Korn's guitarist finds God

I was reading Michelle Malkin's blog when I ran across this piece.

"NEW YORK - Korn guitarist Brian "Head" Welch has parted ways with the hard rock act, citing a recent religious awakening. Welch broke the news Sunday on Bakersfield, Calif., station KRAB-FM.

"I had it in my heart to come here and explain to you," Welch said. "I'm good friends with Korn. I love those guys, and they love me, and they're very happy for me."

Addressing the aggressive tone of the music he made with Korn, Welch said, "Anger is a good thing, and if kids want to listen to Korn, good, but there's happiness after the anger. I'm going to show it through my actions how much I love my fans.""

This just hit close to home. I grew up in Bakersfield. I went to school with Jonathon Davis' half brother (ex-lead singer of Adema), Mark Chavez. Interesting Story, Michelle is right, I hope they have more on this story (either here or at KRAB).

Crazy Funny Stupid

And here's to Saturday:

Numa Numa Dance

Why would anyone want more of this? Apparently it was huge, the guy appeared on CNN and VH1.

Dancing Banana

I now am going to bang my head against the wall a few times until I bleed.

Terror alert color on the same Dancing Banana

This is so stupid I added it to my sidebar.

Update 1:
She frickin' blocked me

I wonder how many poor guys this happened to ;-)

Carnival of the Trackbacks

Kevin at Wizbang started what I call the Carnival of the Trackbacks, He put up a post just for the idea of smaller blogs sending in links to posts that they think are worthwhile reads.

I must applaud Kevin's efforts to get lesser-known and lesser-read blogs more traffic and more readers. If it weren't for Wizbang, I probably would still be a slimy mollusk. ;-)

Global Warming or is it?

Update:
Paul@Wizbang on News by Press Release.

Welcome Wizbang! readers.

I know there have been a lot of posts, scientific studies and such, but I wonder if anyone has pondered that perhaps its just one giant heat transfer problem.

In modeling the earth as a heat transfer system, one must look at three different parts, the conduction (and somewhat of convection) from inside the earth to the surface. From the center to the outer crust, its a convection problem, making the assumption that there is nothing but magma in the center, and since magma can flow and change course, we have to assume convection heat transfer properties. From the inner surface of the earth's crust to the outer surface of the crust, its heat transfer, even though its a very small amount.


*Picture taken from The Interior of the Earth

I'm not going to go too much into detail about the conductivities of the various materials, but suffice it to say that there WILL be heat transfer. There always is. Its the "Zeroth" law of thermodyamics, If there are two objects in contact, one at a Higher temperature than the other, then (in layman's terms) heat will always flow from the higher temperature object to the lower temperature object until their temperatures are equal.

Ok to start off this problem, that-which-was-our-solar-system was fleeing the big bang (probably didn't want a repeat incident) and spinning at an uber-fast rate. At some point, the earth was flung off of that huge ball of matter and continued its orbit around the sun at a super high speed. To make our problem simple, let us assume that it was all a constant temperature (the temperature of the huge ball of fire that which was our sun). That's pretty freakin' hot! How can you complain about global warming when the earth was super hot to begin with?

Anyways, as I mentioned above, there are three modes of heat transfer, radiation, conduction, and convection. Conduction is the heat transfer of two solid objects in contact. Convection is the heat transfer when dealing with a fluid flow, its basically conduction, but with moving particles, and thus has to be modeled differently. Radiation is a whole other ball game. Heat transfer by radiation has to do with the the difference of energy states of two objects. Radiation is the only mode of heat transfer that can occure through a vaccuum, if it weren't for radiation, we wouldn't have the life here on earth.

Back to the problem, as heat was given off by the earth through radiation to other particles out in space somewhere, the outside temperature of the earth cooled and formed a "crust" layer. This crust layer slowed down the rate of heat transfer because its temperature is closer to the temperature of the "outside surroundings" out in space and since heat transfer is related to the temperature difference (actually radiation is the temperature to the fourth difference-- Tsurf^4 - Tsurr^4), the heat transfer lessened.

