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freudinshade's LiveJournal:
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| Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 | | 6:27 pm |
Fox "News"
So, as if I weren't already aware that Fox News is biased in their reporting, I just got a poll call from them. Now, I've done opinion surveys with Gallup and Nielsen and several other less well know pollsters and I can tell when the poll wants a certain response (in particular a "push" poll sponsered by Gov. Schwartzenegger's office run by a group I hadn't heard of before.) Never have I heard one so completely biased as this. The staffer came informed me that they were going to ask me an opinion question about Obama after I heard a message about him from one of their anchors (I can't remember which one and I'm not going to brave their website to find the name). I listened to the message which was completely negavitve, stated conjecture and opinion as fact (such as "the stimulus package has completely failed to do anything but stimiulate the growth of the federal government" and "Withour a doubt, Obama is the most liberal president we've ever had'), then passed me back to the staffer(after promising me a copy of his book, a sure sign of fair and balanced poling.). She asked something to the effect of "After hearing that message, do you believe that Obama is off track?" I answered no and it sounded like there were more questions, but I commented that the poll seemed a little biased and she thanked me and hung up. I don't know if I'll get my promised book. | | Saturday, June 20th, 2009 | | 10:14 am |
| | Thursday, June 18th, 2009 | | 7:12 pm |
Fairest of them all.
Now that I'm done loaning the most beautiful and talented physics teacher to the world of education, we get her back tomorrow! Here she is being "Unprofessional"  | | Saturday, June 13th, 2009 | | 10:53 pm |
The Single Dad experiment
With Judy gone for a little over a week, I get to be a single dad for a little bit. Really, it's not so bad, considering I have the most wonderful, cooperative and generally helpful son I could ask for. Also, there's some cheating involved, since Judy made all the arrangements for day care while I work, all I have to do is drop him off and pick him up. It helps that we have a lot of friends and family willing to take him for a day. Today was no work at all. He let me sleep in, fed himself breakfast and played games on Judy's computer and the PS3 (a couple of Flash games he was introduced to at "faculty camp" on the PC and an old PS2 racing/crashing game called Burnout 2 on the PS2, at which he is, not surprisingly, much better than me. We have similar styles of driving, except he crashes less.) After I got up and played a few races with him (I won one, then he won one and I finished dead last - can't handle the muscle car.) and we made out plan for the day. After some discussion it was Miniature Golf (his favorite kind of golf, he informs me) at the Castle in Sherman Oaks, then to the Zoo. 36 holes of theoretically unscored play (though he informed me after each hole if we birdied or bogied and after a while he decided that anything over tripple bogey didn't count) later, we were tied 1-1 (he decided he was going to count Eagles), we had lunch, played some air hockey, skee-ball and arcade style basketball then headed out for the zoo. At the zoo, he declared in the parking lot that he wanted to get a map, though, since we're members, he already has a pretty good idea where everything is. Today, it seems, was not about the animals. It was about the map. For the first half hour or so while were there, he walked everywhere with the map opened in front of him, stopping occasionally to check our position and confirm our route. After the first waypoint (the new location of the LA Choo Choo) he handed me the map, but still frequently consulted it. He then routed us up to the play area, but when we arrived, he declared it too crowded (Who'd have thought that MY son would avoid crowds...) and he plotted a new route. We ended up doing the whole loop of the zoo, but only watched animals in passing, though we spent a couple of minutes at the giraffes, the little one is really cute. Back at the ole homestead we played a game of basketball. After a little bit, I started playing with just my left hand (I suspect my left shoulder will not be happy with me in the morning) and he eventually triumphed 28-27. He played some more Burnout while I made dinner, then we ate together and got him ready for bed. A puzzle and a book later he was out (so was I). All in all a good day. Tomorrow has swim class, a visit to LA Live Steamers, some house hunting and dinner with my family on the docket. | | Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 | | 12:03 am |
Yay for public debate
I have to say I've been impressed by Colbert this week from Iraq, if only for the fact that he's being allowed to humorously take on a number of issues which the military might consider touchy. To whit (after 41's bit): | | Monday, May 25th, 2009 | | 9:28 pm |
NorseCODE
Just finished ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) gregvaneekhout s novel Norse Code. Damn fine writing there. There's a few minor pacing issues, but that's to be expected from a short story master making the transition to novel writing. Overall, the story is compelling, the characters well drawn and the mythos coherent. The downhill ride of the third act is a rush. Highly recommended even if the author hadn't spent an evening racing around some of the scenery in the book in my car dressed as a pirate. | | Sunday, March 1st, 2009 | | 2:28 pm |
| | Sunday, February 8th, 2009 | | 11:58 am |
| | Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 | | 9:14 pm |
| | Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 | | 9:58 pm |
| | Tuesday, October 21st, 2008 | | 10:13 pm |
Homecoming weekend
