The Bigsibling Blog

What irks me?  I know many have wondered.  But something that really and truly irks me is a story in The Register – a UK rag that proclaims there are now over 1 million (that’s a 1000 times 1000 for you folks in Arkansas) Europeans are now running broadband internet on fibre optic cables directly to their homes.

WTF is this?  I thought we were in America?  Why is it that we in America aren’t running fibre to the home?  We created a pen that can write in zero gravity, we put a man on the moon, we started the internet for crying out loud.  We created the telephone, the helicopter, the airplane, and microwave pizza.  But we can’t get fibre to our homes to run broadband internet on?  They have to do it in Europe before we do it here?

This is wrong…just so, so, so wrong.  I suppose we are all just too busy wondering why Spears cut her hair off, or whether Ana-Nicole will actually be buried somewhere and how the father really is to worry about such technological leaps as running fibre optic cables to our homes.

Bah…

source

Technorati Tags: Fibre Optic, Fibre To The Home, FTTH

Stumble it!

Being a loud and somewhat vociferous harbinger of the ‘dumbing down of America,’ I had to watch the premier last night of the new Fox television show “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?“

This show is more-or-less a re-working of the hugely popular “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” where contestants are asked questions for dollar amounts.  It is somewhat simpler, there are ten questions to get to the $500 grand mark, then one more question (I think) to get to the million dollars.  The contestant can bow out at any time and take whatever money he has already won.

There are five fifth graders on the program which are there to give assistance to the contestant, should they need it.  There are three types of assistance, Peek, Copy and Save.

In Peek, the contestant can peek at the student’s answer, and choose whether or not to use that answer.  In Copy the contest must accept whatever answer the student has written.  In Save, if the contestant is wrong, and the student is correct, the contest is saved.

It seems there might be a glimmer of hope with our current crop of students – or at least they do not seem as dumbed down as possibly my generation.  The first contestant on the show was a guy my age, who graduated with a 3.0 GPA from UCLA majoring in US History.  He is now an attorney.  The question that did him in was “Who was the first American president to be impeached?”  This Einstein also didn’t know in which month Columbus day is celebrated. 

Of the four questions he was asked, he go zero right without the help of the fifth graders on the show.  He used up all three cheats, then quit and walked away with is $5K.  That shows me there is a lot to be concerned about as my generation gears up for ruling the country.  Maybe not the next president, but the one after that will certainly be a person who went through grade school in the 70’s, and high school and college in the 80’s.

Technorati Tags: Television, Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader, FOX

Stumble it!

I’m sorry, I think I woke up on the wrong decade…nay…the wrong centruy.  If one can actually believe this bale of doohicky, there is an honest to goodness elected official in Kansas who introduce a bill to amend the Kansas Constitution with an Equal Rights Amendment.

I didn’t know things were so bad for the fairer sex (oops, can I say that if the amendment passes?).  But I suppose for Marla Patrick, statewide coordinater for the Kansas National Organizatin of Women (NOW).  She things we are still living in the stone age or something.

“Women should not have to fight for their rights with every changing political cycle,” Patrick said.  “It is unconsionable that women are denied full constitutional rights when they are equally contributing members of our society.”

Maybe I don’t see it.  Maybe the whole being a man thing gets in the way.  But where are women denied any constitutional rights?  Where are women being oppressed and living without due process?  Where is this taking place?  Is this part of the evolution thing Kansas is so nationally known for?  How are women fighting for rights with every political change?  Doesn’t Kansas have a woman governer?

source

Technorati Tags: Kansas, ERA, Womens Rights, NOW

Stumble it!

Bah, kids these days. They just can’t figure things out. A couple of excellent examples of the dumbing down of American youth are Shaun Harrison and Saverio Mondelli.

These two Einsteins created a tracking program that would allow anyone to track IP addresses and email addresses of MySpace users. They were selling the program online for $30. This is might seem rather innocuous on the surface, but I could see them being sued in civil court for damages if a user of MySpace.com was in some way injured or damaged as a result of their software.

Regardless. MySpace was aware of the program, and implemented security measures to block it. So these dweebs contacted the MySpace people and claimed to have an ‘ubreakable’ version of their software which they would sell unless MySpace paid them a ‘consultancy fee’ of $150 large.

Now, I am not Bill Gates, but I am smart enough to know that, in the computer world, there is no such thing as ‘unbreakable’ software. There will, given time, be someone who can create a way to break or work-around anything out there. Look at DVD encryption. Supposedly unbreakable, but some kid in Europe was able to crack the DVD encryption.

I am also smart enough to know that the MySpace folks are not so dumb as to give in to this type of blatant extortion. If they did that, then these asshats would just keep coming back for more. Did they forget that business mogul Rupert Murdoch owns MySpace? Probably didn’t even know that. Murdoch did not get where he is today by paying off kids who make impossible claims.

