocratic jail cell imposed by Bush and his religious whackjob masters.

Watchmen

Saw it. Its good. Go see it!

It’s been a while…

To make up for my lack of posts-which I am sure has my bazillions of readers furious-I figure I’ll just wing it and put something up, even though I have no idea where I am going with this.

Last night the lovely wife and I went and picked over the carcass of the nearest Circuit City. Not much left folks. We walked out with a Samsung digital camera (L100) for $75. Nothing fancy, but I have wanted a “little” camera for a while now. Something a little less obtrusive and obvious. There is hardly anything left in the store. I never liked CC that much, but it is kind of sad seeing a company that employs thousands nationwide go belly up.

I still want a DSLR.

How about that Rush Limbaugh? The Republican Party has always portrayed themselves as the tough guys compared to the wimpy Democrats. With that in mind, it is quite funny watching them quake in fear at the feet of one of the worlds most obnoxious windbags. Over on MNPublius a commenter actually had the gall to defend Rush as an “honorable” man. Of course this commenter’s website loudly proclaims “Whites Only”. I fail to see what is honorable about constant streams of hate, misinformation and outright lies.

I think we just may be seeing a party dying before our very eyes-at least as we know it. The Republican Party’s entire economic philosophy has been shown to be, for lack of a better word, wrong. The concept of supply side economics and trickle down that they have clung to since Reagan started the bankrupting of America has been definitively shown to NOT FRIGGIN WORK. Contrary to their claims, doing everything they could to benefit the wealthy has not helped the middle class at all. Right now the Republicans have nothing to offer except obstruction and America seems to be in on the secret:

Obama’s favorability rating is at 68% (an all-time high in our survey), 67% say they feel more hopeful about his leadership, 60% approve of his job in the White House, and 49% have a positive view of the Democratic Party (which is also near a high). On the other hand, just 26% view the GOP positively (an all-time low in the poll), respondents blame Bush and congressional Republicans for most of the partisanship in DC, 56% think the GOP’s opposition to Obama is based on politics, and Republicans lose by nearly 30 percentage points on the question about which party would do a better job of leading the country out of recession.

NBC/WSJ poll

The party of Reagan has been reduced to groveling to a fat, drug addicted egomaniac. Sweet. Bobby Jindal getting caught in a flat out lie in the party’s response to Obama’s speech didn’t help.

It seems that Republicans have been having a contest to see just who can be the most hypocritical. A couple of fine examples:

• Mitch McConnell criticizes the stimulus bill as a “spending binge” even though it contains over 51 million in earmarks added by some guy named Mitch McConnell.
• Orrin Hatch, Sam Brownback, Chuck Grassley, John Cronyn, Jeff Sessions, James Inhofe, Tom Coburn, and Pat Roberts sign a letter saying they will filibuster judicial nominees not to their liking. These same folks previously said that filibustering judicial nominees was unconstitutional. I guess they meant that filibustering a republican President’s judicial nominees is unconstitutional. If the nomination is made by a Democrat it is TOTALLY DIFFERENT!

How is this for scary? The Bush administration seriously considered suspending the First Amendment. Gotta love the GOP. Massive critics of big Government that have no issues with the government being able monitor, imprison and torture the people at will with no interference from that pesky judicial system.

Congrats to Levi Leipheimer on his third consecutive victory at the Amgen Tour of California. Team Astana had three riders finish in the top ten, including some guy named Lance Armstrong. Impressive.


Evolutionary biologist, author and pain in the ass to religious wingnuts Richard Dawkins is in town tonight at the Northrup. Go check it out if you can.

That’s all for now.

Time makes the heart grow fonder?

An article on CNN.com discussed American consumers’ thoughts on the US auto industry. Buried amongst the common sense calls for scrutiny and accountability in exchange for a bailout, and details of the benefits of buying American, there was this nugget:

By buying foreign cars, "You might as well be laying off the American autoworkers yourself and handing their paychecks to those foreign automakers personally," says Diaz.
The American auto industry can be turned around if top executives renew their focus on quality construction and better materials, says Diaz.

"I believe Americans want cars to be as durable as they were 20 years ago. No cutting corners."

Mr Diaz, I would suggest you think about that for a moment. American cars in 1989 were pretty much garbage. Poorly assembled, unappealing, unreliable dreck. Of course there were exceptions, but come on! Yeah I sure miss the good old days of cruising around in an opulent, well built Chevy Beretta. Or perhaps my old Dodge Omni with its high quality Philippine carburetor and corrosion induced passenger compartment ventialtion is more to your taste.

But hey, maybe chronic rust and engines that barely run are your idea of durability.

