Speaking of jobs and the economy, I recently started my own business.  I have an A+ Certification from CompTIA for IT Technician.  I started my own PC business.  I repair, upgrade and clean peoples' computers.  I also do custom builds.  The web site is http://www.geocities.com/dukethepcdr/index.html  if you are interested. 

What makes this country great is that we are free to try things like this. 

A REAL FOURTH OF JULY CELEBRATION


This year, my wife and I flew back to my hometown in Nebraska for the week of the fourth.  We did some of the typical holiday things like going to a picnic on the beach of Lake Mac (everyone there calls it that partly because it's full name is too hard to spell or pronunce right); watched fireworks in Ogallala; and checked out the local art shows. 

Two days after the fourth however, we were privilaged to witness a celebration of what this holiday is (or should) be really about.  Blake, one of the hometown boys who had served with the Army for 25 months in Iraq, had come home and his parents threw a big community Welcome Home party at their house. 

We got there a little early and had a chance to talk with Blake while the family was putting the finishing touches on everything.  We were just sitting around shooting the breeze, nothing formal or anything.  I hadn't seen him for several years and he sure has grown up.  He's not the scrawny little kid with the mullet running around the local pool anymore.  

We talked a little bit about his experiences over in Iraq.  He was very relaxed and talked quite plainly about it.  His unit spent most of their time guarding a water distilling plant that the Army used to prepare and distribute water to the soldiers and even some to the surrounding community.  He said everyone he came in contact with was either friendly or indiffrent but none were hostile toward him.  The whole time he was there, his unit of 2000 men only lost two.  One had a truck accident and drowned in an irrigation ditch before anyone could get him out.  The other was blown up by a roadside bomb.  

He and a couple other guys spent several months manning a Comm station on the Iraq border. Noone bothered them and all they had to do was keep the equipment running.  They lived in mobile home-like barraks with air conditioning that worked most of the time.  His training was in communications and electric systems.  Now that he's back home, he's going back to the Union Pacific Railroad depot in North Platte, NE. 

He's home more or less for good.  He still has a couple of years left of National Guard duty where he will have to train every so many weeks during the year for two more years.  He could be called up again, but said it was unlikely.  He's a typical guy in his 20's but he does have a good head on his shoulders and I think he'll do really well at the railroad. 

It was really neat to see a large number of his friends and neighbors come over for the picnic and talk with him.  Talking with him and seeing all those folks getting together reminded me of what this country is really all about.  It's not all the doom and gloom and politics you hear on the news, it's about sacrificing your time and possibly your life for your country.  It's about friends and family being able to have fun together without having to worry about anything bad happening. It's about the freedom we have to have picnics, fireworks, car shows, fairs etc.  Few other countries in the world enjoy the amount of free time, cheap food and safety that we have. 

I'm very thankful to our patriots both past and present who have given their all so that we can enjoy the only truly free republic in the world.

So Long, BINGO NIGHT

The last episode of ABC's new game show Bingo Night has passed. Now what will I do with my Friday nights? It was a nice excuse to get the whole family together in one room, for a change, to print off their cards and play along. I'll miss the Indian dude in the referee outfit stretched over his dress clothes (what was up with that wardrobe idea anyway?) saying "noooo Bingo!" 

Though it was a great idea, it wasn't executed as well s it could have been. After playing all of the games, my grandma finally won a Bingo and sent in her card numbers. After waiting for two weeks, she finally got an email saying she didn't actually get a Bingo. She called the 800 number and the person on there said the email was correct.  My grandma has been playing Bingo since before most of the people involved with the game show were born and she knows how to play the game. We all in the house could tell she had a Bingo. Oh well, I guess she got jipped out of her $5 Kmart gift card. Not a big deal, just a little frustrating to be called a liar like that. 

The game has given me an idea though, maybe we could make more of the game shows on TV playable at home so more families would watch them together. It was a lot of fun to get together and make fun of the weird aspects of the game show and to see who could win or at least come close.  I'm thinking of a way to play Jeopardy (still my favorite game show) with the family.  Or maybe Family Feud or Wheel of Fortune.  

