Teen Pregnancy

I read an article in the Charleston Gazette Mail about teen pregnancy rates in WV that left me dumbfounded.  I have several problems with the attitudes revealed in this article.

First, While I agree that it's a problem,  I think the article oversimplified the problem.  Births to unwed mothers in general and teenager unwed mothers in specific are a problem.  Married 18 and 19 year-old mothers are not the problem. It isn't just age.

Second, the article talks about pregnancy and birth  as if they were diseases.  Pregnancy is the rational, expected outcome of the activity designed to produce it.  Birth naturally follows pregnancy.  Nobody works out in the gym, and wonders why she looses weight.  Nobody goes to a tattoo parlor, has needles stuck into his arm, and wonders why he  have a tattoo.  Nobody goes to work and wonders why she gets a paycheck.

I find some of the comments laughable.  Like this one.

Although one particular reason cannot be pinpointed for West Virginia's teen birthrate, Pomponio said poverty might be one factor.

Sure, I'll grant that poverty may have something to do with it (there's a joke about not affording cable TV), but I can pinpoint one reason for the high teen birthrate, actually stated it in the article.

The CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey of 2009 indicated that West Virginia has a higher rate of teen sexual activity than the national average: 54 percent compared to 46 percent.

The big news is that teens are getting pregnant because they are having premarital sex.

Note:  WV Free, the organization which published the report that the article addresses, is a pro-abortion organization.  The organization is a champion of "reproductive justice."

Searching is for Chickens

I was doing some research on COOP plans, which are Continuity of Operations plans.  It's the idea of planning how your organization will stay in business when emergencies or disasters strike.

I kept getting results about nesting chickens and chicken coops.  My mind was a million miles away from chickens, so it took me a second to realize that coop and C.o.O.P mean the same to Google.  Goes to show, you can get some really fowl results from searching.

Sallie, you're screwed up!

I was stupid.  I went into debt to get my degrees.  I owe a little over $20,000 to Ol' Sallie Mae for an Associate's and a Bachelor's degree.  I freely admit I was stupid.  No shock there, for I'm frequently stupid.

That disclaimer said, I went to answer some love-mail from ol' Sallie, and tried to log into my account.  I forgot my password.  Easy enough to do, I know.  I dare not even count the number of different web sites, accounts and services for which I must remember passwords.  But I digress.

I forgot my password, but there was an easy, simple little button that says "forgot password."  I clicked it, believing it would be simple. 

It was.  Simply frustrating.  I typed the password I wanted.  It was a nice, juicy 18-character complex password that makes computer-security types sleep well at night.  An error came back that said...

Invalid password.  Passwords must be between 8 and 32 characters long, contain at least one number and at least one letter, and must not contain the word 'password' or your user name.

Maybe the password was too long?  I counted the symbols.  Nope, less than 32.  I looked at it clsoely, and could see at least a number, and a letter, and that it did not contain 'password' nor did it contain my user name.

So I tried a different one, thinking that maybe I used this one before.  I got...

Invalid password.  Passwords must be between 8 and 32 characters long, contain at least one number and at least one letter, and must not contain the word 'password' or your user name.

So I tried another and another and another .... Until I realized what was happening. 

As part of a complex password, I was including a special symbol in each of my passwords.  As encouraged by most security geeks, I was including spaces, dollar signs, and other punctuation marks to make the password that much harder to guess. 

Ol' Sallie Mae choked on special symbols.  Did they say not to use them?  No.  Did they say "Um, here's your problem?"  No.  The web site wasted my time with that inane message that was completely off base.

Not only did they waste my time, but they show how pathetic they really are.  I mean, even Windows supports complex passwords.  Papa Johns, Gmail, and Facebook all support complex passwords. 

But good ol' Sallie Mae chokes on them, meaning that their passwords are less secure than your Speedie-Rewards account.  Great job, Sallie.

Why Facebook is good exercise for self-control

I read a post, today, from a friend on Facebook, lamenting something which needed no lament.  Today is not special.  At least once a week I see a post which tells me the poster either has a serious lack of understanding of the way the world works, or a complete misunderstanding of cause and effect.
These provide wonderful opportunities for my to practice keeping my virtual mouth shut.   Here are some general (made-up) examples of what I'm talking about and, no, I'm not thinking of you, whomever you are taking offense. 

Post:   "We have no money, I don't know what to do"
What I want to say:  "Turn off the x-box, and get a job.  McDonald's is hiring, and you're not too good to flip burgers."

