Rampant Racism Funded at Colorado University

Posted on October 3, 2006 by Phil Kadath

Unless you’re mentally deranged, then you’d call it “Affirmative Action”.

Diversity Tops CU Leaders’ “To Do” List

Increasing the presence of minorities on campus will be part of the evaluations used to set salaries for top administrators, University of Colorado President Hank Brown said Friday.

(snip)

Brown made his comments to a meeting of the 46-member Blue Ribbon Commission he appointed last year to make recommendations about recruiting more minority students and faculty members and improving the social climate for minorities at the Boulder campus.

Former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, a member of the commission, told Brown he expects more than words. Webb said the chancellors of the three CU campuses should be fired if they don’t improve on the number of minorities.

How much do you want to bet that Webb’s definition of “Minority” doesn’t include people of Asian heritage?

Found at the AoSHQ

Posted in Academia and Other Nonsense | 2 Comments

21st Century Entertainment

Posted on October 3, 2006 by Phil Kadath

Finally, I convinced the wife to buck up and take advantage of our cable provider’s offer of a Digital Video Recorder (DVR) instead of just our standard cable box on the main TV in the house.

We took delivery of the item on Friday afternoon and I installed it shortly after waking up Saturday. Needless to say, I am quite enamored with this wonderful piece of technology.

I don’t watch a whole lot of TV, maybe five hours a week, and two-thirds of that is recorded stuff that is broadcast while I’m at work. Tiring of the nearly endless stacks of VHS tapes was one of the straws that pushed the wife to get the DVR.

Along with the DVR came a whole slew of new channels, most of which I will never watch (Logo, The Women’s Entertainment Network, The Black Family Channel, etc.). But it also came with The Military Channel, History Channel International and one that I have actually been waiting for, The Biography Channel.

The Biography Channel is one of my favorites because they took over the “Arts” portion of A&E, who used to show the Granada Production Company’s “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” episodes. Back when A&E actually had decent programming, I used to record this show semi-religiously. Sadly, many of these tapes were lost in the “Great Storage Unit Deluge” and I was stuck with just a half a dozen unreleased episodes.

But no longer!

We can record up to 70 hours of shows before we have to start erasing shows, and with the purchase of a recording DVD player in the future, I should be able to increase my Holmes collection fivefold.

Does anyone else out there watch this show? Or, as the wife likes to imply, am I a freak?

Posted in Kewel! | 5 Comments

Fools! Buffoons! Insolent Bastages!

Posted on October 3, 2006 by Phil Kadath

So I’m eating my 1/2lb Angus burgers before heading off to work last night, and the wife is watching one of her favorite channels, Bravo, from the dining room. They were showing the last half of their “Top 100 Funniest Movies of All Time” episode. While I normally leave the room when Bravo is on, I love a trainwreck too much to leave, so I stayed to see what kind of chicanery these fools could come up with.

Sure enough, just as the show comes back from commercial, they make their first screw up, listing Monty Python and the Holy Grail at #40, followed by Mrs. Doubtfire at #39.

If this country were as fascistic as the left likes to scream about, the producers of this show would have been lined up and shot for just that idiotic mistake.

But it doesn’t end there; They not only put “Legally Blonde” a step above “The Big Leobowski”, they also put “Shrek” and “There’s Something About Mary” (a movie I couldn’t sit through because it was so boring) above both “Airplane” and “Blazing Saddles”.

Those mistakes would almost require torture before death in any just world.

Their complete list is here. I have assembled an ‘off the top of my head’ Top Ten list of comedy movies gathered from their list below the fold.

Let me know if I left anything out.

Continue reading →

Posted in Too Stupid to Live | 10 Comments

RNS Quote of the Day — 10/03/06

Posted on October 3, 2006 by Alaska


…[A] gun isn’t a magic wand that repels bad guys. Think of it, instead, as a fire extinguisher. If you’re looking to prevent fires in your home, a fire extinguisher isn’t your first purchase. Instead, you analyze your home with an eye toward minimizing fire risks. Is the wiring old and sparking every time you turn on a switch? The solution is new wiring; the fire extinguisher is strictly for secondary protection. [Similarly,] BEFORE you make the decision to purchase a gun, you need to study your lifestyle, your home, your family, with an eye on minimizing risks — especially during periods of social dislocation.