At least game shows like that are more interactive in possibility than the stupid "reality shows" where our only thing to guess is who will get voted off or which team might win some stupid little contest. I mean, who cares which tribe wins the spear chucking contest really? 

I've heard that National Bingo Night might be back for a second season this fall.  On the website, they are saying that they are accepting audition tapes and applications for being a contestant.  Audition tapes? Applications? Honestly, how hard could it be to be the actual contestant? All you have to do is guess even or odd, black or red, number five or not? The real game is with the audience in the studio and at home.  We're the ones actually playing Bingo.  Not that playing Bingo is hard, all you have to do is be able to read your card and pay attention.  They call the numbers so slowly that my family was playing two sets of cards by the third game and keeping up nicely.  

I'd rather be a contestant on Jeopardy.  I'd probably get beat badly but at least I'd feel like my intellect was being challenged a bit.  It would feel so great to even get a few questions right on TV. 

I'm looking forward to the return of the show.  I just hope they figure out a better way to verify the Bingo cards. 

 The following article from the Culture nd Media Institute was featured in the most recent Media and Culture email from Townhall.com.  Articles like this drive me crazy!  How can anyone be stupid enough to think that it's wrong or ineffectual to teach our children to not have sex at all?  If parents, teachers and other authority figures in a child's life would only be consistant about what they tell the child about abstaining from sex until marriage, then the chance that the kid would do so would be much greater.  Instead, we have some parents who don't care what their kids do, others who are promiscuous themselves, and still others who try so hard to be their kid's friend that they can't bring themselves to tell the kid what they can't do. 

Why do so many of these groups who are against abstinance push condoms, diaphrams, pills etc?  None of the contraceptives invented so far are 100% effective at preventing pregnancy.  Most of them provide no protection from sexually transmitted diseases.  All of them cost money.  Meanwhile, there is a method that is 100% effective at preventing disease and pregnancy that is free: keeping your pants on! 

What's even more important than teaching kids not to have sex is teaching them to have respect and concern for others.  So much sex that goes on is all about selfish desires.  So many kids think only of their own desires and never consider the possible consequences of their actions in many ways including sex.  If people would think things through before they carry out certain things like premarital sex, we wouldn't have this debate at all. 


Condoms are Fine, but Don’t Teach Kids to Say No to Sex
The media trumpet research undermining abstinence education, but suppress favorable data.

By David Niedrauer
Culture and Media Institute
June 18, 2007

Telling kids to put off sex until marriage doesn’t sit well with mainstream journalists.

When a recent study came out that undermines abstinence-only education, the media gave it a full ride, but the same media refused to cover research supporting abstinence education, or criticisms of the anti-abstinence study.

On June 8, The Institute for Research and Evaluation in Salt Lake City released a report that studied federally funded abstinence-only programs and found that the best ones “can reduce teen sexual activity by as much as one half.” IRE’s report also questions the methodology of the much-hyped Mathematica study, released in April 2007, which challenges the efficacy of abstinence education. The Institute’s work is frequently peer-reviewed, and preeminent sex researcher Douglas Kirby included some of its findings on abstinence education in his 2001 Emerging Answers survey of notable research in the field. However, the media has so far kept mum on the Institute’s abstinence education report.

The selective coverage is a pattern.

In March 2007, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sponsored the “Abstinence Education Evaluation Conference” in Baltimore, MD to present peer-reviewed research on state abstinence-only programs. Nearly 400 experts and critics from around the nation attended. The conference assessed 10 empirical, peer-reviewed studies of abstinence-only programs in 10 states; nine of them found such programs to be extremely effective. The event was a victory for abstinence education, but even the local press decided to go AWOL.

The National Abstinence Clearinghouse distributed a press release on the event on April 13. The release cited ten other peer-reviewed studies favorable to abstinence-only education, and stated: “Recent media have reported that abstinence education is ineffective. While these reports cite one study, there are many more substantive reports that show otherwise.” NAC President Leslee Unruh vented her frustration: "Opponents of abstinence education have refused to recognize the abundance of both general research that supports abstinent behaviors and programmatic research, which demonstrate the effectiveness of abstinence education.” But the media didn’t pay attention.

