Shades of Nagano...

I wrote parts of this post during the Olympics, but I decided to hold off until afterwards to see the whole product.  Additionally, due to a heavy workload, I had to DVR portions of it.  Still, I can now reflect and give my opinion, as if anyone cares.

During the Olympics in Nagano, CBS had what I could only describe as some of the worst direction that could possibly be used for the production.  Every US and some other counties athletes all had a tragic tale of hardship to overcome to make it to the olympics. Every competition shown had a significant segment for each of those athletes, so that in any given broadcast, it appeared to show 10% competition, 15% commentators and 75% tragic stories of hardship.  CBS got slammed harder than the US Mens Hockey Team for the poor production.

So now we have the London Games of 2012.  The athletes did a wonderful job.  The US Olympic committee did a good job as well, despite (in my opinion) some poor judgement on clothing.  Still, a great showing overall.  London organizers failed to comprehend the importance of ticket sales, but they got that under control as well. 

So that brings us to NBC's coverage.  I watched as the hosts commented at the end of the first day of competition that they had already exceeded the entire amount of video footage that had been shot at the last Olympics in London.  As the games wore on, I noticed that a large number of competitions were not being heavily covered despite NBC using all of their networks.  In fact, I spent a large amount of time waiting for the competitions an little time actually watching them.  Instead, I was treated to Nagano style tragic back stories for the athletes, time spent with one host who was effectively sent on vacation to the UK for several months ahead of time to explore the culture and an hour long treatment on the greatest generation as the fought WWII. 

NBC has stated that they will likely lose money on the Olympics.  My suggestion would be to cut back on the money spent shooting all of the back stories, the culture and the non-sport related items and concentrate on the actual Olympic Games.  That is what we tuned in for.

US Olympics Committee, proudly supporting the Chinese economy...

I read this today while eating my lunch and nearly saw said lunch again.  The US Olympic committee decided to have Ralph Lauren design the uniforms for the upcoming festivities.  The designs were then manufactured in China.  Approximately $2000 for the men's uniform and $1500 for the womens uniform.  The worst part is that these uniforms look like they were pulled out of a JC Penny catalog from the late 70s.  And berets, not really seen as iconic American headgear.  I guess cowboy or baseball hats don't really go with the Captain and Tennille's heyday styling.  Really, $2K each and this is the best that they could come up with? 

Someone at the USOC should be doing some soul searching right now, not acting arrogant about their "proud partnership with an American company."  Unfortunately, there is no accounting for some people's children. 

The Geek is strong with this one...

Several months ago while fixing a laptop, the user and I had a discussion that ranged over many subjects.  One of them happened to be the Star Wars saga and the various editions and versions.  I have the original movies in VHS widescreen special edition (numbered, even!).  I commented that I would love to get my hands on the LaserDisk version, since that is the only digital edition that has the original versions as released in the theaters.  <note: I do not have a "Han Shot FIRST" shirt, although I do understand the peeve>  Apparently, his parents were big into the LaserDisk phenomena, so he had them in their collection.  The conversation went on from there and I thought nothing more of it until a came to work several weeks later and found a box sitting on my chair.  What was in it you ask?

Why, this:

And underneath, this:

After I finished hyperventilating, I confirmed that these did, in fact, now belong to me.  Now I just needed a player.  He apparently was happy with the job I did on his laptop.  I emailed a friend to ask about where to get good LaserDisk players, since they haven't made them in well over a decade.  It turned out that his brother had a spare that he didn't need.  Also, free of charge. 

So, after several weeks of delay, the player was added to the entertainment center and we could enjoy the movies.  It was at this point that I found out several interesting facts.  My wife saw the first movie in the theater, whereas I did not see it until 1989 on VHS.  Neither of us saw the second movie in the theater.  Again this was 1989 VHS for me (I did a marathon Saturday) while she has never seen it.  I saw the third movie in the theater, while she has never seen it at all.  Our daughter has not seen any Star Wars movie of any type.  This had to be rectified, asap!

So, for the last three evenings, we have had family geek movie night watching the first three movies in all of their original glory.  I do have to say that LaserDisk is interesting to watch movies on.  I understand why the format died.  Every 15 to 20 minutes you either wait 10 seconds for the player to switch sides or you have to get up and change the disk.  At three disks per movie, that got old.  However, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and many bags of popcorn died.  Now we have to work on the prequels, which I don't think I own, so a trip to WalMart may be in order.  We may also pick up the updated versions of the first three as well.  then I can put the LD version on the shelf next to my letterbox special edition VHS copies of the first three, which I refuse to put into our current VCRs.  Yes, that was plural.  What's your point?