Now the heat transfer from inside out is increasing because the temperature difference between the core of the earth to the crust is increasing, so the heat starts flowing even more to the outside, as that heat starts to flow more, then the surface temperature heats up as the crust matter stores more energy. When the temperature on the outside surface of the earth heats up again, then it gives off more energy to the surroundings in outer space, cooling the surface of the earth again, continuing the cycle.

Considering that our planet is probably a quite young planet as the universe goes, the earth will eventually find an equilibrium state, but Notice that the surface temperature of the earth went from VERY hot to VERY cold (read, ice age!!!), back to mediocre warm, to mediocre cold, and as it continues to "hunt" to find the steady state condition, the surface temperature of the earth, and by convection, the atmospheric temperature, will continue to vary up and down a little.

Of course, the sunspots and radiation from the sun throws a few curveballs, but the basic premise holds true.

Not just silent

Sorry everyone, I'm currently working on post off and on about the possibility of the varying temperatures due not to "global warming", but instead due to forces beyond our control.

Such as radiation heat transfer back and forth between the sun and the earth and other objects out in space (as well as heat loss from the core through the magma up through the crust out into outer space).

Busy Busy Busy

Lately I've been studying for my Coast Guard exam retakes as well as homework and my senior design project work, so I've been busy. Apologies.

Silence is deafening

Apparently I'm not the only one who attempted to comment at Wizbang recently, only to have my post denied (for content??!?!?).

Update For Paul:
No, its not rewording. I just tried posting "hmm" and it didn't go through.

Update again:
Trackbacks don't go through, either.

Final Update
working again

Text Messaging

Well Verizon's text messaging service has always fucked up for me. Every text message I try to send just doesn't work out, POS. Not only that when I go to Verizon's Picture Messaging site, and I try "joining up" (you have to join up in order to be able to login), and I try putting my mobile number in the box, i hit "register" and it claims that it sent the auto-password to my phone....but NOTHING HAPPENS. I tried it numerous times, I then tried calling verizon and I was on hold for 20 minutes.

Oi.

Update 1:
Thank Goodness its Verizon. I called the customer service people just now and I got through after 1 second on hold. The guy was (of course) friendly and apologetic. It seems the problem is that when Verizon "activates" text/picture messaging on your account, it apparently sometimes doesn't remove the block on incoming text messages. He removed the block and I received the confirmation.

Playboy Interview with Kid Rock

Yes, I have a subscription to Playboy (and yes I do actually read the articles, you perverts!)

In the most recent (March 2005) issue, they interview both the Rock and Kid Rock. Playboy is known for its own views regarding Bush (they're liberal as hell), so this one question they asked Kid Rock was obvious. Kid Rock's response, however, was priceless:

I won't necessarily always agree with the president, but I'll support him and stand by him. To be honest, I'm not educated enough to speak about it, and I don't think any of these other motherfuckers are, either. I'm pretty sure Janeane Garofalo's and that chick from the dixie Chicks' educations don't stretch that far. Look up Condi Rice's or George Bush's education, where they went to school. They've been doing this shit their whole fucking lives, while we've been out dicking around with guitars, entertaining people. Fuckers in Hollywood who want to use the camera to be like, "Guess who I'm fuckin' now?" and "Oh, stop the war!" - all that shit just makes me sick. It really makes my stomach turn.

Sometimes you just can't say it better yourself.

Harvard President Makes Sense - Part 1

Paul at Wizbang discovered the actual transcript of the Harvard President's famous speech.
(** Note, this is going to be a fairly long entry, apologies)

First and foremost, I'd like to say that his first remarks are hilarious in hindsight. He literally said he'd rather be provocative.

I asked Richard, when he invited me to come here and speak, whether he wanted an institutional talk about Harvard's policies toward diversity or whether he wanted some questions asked and some attempts at provocation, because I was willing to do the second and didn't feel like doing the first.

