National Geek Day

Happy National Geek Day!  It’s about time geeks got their own holiday.  If you enjoy finding the value of Pi, if you can multiply six-digit numbers in your head, if you’re excited about the latest news about the Boson’s Particle, if you scored 800 on your SAT or GRE math scores, if you’re a fan of Just Six Numbers, this is your day.

The big issue of this holiday, aside from whether the scientists just made a huge mistake about finding the Boson’s Particle (I spent yesterday with two genuine Geeks – the Nephew and his girlfriend), is which science fiction series or film series best satisfies the intellectual curiosity of Geeks?

The contention is between Star Wars and the original Star Trek. Which really involved actual science and still qualify as a drama?  According to our family’s Grandfather of Geekness (who is now wandering among the particles of space) – our father – it was definitely Star Trek.  He lived long enough to see to the original Star Trek when it was really on, and Star Wars.

He thought Star Wars was a joke, and a movie that mistakes a measure of space – parsec – for a measure of time, didn’t measure up in his view.  Dad generally didn’t watch children’s shows with us, but Star Trek piqued his interest, in spite of the foam boulders.  Gene Roddenberry’s ideas were ahead of their time.  Dad especially liked Mr. Spock and the notion of three-dimensional chess.

All the episodes of the original Star Trek series are available on Netflix.  If you have, you can have your very own Star Trek marathon – without the commercials.  Celebrate your Geekness with pride.  Remember, if it hadn’t been for a geek, you wouldn’t have an HDTV or Roku or other wifi device on which to watch the Star Trek reruns.  You wouldn’t have a computer, cellphone, tablet, or graphing calculator if it hadn’t been for some geek like yourselves.

Here’s to the Geeks of the world:  Live long, and prosper!

Wrong Speech, Wrong Audience

Was GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney handed the wrong speech before he stepped up to the podium to address the NAACP?  Surely, it had to be clear to him that he wasn’t exactly speaking to a group of Tea Partiers (although we do have black members and we welcome them with open arms)?

When he vowed to repeal Obamacare, the NAACP, unsurprisingly, booed him.  At some point, he also ruefully admitted that he probably wouldn’t win over the African-American electorate.  In 2008, 96 percent of African-Americans voted for Obama, and the NAACP wholeheartedly supported him.

Still, you have to give Romney credit for guts.  He pointed out that his father, Michigan Gov. George Romney, broke with his father to support the Civil Rights Act.  Romney needed to do his homework there; the GOP supported the act.  Southern Democrats were opposed to it.

That 96 percent of African-Americans voted for Obama is disappointing, if not exactly shocking.  Those are the same kind of numbers that put Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq until Pres. G.W. Bush put him out of commission.  That’s the kind of bloc voting, the kind of collective mind-set that has brought us to the brink of socialism.

You would think that of any group, the black people would most value freedom and independence.  Although it took hundreds of years to achieve, they now have the same opportunities everyone else does.  They’re given education for free.  Their housing and food are free.  And apparently, they want to keep it that way.

There’s no excuse for the failure in black schools except lack of will.  They’ve been so brainwashed by community agitators that the white community hates them and that they should hate the white people back that they don’t even think of trying.  Why should they, when for a simple vote, our government hands them everything.  Health care is just the next item on the socialist shopping list.

So of course they booed Mitt Romney for vowing to repeal Obamacare.  They won’t be carrying the burden for this costly and intrusive government program; the rest of us will.  And that seems to suit the inner city African-American community just fine.  As far as they’re concerned, it’s just another example of “social justice.”

To us, it’s just another example of thuggery.

Expelling the Founding Fathers

According to a column by Todd Starnes on the Fox News website, Nebraska is considering rewriting their social studies standards.  In the initial draft, the Founding Fathers are expelled and cultural equivalency is promoted over American exceptionalism.  Every school district in the state must adopt the standards or enact an equivalent standard of their own.

An early draft has already been rewritten, reinstating George Washington and Benjamin Franklin – along with other Founding Fathers and historical facts.

Nebraska Board of Education member John Sieler says that the standards also teach global warming as fact, and promote cultural equivalency.  The draft process was not open to the public

Omaha.com reports that the draft instructs schools to make sure high school students can “analyze and evaluate the impact of people, events and symbols upon history in the United States and abroad.”  It also calls on students to explore history from multiple perspectives.

