Archive for February, 2009

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How about those Oscar Awards, eh? Or did you even notice?

When I was a lad back in the 1400s — no, seriously, 1950s-60s I mean, watching the Academy Awards, the Oscars, each year was a big deal of sorts in our household. It was fun to see movie stars/starlets/actors/actresses and see which films and actors were honored. From what I heard about Sunday’s televised broadcast, it was one of the lowest rated ever, though it was up in viewership several points over last year.

(One of the films that failed to whip “Slumdog Millionaire” for Best Picture was “Frost/Nixon.” I have not seen either film, but I DID “come of age” or reach maturity during the days of Nixon’s vice presidency and later presidency. So one of these days I expect to rent “Frost/Nixon” and see just what they’ve done with the guy. A quick Google on “Nixon” turns up entries about “Richard Nixon,” but oddly enough, the top entries are for Nixon watches??)

Conventional wisdom is that the film industry flourishes during recessions and hard-times because people use films to escape the hardships of job loss, economic loss, etc. If contemporary America is any indication, that might be changing. At least box office receipts and Oscar ceremonies don’t seem to be doing all that well. Perhaps that’s due to so many online and DVD film options in our time.

Do you prefer going out to a movie theater, or do you instead rent a lot of DVDs? Leave a comment for this totally informal, unscientific “survey” of America’s viewing habits and let us know!

Sen. McCain calls out the President on helicopter contracts — handled well or not?

Sen. McCain called out President Obama on a contract for White House helicopters at a press conference yesterday and it got a lot of media play by the networks. But was it handled well or not?

I’m all for the concept of “the loyal opposition” in the politics of a democracy: the idea that those who lose an election owe it their supporters and to the nation to watchfully, even boldly, oppose (peacefully) those in power when they need to be called to the mark.

But I have to suspect the exchange you’ll see in the video below was at least partly a case of Sen. McCain grabbing the spotlight to verbally “tweak” President Obama over a matter that could have been better handled in a phone call or personal question instead of at a public press conference covered by the networks. It was somewhat “all in good fun,” and I won’t imply that I’m “outraged” or even upset about it. But it probably (as Chris Matthews mentioned on his show today) could have been done more tactfully between McCain and Obama. Take a look at the video, then I’ll say one thing more about it below the video:



I only want to add one more thing, and I haven’t “fact checked” it, but — various media reports since this public appearance have said the contract for the big-money helicopters was made under President Bush’s Administration, and is simply now being fulfilled under Obama’s Administration. And as you’ve seen in the video, Obama already has Defense Secretary Gates working on the whole boondoggle. (I love the sound of “boondoggle” and always wanted to use it!)

Bottom line: We’re talking about big money here, not something as light-weight and cheap as industrial knobs for a tool cabinet or workshop. So, of course, it is important to cut waste here, if the choppers really are being done wastefully. The issue is how it is handled as much as anything.

Are you willing to show off your body parts to airport security personnel?

Are you willing to show off your body parts to airport security personnel??

Okay, I’ll admit I used “show off” mostly to get your attention. But surely you’ve heard by now that new body scanning machines are being installed — at a cost of $170,000 per machine, I read — in U.S. airports. One article I read explained that “electromagnetic waves to create pictures of energy reflected off people. The metallic-looking images show outlines of private body parts and blur passengers’ faces.”

Good to know they blur faces, but I think I’d be much more comfortable showing my FACE rather than, uh, well you get it.

That same article says they detect hidden objects on a person as small as a button. Certainly that is more effective than going through a metal detector or whatever and trying to catch everything from a nail clipper to a box cutter. In fact, according to that USA Today article, these scanners will eventually replace the 35-year-old metal detector system currently in place.

Still, and even though only a handful of people have so far objected to the new scanners, I’m not sure I’m personally comfortable with someone in the TSA seeing that much of me. What do you think?

Wishing for some serious healthcare reform, but may not happen

I’m wishing for some serious healthcare reform, based on President Obama’s good intentions during the campaign, but that may not happen, at least for some time. I suspect getting something done about jobs and the economy will outweigh healthcare reforms for the near term.

It doesn’t take any special insight to see that healthcare services and costs both have gone wild in America. I personally have no health insurance because until this Internet work I do takes off and brings in far more than it does currently, my wife and I simply cannot afford health insurance for me. (She got a terrific retirement buyout some years ago that included health insurance we CAN afford.)