He then states in his preamble (his introduction, if you will), that the fact there are so few women in science and engineering fields (the left-brained people) causes there to be so few role models for even younger women to take up those fields.

It is after all not the case that the role of women in science is the only example of a group that is significantly underrepresented in an important activity and whose underrepresentation contributes to a shortage of role models for others who are considering being in that group

Not only that, he even gives examples of other areas of underrepresentation right after that:

To take a set of diverse examples, the data will, I am confident, reveal that Catholics are substantially underrepresented in investment banking, which is an enormously high-paying profession in our society; that white men are very substantially underrepresented in the National Basketball Association; and that Jews are very substantially underrepresented in farming and in agriculture. These are all phenomena in which one observes underrepresentation, and I think it's important to try to think systematically and clinically about the reasons for underrepresentation.

He gives "three broad hypotheses" for what he believes are the sources of such underrepresentation:

One is ... the ... high-powered job hypothesis. The second is ... different availability of aptitude at the high end, and the third is ... different socialization and patterns of discrimination in a search

Then he starts into his first, the high-powered job hypothesis. He discusses that there WERE large numbers of women enrolling in college 25 years ago, and he talks about what happened that there are so few women in the "high-power" jobs:

Twenty or twenty-five years ago, we started to see very substantial increases in the number of women who were in graduate school in this field. Now the people who went to graduate school when that started are forty, forty-five, fifty years old. If you look at the top cohort in our activity, it is not only nothing like fifty-fifty, it is nothing like what we thought it was when we started having a third of the women, a third of the law school class being female, twenty or twenty-five years ago. And the relatively few women who are in the highest ranking places are disproportionately either unmarried or without children, with the emphasis differing depending on just who you talk to. And that is a reality that is present and that one has exactly the same conversation in almost any high-powered profession.

At first glance one could assume that there might have been discrimination, and he might talk about the sex discrimination in hiring practices and promotions, but he instead discusses something else:

...the most prestigious activities in our society expect of people who are going to rise to leadership positions in their forties near total commitments to their work. They expect a large number of hours in the office, they expect a flexibility of schedules to respond to contingency, they expect a continuity of effort through the life cycle, and they expect-and this is harder to measure-but they expect that the mind is always working on the problems that are in the job, even when the job is not taking place. And it is a fact about our society that that is a level of commitment that a much higher fraction of married men have been historically prepared to make than of married women.

He says that its not discrimination on the employer's part, its the willingness to commit so much to such demanding positions that is inherent in the employee!

Another way to put the point is to say, what fraction of young women in their mid-twenties make a decision that they don't want to have a job that they think about eighty hours a week. What fraction of young men make a decision that they're unwilling to have a job that they think about eighty hours a week, and to observe what the difference is.

He sums the first hypothesis with a simple question:

...who wants to do high-powered intense work?

The second hypothesis is where his famous controversy a month ago came from, inherent aptitude.

It does appear that on many, many different human attributes-height, weight, propensity for criminality, overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability-there is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means-which can be debated-there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population. And that is true with respect to attributes that are and are not plausibly, culturally determined.

He then discusses some statistics, all the while he kept claiming that his calculations were crude, his calculations were probably wrong, and so forth:

If one supposes, as I think is reasonable, that if one is talking about physicists at a top twenty-five research university, one is not talking about people who are two standard deviations above the mean. And perhaps it's not even talking about somebody who is three standard deviations above the mean. But it's talking about people who are three and a half, four standard deviations above the mean in the one in 5,000, one in 10,000 class. Even small differences in the standard deviation will translate into very large differences in the available pool substantially out. I did a very crude calculation, which I'm sure was wrong and certainly was unsubtle, twenty different ways. I looked at the Xie and Shauman paper-looked at the book, rather-looked at the evidence on the sex ratios in the top 5% of twelfth graders. If you look at those-they're all over the map, depends on which test, whether it's math, or science, and so forth-but 50% women, one woman for every two men, would be a high-end estimate from their estimates. From that, you can back out a difference in the implied standard deviations that works out to be about 20%. And from that, you can work out the difference out several standard deviations. If you do that calculation-and I have no reason to think that it couldn't be refined in a hundred ways-you get five to one, at the high end.

