Category — Economics

We’ve had two Compassion International kids for over a decade, and the experience has been fantastic.  They are a great group with a real heart for children.  Their work makes a material difference in the lives of the kids.

My cute CI Kids.

I love my 2 kids!  Uwimana is from Rwanda and a sweet, sweet girl.  She has struggled in school and hardship at home, but has come a long way from when we first sponsored her.   Helio is a handsome boy from Brazil who loves soccer and art.  He lives with his Grandmother and every letter from him comes with a beautiful picture.

Emily thinks of them as being a sort of brother and sister and sometimes plays with their pictures, making them talk as if they were really with her.  She mentions them often enough to let us know that their lives and struggles have had an effect on her, even at 4.

For a few bucks a month, its a great way to make a personal difference in the lives of people who really need it.

You may remember me mentioning AB 2270, a bill that was passed by California legislators that would have allowed the government to confiscate a private citizen’s water softener if a non-elected board decided that local salinity was too high or harmful to the environment.

Well, fortunately our Governator thought that this was pretty stupid too.  He vetoed it, saying that the bill would “create a system that could unduly limit choices for consumers and small water systems, with potentially little positive impact given the relatively limited contribution of water softeners to our salinity problems.”   Find out a bit more at the Water Quality Association.

Score:

Common Sense: 1
California Legislators: 347828

Exactly why do I live in Kaliforniastan?

Auto lust is in the air, and it seems to be spreading.

Could this car get me to buy American again?  Just maybe.  Its a technophile’s playground.

Now, don’t get on my case about NOT buying American.  These days, my US assembled ULEV Honda is more of an American car than your average Mexican built Chrysler.  And, I’ve more than paid my dues with my other car, a 10 year old Cadillac SLS.  Its the second Caddy I’ve owned, after the first one died on me in roughly a year.  Never again!  Should have thought of that before getting my current one!  Ha!

The biggest question with the Lincoln is, will I fit in it?  Well, OK – that’s probably second to will I ever be a non-cheapo and actually buy it?  Probably not.

*SIGH*  Being fiscally responsible really sucks.

I won’t take a bunch of time telling you what Google Chrome is about.  Rather, I’ll give you a quick bullet list of neat features and let you go out on your own and get the details.

• Its fast.  VERY fast.
• It has crash control – one tab won’t crash the whole thing.
• Tabs can be ripped off to their own window or merged back into the bar.
• Incognito mode – a “no record” type of web browsing, which is great for accessing sensitive or confidential information on shared resources (think web banking at work, web mail at a conference, accessing your company’s CRM system at one of those public PC’s at an airport, etc.)
• Application shortcuts to make web apps feel more like desktop apps
• A minimal interface so that the content is the focus, not the browser
• and more.

Its still a beta version and has a few issues – for instance, while writing this post, the entire browser crashed, not just one tab.  So much for crash control! To be fair, it wasn’t my web app that crashed. It was the browser itself – so, crash control on tabs wasn’t supposed to solve that kind of thing.  Again, its a beta.  As such, it is very promising.

My overall feeling about it – WOW, is that fast.  Every page seems to load 20-50% faster anecdotally than anything in FF or IE, and the minimal interface is really nice (a bit similar to full screen tabbed browsing, but that’s OK).

I have a few concerns too:

• How long will they actually continue developing it?
• Spell checking doesn’t seem to be integrated yet – I LOVE integrated spell check in FF
• There is no plug-in mechanism yet (AFAIK…)
• Will this derail Google’s long time support of FF?  They did just renew their commitment to it, but is another browser really necessary?  I love FF and wish they would have simply worked with that initiative to improve FF to be everything that they wanted to achieve with Chrome.
• Google has its own agenda (ad revenue), and sometimes things seem out of touch with that goal.  With FF as a non-affiliated browser, why the need for Chrome?  They give some answers, but none that ring true enough to warrant a separate branch from FF, in my opinion.  It makes me wonder what evil plans they have lurking in the wings.  To be certain, Google has long been the Jedi to Microsoft’s Sith, but (in my best Yoda voice) - “The Chosen One, Google may be. Still, too clouded its future is.”  Google has been trying to become a viable and complete computing platform, hoping to drive Microsoft out of its stranglehold on PC computing.  But, once it is successful, what evil things will it start to commit? Some would say the evil has already started…  To borrow a line from The Dark Knight - will they be the hero long enough to see themselves become the villain?

