A Question No One Is Asking?

Unless you have been in a cave for the past few weeks, you doubtless know about the situation in Iran. Talk of electoral fraud, resulting unrest, protests across the entire country, heavy-handed actions by the party in power (who incidentally "won" the election)...the standard story.

Now, I'm no judge as to whether there actually WAS electoral fraud in the Iranian elections. But given the amount of unrest that we've seen, and the sincerity and (more importantly) longevity of the protests, I would say there's a serious issue that needs to be resolved. I would also say that knowing what I know about Americans and knowing what I know about the Iranian regime, the US generally favors the protestors. But that's beside the point, really.

Here's the question I referenced in my title, which I have seen no one ask at all. (If you see an article where someone has asked this question prior to the date of this post, please forward it to me so that I may credit it properly.) It's the one that, as the Oracle says in The Matrix, is "really going to bake your noodle later on": were the protests in Iran IN ANY WAY catalyzed by the success of democracy in neighboring Iraq? In other words, would the Iranians be behaving the way they are today if the Iraqis weren't succeeding in getting their own country under firm democratic control? Perhaps George W. Bush's concept of "spreading democracy" wasn't so stupid after all...but you might not ever hear anyone else suggest that.

The Ultimate In Crafting

Are you a craftsy type of person? Does your idea of a really good time involve a stack of various brightly-colored cardstocks, a bottle of Aleene's Tacky Glue, felt pieces, yarn, glitter, and stencils?

Well, then THIS IS FOR YOU! Seriously, I'm considering trying it with some lightly-stained balsa wood...though theoretically any material which could be made to the correct shape could be used. It would make a great gift for several folks I know.

Swamped, with Updates

From a quick break at work with a pair of chili dogs (it's $3 lunch day here at work):

- Sorry I haven't posted in a while...that's what happens when you have a busy family and a sick vehicle that you have to repair yourself. It took me a week and a half of nights-and-weekends work to pinpoint the issue (in this case, defective air injection system affecting engine performance), and it will probably take me another few days to finish diagnostic tests and fully resolve the problem. For now, I've Band-Aided it so that it drives without giving me any grief, so I'm not in any big rush.

- I'm back on Facebook (in case you couldn't tell by that badge thing over on the right). I don't know exactly how I feel about it. On general principles, I'm against social networking sites like Facebook. Sure, it allows you to reconnect with people from your past, but A) that isn't always a good/desirable thing, and B) it discourages you from getting out, meeting REAL people, and doing things in the REAL world. This is my third go-around with it, so if I can't stick with it, I am dumping it FOREVER.

Besides, it takes away from blog posting time. I mean, FB does pretty much the same thing a blog does, only with shorter updates/posts and more pretty features. Games, hugs, flair, quizzes...I can't do that on here. (Well, I could, but it would take a lot of work.). The FB page and the blog don't really complement each other very well, either.

Of course, I get to say a lot more on here than I do on the FB page. For example, chatter and status updates on FB are light, light-hearted, and/or humorous. I've made a few more serious comments and observations there, and people don't seem to like that much.

- My life is beginning to firm up a little bit, in terms of its general fabric. For a long while, things kind of were loose and frayed around the edges. Now, though, I'm getting into a groove, finding myself again, and getting things back under some semblence of control. Hobbies, car situation, work, kids. And that's all a very good thing. Sure, there are still lots of uncertainties and things that need resolution, but overall life seems to be settling down a little bit. FINALLY.

- Heidi and I celebrated our 3-year anniversary on Tuesday. WOOHOO!!! I love her so much...she is one of God's greatest gifts to me. I just can't say that enough.

- So we have a couple of Sooners playing in the US Open, which runs this weekend. Anthony Kim is doing well in his first round, sharing the lead at -2. Todd Hamilton is also is the hunt at even par. My fave Phil Mickelson (not a Sooner but still a great golfer) is also at even, so he's right in there, too. I wouldn't mind seeing any of those three guys win, that's for sure. Please remember to keep Phil in your prayers, as he continues to help his wife through treament for breast cancer.

Sorry to all my loyal readers for taking so long to post...hope you aren't mad at me. Thanks for reading along.

You Just Noticed??

I find it amusing how every month or two, someone in the Mainstream Media wakes up and notices this is going on. These people are supposedly much smarter than you and me, so I am greatly confused at how this continues to be some sort of new thing, as though they're just reporting Ben Franklin's discovery of electricity. Even his suppositions on the root cause (third-from-last paragraph) seem as though, somehow, he just can't fathom where this is coming from.

Boy, I sure am glad we've got these folks watching out for us.

A Spoonful of Sugar...

Are you too happy? Do you feel tremendous hope for the American future? Is your mind constantly distracted by the wondrous opportunities you see in the current economic crisis? Do you watch Pollyanna over and over?

Well, I have the perfect tonic for you. Just go to this site.

Now tell me you don't feel better. (And thanks to my work pard Jason for sending that site along.)

Just Signed Up For Google Wave

You might have heard about it already, or you might not, but this week Google introduced what it sees as the future of collaborative online communication, Google Wave. Tired of dealing with e-mail separate from IM and chat, or sharing multiple versions of documents via e-mail, or using obnoxious third parties and sending links to shared photos, or updating your blog...then Facebook...then Twitter...then Myspace...then...? Google Wave seeks to combine it all into one single interface so that all of these disparate clients and protocols are collapsed into one, making a more enjoyable experience for users and a simpler environment for developers (which will only FURTHER enhance features for users, as they build more into it). As it is pitched, it could essentially be the central social and communication app for the entire Internet, combining e-mail, chat, social networks, blogs, doc/picture/file sharing, collaboration...whatever. Even better, Google (in their typical fashion) are building it not as a proprietary Google-only scenario, but are looking to extend the protocol standards it's based on, release APIs for developers, and possibly even open-source the entire thing! So Google will start it, but any person or company will be able to build there own clients and applications into it to make it even better and foster conmpetition. AND...it's due out in beta within a mere few months' time! Sound interesting to you? Go check it out.

