THIS is the problem

A local NJ lawyer and Blogger uses this interview" of John Kerry by Don Imus to putatively make the point that Kerry 1) does not have a "good" plan to get us out of Iraq and 2) that Kerry is still "flip/flopping" on at least this issue. Unfortunately, Hondo is totally wrong on this one. He misses the first point that Imus never asked the right question--and that when Kerry tried to steer the discussion to that question, Imus flat out cut him off. (The "right" question is, of course, just what Bush intends to do get us out of the nasty pickle he has gotten us into in the first place.) And he definitely misses the second point, which Kerry was able to get out, that the current president is presently muddying up the water even more so it is virtually impossible for him (Kerry) to formulate any sort of specific plan until after the elections. Once he is two months from office, he, and his staff, can begin the process of taking over the reins of policy and planning.

Personally, all I want to hear from Kerry is the acknowledgement that the situation is grim and is growing grimmer by the day. I don't expect miracles from him, but I do expect him to bend every effort to achieving the best possible outcome from our misguided initial military invasion. George Bush has been the worst president this country has had in my lifetime (and I go back to Truman). He has consistently done the wrong thing in almost every area he has touched (from the economy through civil liberties/human rights to the environment and culminating in the twin disasters of international relations and this war.) The last thing I want to do is "stay the course" with this person. I am uncomfortable about not supporting him while our troops are on the ground and being shot at, but I think, in the long run, it will be better to increase shortterm risk because, if we are successful, it will lower the long term risk.

Daily I become more convinced that it is imperative to remove Bush from office. If we fail at that this coming November, I fear the damage to this country will be irreversable by the time he is forced to repeal the XXII Amendment in order to make himself President-for-Life.

Cell phones and cars

I think the ban on cell phones is dumb. A cell phone is potentially no more distracting than singing along with the radio...or letting one of those talk-jocks raise your blood pressure, or even carrying on a conversation with a passenger. Of course, the key word is "potentially". There are too many drivers out there who can't be trusted to chew gum and tie their shoe laces at the same time much less do anything other than pay strict attention to the road when driving. For these people, giving them a cell phone while in a car is like handing a loaded gun to a toddler: the ultimate result is sure to be a bad one. So, until we figure out how to weed out the people who should not be entrusted with a couple tons of metal travelling at 51 feet per second (that's 35mph,) the rest of us will have to suck it up and live with the ban on cell phones.

OK, so I am being a law abiding citizen in this respect and am not driving around with one hand on the wheel while the other holds a cell phone plastered to my head. If I do have to talk to somebody not in the car at the time, I use a hands free headset, like the law requires. And I get really pissed when I see some other jerk still driving around with a phone plastered to his/(or more often than not) her ear. I'm going to start carrying my digital camera around so I can take pictures...and post them here. I realize that taking pictures while driving is probably more distracting than chatting on the phone, but 1)it isn't illegal, yet and 2)I am capable of doing at least two things at the same time.

So, if you drive around with a cell phone growing out of your head, look for your picture here in the near future.

I haven't had time nor energy to post about local stuff...until now

OK, One of the things I'm going to do here is post license plate numbers and vehicle descriptions of poeple I see with cellphones attached to their ears. As of 7/1, we here in the Garden State are supposed to do our cell phoning in cars using "hands free" technology. That means an earpiece and boom mike, for the most part. It doesn't mean for me to look over at the car next to me and see a cellphone plastered to the side of the driver's head. I have my first two licenses and vehicle descriptions on a piece of paper in the car (I wrote down the particulars when I was stopped...even though it meant reciting a mantra of license number and vehicle description until I could write them down. Tomorrow they'll be posted here. And I swear to God that I will continue to do this until said practise stops. I had to get a phone with a hands-free headset and all. If I have to do this, then the rest of my fellow Jerseyites have to do it as well.