In my opinion it is just the last few years that Detroit has started getting some things right. Don’t get me wrong, the big three have all screwed up big time. Going all in on the SUV craze (created by their own marketing, not actual market need) proved to be a potentially fatal gambit. But they are actually producing some very good, reasonably priced cars nowdays that are very reliable. And heck, some of them actually look good too! They didn't get into the mess they are in now by making unreliable cars, they got here by making vehicles that most people do not want to buy.

Back From the Desert

The lovely wife and I just returned from an extended weekend in the Phoenix area. Unfortunately for us temps were below average the whole time we were there. Of course “below average” in Phoenix this time of the year is still in the mid fifties to mid sixties. No real complaints after dealing with this particularly cold and snowy winter in Minnesota.

My plan on Friday was to rent a bike and hit the trails in South Mountain Park. I had contacted DNA Cycles in Mesa (the city where we were actually staying) ahead of time and told them where I was from and what my plans were. They said, “come on down” and that they had plenty of bikes.

So Friday morning my father in law and I head over to the shop to get a bike. I talk to the guy at the counter and he informs me they can’t let me take a demo bike because I have an out of state driver’s license. Even though I had told them on the phone I was from Minnesota and they told me there would be no problems they stood by this “store policy”. Nice. The guy behind the counter was at least nice enough to provide the name of another shop that might be able to help me out.

In retrospect this worked out better.

We headed over to South Mountain Cycles which is, it turns out, just a mile from one of the South Mountain Trailheads. This was a really cool shop. Tons of really nice bikes and super nice people. They hooked me up with a Stumpjumper FSR Expert, drew me up a map and sent me on my way.

It was soooo nice being able to hit some singletrack after a few months of hibernation. The weather was perfect and I was on a very nice bike. Too nice actually. Noticeably better than my old warhorse. Lighter, stiffer, better climbing and better handling. Oh well. The trail system there is great. Accessing the trailhead by riding up a dry canal was kind of cool. The terrain varied from patches of sand to ultra rugged rocky sections. The bike handled everything with ease. I wish I could say the same about my lungs. Lots o’ fun. I wish I would have had more than a couple of hours to explore.



On Saturday the wife and I hit the road and headed south towards Nogales. We spent a few hours in that rather scummy Mexican town, had a great meal, then headed back into the U.S. for a night’s stay at the Esplendora resort in Rio Rico. Nice place, but I have a couple of gripes. In this day an age I find it remarkable that a place that charges $175 for a room actually CHARGES for internet access! Seems to me that a luxury resort should have the “amenities” included in the cost. They also tacked on an $8 “resort fee” for paying the security guards and grounds keepers. Ummm, what does my room fee pay for?

Now we are back in the Twin Cities counting the days until we get to skip town again.

Thursday random pic

Downtown parking douchebaggery and other random thoughts

Most days I ride the bus to my job in downtown Minneapolis. On the rare occasion I do drive I usually park in a ramp about a block from my building that has a pretty good "early bird" rate. Over time that rate has fluctuated from $6 to $7 to $7.50 then back down to $6.99. Yesterday I was about to get on the bus when realized I had left my laptop at home. So I walked back to the house, grabbed the laptop and hopped in my car. As I pulled into the ramp I noticed the sign still said $6.99. When I pulled up to the paybooth, I handed the guy a twenty. He handed me back my change and I went to park. But then I realized he had given me $12.50 change. Something didn't make sense. It turns out the company that runs that ramp, and several others downtown, added a "+tax" to all their signs. So even though it said $6.99 it came to $7.50. This strikes me as technically legal, but realistically a slimy thing to do. I have NEVER seen parking ramps advertise their rates with a +tax caveat. If it is posted one buck for the first hour and you leave within an hour you pay one buck. So DAP, the company that runs these ramps, decided to raise their rates and were either to cheap to print new signs, or wanted to deceive customers by adding small print to something that has been up for months that you glance at as you are driving by. Lame.

Brewing Update
Last weekend the wife and I bottled the beer.

Ready to go (note the bottling tube attached to the spigot):



Pop in the carbonation tablets:



Bottle Away:



I ran into one dilemma after bottling-the instructions called for the bottles to be kept around 75 to 80 degrees for seven days. That is a hard thing to do in a Minnesota house in January. I ended up buying an electric blanket to put in the box with the bottles of beer. It did the trick perfectly. Today is the one week mark. Next we keep them at room temperature for another week, then I get to see what this concoction tastes like.

Good Food

The in-laws are visiting this weekend. Last night we all went out to dinner at Bali. It is the only true Indonesian restaurant in the Twin Cities. Really great food for pretty cheap, and the atmosphere is nice as well. Afterwords we walked two doors over to Salsa La Salsa to get some dessert.