Is the media one of the opponents of abstinence education Unruh was referring to?

The same media devoted hours of coverage to a study alleging that abstinence education is a failure. In April 2007, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. released a study, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, assessing abstinence education programs. Mathematica released two significant findings: first, that abstinence-only “programs had no effect on the sexual abstinence of youth,” and second, children in abstinence programs “were no more likely to have unprotected sex” than children not in the programs.

National Public Radio’s Larry Abramson, April 13: “Does it make sense for the government to spend $170 million a year on abstinence education?...But abstinence education critics say, in fact, the administration has been pushing this approach almost exclusively at the expense of comprehensive programs that are more effective.”

CNN News’s Joe Johns, April 13: “But critics argue, abstinence-only programs are not realistic. They do not provide kids with the facts with things about like condom use, and that could leave the kids naive about protecting themselves if they do have sex.” Johns did not cite a single study supporting abstinence-only education.

ABC’s Dianne Sawyer on Good Morning America, April 16: “A government report finds abstinence-only education programs are not working.”

An AP article in the New York Times, April 15: “Students who participated in sexual abstinence programs were just as likely to have sex as those who did not, according to a study ordered by Congress.”

Dr. Stan Weed of the Institute for Research and Evaluation has criticized the Mathematica study for, among other things, sampling youth almost exclusively from single-parent, poor African-American households and analyzing programs that provide no follow-up instruction after middle school.

National Abstinence Education Association Executive Director Valerie Hube claims the programs analyzed were “still in their infancy” and that abstinence-only programs have improved significantly since 1999 when Mathematica’s longitudinal study began.

But the media has so far ignored the criticism.

David Niedrauer is an intern at the Culture and Media Institute, a division of the Media Research Center.

First we have to put up with the nonsense that Morgan Freeman (Playing God) gives his powers to Jim Carrey in Bruce Almighty. Now, we're asked to watch "God" break His promise that the world won't be flooded again and that he's turning Steve Carell (Evan) into a new Noah.  Give me a break!!  I didn't waste any money on Bruce Almighty and I certainly won't on Evan.  What's Townhall doing promoting this crap?  I log onto the site today and see a huge ad at the top of every page for the movie.  I know the site is fee for users and they have to pay for it somehow.  Didn't anyone who runs the website consider the possibility that Christians and Jews might find the movie offensive and don't appreciate having to see trailers of it on a supposedly conservative site?  I like Townhall, but I might not spend much more time on it if they are going to keep promoting anti-Bible junk like this movie.

All this talk about global warming (AKA global climate change) is wearing me out.  This endless debate about whether it is really happening or not, who and/or what is causing it and whether we can do anything about it is really pointless compared to other environmental problems.

What happened to the concern for more tangible, more apparent problems?  Our water, soil, air, plants and animals still need conserving.  Whether the global temperature is one degree higher than it was 100 years ago doesn't matter much to a person who can't find safe water to drink.

Where's the push for recycling?  Was that last decade's flavor so now we have to find something "new" to beat the public over the head with?  Sure there are some recycling centers around if you live in a big enough city but there are still a lot of places where people dump easily recyclable stuff in land fills because they don't have anywhere else to take it.  It's getting easier to find products made from recycled material but they still, all too often, cost the same or more than the same things made from "virgin" material so there still isn't much of a real incentive for the cash strapped, bargain hunter to buy recycled.  There used to be ad campaigns to encourage recycling.  Where did those go?  If you don't think recycling and trash management are important, take a look around any city or even small town for that matter.  What do you see?  Papers, plastic bags, cigarettes (don't get me started on those threats to the environment and our health, that could be a blog by itself), bottles etc. laying all over the place.  It looks terrible.  Even worse, it messes up the ecosystems of plants and animals.  Just because we have put perforations on the six-pack rings doesn't mean there aren't any animals suffering from messing with them.  Sure, they don't get stuck in the rings as easily as they used to, but they are still getting hardware disease from trying to eat trash they can't digest.  You won't see me bragging about Mexico's environmental progress very often, but one thing I have to give them is that they re-use glass bottles a whole lot more than we Americans do.  We used to have all kinds of places where you could buy pop, beer etc. in glass bottles then redeem the empties.  Those empty bottles were then cleaned and refilled.  What happended to that deal?  It's a whole lot easier and environmentally friendly than selling so many things in plastic then having the vast majority of the empties getting thrown in the landfill.  The ones that are recycled, have to be melted down and remolded into something else.