Post:  "We are at our whits-end, we just don't know what to do.  Little Johnny is completely out of control!"
What I want to say:    Well, since you haven't tried it yet, why not try being a real parent?  You know, grown a spine, be the boss, say no, don't give in, and enforce some discipline.

Post:  "Look how tough I am!  Person so-and-so made me mad, so I will try a little spineless, passive-aggressive character assassination behind his/her back by berating them on Facebook without using that person's name!"
What I want to say:  Say it to the person's face, or shut your mouth.  You obviously have the spine of a jellyfish.

I didn't say anything.  I consider that an accomplishment.

PETA

This article in the International Business Times reports that the new xxx top level domain name is causing some porn business to fuss at having to 'protect their brands'.  While my heart breaks for the poor business (please hear the insincerity and sarcasm in that comment), I found this blurb very interesting.

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) have also signed up and instead of blocking its name the organization will launch peta.xxx as a pornography site that draws attention to the plight of animals, according to PETA spokeswoman Lindsay Rajt.

So, for those of us who detest PETA, we now have a new reason to detest that group even further.   So even while PETA's Wikipedia Article states that

The group regularly protests the use of animals in entertainment, including circuses.

They announce that they don't have a problem exploiting women to help animals.

Response to "Envy"

My blog posts sync with my Facebook account.  My brother responded to my blog post of  4/30/2010 (which finally was posted  today).  He said

Isn't the idea of equality supposed to be a founding principle of this nation? 

To which I reply, "It depends upon which type of equality you are referring."


There is equality before the law, as articulated in the Declaration of Independence.  In it, our founding fathers stated

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The “Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts”, penned by John Adams in 1780 perhaps states the idea more clearly.

Article I. All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness

They wrote this in rebuttal to the idea of the Divine Right of Kings at a time when the law for the commoner was not the law for the royals. Created equal means that our nation does not recognize certain classes to be superior than others and all people in this nation have equal state and standing before the law.
Even though we've veered some from this founding notion of our nation with some of the current class-based politics (hate crimes, protected classes in employment law, affirmative action laws, etc in which one group is 'more equal' than others.) and that wealth and power still create a pseudo nobility which often receive much fairer treatment than the poor and obscure (to the nation's shame), most of our nation's law is based around guiding principle.
But I wasn't talking about that kind of equality. No, I meant the equality of outcome.
My problem with equalizing outcome that I discussed in my blog post is that in attempting to equate outcome, the government must restrict freedom.  It has no other choice. Either it must take from one to give to another, or prevent one from accomplishing his potential so that he will not overshadow those with less potential.
If we are both handed a shovel, one of us digs for ten hours while the other doesn't, the results aren't equal.  We both had an equality of opportunity (the shovel, the dirt, and the ability to dig), but outcome was not equal.  If we were paid by cubic foot of dirt dug, one would make out well, the other wouldn't.
But, equality of outcome means that in the above scenario the government ignores the difference in the amount of effort applied and money it takes from one and give to the other, to make things equal.
Is it fair for you, after toiled in the sun all day to dig that hole, for the government to take your pay to give to me, who found a shady spot and napped?  This rewards my sloth, and punishes your  work.  When the Soviet Union experienced this, they sent men with machine guns to force both do the same amount of work. That's not freedom but oppression.
Furthermore, the highest need in Maslow's hierarchy of needs is self-actualization, which I will define as a human reaching his or her fullest potential based on the skills, desires, talents and abilities he posses. Under a model of equality of outcome, nobody can reach this except, perhaps, the lowest-functioning among us.
The only true way to allow people to grow and nurture the talent they have while being fair is to dispense with the notion of equality of outcome and focus solely on equality of opportunity because attempting to enforce that type of equality leads only to equality of misery and suppression of the human spirit.

new old blog posts

For the past six years, I've been juggling  school, work, family and church, to varying degrees of success. 

Over the course of time, I've written several posts that were left in a draft state because I ran out of time.  I went back today and cleaned and posted several of them.

So enjoy the years old new posts!

Defict

I get so ticked when I listen to the brainless talking heads on the news!  They have these serious-sounding discussions about the Federal deficit and seldom discuss the underlying debt!

The deficit is only the amount by which the Federal Government overspends each fiscal year.  Imagine it like this...

If a family making $55,000 a year, spends $90,400 a year, it's deficit is $35,400. 

Consider the fact that the same family have been overspending for decades, and owe a combined total of  $332,000 of outstanding debt. 