The kids did one smart thing though. They listened to their attorney and got off with what I think is a fairly light sentence for what their crimes were. They received three years probation, 160 hours of community service and have to pay $13 large to MySpace for damages. Chances of MySpace ever seeing a nickel of that? Slim to none. If these kids are this stupid at 19 and 20, where in the world will they find a job that doesn’t require them to say “You want fries with that?”

source

Technorati Tags: Hackers, MySpace, Shaun Harrison, Saverio Mondelli, Black Mail, Dumb Crooks

Stumble it!

The Federales arrested Charles Rust-Tierney over the weekend for possessing child pornography. This isn’t some “opps I went to the wrong website” or “hey, someone must have sent that to me in the e-mail” kind of offense either. This perv had CDs filled with movies of girls as young as 9 years old being brutally raped and screaming and crying for help.

How sick does this get? Oh, there is more. Chucky the perv is also youth sports coach! And former president of the Virginia ACLU. And used to be a public defender for Washington, DC.

Can it get any worse than this? Yes, it could be found that some of this sicko’s movies were created by him. And he could get one of those progressive liberal candy-ass judges that gives him something like 60 days in jail and then rehab.

ACLU ex-president charged in child-porn case – Metropolitan – The Washington Times, America’s Newspaper

Technorati Tags: ACLU, Child Rape, Youth Sports, Rust-Tierney

Stumble it!

I was watching the ABC morning show while walking my 1.5 mile treadmill walk at the gym this morning, and a segment came on that caught my interest. I can’t be 100% certain what all was said because I have trouble reading whatever language those transcribers type in for the closed captions, but it was about how restaurant food contains high calories.

Well…duh! It’s a restaurant for crying out loud. They were picking on a national chain, something like Red Robin or TGI Fridays or somewhere like that. They were reporting on how the chicken and broccoli pasta dish (which sounds healthy) contained 2100 calories while the gigantic monster burger had only 1950 calories.

This whole exercise was geared toward a movement to have nutritional information on restaurant menus. Because, as one might guess, people go to restaurants for their low-calorie fair, and not for good food and service.

This is just more nanny-stateism. And yes, I can fully and proudly state that I am an Anti-NannyStateist. It is more of this whole movement to remove personal responsibility from the individual person and shift it somewhere else. “It isn’t my fault I spilled coffee on my lap, it was the restaurant I bought the coffee at.” “It isn’t my fault I shot someone dead, it is the gun manufacturers’ fault.” “It isn’t my fault I drove drunk, Chevy knows that people drink and drive, and yet they make cars anyway.”

Once we as a people abolish individual responsibility for our own actions, we start on a dark and doomed path. The pendulum has got to start swinging the other way, and soon, or I truly fear for what kind of sissification will be indoctrinated into my grandchildren.

Thanks for visiting.

Stumble it!

Reason wins out in California…at least it gains a small victory, but not quite an outright victory.

California Democrat Sally Lieber re-vamped her bill which would have outlawed spanking children under 3 years old.  It’s been replaced with specific violations parents could commit while disciplining their children.

It is important to note that there is a difference between discipline and abuse.  Her bill lowers the threshold for abuse, and defines as abuse;

use of a stick, rod or belt to hit a child, striking a child with a
closed fist, and striking a child under the age of 3 years old on the
face or hand

Some of them I can see.  Hitting a kid with a closed fist, regardless of his age, is wrong.  That is plainly and simply abuse.  But using a build or rod?  No, while that can be abusive, so can the form of discipline loved by the libs – the time out.  A time out can be just as abused as corporal punishment with a belt.

Check any metro newspaper and one can find stories about kids being locked in their rooms, or a garage or a shed for hours, even days at a stretch.  But this bill would not prohibit that. 

Instead, Ms. Lieber tends to believe she knows how better to raise children than parents do.  If the current state of the populous of California is any indication of the proper way to raise children, I’ll pass thank you very much.  What we don’t need is a country full of people who engage in the same type of thinking as the people of California.

source

Technorati Tags: Parenting, Rights, Stupid Laws

Stumble it!

I found this over at Hillbilly White Trash and just had to steal it. I don’t feel terribly bad because HWT stole it from Shooting The Messenger.

Thanks for visiting!

Stumble it!

***ADVERTISEMENT***

Technorati Tags: Streaming, Audio, Video, Pictures, Widget.net

Stumble it!

Kansas City Police have an image problem.  They are seen as the enemy by most people.  Perhaps this is one reason why.

You can see the video here.  I hope it disgusts you are much as it disgusts me.

The police chief pretty well summed it up:

“Police officers are expected to help people, and this incident did not
demonstrate that value,” Corwin said in a prepared statement released
today. “I expect members of this department to treat people with
dignity and respect at all times. Behavior like this, although
isolated, greatly disappoints me as a police chief and a human being.”

source

Stumble it!

« Previous entries