
You can read Cox and Forkum's related links on this topic HERE.








A compilation of information and links regarding assorted subjects: politics, religion, science, computers, health, movies, music... essentially whatever I'm reading about, working on or experiencing in life.











As had been anticipated, the N800 bears a high resemblance to its older sibling, the 770. Key changes include: addition of a VGA-resolution web cam; microphone moved to a more phone-friendly position; two full-size SD card slots, instead of a single RS-MMC slot; built-in stereo speakers, instead of a single speaker; scroll rocker for web page scrolling; redesigned top-mounted buttons and 5-way cursor pad; built-in stand; and a few mechanical tweaks. [...]

[...] I know I shouldn't be surprised but I can't believe what doomsayers the Democrats and the Drive By Media are being about this new approach. As Rudy Guiliani said if Bush had come up with a different strategy the Democrats would be whining that we need more troops. It saddens me that there is so much venom for the President that the Democrats can't even cheer for their own country. They aren't even giving this plan a chance. They denounced it before the speech was even given. The Democrats and the Drive By Media are truly "summer soldiers" and "sunshine patriots".[...]



The most naive sentence in the English language is: It couldn't get any worse. That's an argument many who have protested the war give for getting out of Iraq -- that nothing could be worse than 3,000 U.S. troops killed as the Iraq insurgency has grown stronger.
There is something worse: Some 3,000 U.S. troops dead, followed by the collapse of the Iraqi government, thousands of Sunni Arabs dead, Iraqis who worked with the coalition forces assassinated and their families butchered, and thousands more refugees swarming across the Middle East. Something worse would be 3,000-plus troops dead after a defeat that has emboldened jihadists, who want to kill Americans, and have become convinced that if they do, the United States won't fight back -- not for long, anyway.
The worst of it is: Defeat in Iraq is assured, if that's what Americans choose. Yes, the Bush administration has made horrible mistakes -- start with too few troops -- that have cost American lives. It also can be said, however, that the antiwar movement has stoked the insurgency by showing that civilian and military casualties could lead to troop withdrawal -- and that has increased the coalition's death toll and made it harder for the coalition to succeed. [...]

Excellent news. We are indeed moving right ahead. I noted on Tammy Radio today, and in posts here, the one true sign that the new Iraq approach is serious and will work is when Muqtada al-Sadr, Iran's primary Death Squad agent in Iraq, is dispatched and the Death Squad itself, is eliminated. The Mahdi Army will not voluntarily disarm, btw, opening the door to its annihilation. How we actually handle this situation is the key move. It is why the military is saying we will know "within months" if the new strategy (i.e., killing the enemy) will work, primarily because they expect al-Sadr to be gone. [...]

[...] If you can get past the SNL-sounding parody title, you'll find a charming, low-key comedy.
Unlike the usual fish-out-of-water scenario in which an ignorant and often arrogant newcomer is taken down a peg or two by the quirky but knowing locals (see Men In Trees), Little Mosque makes the locals (God-fearing white folks) ignorant and intolerant and the butt of most of the jokes, while the members of the Muslim community are peaceful, conciliatory and occasionally sharp-tongued. [...]
[...] The strongest insurance against outrage from the faithful is that the force behind "Little Mosque" is Zarqa Nawaz, a Canadian Muslim of Pakistani origin whose own assimilation, particularly after she left Toronto for Regina, Saskatchewan, 10 years ago, provides much of the comic fodder.
"It rests on my shoulders to get the balance right between entertainment and representing the community in a reasonable way," Nawaz, a 39-year-old mother of four, said in an interview here. "You have to push the boundaries so you can grow and evolve as a community."
[...] The best word to describe the pilot episode of Little Mosque on the Prairie is "clunky." It's not unfunny, but this is definitely a show finding its footing.
The show's biggest letdown is that it treats the obvious ethnic conflict between "average white Canadians" and Muslim-Canadians so very, very badly. It's played for laughs - which is good because it's a comedy - but the jokes aren't funny because the Dumb White Folks are so clownish and buffoonish you feel like you're being told to laugh, or worse, lectured on tolerance and diversity. (It doesn't help that Neil Crone's boring Rush Limbaugh parody and Sitara Hewitt's gratingly self-righteous young Muslim woman make one want to put on a blindfold and earmuffs until they go off the screen.)
On the bright side, however, the show picks up very nicely on another conflict - the fact that Torontonians and Albertans hate each other. (Torontoist is biased, as we are located in the greatest city in the world and not in a province full of tar-sand-loving rednecks.) There's a lot of promise here as an additional theme, not least because Zaib Shaikh plays Amaar, the new imam from Toronto, as a total city boy who knows what's best in life - like low-fat cappucinos. [...]

