Proposal for California's Electoral Vote Could Benefit GOP

The article is here and, lest you think this some kind of "Republican plot", here is a very interesting quote from Bob Mulholland, campaign adviser for the California Democratic Party (emphasis mine):

The California Democrat later compared the Electoral College to the Mafia, saying that the founders created it "because they had little faith in the voters, and this was a check made on the voters. The voters could 'make the wrong decision" in the general election, and the electors could put the fix in. Well, that's like the mob. That's kind of outdated."

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At least he's not bitter about the 2000 presidential elections, right? Bush lost the popular vote in 2000 but won the electoral vote and in 2004 he won both the popular and the electoral vote. Incidentally, the Bush "upset" was the third time a US President has won the electoral vote without getting the popular vote. But I digress...

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Mulholland (the Cali Dem advisor) had just finished basically accusing Arnold (the Governator) of trying to force the issue onto the ballots. Hm.....the Governor of California is trying to let the people of California decide how the electoral votes of the people of California are allocated. Yeah, somebody tell me - what is the problem when people govern themselves - isn't that what we're all about?

The French are so funny

Now I realize that being on a game show is stressful and people on game shows sometimes have trouble recalling the simplest of facts but this is really funny. If the video doesn't display, you can find it here.

This really doesn't make French public education look very good.

Letters from a Skeptic

We are discussing the book "Letters from a Skeptic" in our Sunday School class (I can't remember if I'd mentioned that before or not) and it makes for lively discussion. Granted, I don't always agree with the defenses that the author makes (or the way he chooses to employ a defense that I do agree with) but that keeps it more interesting for me. The discussion has been really good and Lily has been posting some of her notes here.

A couple things about this class have given me pause to think: 1) The specific "attendees" and 2) The reaction to the book.

The people who have been coming into class for the discussion have been, for the most part, people (like myself) who were raised in church - traditional evangelical church, too boot. The Sunday School teacher, the pastor and myself were all thinking that this would be a good "entry class" for people new to the faith with some still unanswered questions, but we haven't been overwhelmed with "newbies". At first I was dismayed by this. But not any more.

You see, we have been running a "blurb" about the class for a few weeks in the bulletin and I've made sure that a slide promoting the book and class has been in our announcement "slideshow" that runs before the worship service starts. This would generally include cover photo of the book, class location and the next couple specific questions coming up for discussion.

I was so pleased when Lily told me this morning that nearly all the books are gone! My wife and I are sharing a copy and I know that other couples in the class are also sharing a copy and I only knew of one person outside the class that said she and her husband wanted a copy to read. But lo and behold, other people are picking them up!

Okay, so I'm rambling. The point is that people are not afraid to confront this material! One of the guys in class put it really well this morning - he said "as I've grown older, I've been thinking more about things that I used to just accept". (he's younger than me) Some of us sometimes like to "discuss" things too much (that would be me) - I am so charged that people want to "read the hard questions" and I will be perfectly happy if we need to order more books!

Dodged a Bullet

All these images are from Weather Underground. These are screen shots of their projections of Hurricane Dean. So if they're copyrighted (but I didn't see any "copyright" info) they would be copyright Weather Underground.

Some of these earlier preditions had Dean coming right up into our neck of the woods or at the very least inundating us with quite a bit of rain.

My family grew up in north east Oklahoma and tornadoes were a matter of course. So when we moved down here I thought "Hurricanes?? Its just a big 'ole twister over water - big deal."

When I found out that hurricanes are so doggone big that they have tornadoes as a "side effect" I got a bit worried about living here.

Turns out that these hurricanes can throw rain on you even if you're a couple hundred miles from the "eye".

Fortunately for us (but unfortunately for the people of Veracruz) the hurricane didn't come nearly as far to the north as originally predicted.

And hurricane season 2007 is just getting started.

Olive Garden

While we were out on vacation we saw a lot of neat places but we didn't have an "official" anniversary dinner.

Once we got back home, we took the kiddo to spend a couple days with my folks (what are grandparents for? :-) and then wifey and I went to her favorite restaurant (Olive Garden) for a nice, long, calm anniversary lunch.

We ordered too much and brought home a "doggie bag" for supper.

I really love my wife.

Hurricane Dean

This is a screenshot of Weather Underground and their Tropical Storm: 5 Day Forecast for Hurricane Dean at 2pm today.

Erin went north of us and this one is gonna make landfall a bit to the south of us. I have a feeling that we're gonna get some rain from Dean.

Dean looks (right now anyway) like it'll make landfall in the Mexican mainland sometime Wednesday night/early Thursday morning.

I might just go visit my little brother...

More books

While visiting South Padre Island recently, my family shopped at a couple different stores with "used books" sections. There is a funny thing that will happen when my pop and I are going through a smallish section of used books: whoever makes it to the books first starts on one end and the other one will start at the other end (that way we don't get in each other's way).

That's not the funny part. You see, even though my (borderline unnatural) love for books was fostered by hours of helping pop sort through his book collections; pop and I have (almost) completely different tastes in books and authors. So, as we're working our way through the books, occasionally each of us will run across a book that we think the other might like and we'll say something to the effect of "You might want to take a look at this one". I've figured out that when I see a book that I might want I will go ahead and add it to my stack because if I don't I won't be able to find it later. And I can always take books out of the stack.

