For those of you who have had some of your faith in humanity restored on this blessed day, I direct your attention to the STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL:
This appears to be the whole thing. Watch it if you dare.
Our movie culture has descended into immaturity, deep and inhuman violence, a pervasive and flattened sexuality. It is an embarrassment.
In Iraq this year I asked an Iraqi military officer doing joint training at an American base what was the big thing he’d come to believe about Americans in the years they’d been there. He thought. “You are a better people than your movies say.” He had judged us by our exports. He had seen the low slag heap of our culture and assumed it was a true expression of who we are.
And so he’d assumed we were disgusting.
Hollywood: Movies by people who hate America most of the time. Except when Americans go to the movies or buy Blu-Rays.
Via Instapundit.
Kindle USB Drive Mode
USB Drive Mode
If you want to read or shop on your Kindle while continuing to charge over USB, please keep the USB cable attached, but eject your Kindle from your computer.
because ejecting doesn’t clear the message and let you keep reading, the solution is to eject the Kindle from Windows Explorer and NOT from the system tray (or Printers and Devices).
- Make sure the Kindle is plugged in and unejected…if you’ve tried to eject it already, unplug it and plug it back in
- Open Windows Explorer (Win+E) or go to Computer from the Start menu
- Right-click on the Kindle
- Choose Eject
This should do the trick for Windows 7 and Windows Vista. Here is a technical explanation of why this is necessary if you’re interested.
Spank No More: Why are fewer parents hitting their kids?
The writer of this article appears to come from a different planet than Murdoc.
The most recent national data from the National Institutes of Mental Health, obtained by a Gallup telephone poll, was encouraging in some respects. Almost every parent regularly tries to reason with a wayward child, and nearly three-quarters redirect misbehaving kids into another activity or use time-outs.
Still, many also hit children regularly…
Remarkably, however, a powerful trend toward abandoning corporal punishment is already under way. There has been a dramatic reduction in its use over the past two generations—an unprecedented change in a pattern that likely had been fixed for millennia. In the United States, for example, 94 percent of parents endorsed hitting kids in 1968, but only one-half approved by 1999.
He quotes a sociologist who believes the decrease is “part of the long term civilizing process of society.”
Then there’s
The issue wasn’t that one group was more or less lenient with bad behavior. Instead, middle- and upper-class parents tended to treat children as peers, with the pint-sized ability to make choices, respond to reason, and have valid emotions. It’s not a huge leap then to see children as having nascent civil rights that conflict with regular corporal punishment.
And he says it like it’s a good thing. And
As a result, these children who experience it develop an “emerging sense of entitlement”—a trait that may carry some negative connotations but generally correlates with better verbal skills, school performance, and a sense that they can actively shape the world around them.
So they’ll be the sort who think they’re owed stuff, but at least they’ll have good grades and be well-spoken. (He left out the “they’ll crap in peoples’ yards while whining about student loans,” but it’s his story and he can tell it however he wants.)
For the record, Murdoc is the father in a household that spanks. And as brutal and savage and uncivilized as that probably sounds to some, spanking occurred fewer than ten times total for two kids. The important thing is to be just and honorable. It seems to work.
Being this is the Christmas season, Murdoc’s spent more time than normal in the mall lately. He’d bet that if you take the 500 worst-behaved kids he’s seen, at least 80% of them come from “no spanking” households. He also did not detect any outward signs of good grades or increased vocabulary.
This guy who wrote the article clearly has a different vision of a good society than Murdoc does. Children are not “little adults” who are in many ways equal to the taller people who live in the same house.
NTSB Chair Supports Cell Phone Ban With Lies & Obfuscation
Conservative columnist Mona Charen contacted the NTSB and found out that the 3,000 fatalities statistic actually was for all distracted driving. Of those ~3,000 fatalities, the agency considered 995 to be due to cellphone use. So NTSB Chairman Hersman was misleading the public, exaggerating the risk of cellphone use by a factor of at least three.
How many of those 995 were drivers using hands-free phones?
Via Instapundit.
UPDATE: Also: There’s No Reason To Ban Cellphone Use While Driving
A 2009 NHTSA study found that 80% of all car wrecks are caused by drivers eating or drinking — not cellphone use — with coffee-guzzling the top offender.
Let’s see Washington ban coffee drinking while driving. The Second American Revolution would begin three minutes after it passed. It would be the first thing to unify all Americans since, well, ever.
Look, Murdoc is opposed to distracted drivers, and that includes drivers distracted by cell phones. He could be convinced that a ban on texting was appropriate. He would even listen to arguments in favor of banning hand-held phones, though it would be a tough sell. Bans on hands-free phones are just plain stupid. Especially at a national level.
Oh, and for all those who keep telling Murdoc how much worse things are now that everyone is yapping on their phone all the time:
According to federal data, traffic deaths have fallen from 2.1 per 100 million vehicle miles in 1990, when virtually no one had a cellphone, to 1.1 in 2009, when almost everyone does.
Missed this yesterday:
Happy 375th birthday, National Guard
The National Guard began on Dec. 13, 1636, when the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law establishing formal militia companies.
Last F-22 Raptor Rolls Off Assembly Line
The final F-22 Raptor fighter jet rolled off the assembly line during a ceremony at the Lockheed Martin aircraft plant at Dobbins Air Reserve Base. The U.S. military is turning to the less costly F-35 Joint Strike Fighter to complement its operational fleet of 187 Raptors, amid concerns in Washington that the $153 million F-22 is too costly and too high-tech for its own good.
187 is not enough.
Republicans muscle tax cut bill through House
The Republican-controlled House has passed legislation sought by President Obama to extend Social Security payroll tax cuts through 2012. But the bill also includes a requirement for construction of an oil pipeline that has drawn a veto threat.
The Republicans “muscled” it through. That’s like getting enough votes to pass, but way meaner.
Fleet of ‘double-V hull’ Strykers growing in Afghanistan
Two hundred of the double-V hulls are now in Afghanistan, with more slated to arrive in coming months, according to Lori Grein, a public affairs officer with the Project Executive Office-Ground Combat Systems. There are almost no flat-bottom Strykers left in Afghanistan, Grein said; most have been replaced by the double-V hulls…
Soldiers who swap the older Strykers for double-V hulls notice few differences.
“Ergonomically speaking they have kept everything the same,” said Wood, 25, of Oakfield, N.Y., who patrols regularly in a double-V hull out of Combat Outpost Talukan in Kandahar province. “All the changes they have made are behind the scenes.”