This past weekend was homecoming at my High School (aka, my wife's work and my son's elementary school...) and was chock full of activities. I started off with the Alumni Poker Tournament, which was structured to maximize fundraising with little regard to creating a fair tournament. I lasted through about a half dozen re-buys at my table before going all-in with top pair and losing out to a flush. The main problem with the structure of unlimited re-buys (actually, you couldn't buy if you were over the starting stack, but you could buy in half starting stack increments at any time during the first few rounds of play.) at the break, they had a truly unlimited rebuy. I saw people dump in quite a hefty sum at that point. I have no idea if the winners were among the heavy buyers or not (I know the guy who placed 3rd wasn't, but other than that, I don't know.) I still had a good time, saw a bunch of old alums I knew (though my class, being an ebb tide of school spirit, had no one but myself there all weekend...) Saturday was the homecoming carnival and the football and volleyball games against the hated rivals of Tartan Hall (name changed to protect the innocent, but they know who they are). I believe it was a clean sweep (I didn't see the JV volleyball game, so I'm not 100% sure on that) despite a valliant effort by the TH Varsity defence (the offence and special teams kept turning the ball over in awkard positions) who had their team ahead at the half. The TH Girls Volleyball team went down in 4 games with an impressive stand in the 3rd holding on to a 30-28 win, before being soundly beaten in the fourth. LB had a blast at the carnival, roughousing with the bigger kids in the bouncy house, repeatedly dunking the poor senior in the dunk tank (the other seniors working the booth kindly let him push in the target if he managed to hit it. His throwing arm's getting there...) and, of course, watching his dad make an utter fool of himself in the alumni flag football game. Which brings us to the 6th Annual Alumni Flag Football Game. In the past, I've been smart enough to leave this one alone, but for some reason I decided that, since I was going to be there anyway, I would play. Now, I wasn't exactly a good football player in high school and I believe I was the smallest, and without question oldest by almost a decade, player out there. But, hey, it's just flag football, right? Well, it's a pretty aggressive version of flag(though the referees were doing a good job of keeping it from getting too bad), but I did pretty much get run over (I was playing line on both sides of the ball). Somehow their team got more of the bigger and more atheletic players but no QB (their team included one, "honorary" alumnus, former track Olympian...), and our team sustained all the injuries including one play where the two defensive linemen forgot the old adage "meet at the quarterback" and met at the guard(me) and I got rolled over pretty good. Still, we won 12-6, LB had a blast watching us (he commented during our halftime break that I hadn't touched the ball, but I did catch a pass for a pretty good gain in the second half) and I had a great time. I couldn't really move smoothly Sunday and I'm still a little twingy, but no lasting injury so it's say it was a net positive. Current Mood: Stiff | | Saturday, October 4th, 2008 | | 2:40 pm |
It worked in Sweeden
A couple of links for those not yet ready to explode from the financial fun. This American Life did another episode on the financial situation where they do a pretty good job of explaining what is happening and why. I haven't heard the whole thing yet, but the part I listened to on the way home last night helped me understand why any one of these giant institutions failing would have made such a mess for all the rest: http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=365 "Another Frightening Episode About the Economy." If it helps you, you might also want to listen to the "Giant Pool of Money" episode which is done by the same correspondents and is linked off the page for this one. Fidelity Investments sent out this analysis of the "not a bailout" http://personal.fidelity.com/misc/framesets/iwarticle.shtml?pagename=IW080929govtrescue&fca_id=20084343p01I'm looking for a full listing of all the provisions (sweeteners) which got added to the bill. The tax stuff is getting the most attention, but I understand they stuck such things as Mental Healt Parity (which could have a big impact on my future profession) in there. | | Monday, September 29th, 2008 | | 9:34 pm |
Love
Ran across this at wickedthought s journal and thought it deserved to be spread more widely. I'm sure most of you will recognize the passage and it's source. It's put to excellent use here. | | Thursday, September 25th, 2008 | | 11:15 pm |
The great bailout as viewed by John Stewart, et al.
If you haven't seen tonight's Daily Show, they opened with a side by side comparison of the Case for War and last night's Case for Bailout. Hint, they're almost the same speech, both devoid of specifics and long on fearmongering. In the second segment they cherry pick idiotic statements from Paulson and Bernanke from the Congressional Hearings. Along the way John Stewart took the time to go through the timeline following John McCain's suspension of his campaign and actual going to washington, amongst other things. Last night he had President Clinton on, also worth watching, especially if you're an Obama booster, but he went through a series of alternate proposals for dealing with the current situation which all made a lot more sense to me than "bailout the big banks". As a side note, the best theory I've heard for the real reason for the suspension of the McCain campaign is to derail the VP debate (the capper to the campaign's attempts to keep her from speaking on record or on camera), since their proposed rescheduling date for Tomorrow's debate is to the date of the VP debate... | | Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 | | 9:57 am |
Investment Ideas
Since AIG will inevitably be removed from the DJIA the question of which stock will replace it becomes very interesting. The model of the Industrial Average is that it has 30 stocks (with each having a multiplier based on historical splits, etc, which is why you can't just add up the prices of each and get the index) which are the bellweathers of their industries. AIG can no longer be considered that for the insurance industry (and it's currently controlled by the Federal Government... which is a different issue) and will likely be replaced. I put the question to our investment guru here at work and his first guesses on a replacement were Chubb and The Hartford, both big and at the moment relatively solid, unlike AIG, but he also said that there's a movement afoot to wrest AIG from the Feds and restructure it...