Only time will tell.

But, if they clean up a few of the gaps that currently exist as compared to FireFox, Chrome may actually be an extremely viable third option.  After all, its from Google.  They usually don’t make things that suck.

Well, color me surprised.  I never though my blog would last longer than a Virgin Comic.

Back in 2006, I reported that Virgin had opened a joint venture with Gotham Entertainment to take advantage of a growing comic book and graphic novel market.

According to AWN, Virgin Comics produced 17 comic series in two years, as well as 18 trade paperback collections and three hardcover titles. The owner to the rights to these properties is unclear.

Started by Richard Branson, Deepak Chopra and his son Gotham Chopra, the company’s original goal was to create comics inspired by Indian and Hindu mythology for license out to film and merchandise companies to build global franchises.  Great idea!

As part of their work, Deepak Chopra wrote a biography of Buddha in comic form.  Bad idea!

AWN also reports:

Virgin also created a Director’s Cut line, featuring comics from Hollywood players like actor Edward Norton (DOCK WALLOPER), director Guy Ritchie (GAMEKEEPER) and director John Woo (SEVEN BROTHERS). Virgin hoped to turn these projects into major films.

Virgin’s Voices comic line featured works from actor Nicolas Cage (VOODOO CHILD), adult film star Jenna Jameson (SHADOW HUNTER) and musician Dave Stewart (ZOMBIE BROADWAY).

Ed Norton!??  Deepak Chopra??  Jenna Jameson??   Hmm..  I think they should have looked for more folks like John Woo and Guy Ritchie – at least they make a bit of sense.

Just because a person has had every major orafice of their body violated on camera does not mean that they will make a good comic book.  Maybe it was just the irony of Jenna Jameson making Virgin Comics?

Do other industries do stupid sh*t like this?  Never mind.  Don’t answer that.  I don’t think I could stomach the truth.

No, really. They do. At least in California.

California legislators have passed AB 2270, a bill that basically allows the government to confiscate your water softener if a non-elected board decides that local salinity is too high or harmful to the environment.

You can read the amended text here.

The juicy part is here:

SEC. 4. Section 13148 is added to the
Water Code , to read:
13148. Notwithstanding Article 1 (commencing with Section 116775) of Chapter 5 of Part 12 of Division 104 of the Health and Safety Code, if the state board or a regional board makes a finding at a public hearing that the control of residential salinity input will contribute to achievement of water quality objectives, any local agency that maintains a community sewer system in an area affected by the finding may by ordinance take action to control residential salinity inputs, including those from water softeners, to protect the quality of the waters of the state.

So basically, after we have spent $2500 to make our water more normal for everyday use (we have 26 grains of hardness!), they can come in and simply remove my unit, without any compensation at all for my cost.  We bought the unit for medical reasons (my daughter has very dry skin), and yet there is no allowance even for that.

I swear our politicians are dead set on making the United States a modern Gulag.

While we did buy the unit to help my daughter’s dry skin, its a simple fact that hard water also costs a homeowner money by greatly damaging pipes and plumbing, increasing the cost to operate appliances and by making clothes wear out faster.

Hard water is also BAD for the environment, as it forces the use of more soap and detergent for all household and commercial cleaning applications.  That means that MORE, not less chemicals are introduced back into the environment when the entire goal of the proposed bill is to reduce environmental impact and to increase water serviceability through recycling.  Sacramento is sometimes nothing more than an expensive idiot farm.

Here’s an idea – why don’t we have a referendum to vote that next year, politicians can only REMOVE laws from the books – they can’t write new ones for a whole year.  Something tells me the benefit to society would be tremendous.

Please join me in telling the Governator to VETO this assinie bill.  Its easy to do – just go to: http://savemysoftener.com/ and follow the directions.