I made a graphic to help illustrate the underlying thematic point of the New York Times article linked above on mothers, motherhood, and the vice-presidency and presidency.

UPDATE: This article sums up a lot of my thoughts, as well.

When Joe Biden tragically lost his wife and infant daughter in a car wreck in 1972, not a single colleague, friend or competitor advised him to quit his newly won Senate seat to raise his two little surviving sons.

Rather, he was sworn into office from the injured boys’ bedside, and took to commuting an hour and a half each way from Delaware to Washington. And when Biden’s second wife gave birth to a daughter, no one thought to ask him to step aside and stay home.

They all do it. John Kennedy did it; so did Barack Obama: Men run for office and serve in elected positions while creating small children without ever being patronized as “super dads” or “multi-taskers.”

Nor are they penalized, ridiculed or dismissed for ignoring their kids. They’re good dads.

If Sarah Palin, tapped as John McCain’s running mate, were a man, it’s unlikely we’d even be having this conversation. (A man, or a Democrat.)

Indeed.

Monday, Wednesday, Friday

9:00 a.m. - Sales and Leasing

Monday, Wednesday

1:00 p.m. - Estate Administration
3:00 p.m. - Pretrial Litigation

Monday

6:30 p.m. - Employment Law

Tuesday, Thursday

1:00 p.m. - Estate and Gift Tax

It’s been a long time since I have taken sides in the Microsoft-Apple war. I haven’t been one of those to throw rocks at the other side while praising my own in some time (if I even have an “own” anymore — I’m a Linux geek), because I really believe that the differences between the two are not nearly as vast as they used to be. It may be a bit more than just cosmetic differences, but the two major players have grown more alike than different over the years. Of the three major consumer operating systems, I believe that they each have their place.

One thing that I never could allow Apple fanboys to get away with saying, though, is how much more secure their favorite operating system is because it has so few viruses. It’s an oft-made error of logic to confuse causation with correlation, and it certainly doesn’t follow that one can derive the premise (the operating system is secure) from the conclusion (there are few viruses). The biggest arrow in the quiver for Apple, in this regard, has been its total lack of market share — if there aren’t a lot of Apple machines to propagate a virus, then why go to all the trouble of writing one that won’t go anywhere?

Now, the AFP is reporting that hackers are starting to take a second look at Apple now that the market share has increased. The article goes into a bit more detail, but it’s not much more than what I said above: it’s simply a cost-benefit analysis to virus writers, and now that Apple’s market share is increasing, the “benefit” to the virus writers is going up.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the United States Constitution grants people the right to own guns, something that should be obvious to anyone who would just read the Second Amendment itself.

The court had not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment since its ratification in 1791. The amendment reads: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

The basic issue for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual’s right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia, a once-vital, now-archaic grouping of citizens. That’s been the heart of the gun control debate for decades.

Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said an individual right to bear arms exists and is supported by “the historical narrative” both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. It can’t be any plainer. There are already people lamenting the decision, expecting gun-related violence to increase; however, if one just takes a moment to think about it, one will see that the only people affected by this ruling are the people that were getting killed by murderers.

Those in DC (which has one of the highest murder rates in the country) who were not allowed to own guns (everyone), and who followed the law, were the ones getting killed. Those who were shooting people with guns obviously didn’t follow the law that said they couldn’t own one, thus they owned guns “illegally.” Those that would shoot people who would break in and rape or murder their wife or children are the ones actually affected by the ruling: now they can defend themselves.

I’m going to make an easy prediction: gun violence is going to go down over the next few years in all cities that had handgun bans.

105 words

Speed test

Anecdotal evidence of temperature drops all over the globe have now been replaced by hard science.

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile — the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA’s GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year’s time. For all four sources, it’s the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

The statement “[a] value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years” is profound. Of course, the money-makers have their bases covered:

Let’s hope those factors stop fast. Cold is more damaging than heat. The mean temperature of the planet is about 54 degrees. Humans — and most of the crops and animals we depend on — prefer a temperature closer to 70.

Historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum were beneficial for civilization. Corresponding cooling events such as the Little Ice Age, though, were uniformly bad news.

Ok, so which is it, again? I forgot. Is “global warming” good or bad?

More global warming debunking here.

The U.S. military is hoping to bring down a decaying (falling to Earth) satellite that is expected to make its way to the ground at least partially intact.

The Pentagon counted down Wednesday toward an unprecedented effort to shoot down a dying and potentially deadly U.S. spy satellite, using a souped-up missile fired from a ship in the Pacific.

