Happy New Year!

I hope all of my readers have a fun and safe evening. May you all have a great evening that is short on stupid things, both said and done.

Rest in Peace, Netscape Browser

It is a sad day. AOL is finally pulling the plug on Netscape.

Netscape Navigator, the world's first commercial Web browser and the launch pad of the Internet boom, will be pulled off life support Feb. 1 after a 13-year run.

Its current caretakers, Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, decided to kill further development and technical support to focus on growing the company as an advertising business. Netscape's usage dwindled with Microsoft Corp.'s entry into the browser business, and Netscape all but faded away following the birth of its open-source cousin, Firefox.

I loved the Netscape browser, and I used to scrap with anyone over the topic. Once they released 8.0, though, the writing was on the wall. The browser used either Firefox or IE to render the page, which made it pointless to use it instead of one of the other two. I still have 7.x on my laptop. I think I'll fire it up for old time's sake.

"It does not serve our interests"

Really? Ron Paul supporters, can you honestly say this guy is ready for prime time? Just because he may appeal to you on two or three topics does not mean this guy deserves any support.

Large Mammal?

I just have to make a quick comment on my Truth Laid Bear ranking. I noticed that I am in the "Large Mammal" category today, a place I haven't been in a long, long time. Did they change their metrics or something?

On Bhutto

I agree with this post by Mark Steyn over at The Corner. I'll also add one thing-was I the only one who would cringe when seeing Bhutto amongst crushing throngs of people since she returned to Pakistan? For such a high profile and controversial person, it always seemed unnecessarily risky.

Benazir Bhutto Assassinated

Uh-oh.

Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday in a suicide attack at a campaign rally that also killed at least 20 others, aides said.

Bhutto's supporters erupted in anger and grief after her death, attacking police and burning tires and election campaign posters in several cities. At the hospital where she died, some smashed glass and wailed, chanting slogans against President Pervez Musharraf.

The death of the charismatic 54-year-old former prime minister threw the campaign for the Jan. 8 parliamentary elections into chaos and created fears of mass protests and violence across the nuclear-armed nation, an important U.S. ally in the war on terrorism.

Pakistan was already a tinderbox. In the short to medium term, this is only going to make it worse.

Peace on Earth

With everyone hustling and bustling about in an effort to get a month's worth of Christmas shopping done in less than 72 hours, I can think of now better time to share one of my favorite Christmas cartoons. In 'Peace on Earth', wildlife celebrates Christmas in a post-WWI, post-man world. Enjoy.

Leave sledders alone!

Helmets for sledders? Really?

Those figures, coupled with a new study that reports sleds reach average speeds of 19 miles per hour, have some health officials wondering how far to push the helmet issue.

"The challenge that we face is that it's not the norm - nor is it likely to ever be the norm - for kids to wear helmets while sledding," said Bridget Clementi, injury and prevention manager at Children's Hospital and Health System. Clementi said the Injury Free Coalition for Kids recently compared the average speed of a sled at 19 mph with the average speed of a kid on a bike, which is 10 to 15 mph.

Many parents have made it a habit to make kids wear helmets on their bikes, Clementi said.

"We don't want to kill the fun, but we are starting to look at reaching out to parents on sledding safety," Clementi said.

Clementi said parents should be aware of where their children are sledding and be around to supervise if necessary. She said children should slide feet first and parents who ride with small children probably should practice bailing out so the child knows what to do in case of an emergency.

As a voluntary measure, I'm fine with it. It may even be a good idea in an overly protective sort of way. But anytime helmets start getting brought up for anything, it isn't long before do gooders try to mandate them. It does concern me, though. As we form this bigger and bigger bubbles around kids, we may protect the few from severe injury or even death, but for a larger number we are preventing them from learning a good, if painful, lesson about not doing stupid things and how to be careful when doing risky things.

Plus, I have to add in an old fart's "back in my day." Back in my day we played a game that was kind of like football. We drew a line in the snow. One of us would sled down the hill and another would stand in front of the line. If the sledder went over the line, he won. If the defender prevented it, he won. And if the defender knocked the sledder off his disk, there was bragging rights. Talk about a good way for a boy to toughen his hide while experiencing his first half dozen concussions...

Will a strengthening La Nina break global warming trends?