Ooops

In the process of updating the template for this Blog, I have managed to lose my commenting and my links. Bah! Humbug! *mutter* OK, I don't have time this morning to work on it any further. However, hopefully I'll be able to do some repair work this evening and all will be well tomorrow. I hope...*aaaarrrrrrgggghhhh!!*

I'm thinking about resurrecting this Blog

I'm considering resurrecting this Blog to be a Hyperlocal Blog for Somerville, NJ. We'll have to see whether I have the time and energy to undertake a project like that. I will try to do a little posting this week to get my feet wet, so to speak.

OK, I've created a new Blog which is pretty much gonna take over from this one. The new address is:
  http://home.earthlink.net/~elzorroviejo/blogger.html
As of yet, there isn't very much there, and I don't have commenting turned on yet, but it's coming...it's coming. I also have to edit the template and a buch of other things. It should be ready to rock and roll, though, by sometime late tonight.
 
I will post here once more to let anyone still hanging around that the new site is up and fully ready for business (which is most certainly is not at this moment. But not now; now I have to go do some actual work around here before I go play for an hour or so...Laters....
 
UPDATE! I'm turning off commenting here and moving it to the new blog. I think I'll leave this up for a month or so before I kill it and migrate entirely to the new site. The commenting will be gone by tomorrow morning. (As if anybody cares!)

Disregard that abortive effort below (ie. the second post of October 19, 2002). I left out a couple quotation marks in three of the links and managed, thereby, to totally screw up the post to the point where I can't get in to edit it. That (me being so stupid) really sucks! So, following is what I meant to post the first time.
 
TCS: Tech Central Station - Where Free Markets Meet Technology
 
I stumbled across this site courtesy of another New Joisey Blogger. It is an interesting mix of tech and conservative politics. I feel a little funny recommending it to anyone who happens to stumble across this, but recommend it I do--with the caveat that one has to approach this site with a certain degree of...of...caution, I think, is the word I'm looking for. Don't take their every word as gospel and understand that their agenda might not be the same as yours (or mine, as the case might be.)
 
For example, there is a good article by Brock Yates (my God! I remember Brock Yates writing for Car and Driver back in the 60s when I was in my twenties) about hydrogen fuel cells and their highly suspect future as an automotive fuel source. I don't want to read this kind of stuff except that his facts and his science (to the best of my ability to verify them) are sound. Then there is another article about wind generators and their limitations as an alternative source of electricity. Another of my pet technologies given a severe, and seemingly warranted, downgrade. However, there is, I think, a silver lining in all this: namely that both could eventually contribute significantly so long as sufficient resources are devoted to furthering their technology.
 
There are other articles which I think are plain wrong, and deserve opposition. The thing is that whether I agree or disagree with an article, they all make me think about the science involved, the economics involved and the politics involved. These are not strident polemics from the fringe right. They are pieces by, as far as I can tell, intelligent people who are trying to rationally, and with supporting evidence, advance their agenda. This is not a bad thing, and I recommend TCS to all and sundry.

TCS: Tech Central Station - Where Free Markets Meet Technology
 
I stumbled across this site courtesy of another hydrogen fuel cells and their highly suspect future as an automotive fuel source. I don't want to read this kind of stuff except that his facts and his science (to the best of my ability to verify them) are sound. Then there is another article about No comments:

OK, I've been a baaaad boy in that I haven't posted anything in two weeks! This is supposed to be a daily exercise rather than a "whenever I feel like it" event. Mea Culpa and I'll really, really try to do better in the future. In fact, to try to make partial ammends and to catch up on things I've been doing/thinking, I will try to post a bunch this weekend. (However, I do have to split my writing time between my Blog and my Diaryland site where I'm supposedly posting chapters from the novel I'm working on --and have been working on, on an intermittant basis, for the past 15 years: that works out to about a chapter a year, more or less. I will be happy to supply my diaryland address to anyone who is interested [he said in a blatant attempt to see if anyone is reading this site.])
 
Last weekend, my wife and I went up to the Adirondacks to close the family cabin for the winter. We did not get up there at all this summer, which was a mistake. I get such a feeling of renewal being there that I have to make going up a priority rather than a luxury. The cabin is on the west shore of a medium sized lake, and it is totally surrounded by state parkland. This means that there is no road access to the place. Consequently, there are no modern utilities: no electric, no gas, no plumbing. Cooking is done on a woodstove; heating is by said stove and a big fieldstone fireplace; water comes from a spring which is about 1/2 mile distant by land (a little less by boat); sanitation is rudimentary--an outhouse; finally, light is from a couple Coleman lanterns and some kerosene lamps. When you are in residence here, life truly gets back to basics.
 