Sieler said the state needs to adopt a specific statement recognizing American exceptionalism.

“That is the key to the whole thing,” he said. “We need to teach that we are the good guys. That doesn’t mean we have to hide some of the things that we are not proud of as a nation. We’ve made some mistakes but we are on the right course. We’re not out to conquer countries and enslave people.”

 “Certainly the standards are very strong in the fact that America is a great country,” Donlynn Rice, the state’s administrator of curriculum, instruction and innovation, told Fox News Radio.

            
“What exact terms we use remains to be seen as we work with the draft.”

But she said she was not sure if the term “American exceptionalism” is in the draft.

“We’re talking about the importance of understanding different cultures,” she said. “We certainly want students to be aware there are many different cultures both in our country and across the world.”

Rice told Fox News that they are listening to public input and used the re-inclusion of the historical figures to illustrate that point.  Yeah.  Seems the frogs aren’t quite boiled enough.

Stripping a nation of its culture and heritage is a generally-accepted practice in overthrowing a country.  In Hungary, the Communists destroyed or erased the faces of local Hungarian heroes.  The new, Muslim leaders of Egypt are planning to destroy the Great Pyramids at Giza, just as they destroyed one of the world’s largest statues of Buddha about ten years ago.  There are reports that the Islamists have their eye on Timbuktu, as well, an ancient marketplace, and home to a sect of Christians who believe they’re in possession of the Ten Commandments.

In Scotland and Ireland, the natives were forbidden to speak their native languages.  Many immigrated to America for the chance for freedom and fought in the Revolutionary War.  Now, our own government, grown so large that it can no longer be governed by the people, wants to wipe the school slate clean, and write their own, Socialist version of history.

If we allow these people to have their way, nothing of history will be left.  There’s not much we can do about the pyramids of Egypt.  If you’ll recall, during the Arab “Spring”, docents of the Egyptian museum had to call in the army to stop the mobs from destroying the artifacts.

These are the irresponsible cretins whom we’ll be paying homage, rather than George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, if everyone doesn’t get their Conservative hats on and vote in November.

As it is, the Pyramids of Egypt are probably already history.  And to think, we helped them.  Or rather, Obama did.  That is why I’m planning to become a librarian – because the only place you’ll be able to see a pyramid, or read what the Founding Fathers wrote is in a book in a library.

A well-hidden library.

Rifling the Second Amendment

The nearer to cities Americans live, the more nervous they are about guns.  There must be some proportional relationship to this gun-anxiety.  The closer you are to a city, the higher the crime rate will be and the more likely it is that some percentage out of the hundred or so people walking on that sidewalk is a criminal carrying an illegal firearm.

The farther out you go into the suburbs on the other hand, the percentages differ.  Thrown in with the criminals are the homeowners trying to protect themselves from the criminals, the rifle-rangers, and the Bambi, Yogi, and Thumper shooters.  This last group doesn’t have a very good reputation in the commuting suburbs, where residents are perfectly happy to share their property and their garbage with the black bears rather than shoot them.

Finally, out in the exurbs, the rural countryside, it’s the happy hunting grounds.  In the Catskills, the Adirondacks, and the Poconos, hunting (and fishing) is the favorite sport.  There are plenty of deer and bear, plenty of room, and plenty of hunters.

Watching a number of period movies (The Last of the Mohicans, Oklahoma, and Pride and Prejudice), I wonder how modern suburbanites would have fared, growing corn, fattening hogs, milking cows, and slaughtering geese and chickens?  Especially that last part.  How would they have felt about shooting little bunny rabbits that got into the carrot patch or wolves that were threatening the livestock?

This month, Obama is expected sign on to the U.N. Gun Ban Treaty.  Criminals will declare whatever the official date is a national holiday, and Obama will probably issue an Executive Order mandating such a holiday.  People in New Jersey will be ecstatic – at least until the deer run amok on Rt. 287, totaling cars and occasionally killing people (usually the front passenger).

No doubt, state governors will order the carcasses to be distributed among the poor.  Wait – can they even do that?  That may be against some new nanny state health ordinance.  Garbage can and garage door manufacturers will see a boon in sales as bears mangle suburban garage doors to get at the stored garbage.