He finds about a 5 to 1 ratio male to female in the "3.5 to 4 and up" standard deviations, basically the top of the top of the top! When you are a top research physicist at an established University (especially one that might be known for its physics research department), you are there because you earned it. Note that this can also tie in with the previous hypothesis because those positions are also high demand jobs.

He then talks a bit about his third hypothesis (socialization), with awonderful example:

I just returned from Israel, where we had the opportunity to visit a kibbutz, and to spend some time talking about the history of the kibbutz movement, and it is really very striking to hear how the movement started with an absolute commitment, of a kind one doesn't encounter in other places, that everybody was going to do the same jobs. Sometimes the women were going to fix the tractors, and the men were going to work in the nurseries, sometimes the men were going to fix the tractors and the women were going to work in the nurseries, and just under the pressure of what everyone wanted, in a hundred different kibbutzes, each one of which evolved, it all moved in the same direction.

How true. When Israel was first started, life was really tough, just about every arab around tried to exterminate them at some point, the rough life was pretty much the norm. Girls weren't "socialized" to "nurture", everyone was socialized to help out in any way they could. However, he turns around and says that isn't necessarily true, though starting with an amusing anecdote about his own children:

So, I think, while I would prefer to believe otherwise, I guess my experience with my two and a half year old twin daughters who were not given dolls and who were given trucks, and found themselves saying to each other, look, daddy truck is carrying the baby truck, tells me something.

At two and a half years, girls are as girly as can be. Same with boys, coming out of my own past, I had two sisters, who had a ton of barbie dolls. My older sister would sometimes force me to "play" with them, and I would bring along my Voltron (anyone else remember Voltron? Think Power Rangers, but older-mid 80's- and Japanese). My parents told me that I would drive them around on Voltron and make war sounds, my parents would laugh their butt off at that.

First, most of what we've learned from empirical psychology in the last fifteen years has been that people naturally attribute things to socialization that are in fact not attributable to socialization. We've been astounded by the results of separated twins studies. The confident assertions that autism was a reflection of parental characteristics that were absolutely supported and that people knew from years of observational evidence have now been proven to be wrong. And so, the human mind has a tendency to grab to the socialization hypothesis when you can see it, and it often turns out not to be true.

So, we can understand that socialization shouldn't always be considered the cause, that there are inherent abilities and behaviors.

Continued in Part 2 (later)

For the Ladies

On President's day, the uniform of the day (required) was our dress blues:

CNN goof

via JuliusBlog, via The Brad Blog

Apparently, a nuclear facility is located in Iran AND North Korea, according to CNN, in Brad's update, however, he says CNN fixes their mistake

**Note that one picture is the subset of the other

CNN has added the following text to the Korea story:

CORRECTION

An earlier version of this article included an image that was incorrectly identified as an aerial photograph of North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear plant. The photo was actually a commercial satellite photo of a nuclear facility near Natanz, Iran.

The updated picture is here:



For more information on the story head over to The Brad Blog

Linked Titles in Blogspot

It is fairly easy to create clickable linked titles in blogspot that you don't have to constantly keep adding the html to your title bar, and the clickable title for your entire blog, too!

You adjust your template (one feature of blogspot that I find sooooo freakin' lovely, the ability to tweak the html of your blog)!!!!

**Note, since this will be using tags, I cannot show the straight html code, so, instead of less than and greater than, I will use parenthesis: (a href= "")(/a)

For a clickable blog title to your blog url on your main blogspot page.
1. Log in to blogspot, and click on the Template tag.

2. Scroll down in the template to find this text:
(h1 id="blog-title")

(ItemPage)(a href="($BlogURL$)") (/ItemPage)

($BlogTitle$)

(ItemPage) (/a) (/ItemPage)

(/h1)

3. Remove the (ItemPage) tags - this will cause your blog url to be a clickable link on your blog title even on your main page.

