unculturedswine

Let me first start off by saying that this will be my last Political rant on my blog. I’m not stopping, I’m just going to move it. This weekend I’ll add another blog to my site for politics and my take on things, so this blog can cover more of the happy things in life; like puppy dogs and candy canes.

Yesterday Glenn Beck did a short presentation on how much money the US Government is printing and is going to print to cover all this Socialism. For most of the lifetime of this Nation, we’ve backed up the Federal Reserve with Fort Knox and the Gold Standard; for every $1 in paper circulation there would be an equivalent value of Gold stored in Fort Knox. We don’t do that anymore and it worked okay for a little while, but it’s really going bad now. Go ahead and give this a watch:

This isn’t really breaking news, but Japan is setting a date for 2015 to have broadcast ready Super Hi-Vision streaming to the general masses. That’s 4320P (7680×4320) for those of you in the resolution game. Engadget Link

Do you know what I like about Japan (among the many things I like)? I like that they don’t put up with ancient technology. They leave you behind if you’re too slow to adapt. For every 1 new revision of Japanese toys we get here they’ve gone through about 4 versions there. And everyone does it. When the new comes out, you ditch the old and upgrade. You support advancement and progress. You’re not afraid of change.

Do you remember floppy disks? The small plastic ones? Have you noticed that new PC’s still put those stupid things in there? Why? So as not to abandon the .25% of the market that upgrades every 15 years and still uses those things? Why is this country so hell-bent on teaching evolution in school yet just as hell-bent as leaving behind old, very outdated technology? Where am I going with all this?

Congress is one more stop away from approving to delay the ‘Analog to Digital Broadcast Changeover’ another 4 months to June, 2009. President Obama made it one of his first priorities. Are you kidding me? Congress is already spending over $1 Billion dollars to give away free, cheap Analog to Digital conversion boxes for people with older TV’s so they can still watch the rabbit-ear broadcasts. They’ve been giving them away for a few years now.

But gosh-darnit, in the name of fairness not everyone has jumped on that bandwagon and we sure as heck don’t want them to lose their free God-given right to reality TV! As one overly-paid lobbyist has said:

“Still Gene Kimmelman, vice president for federal policy at Consumers Union, argues that millions of Americans — particularly low-income and elderly viewers — will pay the price because “the government has failed to deliver the converter boxes these people deserve just to keep watching free, over-the-air broadcast signals.”"

The government has failed to deliver? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? If consumers haven’t jumped on the free coupon wagon, and haven’t sacked up to pay the whole $40 for a box themselves, then they need to be left behind. At least for the 48 hours it will take them to go buy either a new TV or a converter box. Why on earth should the private companies wasting money to continue analog broadcasts wait for people too lazy to take care of themselves? (PBS, paid for by viewers like YOU will lose an estimated $22 million by delaying another 4 months). Can someone please tell me the sense in any of this?

And just so you know, this isn’t converting every broadcast to HD, this is just converting from an analog signal to a digital signal. The picture will be exactly the same. You don’t need an HDTV for this change, that Zenith you bought in 1965 will work just fine.

So, while Japan moves ahead to offer 4320P broadcast TV to the country, the United States will still be spending billions of dollars debating on when to make 720P HD broadcasts the standard. However, in order for the government to deliver they’ll just have to buy HDTV’s for everyone cause, gosh-darnit again, can’t leave anyone behind cause it’s just not fair. Story Link for quote and stats

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I’ve been on a very interesting diet. Well, Thursday morning was my last injection day. Today (Saturday) is my last 500 calorie day. Tomorrow I’m on the road to eating normal food again, although I have to avoid sugar and starches for the next 3 weeks or so. I don’t expect it to be that big of a deal.

As of this morning I’m down 23 pounds total from Dec 31. Not bad! I’m quite pleased with how it went. And a few weeks after getting back from the Cruise I’ll jump on for hopefully another 20. Once you get into the swing of things and get used to the boredom you just go along every day, waking up another pound lighter. I’ll be typing up a page for my normal website going over my ups and downs and my daily weight tracker.

And on another front I had eye surgery on Thursday. My left eye has always been a little off track and it bothered me a lot. I hated being in pictures mostly cause my eye was off staring someplace else. I could tell when I wasn’t looking at people with both eyes. But now that’s been fixed. I’m still recovering from it for the most part but I’m doing great. I’m a little more sensitive to light so I wear sunglasses a lot (like in my lights-off dark office staring at my computer screens) or watching TV. Mostly it just feels like my eyes are bruised at the outside corners but it’s getting better. I think I’m done with surgeries now though, I’ve had my fun. Recovery just isn’t that exciting.

In other news, Mr Hope arrived in Washington and I did as I said – I avoided the whole party. Now I’ll just sit back and watch and hope that things don’t get too ugly. The results he seeks are welcome and wonderful, I just don’t believe his ideas are the way to get us there. It’s more of a continuation of what’s gotten us where we are – namely the government stepping in to fix all the problems that ironically they created. The government stepped in to make it fair for everyone to buy a house and we know what happened there. The government stepped in to rescue corrupt banks who thus far have spent $350 billion dollars and won’t tell us where. And now the government is trying to invade other places where they need to stay out. This isn’t what this nation was built on.

In happy news, my friend Daniel Beck had his album accepted on iTunes, and it’s for sale there. Go check him out. It’s a good album with a few of the songs being quite moving. I totally recommend it!

Daniel Beck in iTunes