The timing was tricky. For the best chance to succeed, the military awaited a combination of favorable factors: steady seas around the Navy cruiser that would fire the missile, optimum positioning of the satellite as it passed in polar orbit and the readiness of an array of space- and ground-based sensors to help cue the missile and track the results.

The operation was so extraordinary, with such intense international publicity and political ramifications, that Defense Secretary Robert Gates — not a military commander — was to make the final decision to pull the trigger.

The ramifications for either success or failure are great. If it is a failure, some have gone so far as to call for the death knell in the anti-ballistic missile program. If it is a success it will show how far the program has developed, but it will also show the U.S. capabilities in anti-satellite military technology.

UPDATE: Newest info is it is a hit.

UPDATE: Direct hit. Video here.

Of course, the good guy to whom I’m referring is the technology itself and not its primary backers, e.g., Toshiba and Microsoft. HD DVD was considered the “good guy” in the format war between it and Blu-ray mostly because it was slightly less (shall we say) “intrusive.” That is to say that HD DVD was the lesser of two evils in the format war; a wonderful technology could have emerged, but we must roll with the punches.

This news certainly doesn’t come as surprise to anyone remotely following HD DVD’s format war with rival Blu-ray. HD DVD had suffered a string of defections, with Warner, Netflix, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart all recently pledging their alliance to Blu-ray.

The NHK report says existing HD DVD products will remain in the market for a while, but Toshiba will stop further development of HD DVD. The report also estimates that Toshiba will take a hit to the tune of “hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars” and will close factories in northern Japan.

It’s all rumor at this point, but it seems to be well-founded rumor. Official announcements are set for next week.

Adam Shepard left his comfortable life, and became homeless, intentionally to test if anyone really could make it in America. His goal was to have a car, a furnished apartment, and $2,500 in one year.

To make his quest even more challenging, he decided not to use any of his previous contacts or mention his education.

During his first 70 days in Charleston, Shepard lived in a shelter and received food stamps. He also made new friends, finding work as a day laborer, which led to a steady job with a moving company.

Ten months into the experiment, he decided to quit after learning of an illness in his family. But by then he had moved into an apartment, bought a pickup truck, and had saved close to $5,000.

He tells the full story, aside from a bit more in the article, in his book Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream.

As the title of the article says, it is certainly the end of an era.

Polaroid is dropping the product that made it famous. According to CNN, Polaroid is closing its remaining factories that produce self-developing film for its cameras (which have already gone out of production).

I remember an article from a good while back that stated that Polaroid was losing tons of money on the product, so it makes sense that it would end soon. Also, it is no shock that few people are using it anymore. Time and technology marches on, and there are much better, much cheaper methods of photography. Still, all said, when I was a kid it always seemed a technological wonder to watch one of those pictures develop.

It’s looking bad for realistic Republicans out there. While hopeless optimists point to the evenness of the candidates on the Republican side, “realistic Republicans are looking for shelter.”

Nov. 4 could be their most disagreeable day since Nov. 3, 1964. Actually, this November could be even worse because in 1964 Barry Goldwater’s loss of 44 states served a purpose, the ideological reorientation and revitalization of the party. Which Republican candidate this year could produce a similarly constructive loss?

Today, all the usual indicators are dismal for Republicans. If that sweeping assertion seems counterintuitive, produce a counterexample. The adverse indicators include: shifts in voters’ identifications with the two parties (Democrats now 50 percent, Republicans 36 percent); the tendency of independents (they favored Democratic candidates by 18 points in 2006); the fact that Democrats hold a majority of congressional seats in states with 303 electoral votes; the Democrats’ strength and the Republicans’ relative weakness in fundraising; the percentage of Americans who think the country is on the “wrong track”; the Republicans’ enthusiasm deficit relative to Democrats’ embrace of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, one of whom will be nominated.

The articles is a good read to all who are interested. For myself, I think this is the first election where I really don’t feel compelled to vote for anyone. Giuliani, McCain, and Huckabee seem to only be Republicans in name; that is, it would seem to be a losing position to argue that any of them are actually conservative. Romney seems to be the closest candidate to the ideals of “conservatism,” but even he has a chequered past.

Republicans lost in 2006 because for the previous six years they stopped acting like conservatives. Spending like Democrats and engaging in non-conservative tactics (such as letting Kennedy write the education bill) didn’t do much good to conservatism, and they consequently lost badly. I suppose the party stands a real chance of continuing to fracture and hemorrhage as long as Republicans forget that.

Sometimes I consider the thought that my political views are sometimes skewed based on various factors, but is it really impossible that we sometimes meet on common ground no matter the topic?

[Obama] voted against requiring medical care for aborted fetuses who survive, a vote that especially riled abortion opponents.