We have issues with this place. The biggest issue is that, in 1956, the town hall where the deed was registered burned down. When the town "reconstructed" its records, it screwed up our deed--giving us about 1/10th the land we were supposed to have. My grandfather died soon after this, and neither my uncles nor my father ever noticed the discrepancy until sometime in the early '70s. By then, if we had made waves about it, the state would have probably taken our camp (paying "condemnation" prices-hah!) rather than losing a couple acres of "state park". Now the situation is probably pretty much beyond redemption. The back taxes alone would be enough to put an end to any thought of reclaiming our land unless one of us was lucky enough to hit the lottery: 46 years of back taxes and interest would probably hit 6 figures. *sigh*
 
Other than that little problem, we are going to have to replace the kitchen in the very near future. The kitchen is actually a shed attached to the main cabin. The problems are that the roof leaks, badly, and one of the main floor joists is about 3/4 rotted through. I want to sneak in a little expansion of the room (which is now about 10x10) when we make those repairs. An added 5-6 feet in depth and another 2 feet in width would give us more room to move around and more storage room as well. I'm working on my cousins to bring 'em around. I think we could get away with it with the town without incurring any official notice, but the rest of the family aren't all that confident. We'll see what happens in the next year.
 
I also have a set of plans which I call "the hit the lottery" scenario. It would involve turning the main cabin, which is now 18x28, into one with measurements of 24x40. Obviously, that would require construction permits and official approvals, which would, in turn, require large expenditures in both legal prep and in doing things like making "voluntary" donations to various public institutions (towns, state park commissions, etc.) I don't look for this to happen any time in the near future, but I can dream...
 
OK, enough for now. I have to go work on the great sideboard restoration project for a couple hours. This piece of Victorian furniture has to be in place in our dining room by Thanksgiving. More on this as it progresses.

I was engaged in an exchange of posts in a forum I frequent concerning the state of American schools. (OK, actually it was about teaching things like comparative religion in the public schools to start, but the discussion widened.) The problem we face as a society is that, on the whole, our children are receiving a less than adequate education. For one thing, the way the school year is currently configured, there is simply not enough time to teach our kids what they will need to know to be effective adults. Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that the people who have been advocating year around school schedules are right.
 
Specifically, the school year should consist of three terms, a trimester system, with two 14 week terms and one 15 week term. That leaves 9 weeks of vacation time for school districts to apportion out as they see fit. I could see something like: last week in December and first week in January, two weeks in April, one week in July (over the 4th), three weeks in August and one week in November (over Thanksgiving). That gives schools 43 weeks of instruction time. Take another five to seven days off for national holidays and school professional development days, and actual instruction time ends up at about 42 weeks per year. Currently most states mandate about 180 school days per year. This would raise the total to about 210. That's about a 17% increase in class days and it eliminates the long summer vacation which usually results in the first month of the fall semester being devoted to "refreshing" what was taught the preceding year.
 
I wouldn't want to make this proposal too detailed since I think individual school districts should be allowed latitude to come up with schedules that fit their constituency. Of course, rather than call for a trimester system, the same results could be attained simply by mandating a 210 day school schedule--that's 210 days with kids in the classrooms--then arrange the schedule in whatever manner an individual school board might see fit. However, the trimester system seems to be the most elegant solution.
 
The trimester system could be readily adapted by secondary schools (i.e. high schools). Make each course worth one credit per trimester. Require 60 credits to graduate from high school. Set up a core curriculum of required courses--something on the order of:
English and Literature: 8 credits
Math: 8 credits
History and social sciences: 8 credits
Foriegn (second) Language: 8 credits
Physical science: 8 credits
 
This would leave room for electives and advanced placement courses and would give us people ready to be productive members of society. Anyhow, this is what I've been thinking about this weekend.