But, healthcare is such a growth industry with so many vested interests, governmental and private sector, that it’s hard to see how to solve many issues. I will say that healthcare jobs seem to be a strong job sector pretty much always, recession or not. At least there are always jobs listed in our area for medical techs, nurses, and even doctors of all sorts. So that’s certainly a good thing — and it makes me wish I’d thought seriously about becoming a doctor those many, many years ago when I could have/should have.

I don’t really see a way healthcare reform can be done easily. I am admittedly too ignorant about all that would be involved, but it seems to me that Medicare (not Medicaid) has worked pretty well in America for senior citizens. Why couldn’t some part of healthcare reforms include expanding Medicare for more (even all?) age groups? Certainly worth considering.

It really seems to me — probably an oversimplification — that the world’s still arguably “richest” or “greatest” industrialized nation should be able to provide good, affordable healthcare for all who live here. Shouldn’t it?

I’m really going to miss good old ‘ER’ on Thursday nights

Any of the rest of you reading this big fans of “ER”? You know — the long-running medical drama that anchored NBC’s Thursday night television lineup for about 200 years?

I guess it only seems like 200 years. And, frankly, the show has become just a tad worn and probably ready for the end. This is the last season, and they’re pulling out some stops to get former series actors back into the episodes before the end. (I just saw something about unsubstantiated rumors that the mega-star of the founding series cast, George Clooney, will probably do a cameo, but NBC isn’t confirming it. Big surprise.)

I truly have been an avid fan of the show. Sure, it’s little more than a prime-time soap opera, but it was much more than that for many seasons. The writing was great, the acting superb. I’m not sure exactly when it began to change.

But at some point in recent years, “ER” changed from good drama to sappy melodrama. I overlooked the way they first chopped off Dr. Romano’s arm with an errant helicopter blade — then two seasons (I think it was two) later killed Romano off by having, yes, a helicopter fall out of the sky and land on him.

Perhaps, though, Romano’s demise was the beginning of the end of the really best “ER” episodes. I mean, come on, nobody’s THAT unlucky with helicopters in real-life are they??

I can’t think of any especially odd or quirky characters from big-city life that haven’t been in and out of the “ER” at one time or another. Perhaps, oddly enough, they never had a Chicago injury lawyer or other honest-to-goodness “ambulance chaser” come along. I don’t recall much crossover between “ER” doctors and lawyers. But probably there were some.

So, even though I’ll admit “ER” has fallen on hard times, I would have been perfectly willing to watch it a couple of more seasons just to see what sort of interesting stuff was going on with the younger, newer generation of doctors. Ah, well. All good television eventually comes to an end. Guess I’ll be cast back onto watching “West Wing” reruns …

Despite well-publicized recent airline tragedies, flying still very safe

Despite at least two well-publicized recent airline tragedies — the so-called “Miracle on the Hudson” and the more recent commuter plane crash in Buffalo, N.Y. — flying is still one of the safest forms of public transportation. And many of us would see our businesses and careers either crippled or brought to a standstill if we didn’t/couldn’t fly frequently.

But it’s when the rare tragedies strike that the risks of air travel really hit home. When my older brother and I were still kids (he’s seven years older than I), he decided to join the military. All of our young lives, he’d loved the idea of the Navy, of being a sailor, or maybe even joining the Air Force and flying. We grew up in very land-locked southeastern Nebraska, then Denver, so sailing and flying both had some romantic appeal for both of us.

He joined the Army. When I found that out, I asked him why not the Navy. His answer, though intended to be sort of flip, was something like: “I figured if I get in trouble I can probably run farther than I can swim, and I know I can run farther than I can fly.”

Which, of course, is why just about any mistakes, on those rare occasions when they happen on a commercial flight, are FAR more serious than a flat tire on a truck or bus.

Which, in turn, is the reason we all hope for the best as investigators probe the wreckage and investigate all the circumstances of the horrible accident in Buffalo. May they find what happened and, hopefully, find ways of preventing such tragedies in the future.

Meanwhile, if I need to make a long trip, I’m still going to bet on air travel as the best means of getting there (assuming I can afford it).

Here’s hoping the stimulus plan will help the economy

Here’s hoping that gigantic federal stimulus plan will help the economy. Despite what Rush Limbaugh and others have said, it really is in the best interest of us all to turn the economy around. So now the federal cash drawer will open and we’ll have to see what happens.