[...] I can't say that Oprah and I have similar visions of how the world works. When I was working on welfare reform 10 years ago I did her show and it was quite clear that Ms. Winfrey and I are on very different wavelengths.
But now I'm going to defend her.
First of all, it's her money. Unlike many in the entertainment business, Oprah isn't hanging around Washington lobbying for you and me to pay for her pet programs. She isn't even doing Oprah-thons asking us to send in checks.
Oprah made her few billion on her own and she runs her own philanthropy program. It's her money, and it's her business how she chooses to give it away. [...]
[...] Who knows how Oprah's school in South Africa will fare?
But could she possibly waste any more money on education than our own government does?
How about our Department of Education, with a budget of $90 billion this year? DOE got started in 1979, compliments of President Carter, with a budget of $14 billion. Anybody out there think our kids are doing six times better on tests?
Despite appropriations for elementary and secondary education that are, in real dollars, more than 50 percent higher today than in 1980, reading scores for 9-year-old kids are virtually unchanged. [...]

U.S. talk show queen Oprah Winfrey, centre, and students cut the ribbon during the opening of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in the small town of Henley-on-Klip, South Africa, Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2007. Winfrey opened a school Tuesday for disadvantaged girls, fulfilling a promise she made to former President Nelson Mandela six years ago and giving more than 150 students a chance for a better future. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell)










Canadians are not known for the quality of the television they produce. Yet a Canadian sitcom set to debut on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (the CBC) next week is getting slightly more publicity than Gulf Wars I and II combined. And not just in Canada. CNN and The New York Times – among others – have given airtime and column space to “Little Mosque on the Prairie.” The title is a play on the 1970s family show, Little House on the Prairie, based on the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. But the “prairie” in question here is a fictional town in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The series is said to focus on Canadian Muslims interacting with their non-Muslim neighbours, and all the hilarity that will naturally ensue.
While I object strongly that my taxes are used to pay for the CBC, I don’t object to the idea of this show itself. And if hilarity actually does ensue, I’ll be happy. But I’m dubious. The show’s creator, Zarqa Nawaz, a Canadian Muslim filmmaker who wears a traditional hijab, has noted “that while the classic sitcoms All in the Family and The Jeffersons dealt with bigotry and racism for the first time on American television, their success was based on the hilarious delivery of those issues, not on preaching to viewers.”
First of all, I would be willing to argue that All in the Family was indeed preachy, but that aside, Canada’s public broadcaster has had little success where sitcoms are concerned, and regularly scores low ratings against American shows that most Canadians would prefer to watch. The CBC is, however, long on preachy.
One must also take into account the CBC’s propensity for anti-American and anti-Israeli bias in its news coverage, and for increasing dhimmitude in the years since 9/11. [...]










Not that many complimentary things are said about politicians. When a problem arises, people say, "Government ought to do something." They seem to have forgotten that it's the politicians who are running the government. Many think things can be changed by electing different politicians, but I ask: Given the incentives politicians face, why should we expect one politician to differ significantly from another? We should focus less on personalities and more on rules.
The kind of rules we should have are the kind that we'd make if our worst enemy were in charge. My mother created a mini-version of such a rule. Sometimes she would ask either me or my sister to evenly divide the last piece of cake or pie to share between us. More times than not, an argument ensued about the fairness of the division. Those arguments ended with Mom's rule: Whoever cuts the cake lets the other take the first piece. As if by magic or divine intervention, fairness emerged and arguments ended. No matter who did the cutting, there was an even division.
By creating and enforcing neutral rules, we minimize conflict. [...]

Here we go folks, the 110th Congress - Democrat controlled - convenes today at noon. The Democrats have one primary goal, to increase American's dependency on government. It's all about power. The Democrats had it --- for four decades. For forty years they controlled the congressional agenda. Then they lost it. From the very moment the election results for the 1994 midterm elections were posted Democrats vowed to themselves that they would one day return to power .. and when they did they would immediately move to make sure they never lost that power again.
Just watch. It's transparent. Observe the first 100 days. So much of what the Democrats will do will be designed to increase the dependency of one class of Americans or another on the government. [...]
Very interesting...
Read this and then watch the video clip..... Double-click on the attachment. You don't want to miss watching the demo.
If you get asked to test your cellphone at the airport, this is the reason.
Because cellphone guns have been discovered. The attached video clip shows how cellphone guns operate. These phones are not in the U.S. Yet, but they are in use overseas. Beneath the digital phone face is a 22 caliber handgun capable of firing four rounds in rapid succession using the standard telephone keypad.
European law enforcement officials are stunned by the discovery of these deadly decoys. They say phone guns are changing the rules of engagement in Europe "We find it very alarming," says Wolfgang Dicke of the German Police Union. "It means police will have to draw their weapons whenever a person being checked reaches for their cellphone."
Although cellphone guns have not reached the U.S. Yet, the FBI,Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and the U.S. Customs Service say they have been briefed on the new weapons. All U.S. Ports of entry have been alerted. These covert weapons were first discovered in October of 2000 when Dutch police came upon a cache during a drug raid in Amsterdam.
In another recent incident, a Croatian gun dealer was caught attempting to smuggle a shipment through Slovenia into Western Europe. Police say both shipments are believed to have originated in Yugoslavia! Interpol sent a warning to law enforcement agencies around the world.
"If you didn't know they were guns, you would think they were cellphones," said Ari Zandbergen, a spokesperson for the Amsterdam police. "Only when you have one in your hand do you realize that they are heavier than a regular cellphone."
Be patient if security asks to look at your cellphone or turn it on to show that it works. They have a good reason!