It’s worth noting that those of us have owned and used guns for years have quite literally changed our lifestyles to accommodate that decision. First off, my house is secure. My locks are good. My safe is excellent. I live in a safe neighborhood in a safe small town. I make it a point to not park in unlighted parking garages or wander around bad parts of Denver (the closest big city) like some oblivious rube. In short, I plan to be safe, and, generally, I am.

Wise words by Michael Bane. Emphasis is mine. Read the whole thing here. From Michael’s always-interesting Dropped Shot column.

Posted in Quote of the Day | 2 Comments

Hello Cthulhu

Posted on October 2, 2006 by Alaska

It’s apparently been around for a while, but I just found out about it. Cthulhu meets Hello Kitty in an ongoing comic strip. Unspeakably adorable!

Posted in Academia and Other Nonsense | Leave a comment

I’ve got the power!

Posted on October 2, 2006 by Phil Kadath

He-Man was a wuss, although I might need him to lift this thing around.

A little while back, The Mom called me up to ask if I was still looking for a generator. I told her if it was of decent size, sure. And that was how I came to be the owner of my new toy.

generator 002.jpg

It is a Generac 5000 Watt portable generator. You can see a red one here.

Portable is relative: If you count the wheels, it is portable, but unless I was in a real pinch, I don’t know that I could lift into the back of my truck by myself.

You can see the features printed on the side plate in the above photo. Needless to say it has just about everything I’ll be needing.

Back in August, The Geek w/a 45 had a lack of communication problem with his local electricity supply company and had to revert to generator power for a short while. He and the family made the best of it and you can read about it in this post.

After things settled down in FreedomHouse, he sized up just how much juice he’d need to run the place at 6000W. The wife and I, with no yard-apes of our own, could probably get along with just a bit less, which is why, once I get the firing up sequence down to where I can do it in the dark, I’ll be fully set.

OK, so I also want to try and tame the noise this beast makes down a bit too. But that will just take some creative engine exhaust parts sourcing/fabrication, something I find very enjoyable.

The previous owner of this unit lives in the same retirement community as The Mom. He, like so many other folks, bought this shortly after Hurricane Katrina. He got it home, fired it up once and kept it ready for emergencies.

Recently, his doctor informed him that he should never fire it up again as it would probably have quite the bad effect on his recent pacemaker implant. Combining that along with his planned wintering with his children in California, he decided to sell it to pay for the gas during the trip.

And now it is in my garage. The sale price was $350, which is around half of what they go for new. And because I forgot to break a $20 bill so as to make the exact amount, the guy tossed in a 50ft, 3/4in dia, three prong extension cord with triple outlet head along with it.

Score one for sloth!

Posted in By Ourselves, For Ourselves | 2 Comments

RNS Quote of the Day: 10/02/06

Posted on October 2, 2006 by Phil Kadath

Government subsidies can be critically analyzed according to a simple principle: You are smarter than the government. So when the government pays you to do something you wouldn’t do on your own, is almost always paying you to do something stupid.

 

PJ O’Rourke

I challenge the word “almost”. Leaving it out would, in my opinion, be quite sufficient.  

 

FYI: I am still lagging behind in transcribing quotes for this category of posts, having been distracted by the wife getting Sunday night off from work. My apologies.

 

I found this quote came in a post by Kevin Baker of The Smallest Minority a very long time ago.

Posted in Quote of the Day | 1 Comment

This Ought to Steam Them

Posted on October 2, 2006 by Phil Kadath

You can only kick a dog so many times before he bites back.

Wal-Mart Launches Employee Voter Drive

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. yesterday launched a voter registration drive aimed at its 1.3 million U.S. employees in what it describes as the largest such effort by a private company.

The kickoff was held in Iowa, a key battleground in the upcoming midterm elections. Workers at Wal-Mart’s roughly 3,800 other facilities across the country also received registration forms yesterday. Although the world’s largest retailer said it does not want to influence how its workers vote, David Tovar, director of media relations, said the drive was prompted by recent criticism of the company by politicians.

