Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Surefire® Well Almost

Another day in the life of the forgotten man. Began the day today with a flat tire in the dark of the morning. Okay so I changed the tire to the doughnut in the trunk. As I am doing this I am using my trusty Surefire® M4 Devastator. The Surefire fell from my hands and killed the filament inside the lens. My Surefire surely went dark. But what do you expect from a $300 flashlight, err, lighting tool. MagLights are flashlights. So I finished the job with my trusty MagLight.® $20 at Walmart.

When I finally got to work, still po’d from loosing a $40 bulb, I decided to call Surefire® and report this unexpected event. Why unexpected? Because from reading their literature and how they advertise their lighting instruments as being nearly indestructible, I felt they owed me one.

Connected. “This is Surefire. For our award winning customer service press 1.” Okay. After waiting 10 minutes I was connected with a technician and told him about my situation. I must say he was sympathetic and very courteous. His explanation for the discrepancy in advertising and actual real life situations was that Dropping the light onto pavement or cement would likely cause the superheated filament (225 lumen bulb) to break. But wait I said. These are advertised to work well with Special Ops, Law Enforcement and even the Stargate Atlantis Team. Under the worst of the worst conditions. And changing a tire in the dark of night breaks the the light? Several seconds of silence pervaded the conversation. He said that as a courtesy, he would send out a replacement bulb at Surefires expense.

Okay. They really do have world-class customer service. I was told I would receive my new bulb within 2 to 3 weeks. (maybe just under world-class) Much better than most companies would do.

As a side note to this While the gentleman was taking down my information I created a scenario and asked him the likely results. “What if a policeman needed to kokonk an assailant over the head whilst in a struggle in the dead of night. Would the Surefire light go out, or would the assailants lights go out?” He replied by telling me that most likely hitting someone over the head with the light would not cause the filament to break because a persons head is not as hard as pavement or cement. Well, that’s good to know. Maybe it is worth the money. :)

Thursday, March 13, 2008

March 13, 2008

This recent Greenhouse "Wisdom" from the Pages of the Medical Journal of Australia Volume 11, Number 11: 12 March 2008, really got me going today. Please read.


Noting that every newborn baby "represents a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions," Walters (2007), who is an associate professor of obstetric medicine at King Edward Memorial Hospital in Perth, suggests there should be a Baby Levy in the form of a carbon tax, whereby "every family choosing to have more than a defined number of children [which he intimates should be two] should be charged a carbon tax that would fund the planting of enough trees to offset the carbon cost generated by a new human being."

How large should such a tax be? Walters calculates that for Australia "each child born should be offset by planting 4 hectares of trees, to allow for the time they take to reach maturity, and attrition through crop losses, bushfires, dieback and so on," which he says "infers a levy per child of at least $5,000 at birth (to purchase the land needed and plant trees) and an annual tax of $400-$800 thereafter for the life of the child (for maintenance of the afforestation project)," which fees he bases on 1990 figures, leading him to suggest that they would be "probably much more now." By the same reasoning, he additionally envisions carbon credits for the users and prescribers of, among other things, "condoms and sterilization procedures," which would lead to "rewards for family planning clinics and hospitals that provide such greenhouse-friendly services."

Also writing in the Medical Journal of Australia, Egger (2007), who is director of the Centre for Health Promotion and Research in Sydney, touts a personal carbon trading scheme, the plan of which is to allocate to every individual in the world an equal number of tradeable energy units per year, based on a budget which is set by "a central budgetary council." The trading of such units would be conducted either through existing credit cards or through "a carbon card system administered by banks." Under this system, as he describes it, "individuals who are left with carbon credits (i.e., those who are frugal with non-renewable energy use) are then able to sell these back into the marketplace, thereby gaining financial benefit," while "those who overuse their quota pay a premium price for extra energy use," with unused units being "retired, with a view to contraction of the total energy budget to a sustainable level."