What about cleaner water?  It's a crying shame that there are so many places in this country where you are better off wasting upwards of $2 a 20 ounce bottle (depending on the brand) for bottled water than you are taking your chances by drinking from the tap.  Water in so many places tastes terrible and has all kinds of chemicals in it.  We need to do more to control water pollution in both rural and urban places.  Not all polluting runoff comes from crop fields and factories, we need to start working on over-fertilized lawns, golf courses, parks and cemeteries too.  Did you know the typical lush green lawn has more phosphorus and nitrogen per square foot than a typical corn field?  That's because home owners and landscapers apply fertilizer to their lawns at the same rate or sometimes higher every year without bothering to check the nitrate and phosphate levels of their lawn's soil.  More and more farmers do soil testing in their fields, partly due to education from university and government agents and partly due to economics since it's a waste of money they barely have enough of to apply phosphorus fertilizer to a soil that is full of it.  Meanwhile, homeowners watching tv are encouraged every spring by fertilizer companies to pour on the Scotts turf builder or Miracle Grow if they want to have the greenest lawn and be the envy of the neighborhood.  When was the last time you saw a commercial for soil and water testing kits for lawns?  The excess fertilizer that is not used by the grass has to go somewhere and that somewhere is down the storm drain and into the water system.

How about soil erosion?  All the food we eat, much of the fiber we use to make clothes (like those nice cotton t shirts you wear) rely on having an ample supply of healthy soil to grow plants in.  Every time the wind or rain washes "mud" from a crop field, lawn, golf course, construction site etc. it is carrying away more of the most productive part of the soil, the A and B horizons.  Once the A and B horizons (AKA topsoil) is carried away, all that is left is the infertile C horizon or subsoil.  The subsoil has very low organic matter, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and trace mineral content compared to the lost topsoil.  This requires the grower to try to make up the difference in expensive fertilizer applications.  Whether he/she is using chemical or organic (AKA manure) fertilizer there is still a lot of cost involved.  There is also increased risk of runoff since the lack of organic matter in the subsoil makes it harder to keep the fertilizer in place. 

These and other issues have not gone away just because the media and far too many researchers and activists are focusing on global climate change.  Let's get back to solving these problems before we loose any more clean water, fertile soil, trashless land or clean air.

Spider-man 3, Rocky Balboa (AKA Rocky X... or is it Rocky VII, whatever), X-Men 3, Shrek 3, etc. etc.  What's up with the sequelits these days?  Some stories are so deep and rich that they need sequels in order to tell them in the theater without making the audience sit for over six hours straight.  Take Lord of the Rings for example, with three movies running over two hours each, they still had to leave out a lot such as Tom Bombadil and just about all the songs and poems.  But what's up with most of these sequels?  Do we really need to see the green ogre do some more puerile gags?  Not me.  

There are plenty of people out there who have written screenplays, some of which are excellent, who's work will never see the light of the marquee.  Why? Because they don't have a marketable household name behind them like Bay or Spielberg or Gibson or something.  Also because Hollywood studios are blowing their budgets to make these multi million dollar sequels instead of doing more lower budget, unique films.  

Every so often, a new director, producer, writer team manages to squeak in there to bring us something fresh.  Take M. Night Shamalan for example.  When he came on the scene with The Sixth Sense, it blew our minds.  All of his movies have some refreshing twist to them that makes them different from the status quo.  Even Unbreakable, a super hero movie, was way different from your typical Superman or Batman movie.  Or take The Blair Witch Project.  I don't care for that type of movie personally, but it was nice to see a truly indie film make it to the big screen despite having no bankable actors, directors etc backing it up.  