It’s important to note at least two things about this plan:

1. NOBODY, not those who backed it and not those who opposed it, believes all will suddenly be sweetness and light and economic prosperity. If you think those supporting it feel that optimistic about it, you haven’t been paying close enough attention.

2. There are a multitude of idiotic, just plan dishonest charges floating around the Internet and elsewhere about what’s in the huge package of legislation we’re calling the “stimulus plan” or “jobs bill.” Neither label, by the way, is entirely correct. If one thing about this legislation is seriously wrong, it’s the way it was rushed through so quickly that it probably contains lots of problems and lacks lots of details.

Unfortunately, no one can guarantee this will work. And there are those who say the best thing to have done might honestly be to have done nothing. How doing nothing would have helped, I personally don’t understand. When hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of savings and investments are going down the drain monthly, what part of “nothing” really will solve the problem?

If you haven’t seen Pausch’s ‘Last Lecture’ — don’t wait another minute

If you haven’t yet seen the YouTube video of Prof. Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture” — don’t wait another minute. I’ve put it in this post so you don’t even need to locate it on YouTube. You can watch it right here.

Prof. Pausch was a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University who was diagnosed with terminal cancer and told he had only 3-6 months left to live shortly before he did this video as part of a “Last Lecture” program at the university. As it turns out, he lived almost a year after the lecture — and you’ll discover watching this video that he REALLY knew how to live.

On a personal note, my wife and I watched this hour-and-a-quarter-long video for the first time just this afternoon. We procrastinated even though we’ve had more than one friend and family member tell us it was truly “life changing” for them. I don’t know if it was exactly life changing for us — but it was one of those events that will have a lasting impact on me and the way I approach life in general.

But don’t waste your time listening to me explain what’s going on, get started with the video and find all that out for yourself:

‘Alternative energy’ resources — how about doing more walking?

Here’s something to think about when we’re thinking about alternative energy sources, alternative transportation, etc. — how about walking more and driving less?

I realize our culture is hell-bent on everything from luxury cars to high-tech gadgets and mass transit of every sort, but what happens if we all simply buy some good, sturdy New Balance or MBT shoes (for those of you obsessed with high-tech solutions to everything) and start putting one foot in front of the other to get to work or to the store, or at least to a bus stop??

Oh, sure, I realize walking is a serious over simplification to our transportation and/or energy crises in America and much of the world. I realize there are neighborhoods and streets in just about every community that simply aren’t safe to walk through. Indeed, the small- to mid-sized city where I live is so auto-oriented that there are vast stretches of streets where you’re taking your life in your hands if you’re a pedestrian. Many areas around our town simply have no sidewalks at all.

But perhaps we ought to get more serious about such issues as quality of life and fundamental fitness, both of which will improve vastly in most places if we get out of our cars and onto our feet and/or bicycles.

Sure. Over simplification, I know. But it’s something to think about, isn’t it? (Now excuse me while I get out of my recliner and check the kitchen for a late-night snack …)

How cool is this — ‘Allio’ is an all-in-one HDTV with built-in, quality computer

How cool is this — I just ran onto an All in one HDTV / PC: a 32-inch or 42-inch LCD HDTV television with a “Intel Atom 330 Dual Core processor, 2GB of high-speed DDR2-800 memory, and a massive 250GB SATA II hard drive” computer built right into it. It comes complete with USB ports and an ethernet or wireless Internet capability. It also has surround sound, home theater speakers — and the unit is wall mountable.

This beauty sells for between $1,299-$2,799.99, depending on the size and quality of the screen, the options you choose, etc. This could just be the REALLY absolutely perfect home entertainment center and combined computer workstation. Although I don’t — yet, anyway! — own one of these beauties, the Allio is carried by Visionman, an online merchant I’m familiar with and which has been in business supplying great deals in computers and electronics for 15 years.

You’ll be impressed and amazed at all the features in the Allio and the multitude of options and price options available. If you’re considering replacing a home computer and/or home entertainment center, you owe it to yourself and your family to go take a look. Go ahead. I’ll be here when you get back.

Now, if I can just convince my wife that we really DO need to replace our television — actually, we really do — and our old desktop computer (okay, maybe the current desktop will have to stay for now), maybe, just maybe …

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