Now throw into the mix a discussion between the mom and dad, about how much money to cut from the budget.  Dad says that they need to cut $5,400 but mom says that's too harsh, they need trim only $3,000.  Any sane human would scream "You morons!  You need to cut at least $35,400 JUST TO AVOID ADDING TO THE DEBT!"


These numbers are in the same proportion as the Federal Budget (with the exception of the proposed cuts, I just made those up for illustration.  Democrat and Republican proposals would cut even less than my illustration)

In 2010, the  Federal tax income was $2.16 trillion.  Outlays were $3.55 trillion with a national debt of nearly $14 trillion.

Folks, this is insane!!  We cannot continue to borrow like this!  If the federal government didn't spend a dime on anything else but the debt, it would take over six years to pay off.

It's worse than you think.

In 2010, Federal entitlement spending (Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, TANIF, etc) was 96% of Federal revenues.  Interest payments on the debt was another 9.9% of Federal revenues.  This means that before we build a road, buy a bullet, pay a solider, hire an FBI agent, or launch a Space Shuttle, we're already in the hole $125 billion!


Our elected leaders have to make tough decisions to fix this mess, and they are unwilling to do so.   Elected officials don't like to offend people. So if they have a decision of doing x or doing y, and the people are going to get up set with either giving up x or giving up y, our brilliant folk just do both and pay for it later!

What we need is a balanced budget amendment to the constitution.  Four-fifths majority to spend more than they take in, authorized only for six months.  The provision would be waved for the duration of a declared war.

What this would do is require the government officials to actually make the hard decisions like raise taxes, cut spending, stop intervening militarily everywhere in the world, and maybe even stop proposing new social programs.
 
This is not a left or right issue.  If nothing is done, our nation will collapse under the weight of its debt, and our people will be subjected to pain the likes of which they've never before known.  After all, somebody has to pay the fiddler for the dance. 

Democracy out of control.

Peter Barca, the Democrats’ Assembly leader said  “Our democracy is out of control in Wisconsin, and you all know it — you can feel it.”


Why?  Because the people voted folks into office that differed politically from him?  Really?  No, Peter.  Democracy is out of control when elitist like you decide they know better than the electorate.  I think democracy is doing just fine.

Wiki leaks - Double Standards

Many  are foaming at the mouth at Wikileaks, going so far as accusing  Julian Assange of treason.

By way of disclosure, I'm a conservative.  I'm right of Fox News.  Rush is a liberal in comparison.  But, this is just stupid.

First, Assange is not a US citizen, so he cannot be charged with treason for making public top secret material.  Federal law states

"whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States." US Code Title 18, part1, chapter 115 paragraph 238

While some may suggest a charge of espionage, he cannot be guilty of treason.

Second, If we, as a nation, put Mr. Assange in jail, we need to do the same to every newspaper and television reporters who has reported "anonymous sources tells us."  In fact, many newspapers have published material which came from Wikileaks! 


Third, this isn't new.  Have you ever heard of "deep throat" of  Watergate fame?  How about the Pentagon Papers?  The Downing Street Memo?  Or remember the thousands of pages of internal documents from a climate laboratory?  Leaking of secrets is not a new phenomenon.

Lastly, Wikileaks DIDN'T LEAK ANYTHING.  Yes, you read that right.  Wikileaks is nothing more than a clearinghouse for whistle blowers, politically disaffected policy wonks, disillusioned ideologues, and troublemakers.

Let me reiterate the point:  Wikileaks does not actually leak anything, but rather, simply provide a safe place where others can do so.


I have no problems with punishing the guilty (e.g. those who actually stole the classified material) to the fullest extent of the law, up to and including execution.  But I think the treatment of Wikileaks in general and Assange in specific is both wrong and stupid.  It is only being singled out for two reasons.  First, they've been successful in landing rather large leaks.  Two, they are new media.  Would Wikileaks have received this treatment if they were a newspaper?

If we, as a nation, are going to target the channels of distribution of the leaked information, we need to do so across the board.  This means going after cable news channels, Newspapers, and magazines, and not just target new media because it's new and unfamiliar.

Manifest Lunacy

As I look at the United States in the year 2010,  I can't help but to feel fearful. Among the facts that give me pause are the following:

• In 2009, nearly half of all Americans will pay no income taxes (Yahoo Finance April 2010), meaning only 53% of American households pay 100% of all taxes.
• The unelected, unaccountable Federal Reserve just printed $600 Billion, and devalued our currency (Quantitative easing ) trying to dig our way out of a hole.
• Our country is becoming risk adverse in the extreme
• The TSA is now patting down grannies and kids (among others) to make sure "every plane is safe" (ABC News)
• We pay much more attention to the Presidential elections than local and state elections, even though we, as citizens, have much more impact at a local level than the Federal.
• Our government routinely ignores its constitution, and we ignore their ignoring.
• Our Federal debt is at an insane level
• We pay far more attention on who is on American Idol or Dancing with the Stars than to the body politic.