4. Save Template Changes and Republish Index!

To add a clickable title for each post
1. Log in to blogspot, and click on the Template tag.

2. Scroll down in the template to find this text:
(h3 class="post-title")

(BlogItemUrl)(a href="($BlogItemUrl$)" title="external link")(/BlogItemUrl)

($BlogItemTitle$)

(BlogItemUrl)(/a)(/BlogItemUrl)

(/h3)

3. Change the

($BlogItemTitle$)

to look like

(a href="($BlogItemPermalinkUrl$)")($BlogItemTitle$)(/a)


4. Save Template Changes and Republish Index!

The Diplomad is putting up his spurs

Sad news for the conservative blogfront. The Diplomad is retiring his blog.

No fault of man

Found this through the Bonfire of the Vanities - Week 85

Opinionated Bastard's contribution is his rant in Real Women Have Hips on how women's fashion has nothing to do with men.

...In the present, when it comes to the same sex though, it seems we disagree. The women and mostly gay men who control the fashion industry have settled on a standard of female beauty that to my eye makes the women look diseased. For a long time, I figured it was just my particular taste in women. Judging by the catalog I got from Playboy though, it seems I’m not alone, that men in general agree with me: we like women with a little meat on their bones. Because ultimately, we like healthy women not anorexic women. ...

I agree wholeheartedly with OP's commentary. I enjoy looking at those catalogues for the same reason I enjoy looking at Playboy and Maxim magazines, I enjoy looking at photographs of attractive scantily clad women. But those catalogues and women's magazines such as Seventeen, Vogue, Glamour, and Cosmopolitan portray crappy images of beauty that 95% of all women alive cannot even come close to.

Wow

Thanks to more than a few bloggers, I recently became the target of a number of viewers because of this post and this post. Over at Wizbang!, a linked-to blog created a term he called "Wizbanging", referencing to the insane number of hits he got due to a high traffic blog like Wizbang linking him.

I'd like to welcome visitors who read Libertarian Girl, Deltoid, Jacqueline Passey, Foreign Dispatces, and Wizbang!.
Because of you, my traffic looks like this:



Update 1: I can't really take credit for "debunking" HAC. There have been efforts more serious than mine here and here, I just ran across a yahoo! photos album that contains the pictures she uses, and more, with a different name than "amanda", marie. I must admit that the story DOES seem "sensationalist", though.

911 facts

via Instapudit:

Popular Mechanics pooled together a team of experts to debunk 9/11 myths.

A few of those I've already discussed, not here. Last semester I took a course called Engineering Ethics. One of the lectures, we watched a video on an ethics case. The man who designed and built the WTC was presenting himself as a case study, on whether he did enough to prevent the WTC collapse. It was a very moving video, and very interesting (structural wise). These are facts that I got from the video:

When the planes hit, The fuselage literally fell apart, and 'blew' into the building, blowing the fireproofing material right off of the structural steel frame.

The company that administered the fireproofing material did a half-assed job, in some cases, only half the fireproofing material was found to have been installed.

One tower collapsed on the inside, and it "implodes". The other tower collapsed on the outside, and that one you see the "top" of the tower staying there for a few seconds, before finally starting its own path down.

The Jet fuel burned only for a few seconds, but ignited the raging office fire.

The raging office fire caused some of the floor support beams to 'sag', and, as they were designed only to resist sideways motions, not up and down motions, fell from the connecting bolts, and when enough of them fell, the floor collapsed.

Computer models at the time couldn't accurately model building fires and what it does to the structural integrity of the building. The building was also designed to withstand a hit (think: Empire State building airplane hit) from the largest airplane at the time, which was considerably smaller than the plane that ACTUALLY hit.

Despite that, the plane withstood the impact VERY well, just not the ensuing office fire (computer models couldn't model the jet fuel, only the impact of a big heavy object).