Unfortunately, breaths of fresh air like those are few and far between.  What fills up the marquee on any given month?  More sequels.  I guess the business model of Hollywood is "If movie A makes any profit, then that means the public wants more of the same so let's make A2 and A3".  Like I said, some stories need to be told in parts.  Most of them don't need to be drug out that much.  

I sure wish we'd get more unique films in theaters.  Fortunately, there is a growing market out there for indie movies on DVD and the internet.  More of them are showing up for rent or sale at places like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video.  Since more and more people have broadband (high speed) internet connections and huge multi-gigabyte hard drives these days, downloading a movie is getting to be a more and more viable option.  

It may be that in the future, a lot of would be Hollywood writers, actors, directors etc have to settle for trying to get people to download their work instead of going to theaters.  That's kind of a shame though because there will always be some people who won't have a powerful computer and a high speed internet connection who will miss out on some great new movies.  Hopefully, the trend of indie movies on DVD will continue to expand as well.  

 

What's more important: the woman's right to make medical decisions or the baby's right to live? When does life begin? What kinds of abortion should be legal? Under what circumstances should abortion be allowed?  I grow so sick of these debates!  People try to make an issue that is so amazingly simple into something so complicated.  

Who's rights matter the most?  There was a time when that question was quite simple.  The baby's life used to be the most important.  How many mothers, on the brink of dying during their pregnancy have said "don't worry about me, save the baby!"?  It used to be a much more common thing than it is now.  Now unfortunately, it's become "I'm not sure I want to raise this kid so let's get rid of it". 

Murder is murder, unless of course the victim hasn't been born yet.  In that case, these days, it's ok.  Does it really matter what technique is used?  Does it matter what stage the pregnancy is in?  The end result is the same: another dead baby.  All forms of abortion should be illegal regardless of how neat and tidy they may be compared to other methods.  It's the ultimate form of our society's hypocrisy over punishment of murder.  Why do we punish more severely people who murder in more gruesome ways like decapitation or butchering than we do those who use a neater method like one bullet to the head?  The result is the same.  It's the ultimate form of discrimination to say that a victim isn't really a victim and his/her death wasn't really murder if he/she is under a certain age.     

American society used to be one in which the rights of the most innocent or powerless were protected.  Who among us is more innocent and powerless than an unborn baby?  They haven't done or said anything yet.  If a baby is created as the result of rape, incest, recreational sex or what have you, it is NOT the baby's fault!  Why kill the only definitely innocent person in the situation?  Maybe we should abort the rapist instead of the baby.  Millions of couples around the world are waiting for the chance to adopt a baby for a variety of reasons.  Why not bring the baby to term and see if one of these couples will adopt him/her?  The fools who created the baby without meaning to and who do not want it, should not have the right to decide if it lives or dies.  

I don't like the idea of the government stepping into our lives any more than is absolutely necessary.  They have their fingers in there way more than they should already.  However, the area of abortion is certainly one in which the government needs to step in and save the baby.  If it refuses to do so, then why do we have laws against killing anyone at all?  Why not make all other forms of murder legal too?  The mother who drowns her 6 month old son in the bathtub on purpose should be treated the same way that the mother who pays an abortionist to kill her unborn baby.  When you think of it, these paid for abortions are the same thing as hits and the people in the clinics who do them are the hitmen.  The last time I checked, hiring a hitman to kill someone was illegal whether the hit was carried out or not.  

Finally, I don't understand the splitting of hairs in the few areas where the rights of the unborn baby have been considered.  Why was there such a debate over whether or not to charge the defendant with vechicular manslaughter when an unborn baby dies in the wreck?  Why do we have laws that can charge a woman with abuse/neglect if she smokes or drinks during pregnancy when it is legal for her to abort the baby? 

Either unborn babies are people with rights or they are not.  It's not "just a lump of tissue, part of the woman's body" if it can take the form of a uniquely individual human being given enough time.  Is a tadpole not a frog just because it doesn't look like one?  If you take a DNA sample from a fetus at any stage after conception and take another sample from the baby after he/she is born, the samples are identical.  It's that simple.  If the unborn don't have rights then why do the born?  At least that's my opinion.