The funny part is when pop and I pass in the middle of the book section, each of us with a stack of books. Despite the fact that pop and I maintain our unique tastes in books and authors, it will invariably happen that one (or both) of us will say "Um, were you going to buy that or were you just looking at it?" The other day I even talked up a book that I had noticed in hopes that pop would add it to his stack and lose interest in another one that he had picked up.

The upside of all this silliness is that it is a harmless and educational vice. Now if we only had time to read all these books we buy! Pop does much better at this than I do - Wednesday morning he was reading a book while sitting in the hot tub. I never have been able to do the "bathtub reader" thing.

Two Story Dining

While we were in Corpus Christi we passed the "famous" two story Whataburger and we dined in a (not so famous) Subway with a second floor dining room. Aren't you impressed?

I have photographs but right now I can't the little cord I need to transfer photos from wifey's digital camera to wifey's laptop computer. I probably shoved it in the bag of dirty clothes - it'll turn up.

Pictures will be posted as soon as I find that foolish cord!

Happy Anniversary to us!

We celebrated 13 years of marriage (on the 13th) by visiting the Blue Ghost. This is the historic USS Lexington permanently parked in Corpus Christi Bay. The Lex is open 9am - 6pm and there are currently five tours on the boat. The Flight Deck, the Foc'sle (Forecastle), the Gallery Deck, the Lower Decks, and the Hangar Deck. The Hangar Deck is the part of the ship that you enter and it now includes an IMAX theater, many displays and, of course, a concession stand. We got there at 10am on a Monday and there were very few people. If you haven't seen the Lex, you really should.

Go on a weekday, go early, tour the flight deck early (it warms up pretty quick up there) and just enjoy yourself.

After our (running) tour of the Blue Ghost we went to the Texas State Aquarium. It's a bit pricey for my taste but it was a special occasion and they have shows going on all day long.

Old Friends

This morning we postponed leaving on vacation so that we could go have coffee with some old friends. They're not old - they're younger than my wife and I, but we've known them for seven or eight years.

We had a really nice visit but I can't tell you their names or where they live or even show a screenshot from Google City Lights of their "neighborhood" at night.

Why all the "cloak and dagger", you ask? Let me put it to you this way - we were talking about blogging and net stuff and when I mentioned the name of my blog the man said "It'll probably be blocked". Even though I sometimes find the ACLU (and their ilk) annoying, THANK GOD for differences of opinion and freedom of speech in the USA! And for the 2nd Amendment - that's the one that protects all the rest.

They say "You don't know what you've got until it's gone" - I sincerely hope that this (very comfortable) next generation learns the value of their freedoms before it's too late.

I like it when I'm right

I told a good friend of mine recently that I would be back at work after taking three days off and "nothing will go wrong in those three days that I can't fix". Looks like I was right - looks like the office did just fine without me.

I'll have to take some time off more often.

Change of Plans

As I mentioned in my earlier post here, "These images are all from the free version of "Google Earth" available at http://earth.google.com/ It will only appear this way if you check Earth City Lights under NASA under Featured Content. All these images are copyright 2007 Google, copyright 2007 Terrametrics and copyright 2007 Europa Technologies."

In the aforementioned post I showed a Google Earth City Lights image of where we were planning on going on vacation with my in-laws. It turns out that my in-laws (they're super by the way) had just finished hosting a conference and, being a little tired, they weren't really up to traveling 8 hours one-way to "relax". So we all decided to hang out at the campground where the conference had been and just take it easy.

Here is the Google Earth City Lights image (again at an "eye altitude" of 50 miles) of the campground and surrounding area. This campground is located just to the south of Monterrey, Mexico; a modern metropolitan city if there ever was one.

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A short drive to the southeast you can go shopping in Villa de Santiago and a short drive to the north you can find modern malls, Wal-Mart, H-E-B, Pollo Loco, Burger King, McDonald's, many museums, a planetarium, amusement parks, and that's not all.

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Despite the somewhat large population of Monterrey and the amount of automobile exhaust connected to that, Monterrey does not suffer from the pollution problems plaguing Mexico City. This is because Mexico City is surrounded by mountains and that puts it in the middle of a "bowl" while Monterrey is wrapped around a mountain so the smog isn't trapped. (but i digress...)

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We had a great time, played Rummikub (in Spanish) and I found the whole experience very relaxing. Three cheers for great in-laws!!!

Made in Oklahoma

Last night I had a great conversation with an old friend. I haven't had the chance to talk with this fellow in a long time. We reminisced for two hours and seems to me like we both needed that phone call. Did you ever have the experience where you pick up the phone and it's somebody that you haven't talked to in like, forever, and it's just so good to hear their voice? It was like that.

But that's not what I want to tell you. You see, this friend is the one (I think I've mentioned before) that makes a hot sauce called SALSA NOCHES. This year SALSA NOCHES is going to be in the Made in Oklahoma building at the Tulsa State Fair! This is just so cool!

I know some of you are thinking "Whats the big deal?". If you're thinking that, then you've never been to a good state fair. This year the Tulsa State Fair is going to be September 27 - October 7 and if you're going to be anywhere near Tulsa Oklahoma then do yourself a favor and go to the fair. Here is a link to a PDF map of the fairgrounds - the fairgrounds is in Tulsa and it is quite a landmark.

Also, this year Oklahoma celebrates 100 yrs of statehood so the fair will probably be even a bigger deal than it normally is (and its normally a big deal). In fact the I.P.E. building boasts the world's largest unobstructed interior volume. This HUGE building is where we would go to the Tulsa Gun and Knife Show when I was growing up. And in front of the International Petroleum Exposition building is the famous Golden Driller.