Residents closer to the cities already know all about the various gun regulations; how you have to keep it locked up in its box at all times, with the ammunition stored in a separate place.  In New Jersey, you have to carry the gun disassembled.  You can just hear some hapless citizen crying out to a mugger, “Hey, can you hold on just one more minute before you rob me?  I can’t find my bullet.”  By the way, the treaty is going to be debated at the United Nations building in New York City.  Look out, Turtle Bay.

This treaty causes all sorts of Constitutional problems, as well.  According to the National Rifle Association’s Legislative Action website: 

In March of this year, U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kans.) introduced legislation to prevent any arms treaty from infringing the right to keep and bear arms in the United States. The “Second Amendment Sovereignty Act,” S.2205, would prohibit the administration from using ‘the voice, vote, and influence of the United States, in connection with negotiations for a United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, to restrict in any way the rights of United States citizens under the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States, or to otherwise regulate domestic manufacture, assembly, possession, use, transfer, or purchase of firearms, ammunition, or related items, including small arms, light weapons, or related materials.’

Now, if this were a House bill, it would be a sure shot to be passed.  However, this is a Senate bill and we all know who controls the Senate – at least for the being.  Part of the bill calls for defunding any support of this treaty.  If the current Senate debates this bill, it’ll stand a better chance of passing than I would have putting a hole in the side of a barn.

So what’s the problem with the U.S. ratifying this treaty?  Everybody except hunters and criminals hate guns and the criminals have no problem getting the tools of their trade.  The question is who’s going to enforce, here and around the world?  What’s going to stop internationally criminal countries from producing weapons?  All the diplomacy in the world hasn’t stopped Iran.  Or China.  Or North Korea.  Looked how well diplomacy worked during the Cuban Missile Crisis?  The Russians were practically within sight of Cuba when Kennedy stopped fooling around and brought out our own big guns.  And even then, he had to agree to close all our military bases in Turkey.  Who really won that show-down?

If the treaty passes, all the decent people of the world will be unarmed.  They will live in a world where it will be illegal to carry or use something they’re loth to use anyway.  The evil, on the other hand, will be well-armed.  Even if you’re a non-violent person – so who cares if the Communists take over the world, we can still get by – Communist countries are known for their food shortages.

I love animals.  I can’t even swat a fly.  But when hunger rings the dinner bell and you’re starving, your kids are starving, and Bambi’s father goes strutting by, cruel as it is, you’ll wish you had that gun in your hand.

But more than watching your next meal walk off into the twilight, you’ll start to wish you had that gun for another reason:  to shoot the lock off the cage in which the Communists have imprisoned you.  Oh sure, now you say, ‘what’s the harm in giving it a chance?’  The Communists, like all good ideologues, have a cunning way of whitewashing the defects in their plan.  They know what the problems are, but since they don’t want to lose power, once you’ve voted them in, you won’t be able to vote them out again.

You won’t be able to own property.  You’ll work at the job they tell you to work at.  They’ll ration everything under the sun in the name of not overproducing anything or making a profit.  You can try praying to God; just don’t do it publicly.  Eventually, they’ll need a religion as an “opiate of the people” and the “opiate” will be Islam, from which there is no escape.

Well, what are we Christians worried about, anyway?  God already commanded that we should not kill (murder).  Still, our human sides would feel a little better if we could defend ourselves.  Somehow, we just don’t see ourselves as sheep for the wolves.  We want to live – in peace if we can.

If God told us to throw away all our guns, that would be different.  I don’t own one anyway.  God isn’t telling us to throw away the guns; someone else is, someone who shouldn’t be trusted to make such a declamation.  God said not to kill.  God also said we should have no other God but Him.  He also said not to tempt him.  That is, don’t throw yourself in front of a tornado so God can save you.  Don’t throw yourself in the way of a gun (unless it’s to save someone else’s life).  He who takes up the sword shall die by the sword.  Or the gun.

There are better ways to solve problems.  But until there are better people we won’t find those better ways.  The best ordinary people can do is not live or go anywhere near people who use guns to commit crimes, and pray they’ll never encounter any.  However, with the Communists plotting to herd us all into city communes, we’ll be sitting ducks for criminals who don’t care what God or the Government says.