(snip)

Wal-Mart sent letters to 18,000 Iowa employees in August criticizing Sens. Evan Bayh of Indiana and Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware and Govs. Tom Vilsack of Iowa and Bill Richardson of New Mexico — all Democrats — for participating in a bus tour arranged by Wake Up Wal-Mart, which is funded by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Similar letters were sent to workers in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

You may remember the last stop of the “Wake Up Wal-Mart” tour in Seattle from this post.

Follow the link and read the propaganda the UFCWI were spreading and ask yourself “What took Wal-Mart so long?”

Also ask why they didn’t send anything out on either Maria Cantwell or Jim McDermott.

Found at the AoSHQ

Posted in Order of the imperial upraised middle finger. | Leave a comment

The Dumbest Thing I’ve Read All Day: 10/02

Posted on October 2, 2006 by Phil Kadath

The main reason for the stupidity banner being hung on this link is because it is insulting.

The Baculum King, an inmate at the dKos Animal Farm and Petting Zoo, writes on a topic which I could actually somewhat agree with him: Bill Frist slapped a provision into the Port Security Bill that tells American banks to not let their customers transfer funds from US-based accounts to off-shore accounts used for internet gambling.

It is not the government’s job to tell me where and how I spend my hard-earned cash. Frist clearly stepped over the line with this provision to restrict the choices I have as to where I leave my cash.

Just so you know where I stand, I don’t gamble, period. I find it a waste of time and of what little money I have available. But if someone else wants to lose money faster than Paris Hilton can spend it, that is neither mine, or the government’s business. If a person who chooses to gamble wins, same ideal applies. I do not believe games of chance should be taxed as the game itself is a voluntary tax paid for by the people who lose.

My only problem with gambling is when people want the government to help them out whien Vinny the Shiv or Cheif Bootnaka of the Slapahoe Tribe comes to take their stuff. I have no pity for the stupid.

The Baculum King, on the other hand, only sees this provision as a potential campaign wedge between Frist and internet gamblers.

With a little help from Democrats this can be made the most stunningly stupid political move Bill Frist ever made, and might well swing one or more seats our way.

Personally, I don’t know that I’d vote for Frist to be my representative in the Senate, with this just being one of the reasons on my fecal roster. It would have to be a “lesser of two evils” contest before I could.

What swings me away from the “BA King’s” point is the sentence directly after the above quote

Other than civil libertarians and other such eccentrics, this issue really only matters to those who play poker online

Oh, so people who actually care about actual personal freedom and not just DNC talking point “Freedom” are now “eccentrics”?

Wanting to be able to determine my own way in life and to be left alone by my government is just a foolhardy idea with no base in reality to this jackass?

I had always accepted that they only whined about supposed “losses of rights” to score politcal points with their sycophants, but to drop all pretense of being genuine and insult an entire segment of the population, one probably larger than the fringe left who hang out at places like the dKos and the DU, who believe whatever is said about the opposition party, and to blatantly state that they are people whose ideas and actions have no reason behind them just pisses me off.

It also makes me want to award them with the brown ribbon for “The Dumbest Thing I’ve Read All Day”.

Posted in Too Stupid to Live | 2 Comments

The Opening of a New Front

Posted on October 1, 2006 by Phil Kadath

In the eco-socialists war to clean up after the her holiness, Gaia, has begun in the rivers on the central east coast.

Wildlife waste is major polluter – How clean should we expect nature to be?

Does a bear leave its waste in the woods?

Of course. So do geese, deer, muskrats, raccoons and other wild animals. And now, such states as Virginia and Maryland have determined that this plays a significant role in water pollution.

Scientists have run high-tech tests on harmful bacteria in local rivers and streams and found that many of the germs — and in the Potomac and Anacostia rivers, a majority of them– come from wildlife dung. The strange proposition that nature is apparently polluting itself has created a serious conundrum for government officials charged with cleaning up the rivers.

As Nelson from the Simpson’s would say “HA-HA!”

First, they legislate a regulation as to what constitutes a “Clean Standard” for rivers.

Then, they find out that said standard is unattainable because of nature itself.

That is what happens when eco-socialists are put in charge of the EPA. Or anything, for that matter.

Of course, any person who could be considered and actual “Conservationist”, who is not an agenda driven idealogue, could have told them what the conclusion of their study would be over lunch.

Posted in Armageddon | 1 Comment