The resulting discussion as to whose fault it was, not for the initial impact and fire, of course, but why the buildings themselves collapsed was very interesting. There were a few innovative designs in the WTC. They had to ease buildings codes to make the design feasible. If they had attempted to build the WTC in the same way that the Empire State Building was built (heavy structure and the like), there wouldn't have been enough room for rental spaces, and the building owners would have lost money, so why bother building it?

I'm sure wacko-loons will still claim it's all Karl Rove's fault.

Winnah and steel champeen!

I made the top three in a Wizbang! Caption Contest!



Congrats are in order to bullwinkle, though, his "What do you think this part means 'All your base are belong to me', signed Howard Dean?" was freakin hilarious.

For reference, my 3rd placed entry was: "Al: So I faxed this to CBS from a kinkos"

Libertarian Girl a fake

Cattalarchy recently discovered that Libertarial Girl was a phony!

The entire story is pretty amusing, really. The "unemployed man without a wife or girlfriend still living with my parents despite being over the age of 30" who runs Libertarian Girl did it because he wanted to be "read". Apparently, "When I had a blog as my real self, no one linked to me, no one left any comments, it was as if the blog existed in a vacuum". He created Libertarian Girl and "Every day I’d check Technorati and discover new unsolicited links. It was like I had warped into an alternate universe where all the rules had changed."

He then launches into a diatribe about how easy attractive women have it, and it makes for an interesting read:

It’s funny how there have been some posts in the blogosphere saying that the political blogosphere was a boys club that discriminated against women, as evidenced by how few politics bloggers were women. Boy were they completely off the mark. It’s ten times easier for a woman’s blog to become popular.

This effect no doubt carries over into the real world. Whenever I see an attractive woman with a successful career, I’ll remember the experience of this blog and assume that she didn’t really get there on merit, just her looks.

Then, hilariously, he later invites attractive young women to offer themselves up for a new hoax. He wants to continue the early successes of Libertarian Girl. what I find hilarious, is that the picture he used wasn't even that attractive. The Russian Lady he used had more attractive pictures.

Update 1: My very first trackbacks! I am now a Crawly Amphibian (probably because of my trackback links as well)

Update 2: My Pet Jawa has the real story behind the Russian mail-order bride!

Update 3: Paul was whining, so I'll finally mention that Kevin over at Wizbang finally has the story.

Animosity of the Left

Paul over at Wizbang! feels that Democrats need to realize how to be a majority party before they can hope to do better in national elections. Apparently, "Sue in NH" over at DailyKOS feels that all Republicans are hateful mongerors.

I'm a republican. Fuck you.

I'm a republican. I have my own pile of money. Fuck you.

I'm a republican. My kids go to private school. I don't care about your kids, or public schools. When my kids are better educated than yours, they will get better jobs and make more money than your kids. Fuck you.

I'm a republican. I have a job with health insurance. If you were not so lazy or stupid, you would have a good job with health insurance too. It sure is sad when you go bankrupt after a catastrophic health crisis, but its probably your own damn fault anyway. Fuck you.

I'm a republican. I'm a Christian. You are either a heathen, a raghead Muslim, or the wrong kind of Christian. Fuck you.

I'm a republican. I'm...

...Rage, rage, rage against the lying right.
Damn that felt good! Do you have anything to add?

I added some of the post here so you don't have to give traffic to DailyKOS.

Why is it that you never really see this as commonplace on any of the major conservative weblogs? Daily KOS and Democratic Underground both spew forth this trash daily. Not only is the post kept up on the blog (the site creator, Markos, doesn't censor, filter, delete, or even respond to it), but there are hundreds of commentors that, in general, match the feverish pitch of hatred that they feel they still have for Rebulicans. I feel sorry for the centrist and moderate Democrats. Their party has been taken over by right-hating kooks. The party of Lieberman and Clinton has been taken over by Dean and Moore.