Julianna at Four Months

I can't believe that it's already been four months since she was born. In some ways it has gone quickly...in other ways it has dragged by slowly. She has already changed so much...cooing, kicking, smiling, laughing. In the meantime, I'm just trying to enjoy the ride.

Happy 4-Month Birthday, Jules.

Read My Lips?

I have already excoriated the President once this week, but he deserves another kick in the butt for this one:

Once Considered Unthinkable, U.S. Sales Tax Gets Fresh Look

For once, I completely agree with something that the Obama administration is trying to do. I have been a kill-the-progressive-income-tax believer since the mid 90s; as I started doing real work and paying real taxes, it quickly became apparent how ridiculous and needlessly complicated the system was. So I would love to see something like this, because it really WOULD be fair for everyone. I prefer a flat income tax to a sales tax, because a flat income tax has fewer penalties for those who are devout and dedicated to putting money into savings (as Martha Stewart says, "a good thing"), but I'll take a sales tax over the current nonsense. This assumes, of course, that we completely dump the income tax for this national sales tax.

But that's not why Obama deserves another trip to the woodshed.

Remember how he had promised SO MANY TIMES not to raise taxes on lower- and middle-class families? Guess what this does?? Also notice how there's no explicit mention of reducing or removing income taxes, which prior proponents of the "Fair Tax" had proposed. This would essentially be a supplemental tax that would raise consumer prices across the board, for everyone. Even if you remove the income tax for the bottom 90% of families, as the article proposes, the folks at the bottom are still paying more than they did before! Even though the current system stinks, in it a family of 4 earning $35,000 a year (so pretty much lower-class) pays almost no tax on every paycheck with the right deductions on their W-4. What they do pay, they get back at the end of the year. With a national sales tax, they pay any time they buy something, just like everyone else, making it more fair and equal in the traditional senses of those words (not the newfangled liberal senses). How is that not raising their taxes?? For those people to get any of that back, they would have to keep all their receipts and somehow be able to submit them for some sort of income-based refund process through their income tax stuff, making the entire process more difficult and more painful for them. How is that helpful?

Well done, Mr. Obama...way to keep your word.

The Problem With Green "Solutions"

(NOTE: I had a VERY long post planned and pretty much completed. I spent a few days on it, actually. But most people would have skipped it, and I realized I could say what I wanted to say in much less space. I also struggled with the title, for a number of reasons. Below is my final post.

This link (courtesy of Heidi) to a recent story from Fox News, about a grad student at Yale who built a "green" house, made me think yet again about the issues that Mankind will continue to face as it tries to find "green solutions to our problems". Let's look at a couple of these "problems": "Sprawl", air quality, water quality and conservation, energy use and dependency, production and use of fossil fuels, or old-growth forest protection. They're all related.

And here's what environmentalists do: they just keep asking you to give things up. They come up with solutions people don't want to willingly pay for, because their "solutions" are actually less efficient, less directly beneficial, less aesthetically pleasing, and/or less personally gratifying to human beings. Consider they kind of tripe they're pushing on us all:

Smaller, boxier, less attractive, less functional cars
Electric cars
Immediate death to any power source that isn't solar or wind
New Urbanism
Water conservation vs. building new dams and reservoirs
Recycling

Look up all of those and compare them to what we currently buy. While there are folks who favor those solutions for their own reasons, look at polls about what people want. Look at the market. Look at recent history, as well: DDT, Freon, unleaded gas, unleaded gas with ethanol, unleaded gas with LOTS of ethanol, low-flow toilets and fixtures, eco-friendly cleaning products, organic farming and food products...nearly every "solution" actually requires a big step backward in many areas only for the sake of some ethereal, abstract concept like "stopping global warming" or "protecting Mother Earth". The pattern you will see emerging with green solutions and products goes like this:

1. Great in theory, terrible in practice.
2. They cost consumers more money.
3. They aren't as appealing to consumers.
4. They are less effective or efficient than the solutions and products they are replacing.
5. They often have unintended consequences that are equally "dirty".

So you and I pay more for something we like less, that doesn't work as well, and that costs us more. Is it any wonder that the Greenies have to make us do this stuff by the law, and that most Greenies are socialists and communists? Green solutions and products could NEVER compete directly with regular, less eco-friendly products. That means these solutions and products must invalidate the free market and freedom of choice...you have less choice, less freedom to buy what you want. Basically, the only thing green solutions are good at is making mankind give up its freedom to thrive and progress. There are exceptions to this rule, but they are exceedingly rare and much lower-profile.

Note that I am not saying that we're stupid to be mindful of the environment, or work to find solutions and make products that provide as little negative impact as possible. (We are capable as a species of doing that, if we put our minds to it.) I just want to know why all of the solutions they keep coming up with suck so bad, when compared to what we have. Mankind needs incentives, and eco-friendliness in and of itself doesn't provide enough incentive to keep moving backward. Why don't we all just go on socialist-environmentalist welfare, with no product choice and no free will? Is that the future you want, that you want for your kids?

To tie this back to that original story from the link in the first paragraph, notice that the eco-friendly grad student had to use land "donated" to her, build with materials "donated" to her, and she even has to borrow someone else's bathroom. These solutions cannot stand on their own unless someone else sacrifices, unless someone else pays the price. Let's find REAL solutions to these problems, not pie-in-the-sky nutball pseudo-science nonsense.