That's what forecaster Joe Bastardi is saying in a column at AccuWeather.com (Just a reminder, a La Nina is the cooling of ocean currents). Here's the paragraph that ties things together:

3) Suppose it gets close or breaks it be a little bit (the record for strongest La Nina). It is still a sign that the oceanic responses to the warming cycle is working! This is what happens in nature, so it's a major thorn in the side of people blaming people. There is not rout and the fight is one to take the earth back to where it was 25-30 years ago when the talk was of ice age (and it will be again). It is simple; look at history and one can see it. But suppose it is right, or close, the implication of this COLD event cannot be underestimated as far as what it means to global temps. This has to be factored into the entire system, and the development of questionable land-based data with suspect thermometers and heat islands has been given unearned credit in the global temps. But it's interesting to note how there is not a lot of attention being given to this La Nina as far as what the LONGER TERM CLIMATIC IMPLICATIONS ARE. It simply gets blamed for everything that goes wrong with the weather, and then somehow it's caused by global warming, which it is, but not human-induced, simply part of the natural cycle.

Is he right? Well, we won't know until we see how his forecast of a very strong La Nina plays out. It'll sink a lot of global warming ships if he is proven out, however.

Don't squeeze the Charmin

What a crappy wedding:

Here comes the bride, all dressed in white ... two-ply, extra soft toilet paper. Lovebirds Jennifer Cannon and Doy Nichols of Lexington, Ky., plan to get hitched Wednesday in a public restroom. She'll be wearing a gown fashioned from glue, tape and Charmin Ultra Soft and Ultra Strong toilet tissue.

The intricately detailed dress was designed by Hanah Kim, winner of the 2007 Toilet Paper Wedding Dress Contest, sponsored by Cheap-Chic-Weddings.com.

That's one bride you really, really hope is wearing a white dress.

I'm jealous of today's camera readied society

I'll admit, I am. I also admit that it is for purely selfish and vain reasons. It seems like all of the local broadcasters today have some sort of a program where viewers can submit prep highlights that they recorded, and we get to see some amazing highlights on fairly regular basis. It is a great feature, and it is even better for the kids that make the plays because they get the chance to see it and record it for posterity.

When I was a prep athlete, way back in the early 1990's, that just wasn't the case. Only a fairly small number of people had video cameras, and their footage rarely, if ever, made it to the news. Well, I was good high school baseball player. I wasn't great, otherwise I'd have had a college baseball career, but I was good. One year we were playing our rivals and we had our ace pitcher on the mound. I was playing left and we had a one run lead in the bottom of the seventh, but our rivals had two on and two out. The batter hit a line drive into the gap in left center and I knew I had to get on my horse to make the play or they were going to win. I sprinted towards the left center gap at an angle that was almost parallel to the infield. As the ball and I got closer, it was clear to me that the only chance I had was if I made a play on the ball at the last instant. I waited until the ball seemed like it was going past me and I dove to my left at almost a 90 degree angle to the plane I was running on. I can still feel my toes on my right foot pushing off the ground as I dove. I never saw the ball hit my glove and, more importantly, I never felt it hit the glove. I hit the ground hard and blacked out for a moment or two, knowing I had missed the ball. Next thing I knew, the centerfielder was yelling, "Show the ump the ball! Show him the ball!" I opened my eyes and there, snow coned in the tip of my glove, was the ball. It was in there so precariously that I was afraid to get up, and by this time I was laying on the ground with my feet facing the infield, so I just held my arms up as high as I could in that position until I heard the out called.

I was on cloud nine as I ran into the dugout. When we got done with our little post game ritual, two parents of a guy on the other team came up to me. They had been video taping their kid's game and they had the catch on tape, and they wanted to know if I wanted to see it. I politely declined because I was kind of modest. In retrospect, I really, really want to see that tape. Today, it would have been emailed into to some TV station and it probably would have been played or placed on their website. Back then, it just went into somebody's video library, destined to be forgotten or recorded over with an episode of Oprah.

I should have tried to buy it off of them. As it is, I have no video of my playing days to torture my kids and grandkids with. That would have been a good one.

Woman Writes Her Ticket to the Naughty List

A note to all the ladies out there-Santa's jollies are for Mrs. Claus only.