One thing I've noticed is that you don't see this spewing forth on conservative blogs such as Wizbang or LGF. I only mention those blogs because those are 2 of the biggest read conservative blogs that allow for unregistered, barely moderated comments (as well as the community of people who read those blogs daily). The majority of Democrats aren't this hate-filled, and I understand that. However, in order for the Democrats to be able to 'take back' what was once theirs, that is, regain control of both the House and the Senate (a truer measure of the balance of power in the country than the race for the President is), they need to regain control of their extremists.

A commenter over at Wizbang! in this post's thread wrote of another's comment about the DNC becoming the minority party because of laziness:

And the same thing will happen with the GOP if there is not a credible opposition to keep 'em honest. Our country needs a rational, optimistic Dem Party. (Gack! I can't believe I just typed that- but it's true.)

As long as the Michael Moore wing of the Dem Party is ascendant, they will (rightly) keep losing. That's bad for the long-term health of American politics.

I agree, not only for America's and the GOP's sake, but also because I'd rather have a healthy political debate with someone, instead of a temper-tantrum fit, and having to hold my ears because someone is screaming louder than a 5 year old kid with a cut finger.

Firefox with credibility?

Yahoo toolbar for Firefox

With its release of a search toolbar specifically designed for Firefox, Yahoo about Yahoo seems to have conferred a stamp of credibility on the upstart Web browser.

Certainly, Firefox proponents are interpreting it that way. And it is impossible to refute the fact that the browser is the first to loosen the iron clutch that Microsoft Internet Explorer has had on the browser market.

They don't really delve too deeply into the story, but Firefox was based off of Mozilla's Netscape browser. This is going to be interesting, this isn't the first 3rd party plugin for Firefox by any means, but this is definitely one of the first major inroads to obtaining any sort of standing as the alternative browser to IE. What I don't understand is why more people don't use it. I find it to be a very powerful browser. It has some better features than Internet Explorer (and Internet Explorer has some better features), but I think I've covered this topic plenty.

Welcome to Hengineer!

For all of those who've clicked their way here from a Wizbang comment or trackback of mine, I welcome you to my blog, hope you stay and wallow in the mud a while.

Map of Cal Maritime

Not exactly a map, but in a previous post, I mentioned that our school has a webcam online. (Apparently some IE users can't view it. And to that I respond with GET FIREFOX)
Some may have a question as to whats what, so I took the liberty of taking a screenshot:

Picture Key:
A - T.S. GOLDEN BEAR, currently tied up at the CMA pier.
B - Alfred Zampa Memorial Bridge (The Suspension bridge that was finished in 2003, I-80 west across the Carquinez Straight)
C - CMA boathouse and pier.
D - Technology building (built last year), and the Simulator center (houses a full mission, working, steam and diesel plant simulators), Welding Laboratory, and Machine Shop Laboratory (with many working lathes, milling machines, drill presses, etc..)
E - Laboratory building, with Physics, Chemistry, Materials, Power, Computer, and Fluid/Thermal Lab rooms
F - Classroom building (with plenty of classrooms, of course), including another Computer lab room.
G - Instructors' Offices Building
H - CMA Library
I - Flagpole (American Flag on top, California Flag on one side, and CMA flag on the other)
J - Big green rectangle called the quad. Where we meet for formations every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday around 11:45 AM.
K - Mess Deck, our cafeteria. Its where we eat, and then 5 minutes later, get rid of the food we're served. Just kidding, the food is tolerable most of the time, but sometimes it can really suck.
L - Auditorium
M - Carquinez Straight, Northeastern Bay Area.
N - Approximately where I will stand during formations (such as today)


Any questions?

For the Fun of it

Tribute to Rodney Dangerfield:

I don't get no respect.

(Hint, I'm making fun of her post script:

P.S.: Lest anyone ponder the target o' allusion here, it isn't any blogger -- Fat Cat or otherwise -- who I have identified in BIRD by permanent blogroll link. I link to those I respect. )

Webcam

Yes, my school does have a webcam, weird.

They have it aimed sort of down at the quad with the CMA pier (with the T.S. GOLDEN BEAR) in the background, and the Alfred Zampa Memorial Bridge in the Background.