So an abortion doctor botches killing a baby and the baby lives. And, we actually have legislators who vote against keeping the baby alive because it is not, in fact, a “baby,” but a mere “aborted fetus?” Is that right? For the love of all that is holy, how can anyone, even an abortion proponent, be for that? The article above is actually stating how Clinton believes she is for more abortion rights than Obama, but it is hard to see how a person could grant more “rights” than leaving a baby to die on a cold table.

I hope that the doctors at least throw the babies in the trash so they don’t have to watch them suffer; maybe they can hide it by putting a half-eaten sandwich over top of it. Imagine how awful it would be to watch the final moments of an aborted mass of cells.

It says Clinton has a record of fighting “far-right Republicans” to defend abortion rights, while Obama has been “unwilling to take a stand on choice.”

?

Monday

10:00 a.m. - Business Organizations
11:00 a.m. - Christian Perspectives

Tuesday

10:00 a.m. - Criminal Procedure
11:00 a.m. - Income Tax

Wednesday

10:00 a.m. - Business Organizations
11:00 a.m. - Christian Perspectives
6:30 p.m. - Motor Vehicle Law

Thursday

10:00 a.m. - Criminal Procedure
11:00 a.m. - Income Tax
2:00 p.m. - Trial Advocacy

Friday

10:00 a.m. - Business Organizations
11:00 a.m. - Readings in Jurisprudence
1:00 p.m. - Trial Advocacy

The Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity were given 90 days to get their science done, but four years later, the rovers are still roving.

Since the rovers bounced onto Mars’ surface, they have collectively driven more than 11.8 miles (19.1 kilometers) and snapped more than 210,000 images. That’s roughly 55 standard DVD movies worth of uncompressed data.

Scientists have used this information through the years to crank out more than 100 studies about the planet’s geologic past “with many more in progress,” Lemmon said.

“It’s been a great year for the rovers and we’re getting deeper into Martian history than we’ve been done before,” Lemmon said. “These robots have entirely changed the way we view Mars.”

I have no idea how a hopeful 90-day mission turned into a still-going four-year mission; it seems like a pretty wide gap of prediction on the part of NASA. Regardless, it is always good to see space missions that go better than expected.

There are enough players using steroids, etc., that there is “an All-Star at every position.” Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Eric Gagne, Gary Sheffield, Jason Giambi, Troy Glaus, Gary Matthews Jr., Paul Byrd, Jose Guillen, Brian Roberts, Paul Lo Duca and Rick Ankiel just to name a few. The full list can be found here.

Baseball used to be my favorite sport. Just a few years ago I watched every Braves game, every year. Now, I never watch a game. I haven’t watched a game in three years. Baseball’s appeal was always that it was the most precise, exact sport. You count everything in baseball, and you can compare any player, who played at any time, with any other player.

Now, there is a full list of players who need asterisks beside their names in the record books. How can you compare these players with one another when they are not quite as human as the players that came before them? Unless MLB kicks every one of these players out of baseball (and yes, I know that is a laughable option that would never happen), the league is going to be known as a league full of cheats. And I don’t like to watch cheats.

Voyager 2 is about to cross the termination shock, the point where the sun’s particles slow to subsonic speeds. This “solar wind” is flowing at supersonic speed as it leaves the sun, but due to the resistance of the “interstellar wind” flowing the other way, it slows down to subsonic speed at the termination shock.

The next level is the heliopause, which is the area where the solar wind is completely halted, and at which point the Voyager 2 spacecraft will officially be outside of our solar system.

Click on the image for a full size.

The link goes to a very entertaining and informing study, done by Gallup, showing a correlation between being a Republican and better overall mental health (self-reported).

The differences are quite significant, as can be seen. While Democrats are slightly less likely to report excellent mental health than are independents, the big distinctions in these data are the differences between Republicans and everyone else.

[…]

But an analysis of the relationship between party identification and self-reported excellent mental health within various categories of age, gender, church attendance, income, education, and other variables shows that the basic pattern persists regardless of these characteristics. In other words, party identification appears to have an independent effect on mental health even when each of these is controlled for.

The link shows the summaries of the studies, including mental health and party affiliation when controlled with income, gender, church attendance, and a few others. I would be betraying the roots of my scathing rebuke of the science of global warming if I didn’t point out that correlation does not equal causation, but the study still seems to be scientifically sound. It would be interesting to dig further into this study and see what it is about those that identify with the Republican party causes them to consider themselves having better health.

Perhaps the study should just be done again after the next presidential election.