Santa Claus says that a woman who sat on his lap was naughty, not nice. A Santa at the Danbury Fair mall said the woman groped him. "The security officer at the mall said Santa Claus has been sexually assaulted," police Detective Lt. Thomas Michael said of the weekend complaint.

Sandrama Lamy, 33, of Danbury, was charged with sexual assault and breach of peace. She was released on a promise to appear in court on Jan. 3.

Police quickly found and identified Lamy because the woman was described as being on crutches, said Capt. Bob Myles.

She should fight this on the grounds that she was just putting on a public performance of the Nutcracker. And while I feel for the Santa (despite the jokes), at least that was one patron we didn't have to worry about peeing or puking while on his lap.

California's Crazy

California is a state that is considering the possibility of declaring a budgetary emergency because of a growing deficit crisis. It is also a state that is actively looking to exacerbate the problem:

SACRAMENTO — California moved significantly closer to enacting a broad expansion of health insurance coverage on Monday when the Democratic-controlled Assembly passed legislation that has the backing of the Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

While the plan wouldn't begin until 2010, it will cost an estimated $14 billion, and if history is any indicator, it will probably cost a lot more than that. Sooner or later, that throbbing money sponge in Sacramento is going to be slapped with the reality that, even in California, money doesn't grow on trees.

My favorite part of the plan is that it assesses a levy on-get this-hospital revenues. It'll make the very health care it is providing more expensive to pay for.

I'm also quite fond of this:

Mr. Schwarzenegger has countered by saying there should be no linkage between the revenue measures needed to balance the budget and those needed to pay for the health insurance plan. He also argues that the health plan is intended to bring down costs by encouraging healthy habits, better management of chronic diseases, and electronic record-keeping. That, he says, should ultimately reduce the state’s health care expenses and help California fix its structural budget problems.

Yep. No linkage. No linkage between a huge budget deficit and adding a ton of new spending that will very likely exceed estimates. And 'free' health care doesn't bring down health care costs. Think about it-if your employer paid every dime of your health care, you'd probably go to the doctor for every nick, scratch, and cold, wouldn't you? Ya know, just to be safe and prevent bigger problems, right? And would you ever once question the price? Probably not.

Here's what will happen if California goes along with this plan. First, there will be a health care crisis. There will be more demand for health care than supply. We'll hear about how packed the doctor's offices and the emergency rooms are, and most of it will be with health issues that do not require attention, all in the name of preventative care. Health care providers will be justified in increasing their prices, and then they'll tack on a little extra, because hell, nobody is pressuring them about prices, anyway. Plus the hospitals will tack on some more to recoup the levy placed on them by the state. Then we'll here about how much more expensive the plan was than anyone thought, and more onerous taxes and fees will be set in place, plus likely restrictions on the prices providers can charge if they want to be paid by the state. That in turn will send the best doctors who can earn the best money with their work out of state because it won't be worth it to practice in California anymore. Then we'll hear about how poor the health care is in California, how much malpractice there is, and how doctors are unable to afford their malpractice insurance. And the downward spiral in health care will continue in the state.

Great plan, Guvernator. May other states learn from your mistakes.

What were you doing when...

...you heard the Berlin Wall had fallen?

I was laying in my bed suffering from mono, the kissing disease I somehow acquired without kissing. And you?

A quick thought on the Democratic primaries

It is great to see Barack Obama drawing blood on the Clinton campaign. Everything that happens in the Democratic race that makes Hillary Clinton look vulnerable is only going to be beneficial for Republicans going into the general election...if she wins the nomination. If Obama wins the Democratic nomination however, he may be as much if not more of a threat. Just look at what is happening now. He and his campaign are inexperienced in presidential politics. Despite that, they are taking chunks of flesh out of the Clinton machine. The Republicans should be quietly cheering for the Clinton campaign to land some successful round houses on Obama in the next month. If he can overcome her and build up a head of steam, he may be a very, very difficult opponent to overcome in the general election.

National Champs!

I'd like to take a moment to congratulate my alma matter UW Whitewater. Today the Warhawk football team beat a dynastic Mount Union by a score of 31-21 to win the school's first DIII national championship. After losing to Mount Union in each of that last two years' championship games, this is sweet vindication.

Could Reagan even live up to the Reagan Standard?