And you thought a simple gas tax was a little much! Welcome to the brave new world of Al Gore and James Hansen.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

March 12, 2008

Did you know that the communist surge is working here in California? 166,000 kids who are who are home schooled have been freed by the California Judicial System! All right way to go. Not.

California doesn't want parents to be able to home school anymore. Gee. What other states have laws like this? Lets see. The Communist State. The Italian State, The German (Nazi youth camps) State. Oh yeah, the fascism State. That's the 51st. state in the union if you didn't know.

The Nazis, the Communists, they recognized right off the bat: You control education, you can control the future. Leaders of the Nazi party from the very beginning stressed the primary importance of education in popularizing the new state, in creating habits and attitudes conductive of, quote, loyalty to the state.

Yes, California's rationale on home schooling is something to behold. According to Judge Croskey's opinion, those poor kids are forced to stay at home and interact with no one! No one except there parents and family. Such a bad thing. Not! (It's much better than associating with the vermin at public schools. You know, the ones that carry guns and drugs.) He said parents shouldn't home school in part because "Keeping the children at home deprive them of situations where, one, they could interact with people outside the family; two, there are people who could provide help if something is amiss in the children's lives(what is he insinuating); and three, could help develop emotionally in a broader world than the parents' cloistered setting."

Keeping children home. Yes it does. It deprives my children of situations, and I think that's a good thing!

In this amazing opinion from the judge, who says parents have "no constitutional right to prevent a public school from providing its students with whatever information it wishes to provide, sexual or otherwise, when and as the school determines it is appropriate to do so." Really? Judge, do you know where funding for schools comes from?

Isn't it very telling that the judge doesn't tell parents that they should send their kids to school to get a better education? Nowhere in here is "Because public school could provide a better education." Why wouldn't the judge say that? I mean, isn't that the grandest reason of all to send them to public school? Because it's a better education? Yeah. Not so much, can't really say that, can you? No. Because generally speaking, on the national average, home school kids do better on tests. Home school kids do better in college. Home school kids do better at work. Why? Because home schooled kids haven't been coddled, haven't been talked down to, they've had rules that actually make sense and apply. They're enforced! They've got to get the job done. They're held accountable.

In 2007 the Heritage Survey found the percentage of members of the 110th congress who practice private school choice is disproportionate to the general populous. 11.5% of the American students attend private schools but over 37% of the House members, 45% of the Senators either send or sent their kids to private school. Why your asking? Why? Is it because they are elitists and they are rich and they can afford it? Is it because they're in a dangerous job and they need to make sure that their kids are safe? (What, public schools aren't safe?) No. It is because they know education in the non public venues works. And yes, partially because they are elitists and rich. But you don't have to be rich to home educate.

It only gets better folks. The House and Senate committees which actually have responsibility over our public schools, the ones who set rules on what can and cannot be done, well over 23% of those House members who actually sit on the House Education and Labor committee and 33% of the Senators who actually sit on the Senate Health Education and Labor pension committee opted to send at least one of their children to private school. They're the bastards trying to fix it! They are the bastards running it and yet they are over double the national rate of sending their kids to private school.

California, what the hell are you doing? This is a move that should scare anybody who knows anything at all about history and the history of Progressives. This recent decision here does two things. It removes the parent as the primary decision maker as what's best for their own children. Gotta love that. Two, it gives the state the SOLE power to DECIDE what it is able to teach YOUR children.

Karl Marx said in his manifesto, "free education for all children in public schools." One sentence later he added an education should be combined with industrial production. Why turn the youth into assets for the state? He said it was the intention to destroy the most hallowed of relations and have it replaced with education by the social classes of government. It was necessary for Marx to destroy the most important, most hallowed of relations and that is the relationship of the parent and child to be replaced with a relationship of the state.

I think that we are doing our damnedest to promote somebody who understands world government. The United Nations, how great that it is. How great Progressives are, how bad our founding fathers are, and what a racist country we are. Not on my watch assholes.

Opening Lines

California - USA.

This is the day. This is the beginning. You are witnessing the birth of a new blog. A new blog that no one will really care about. :) Hehe.