The Supreme Court and I disagree...

And in other news, water is wet...


So we have the decision on Obamacare.  The federal government has been given permission to require me to purchase health insurance.  So now we get to see how long it is before government officals start abusing this ruling.  I give it 3 to 5 years.


Remember the last wonderful decision regarding the SC and people's money?  When people said that Eminent Domain wouldn't be used to take private property for commecial interests?  Well, the SC didn't agree.  The results of that decision were both positive (42 states passed laws to prevent that type of shenanegan) and negative (New London is out 78 mil, Pfizer took all of the tax credits before closing shop and the land is still vacant and undeveloped). 


So we have today's decision.  This decision was not made by reading the Constitution as much as it was made by person beliefs.  Ginsburg is the worst when it comes to this, and the recent additions did not disappoint on putting more emphasis on the social agenda than actually doing their job. 


I spent part of the morning reading the decision, as well as my lunch hour.  Generally, the majority decided that since the law of averages will support the theory that you will likely need to purchase health care at some point in your life, opting out of purchasing health care insurance shouldn't be allowed and that the government should be able to penalize you if you do.  They made assumptions about the penalty and decided that, even though it is not stated as a tax in the document, it is a tax and that allows congress to do this.  The assumptions made by them to support this decision are unbelieveable to me, but unfortunately they are the final word.  The fact that Mr Obama has the opportunity, if re-elected, to put one or two more like minded individuals on the bench scares the living hell out of me. 


I give credit to the minority for succinctly pointing out the failure of this decision on page 140 of the decision: 
"It threatens that order because it gives such an expansive meaning to the Commerce Clause that
all private conduct (including failure to act) becomes subject to federal control, effectively destroying the Constitution’s division of governmental powers."

Now that we are stuck with this bloated ball of suck and fail, I look forward to the immense savings on health care costs that will magically appear.  I'm sure that they will, because the president promised that this will save the taxpayer money.  Another fine example of Hope and Change...  I hope when he's finally out of office I still have some change left in my bank account...

Having spent much time researching this piece of... legislation... I still fail to see where cost savings will come from.  You have taken the pot of money being paid for health care, which (unquestionably) fall short of actual costs and you have now forced everyone to pay into the pot, making it much, much larger.  Where, exactly, will the health care industry be inspired (or required) to lower health care costs?  They won't, they will now just get paid (in theory) for more of the people who come into their establishments.  But nowhere in the 900 page law is there a single line that actually requires anything to be reduced, except for the general public's bank accounts or paychecks. 

Mark Mardell of the BBC made a great observation.  This ruling will be good for democracy, because the law originally pissed off so may people that the Tea Party was born and many people who normally would have stayed at home got out and voted.  I am hoping that happens again.  Last time the Democrats took a beating.  I am not thrilled with the prospect of Romney, but once again we have the choice of the lesser of two evils, not the best candidate for the country. 

The best firearm safety in the world...

...Is not pointing the gun at your head.  Really, its part of the Four Rules.  Many gun bloggers have covered it, the NRA has programs covering it, I even have a Boy Scout merit badge book that covers this information.  On the other hand, the gentleman involved appears to also have been in the home pharmaceutical supply business, so maybe we can assume that he was an idiot in search of a village.  I wonder if this would qualify for JayG's DGC... 

Checking the rules, nope.  We'll just have to stick with the Darwin Awards for this one.

I guess he wanted three hots and a cot...

 So I am looking for final results on recent elections in California (I always wait until all the votes are in) and I see the headline below:

Burglar tries to break in Judge Lillian Sing's car
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/06/09/BADI1OVAHM.DTL#ixzz1xRFHF2xd

Short story: Guy goes into court after failing in his current probation conditions, the judge lets him go with a warning.  He exits the building, breaks into a car in front of two cops (the same crime has was already in court for) and the car turns out to belong to the judge who just cut him a break.  

If that was written into a an episode of Justified or Law & Order, everyone would go "yea, right, that'll happen."  And yet, here we have both a "lesson to the bench" and a "You can't make this shit up" moment all rolled into one.  I wonder if the next judge will let him off with a warning too?  I guess it may depend on where they parked...

Lemme get this straight...

I am supposed to believe that Eric Holder's organization is going to find anything pointing to his boss or co-workers leaking classified data that makes Obama look good?  While I wouldn't call it a conspriacy, since I doubt they would have planned something this stupid, I can't see them putting their full effort into this one.  Wait, these are the same people who brought us Operation Gunwalker, so maybe I should just refer to Hanlon's Razor: 

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.