Update 1: Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, you'll see a bunch of people standing in semi-lines on the green area down below. That's when we have "formation" and sometimes "inspection". That happens Monday, Wednesday, and Friday around 11:45 AM, PT.

Khaki Command Inspection

Yes my friends, I had an inspection today, we had to wear the khaki combination cover as well as our black uniform jacket:



Doesn't it just look the gayest?

I just keep tooting my own horn

Ever heard of technorati?

Well, apparently they are a search engine. I just found out (via my sitemeter referrals) that one of my earlier posts made #1 on a search for Genentech.

Genentech is a company based in the Bay area.

Upgrading...

Hey I made it to Flippery Fish!

Thanks are in order to BIRD, RobertLindsay, and HotAbercrombieChick for linking me.

Promising Start for American Dad!

American Dad aired right after the Super Bowl and a new Episode of the Simpons. I must say, it was definitely a promising start. I love it when God calls Bush and requests Bush not to play up the relationship with things like "God made me President". Then God has a call on the other line, its Mr. Cheney. God then says "Yes sir?"

Man I was rolling so hard.

In American Dad, Stan is a CIA executive who, at his house, lives an alien who saved his life at Area 51, a goldfish that has the brain of a german olympic skiier, a loving wife, a hippie liberal daughter (so much so he frisks here every time she comes home), and a nerdy son, Steve.

Stan cares so much about security that he has a magnet with the terror alert (that looks crazily like the NBC peacock feather) color coding system on his fridge. He then goes ballistic when the toast pops up, and he shoots the hell out of the toaster. Freakin' hilarious. I wonder how far in they will start making fun of the Fox network. The best cartoon shows on Fox poke fun at Fox: Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy. Simpsons' moment: The episode of the Simpsons where Lisa is thrilled with astronomy, so gets all the lights turned off so everyone can see the sky, then at some point, they decide to turn on EVERY light (I forget why) so its as bright as daylight. At this point, Lisa points to the sky, "Hey, look, there is the Fox satellite!" She points to a crappy junkyard heap held up by balloons. Man that was hilarious.

Too much rambling?

SuperBowl XXXIX

Pats win third Super Bowl ... all by a field goal

The Patriots won their third Super Bowl in four years with a dominant second half Sunday night, wearing down the Philadelphia Eagles 24-21.

It wasn't overpowering, and at times it was downright ugly. But it was more than enough to match the Dallas Cowboys' run of the 1990s and certify the Patriots of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady as the NFL's latest dynasty.

Fox Sports has the story, along with a great quote by Coach Belicheck:

"To me this trophy belongs to these players," Belichick said. "They met all comers this year, a very challenging year. We're thrilled to win. These players played great all year, their best in the big games and they deserve it, they really deserve it."

Hats off to the Patriots for their third superbowl victory in four years. (I must say I thought the Eagles had a great late 4th quarter drive, they almost tied it).

Another reason

I guess I lied. Half the reason for the lack of posting is homework and researching for the politics and social security, the other half is Pharoah:

Hiatus

No, not really going on a hiatus, but I have been a little busy to post, with schoolwork and all.

Besides, right now I'm gathering information regarding politics and Social Security reform (considering the strong responses for and against Bush's State of the Union Speech).

For now, here's a few tidbits:

Bush's Social Security concerns echos Clinton's in 1999

Bush only wishes to impliment Franklin Delano Roosevelt's original plan for Social Security

Update 1:
Thanks to GeeDubya,
Cato Institute Project on Social Security Choice

A New Name

I decided to rename my blog to the url. Short and sweet.

Hengineer

(hint for those who can't get it, My name is Henry and I'm an engineering student)

Running

Listening to: Trio - Da Da Da
I just started running again, this time its on my own time. I used to play soccer in my youth, and I also ran cross country in high school. I'm a little out of shape, I ran with a few friends and we ran from our school directly across the Carquinez Bridge and back. I walked about 1/2 the whole distance, I'm so embaressed.

Not sure when we're going to run again, I hope its soon, I need to do that more often.