Peggy Noonan has a piece up at the Wall Street Journal that is spreading around the conservative blogosphere like wild fire because of this paragraph:

I wonder if our old friend Ronald Reagan could rise in this party, this environment. Not a regular churchgoer, said he experienced God riding his horse at the ranch, divorced, relaxed about the faiths of his friends and aides, or about its absence. He was a believing Christian, but he spent his adulthood in relativist Hollywood, and had a father who belonged to what some saw, and even see, as the Catholic cult. I'm just not sure he'd be pure enough to make it in this party. I'm not sure he'd be considered good enough.

Most bloggers are linking to this as a reaction against Huckabee and the 'Evangelicals' in the party. I would like to take a moment to remind everyone that Ronald Reagan is the standard by which all conservatives are judged, however. I don't disagree with Noonan's assesment-Reagan probably would have difficulty in this current environment. However, if Reagan the 1980 candidate couldn't live up to Reagan the 2008 standard, perhaps we on the right have done a disservice to conservatism with our beatification of Reagan. That's not to say Reagan wasn't a great conservative, but he wasn't the perfect conservative that he is often portrayed as today. Hell, in his own day he had to deal with unhappy conservatives. Take this entry from The Reagan Diaries, dated Monday, July 28, 1982:

The "Conservative Digest" came out--an entire issue devoted to cutting me up and down and crosswire. John Lofton and his compatriots seem to be determined to paint me as a turncoat conservative. The tone is one of devoted but now disillusioned followers. H--l, in 1980 they held a secret meeting trying to persuade Al Haig to run against me.

Reagan's pragmatism has been glossed over in many conservative circles, and that is a huge disservice to present day conservative candidates and the conservative movement in general. The fact is even Reagan, the conservative standard, took criticism from his right during his presidency. Too many conservatives today expect candidates today to be the perfect conservative that they perceive Reagan was. The fact is that a perfectly ideological conservative would never get anything done during his or her term because that individual would be unable and unwilling to make the trade offs that get things done in our political system, let alone appeal to enough voters to win an election. The mythical Reagan standard-a standard that Peggy Noonan and others don't even think Reagan himself would meet today-is only going to hold the conservative movement back in an iron clad gridlock. It won't be until conservatives accept the real Reagan standard that this movement will be able to move forward again.

Don't overlook the little gifts

Just in my relatively short (nearly) 32 years, I've watched the culture of Christmas gift giving move towards bigger, better, and more expensive. I won't claim that I'm not a participant in that culture. There is a certain pleasure as a gift giver in wowing the person that you are giving a gift to. I've spent the last several days consumed with "stocking stuffers," though. Some of these gifts I'm giving as "stocking stuffers" would have been standard gifts themselves 15 years ago, and I must admit, they are much more fun to search for and buy than the big gifts. I also anticipate that they will be much more eagerly received because they are unexpected surprises. So my advice to you this Christmas is to not get overly absorbed with the big gifts because you can wow with the right small gifts, too. Thought still counts.

Rest in Peace, Triticale

The Wisconsin Blogosphere lost one of its own on Thursday when the blogger Triticale passed away. The Milwaukee area bloggers got to know him much better than I over the years. I knew him only through his blog and his comments at other blogs. I wish I had taken the opportunity to hit a few more Drinking Rights so I too would have known him better. May God's blessings be with you, Tom, and may he comfort your family.

My Greatest Post Ever

I'm all by myself here at home tonight. So, minus the company of my beautiful wife, how did I spend my evening? By firmly shoving my head into my own navel. Translation: I read my own archives for most of the evening. Over the years I've been blogging, I've had many posts that I've been proud of. I've had posts that have been recognized on the big blogs, and I've had posts that have been mentioned on TV and radio. But after sifting through my material, I think this innocuous post was (perhaps sadly) one of my best pieces of insight:

Almost every time you hear a story of a UFO sighting, there is some reference to the blinding speed at which the craft traveled. That begs one question: If UFOs move so fast, why do they never create a sonic boom? Physics, people, physics.

I've still never been given a satisfactory answer.

Update
I must say, I was in rare form on December 17, 2005. Earlier that day I also offered what might have been my best piece of advice: If a cat is trying to bite you, shove your finger in its mouth. The cat's contrarian nature will take over and it will spit out your hand, rejecting the urge to bite you.