In 1845, John O'Sullivan coined the phrase "Manifest Destiny" to give a name to the idea that the American civilization would spread from "sea to shining sea."

I am afraid that our nation has gone crazy.  Will history record us as the nation who stuck its fingers in its ears and said "lalalalala" while everything fell apart?

Why I love my Driod

My lovely bride bought me a Motorola Droid for our anniversary.  The difference between this and my old phone is the difference between night and day.

What I hate!

First, let me tell you what I dislike about it.

• Getting to the camera takes a few seconds more than I like.  There is a camera button on the side, but I can't seem to get it to work most of the time.  While seemingly minor, this means that some of those "just happens" kinds of shots are missed fumbling. with the camera.
• The touch screen gets smudged, and makes it difficult to read.
• You can't read the screen in full daylight, it washes out badly.
• It sucks the batteries very quickly.  The more you do, the faster it goes.  A full charge is gone in less than a day.
• It gets confused at times.  I've had to take the battery out several times to force a hard reboot to clear the confusion.
• The slide out keyboard sucks in a big way.  The keys are much too small for my fingers, and I feel very cramped.  My old phone (LG ENV-3) was far superior in this manner.
• The on-screen keyboard that comes with it also sucks, for much the same reason.
• The OS has no explicit way to terminate an application, requiring the downloading of third party apps to do so. 
• Often, download of data seems very slow compared to my wife's Palm Pre (with the same service provider, same data, her phone seems faster)

But, the thing about this device is that it is so much more than just a phone. I've found that it's become an indispensable part of me.  Actually, you could turn off the phone-portion of the device, and I still would use it every day. 

It's the Apps! 

The Droid is a mobile computer with wireless Internet Access, GPS integration, a five megapixel camera, compass, and a microphone.

• Sticher Radio- is a free streaming podcast service which streams the latest of your favorite podcasts!  I listen to this all the time!
 

• Pandora - a free music streaming service that reads your mind and plays music you like.  Enter a song or a band and a custom radio channel is created just for you.
 

• PDA.Net-Allows you to use the Droid as a wireless modem.  Connect a laptop and you have wireless Internet access!

•  Ebooks-I love to read.  The Android platform has at many ebook readers which allow you to read full books on your phone!  I have used the Kindle app and Nook app (my wife has a nook.)  Both of them sycronize your library to the device, so you can start reading a book on your nook, move to the phone, then back to the nook. Laputa is an ebook reader that also provides hundreds of free ebooks from sites like Blazer.  This is an awesome app!

• Google Calendar is a wonderful thing.  I can view, add and change appointments and tasks on my calendar from the web, my phone or my desktop (I synchronize  my desktop calendar at work with a nifty app from Google.) 

• Social Integration
• Facebook -Facebook has a custom application that runs on everything (Palm Pre, Iphone, Android,etc) and it gives me real time access to my profile.
• Twitter- I can tweet and read other twits' tweets.
• Email access
• Including Gmail and Yahoo mail integration that makes accessing these accounts seamless and easy.
• Internet access
• Google voice integration

There are thousands upon thousands of applications!  Play guitar?  There's a guitar tuner app.  Always forget to feed the parking meter?  There's a Parking Alarm/ Car finder app.

Those applications are the feature that makes this integrate to my life so deeply, and they are why I love my Droid!

All Our Eggs in One Basket?

The Chief Technology Officer of the State of West Virginia is proposing to consolidate and outsource all the state data centers, application support programmers, mainframe computer, and other associated staff.  The State workers in question will be let go from the state and hired by a private company.

While Chief Technology Officer Kyle Schafer was telling legislators that plans for outsourcing Office of Technology jobs are in the very preliminary stages, some OT employees said Schafer advised them it's a done deal, with the RFP for the outsourcing contract to go out by September, with the contract to be awarded before the end of the year - prior to the 2011 legislative session.
Some OT employees have been meeting with representatives of state Public Workers Union UE 170 regarding organizing efforts.  WV Gazette-Mail State House Beat, June 20, 2010

It's true that I am potentially in the group of people to be outsourced, and that may color my opinion.  But am I the only one who thinks that relying totally upon an outside company to host, protect and maintain the states data is not a good idea?

