novatownhall blog

I left yesterday around 4 in the morning for a relaxing vacation.  On the road and headed for Wake Forest to pick-up mama.   Imagine my surprise when we arrived.  Seems that Hilly, the man hater, was doing a stump for the cracker po’ white vote.  Before you could say “Yankees!  Fire!” we were on the road again.  This happened before breakfast and I’m just glad there wasn’t more of a delay.

 Heading to Myrtle you have to go thru Chadbourn-the strawberry capitol.  I couldn’t figure out what all the dust was off in the distance.  Once we got to the single traffic light, we saw what the deal was.  Can you say “strawberry festival?”  We are talking bigtime here.  The dust was from the hotrod riding lawnmowers-and those babies can really cook!  We had outdoor barbaques, classic car show and parade.  Life is good.  The simplistic things of small towns and the south.

 Moving onward without further interruption we made it to Myrtle where we settled in for a cool spring’s night.  The spring “breakers” are gone and the bikers haven’t arrived yet.  Just fishing, catching up on times with old friends (which for the older crowd consists of what ailments, what operations and who died), partaking (embibbing) of the favorite beverage(s), eating and soaking up the rays.

Now if you all are headed down this way, look me up.  Otherwise I will check-in to see the news and update this post with what I’ve caught and how big.  Maybe even some earth-shattering news if they re-open the Sante Fe restaurant.  We’ll see.

Update 5/5 Soaked up some rays. Got extra zzz’s. Went fishing but caught nada. Same with crabs. We went and got ice cream and they make some monster banana splits. Toasted Almond and cheese with crackers. Dinner. Another slow day in paradise. I might do something tomorrow but don’t hold your breath!

Well the Kentucky Derby had a tragic ending — the second place finisher, the philly Eight Belles, put on a tremendous surge to earn that place, but broke both front ankles in the process, and had to be euthanized.

Is this forshadowing?  How strange it is that Eight Belles was Hillary’s pick, and the victor was “Big Brown.”  Will Hillary be put down after the convention?

Sorry for the bleg but I am desperate:

My (day job) company is considering a Web software purchase which is a content management system that runs on Microsoft Server, and I need to get some information on Web site hosting companies. There are many Web sites that tout themselves as “Web hosting review” sites but a tiny bit of digging reveals the vast majority are simply advertising outlets that reprint each company’s promotional literature.

There is a special place in Hell for the guy who started that trend, believe you me.

The very few sites that actually do seem to be trying to provide reviews or compilations of customer ratings are either really outdated or – judging by other “reviews” for software and such that I happen to know about – don’t seem to have much going on between the ears, so I am not taking their word for anything.

The basic specs for the potential host would be dedicated (co-located) server, very powerful machine to pull the gargantuan pile of ore which is Microsoft software, and MS SQL Server. Backups and such, obviously. If anyone knows of any place on the Web or elsewhere where there are actual reviews or test center results for any hosting companies, that info would be greatly appreciated.

This is the question the parents and community around St. James Catholic School in Falls Church are presently dealing with. There is a petition among local residents who want to stop the Hilton from developing this project.

Someone with an interest in the issue e-mailed me with the following:

The parents are concerned that with the development being built so close, during the initial construction phase, it’s going to be very loud and disruptive for the kids in class, and potentially there’s going to be a lot of dust and other stuff that could affect air quality in the immediate area.

On a long-term basis, they’re concerned about increased traffic around the school (with all the attendant risks to pedestrians), and the possibility of the hotel attracting prostitution and drugs.

Here are some recent news stories on the controversy:

Video 1 on St James Catholic School
Video 2 on St James Catholic School
Video 3 on St James Catholic School

More news stories and the petition at Too Conservative.

Bravo to the kids of Central Washington University.

Last Saturday, in an NCAA girls softball playoff game between Central Washington University and Western Oregon University, WOU’s Sara Tucholsky hit her first home run of the season over the center field fence – the game winner.

Unfortunately, after rounding first base, Sara collapsed with a torn ACL injury. And as it turned out, she had missed first base.

She crawled back to first but could do no more. The first-base coach said she would be called out if her teammates tried to help her. Or, the umpire said, a pinch runner could be called in, and the homer would count as a single.

But then, Central Washington first baseman Mallory Holtman and shortstop Liz Wallace asked the umpire if they could assist Sara, and the ump said there was no rule against it.

So the CWU players carried Sara around the bases, ensuring she got her good leg down to touch every base, and thus assuring CWU’s defeat.

“It has been magical and crazy at the same time,” Tucholsky said Thursday. “I’m surprised at how many people have paid attention to this and how far the story has gone. But there are so many negative images of athletes now. Here is one with a positive image.”

Holtman, who had the idea to assist Tucholsky, has also been caught off guard by the ripples.

“At the time, we never thought it would be that big a deal. It just seemed like something anyone would have done,” Holtman said.

In an editorial vein, I would just say “mega-dittoes,” and hope my compatriot Redskin fans would encourage THEIR team to exercise similar sportsmanship next time Tony Romo is a bit under the weather after a week at Cancun, and shoot the boy some love.

The Washington Times has an interesting commentary by Richard W. Rahn, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and chairman of the Institute for Global Economic Growth.  In addition to the fallacies pointed out in the article, I would like to bring up another, the idea that government mandates for alternative energy can create jobs.

Like anything else, the production of energy requires labor.  Even the most automated production system was designed and built by human labor.  So mandating a less efficient form of energy production, such as ethanol, wind turbines, or solar, seems to require more labor to produce the same amount of energy.  And so it does.  Thus, stopping with this simple analysis, we would conclude that less efficient energy production results in more jobs.

But energy is used to produce other things.  Thus, the cost of producing those other things has now gone up.  This cost can either be borne by the owner of the company in lower profits, by the employees in lower wages, or by the consumer in higher prices.  Whoever bears the burden, and it is probably a combination of the three, the purchasing power of these people is reduced.  They will buy less because they have less to spend.  Because they are buying less, companies will produce less, and employ fewer people.

The net result is that there will be fewer jobs because of the less efficient energy production.

Adam Smith’s seminal work on Economics, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, is available online.  Although economic theory has progressed since 1776, like Newtonian Mechanics, Smith’s theories are still applicable 99.9% of the time.  For a more up-to-date economic treatise, try John Kenneth Galbraith’s The New Industrial State.  For those of you who want something a little lighter, try Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics.

An understand of economics is critical to one’s participation in politics today.  When our leaders are proposing Universal Health Care, windfall profits taxes on oil companies, and taking so much of our money in taxes, it is a dereliction of duty for a voter not to have as much understanding of economics as he can.

Thanks to the miracles of modern medical technology and the liberal definition of a “person,” it is now possible to have a child with no mother.  How is this possible?  Well, human ovaries are complete — eggs and all — before birth.  Let us say that a mother-to-be, near full-term, is killed in a car accident, and the unborn child, too.  The distraught father not-to-be could have eggs extracted from the unborn child, which eggs could then be fertilized and implanted in a surrogate.  The resulting child would have no mother.