Of course, this will be the first change in the Dow since News Corp took it over (if I recall correctly), so there's no certainty that they're going to follow any kind of historical precendent.
| | Thursday, September 18th, 2008 | | 5:21 pm |
LB - One to make Pat proud
Today, after school, as we're walking into the house, LB tells me that he wants to play two games. One is candyland, the other is a secret.
Turns out the secret is Labyrinth (we have Labyrinth Jr. as well, but he plays the bigger version just fine, though he's not mastered the strategy yet...). As we start to set up, he tells me there's going to be some new rules and we need to cut out some squares of paper. He procedes to write the numbers 1 to 10 on the paper squares and has me write the name of the game across the top. The rules are, we shuffle up the squares and we draw and the number is the number of squares we can move after we slide our tile. The game ends when the draw pile is exhausted (or, as he puts it "We each get five moves") Otherwise the game mostly follows the rules if the game (I don't recall splitting the objectives deck into equal decks for each player, but with the other rules that doesn't affect much, since the game won't last long enough to exhaust either.) For the second game we played, he added one round for himself afterwards (I think he just wanted to get one objective reached during the game. He had gotten 2 in his five turns the first game.) Current Mood:  amused | | Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 | | 4:24 pm |
Election portfolio
Ok. So the election is 8 weeks away. Barring prolonged court battles (it already sounds like Ohio is going to botch the election logistics, anyone got any other states ready for court?) we'll know who the next President is. While we all have a pretty good idea of who we'd like to be President or who should be President, I'm thining of how to make a little money, either way. So, what stocks will likely get a boost from a McCain/Palin win and what from an Obama/Biden win? Are there any stocks that cross over and are likely to do well regardless of who wins? I'm in the camp that modern economics is largely psychological. The economy is doing badly because enough people think it's doing badly and so take actions which make it even worse. That's another post someday, I suppose. That being the case, I think the US economy is likely to get a boost from either one being elected because of two things. 1) W will be on the way out in a psychologically concrete way and 2) about half the people will expect the economy to do much better under the new guy (and half is better than we're getting right now.) Thoughts? | | Thursday, August 7th, 2008 | | 11:37 pm |
LB 2008 Ultimate Summer Adventure
During the last two summers, Judy has been taking LB on "Summer adventures" on Thursdays, which include things like going to museums, the Huntington and the like. Today she had a surprise for him, and since I'm in vacation, I was able to join them. She didn't tell him where we were going, but if you know LB, you'll see pretty quickly why we knew he'd be thrilled with this one:
This is LB with the Santa Fe 3751, a 4-8-4 steam locomotive (total weight with tender about 850,000 pounds, with 8 80" drive wheels, which you can see next to him.) This engine has been lovingly restored by the San Bernadino Railroad Historical Society and lives at Amtrak's maintnance depot just south of downtown LA. This is, without question, LB's favorite engine (not counting Thomas) and when he's playing at being a train, he almost always declares that he is the 3751. He has a set of DVDs and he's watched the one with the 3751 dozens of times all the way through. Needless to say he was really excited once he realized where we were and what was there. Of course, it being a working rail yard, there were trains going by while we were there and there's really nothing better than seeing the train nut little boy, sitting in the engineer's seat of his favorite engine, watching a diesel freight roll by.
Current Mood: happy | | Sunday, June 29th, 2008 | | 2:15 pm |
...and counting
Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the day I married my lovely bride and made her my lovely wife. Like all couples we've had a few bumps in the road, but they've been relatively few and dealt with and overall it's been a good start. We're looking forward to many more together :). Current Mood: happyCurrent Music: Valentine's Eclectic Mix | | Friday, June 27th, 2008 | | 8:32 pm |
What is good in life?
Many many things (preferably with no lamentations of women), but one of them is singing along to Barenaked Ladies with your 5 year old son, him happily giggling away. Grade 9 is currently one of his favorite songs (for the record, Pop Goes The Weasel and When The Saints Go Marching In are also up there, so it's not all offbeat canadian pop.) Current Music: Barenaked Ladies - Grade 9 |
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