Think about it.  The State Police database, the Medicaid data, birth, death, marriage, data, among so many others will be in the hands of the lowest bidder.

Not to mention that savings are in doubt.  State employees do these jobs now, and most of these workers are underpaid (the state's salaries are significantly lower than the private sector counterparts.  For example, median U.S. Salary for a programmer is about $55,893.  State, $33,036.)  Sure, there are lazy, worthless state employees (just like there are lazy worthless private sector employees.) 

If the state goes this direction, reversing course will be extremely costly and nearly impossible. It's like putting all the state's eggs in one basket, then waving it over your head.

Envy

I had an epiphany today which helped me to understand  about 80% of liberalism's basis. It's envy.

Liberalism, in it's current form, is a offshoot of Marxist theory. At the heart of Marx's ideas is the concept of class struggle. Formally, it's known as conflict theory. In a nutshell, the idea of conflict theory is that people are always going to revolt against upper classes because of inequity.

That, folks, is the crux of the matter. Somebody has something you don't so you're upset. You're not just upset, your mad and willing to fight over it.

Liberalism today seeks equity.  Don't believe me?  Take these few examples.

• The earned income tax credit gives poor people who don't pay income tax needs to get a refund too!
• Affirmative action programs force fairness in hiring, and enforce this fairness by assuming that any differences between the population of the workforce and the population in general are the result of racism.
•  Not keeping score in little league, because somebody will lose. 

Here is a shocking truth. People aren't equal.

Compared to me, some people are smarter.  Others are faster.  Some are healthier.  Lots are better looking, a few are harder working.  No society can ever ignore those differences.

Liberals want to. When they see one person who has more of something than someone else, it causes envy. Envy leads to guilt, so they want to take away that thing.


Fairness is not the government taking money from one and giving it to someone else.  Fairness is setting the boundaries, and letting the players play the game, using all the talent, skill and work ethic God gave them.

Invention of Lying

Saw the movie "Invention of Lying" this weekend. I rate it a 2 out of 10. I give it such high marks because of the creative and interesting premise the movie is based on.

For those of you who've not yet wasted your money to see this movie (don't by the way), let me give you a plot synopsis.

In a world where everyone tells the truth, all the time about everything, there is no fiction (since it is basically not true), all movies are a retelling of history. The Hero is a not-so-attractive writer for the movies who gets fired (his last two screen plays were based around the black death of the 1300s), then evicted from his apartment because he only has $300 in the bank, and rent is $800.

He has a love interest who doesn't think that he is a good genetic match to her ("our kids will be fat kids with pug noses)

He goes to the bank to close out his account, and their system is down. they ask him how much he has in the bank (nobody can lie, remember) and he says $800. The computers come on, they say "The system says you only have $300, so sorry for our mistake"

The main crux, though, starts when he tells his dying mom, who is afraid of the nothingness of death, that there is life after death. He is overheard by some nurses, and it just goes downhill from there.

Problems
Before the political analysis, I just want to point out some plot holes big enough to drive a bus through.

• In the movie, everyone is both truthful (a good thing), and lacking in any compassion or tact (not quite so good). They will say things that are hurtful, if true, without any concern about what how they are saying affects the other person. I can tell someone the truth without hurting them. Why would people lack the ability to care for each other just because they tell the truth?  If my wife asks me "honey do I look like a supermodel?  I would answer, "To me, you're just as beautiful, but your body type isn't one that would classify as a supermodel", not "No, you're too fat."  Both are true, the latter is hurtful.
 

• It is possible to speak what you think is the truth, but be mistaken. Sometimes, I forget about a transaction or two, so my account balance is not what I thought it was.  Why would the bank assume that that there was no mistake in fact.

• In the movie, nobody believes in God.  They have a comparable level of technology.  That means that speculation is possible, for without it, there can be no possibility of technical advancement.  Even, for the sake of argument, we ignore the fact that God did tell man He existed, why could not someone speculate on the biggest questions man have ever asked (e.g. "why am I here?"  "How did I get here?"  "What is the purpose to existence?" "Do I have a meaning?"  "What happens when I die?")

To say the movie is disparaging to religion is a rather gross understatement.  It makes the belief in God more laughable than Santa Claus. 

The movie, though, shows some thought (at least what passes for thought for pop-culture atheists.)  One point, a magazine shows the title "Finally, a reason to be good", referring to the 'man in the sky' God reference.  It also shows the meaninglessness of life and death in the absence of God, thought it doesn't really dwell on it.

Overall, this movie stunk.  Don't waste your time.