Here’s Toni Vernelli, a UK woman who sought sterilization for years, and terminated a baby, all because she wanted to save the planet.

Incredibly, so determined was she that the terrible “mistake” of pregnancy should never happen again, that she begged the doctor who performed the abortion to sterilise her at the same time.

He refused, but Toni - who works for an environmental charity - “relentlessly hunted down a doctor who would perform the irreversible surgery.

Finally, eight years ago, Toni got her way.

At the age of 27 this young woman at the height of her reproductive years was sterilised to “protect the planet”.

[…]

“Having children is selfish. It’s all about maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet,” says Toni, 35.

“Every person who is born uses more food, more water, more land, more fossil fuels, more trees and produces more rubbish, more pollution, more greenhouse gases, and adds to the problem of over-population.”

[…]

[Or how about Sarah and Mark, a different couple who add,] “[w]hen I see a mother with a large family, I don’t resent her, but I do hope she’s thought through the implications.”

Mark adds: “Sarah and I live as green a life a possible. We don’t have a car, cycle everywhere instead, and we never fly.

“We recycle, use low-energy light bulbs and eat only organic, locally produced food.

“In short, we do everything we can to reduce our carbon footprint. But all this would be undone if we had a child.

“That’s why I had a vasectomy. It would be morally wrong for me to add to climate change and the destruction of Earth.

I agree with their choices; I don’t think they should be having children either. Also, as the title suggests, I’m quite curious how these people vote.

U.S. Customs delayed an ambulance that was transporting a man from Canada to a Detroit hospital. Apparently, the man had been “brought back to life” with defibrillators twice.

“If I’m that person in the booth, and there is an ambulance coming with a critically injured person, I’m not stopping the damn thing,” said Kat Lauzon, Laporte’s girlfriend. “I’m irate. I can’t figure it out. He could have died, and I would have blamed that person for murder.”

Be that as it may, but perhaps the Customs agents were buying into the political arguments on the left telling us how great the Canadian health care system is. Think about it: we’re constantly told by the left that the Canadian health care system is superior to ours in the United States.

If these agents had heard that — and it would be unbelievable if they hadn’t since all of us are inundated by it — then they probably thought that it was a big scam. Perhaps the agents just couldn’t believe it. Perhaps they thought the ambulance was being used to traffic something across the border because why would an ambulance be rushing a Canadian, who apparently, we are told, has a far superior health care system available to him, across the border the United States for health care?

“We have a system set up. We are to be pre-cleared and no problems,” Amlin said.

I’m being a little bit facetious here, and obviously if there is a system in place to transport Canadians across the border to give them access to much-needed health care, not available in their own country, then the ambulance should have been waived through. On the other hand, I’m not quoting the article for that purpose; I’m quoting the article to ask the real question: why does he need to come to the U.S. if the health care in Canada is so vastly superior? And for that matter, if the health care system is so vastly superior, why is it necessary to have a system “set up” to transport people across?

The article says that the Windsor hospital was “ill-equipped to perform live-saving surgery.” The city has a population of 216,473, and if you include the surrounding area (including the towns Amherstburg, LaSalle, Lakeshore and Tecumseh) the population is 323,342. I shudder to think what is available for smaller places, because no hospital should be “ill-equipped to perform live-saving surgery” if it services that many people.

I have turned a lot of people onto Vonage, mostly because in my opinion you can’t beat the service, but things have looked bleak for Vonage for a while. In the latest bit of bad news, Vonage had their appeal refused, thus nearly cementing their requirement to pay Verizon $120 million.

Vonage wanted the court to review a decision that upheld most of a March verdict, which found that the company had violated two Verizon patents. The jury from that trial awarded Verizon a 5.5 percent royalty on future income. The amount owed to Verizon had grown to about $88 million when Vonage announced the settlement.

Under the terms of the settlement, the $120 million payment would have been cut to $80 million had the appeals court in Washington agreed to review the decision. Holmdel, New Jersey- based Vonage must pay $117.5 million to Verizon and give $2.5 million to charity.

I don’t think it’s time to abandon ship just yet, but it may take a touch of creativity to get out of this jam. Overall, as a consumer, this is beyond unfortunate. The alternatives from Time Warner, etc., don’t hold a candle to what Vonage offers at half the price. I love being able to get voice mails in email attachments and text messages on my cell phone telling me that someone has left a voice mail, along with a host of other nifty features for $25/month. Oh, and all calls in the U.S. and Canada are local with international rates at a fraction of the big boys.

Regardless, I hope that that creativity of Vonage will come through. Their product is clearly superior to other VoIP offerings; therefore, the market will surely help them through this if the initial damage isn’t too damning.