4/28/2008

An analogy...

Malcolm X : The Honorable Elijah Mohammed : : Barack Obama : Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Somehow I thought of this after remembering the excellent (if long) Malcolm X by Spike Lee. At least somewhere along the line, Obama may have an epiphany.

4/27/2008

Сняло JR?*

Interesting article on how Dallas, with JR Ewing as the ultimate capitalist, ended the Cold War.

When the public under Communist rule saw that America wasn't the evil empire its leaders purported to be, they figured, "Hey, JR Ewing is an SOB, but at least the SOB doesn't put people in the gulag - and he doesn't have a secret police force watching our every move!"

* Who shot JR?

4/26/2008

Putting people first

Another thought on Earth Day, from the Great White North.

Summary: when teachers scream at full-throat that learning multiplication tables is "dull, rote learning," then what the hell is screaming slogans about "saving the planet" and "reducing your carbon footprint?"

And I wonder why these same kids, when they reach college, are so underprepared that half of their freshman year is spent in remedial learning - you know, the lessons the idiot teacher should have prepared but was too busy watching An Inconvenient Truth for the eighteenth time.

And kudos to the first smart high school kid who says, "I think your statistics are hogwash, and you don't deserve the union-mandated salary to teach this environmental Inquisition. I'd like to learn the law of Cosines and Shakespeare, not the Gospel According to Al Gore and his Marxist buddies."

4/24/2008

Don Gillis 1922-2008

Don Gillis, former sports director for the WHDH (when it was Boston's CBS affiliate until 1972)/WCVB (an ABC affiliate since then) and host of Candlepin Bowling on Saturdays, passed away at the age of 85.

Candelpin Bowling was a staple at my grandparent's house, as every Saturday afternoon my grandmother would be serving my grandfather lunch, and he'd dip his sandwich into his tea. My uncle also bowled on Candlepin Bowling back in the eighties, against Hugh Ferguson, and I can also remember as clear as yesterday Tom Olzsta rolling four consecutive strikes.

No word yet if the pallbearers will be in a half-Worcester formation, but Don would certainly laugh at it if he did.

UPDATE: Joe Fitzgerald from the Boston Herald details Gillis' service in the Navy, and was there the day the Japanese surrendered and ended World War II.

A solid analysis of how taxes work

This article from CNN Money/Fortune is a straight-ahead (i.e. bias-free) observation on who pays what in taxes, based on wealth.

All I have to say is, "Better not show this to Congress...or maybe Congress knows this and would get clobbered if the public knew the truth!"

The Top 30 Gold Survey