Groannn.......

Dead Duck

A woman brought a very limp duck into a veterinary surgeon's office. As she laid her pet on the table, the vet pulled out his stethoscope and listened to the bird's chest....

After a moment or two, the vet shook his head sadly and said, "I'm so sorry, but your pet duck, "Cuddles", has passed away."

The distressed owner wailed, "Are you sure"?

"Yes, I am sure. The duck is dead," he replied.

"How can you be so sure?" she protested. "I mean, you haven't done any = testing on him or anything. He might just be in a coma or something...."

The vet rolled his eyes, turned around, left the room, then returned a few moments later with a black Labrador Retriever. As the duck's owner looked on in amazement, the dog stood on his hind legs, put his front paws on the examination table and sniffed the duck from top to bottom. He then looked at the vet with sad eyes and shook his head. The vet patted the dog, took it out, and returned a few moments later with a cat.

The cat jumped up on the table and also sniffed delicately at the bird from head to foot. The cat sat back on its haunches, shook its head, meowed softly and strolled out of the room....

The vet looked at the woman and said, "I'm sorry, but as I said, this is most definitely, 100 percent certifiably, a dead duck."

The vet then turned to his computer terminal, hit a few keys and produced a bill, which he handed to the woman. The duck's owner, still in shock, took the bill. "$150!!!", she cried. "$150 just to tell me my duck is dead???"

The vet shrugged.... "I'm sorry. If you'd taken my word for it, the bill would have been $20.....



(Are you ready for this?)



...but with the lab report and the cat scan, it's now $150.

Spring is really, finally, here ....

Well, the hummingbirds are back (or at least one of them, anyway). Saw a ruby throated hummingbird this morning (7am or so) while sitting on the deck. They're entertaining little things to watch, especially when there are several as they start chasing each other around, "defending" their turf, so to speak. Another sign that spring has sprung!

Immigration - what a mess

Unlike many folks, I have sorta' mixed feelings about this mess. I've felt for a long time that we, as a nation, haven't done nearly enough to work with and help develop our neighbor to the south (Mexico). Despite being a largely 3rd world nation and economy they have remained generally an ally and a "good neighbor" to us over the years. On the other hand, something clearly must be done to prevent - or at least slow down - the flood of illegal immigrants from and through our border with Mexico. I thought George Will (excerpt below) encapsulated my generally ambivalent feelings rather well:

Of the estimated at least 11 million illegal immigrants -- a cohort larger than the combined populations of 12 states -- 60 percent have been here at least five years. Most have roots in their communities. Their children born here are U.S. citizens. We are not going to take the draconian police measures necessary to deport 11 million people. They would fill 200,000 buses in a caravan stretching bumper-to-bumper from San Diego to Alaska -- where, by the way, 26,000 Latinos live. And there are no plausible incentives to get the 11 million to board the buses.

Facts, a conservative (John Adams) said, are stubborn things, and regarding immigration, true conservatives take their bearings from facts such as those in the preceding paragraph. Conservatives should want, as the president proposes, a guest worker program to supply what the U.S. economy demands -- immigrant labor for entry-level jobs. Conservatives should favor a policy of encouraging unlimited immigration by educated persons with math, engineering, technology or science skills that America's education system is not sufficiently supplying.

And conservatives should favor reducing illegality by putting illegal immigrants on a path out of society's crevices and into citizenship by paying fines and back taxes and learning English. Faux conservatives absurdly call this price tag on legal status ``amnesty.'' Actually, it would prevent the emergence of a sullen, simmering subculture of the permanently marginalized, akin to the Arab ghettos in France. The House-passed bill, making it a felony to be in the country illegally, would make 11 million people permanently ineligible for legal status. To what end?

As Will stated, we simply must secure our borders better than we are while also making it simpler & easier to (a) enter the country legally and (b) gain citiaenship or permanent residency status (and, to be fair & honest, it would be nice to see more latinos make an honest effort to assimilate into the "American" culture; learn English, for example; so many latino "spokesmen" seem to pooh-pooh the whole "assimilation" idea). Having completely open borders (liberal solution) is stupid and a recipe for disaster; "fortress America" (ultra-conservative solution)is paranoid and self-defeating. Surely we're smart enough to come up with better ideas than what we've heard so far. (I just get so terribly tired of watching our so-called "leaders," be they politicians, pundits, or "experts," grand-standing, race- baiting, pandering to special interests, &/or posturing for the cameras instead of legitimately seeking workable, well-thought out, solutions .)

Just how screwd up is San Francisco?

This from Neal Boortz' "show notes" this morning:

JUST HOW SCREWED UP IS SAN FRANCISCO?

There was a rally in San Francisco over the weekend. It wasn't a rally to protest the permanent berthing of decommissioned U.S. Iowa, a battleship that fought for our country in World War II, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf War. It wasn't a rally in support of San Francisco's new law that absolutely bans the private ownership of firearms. It wasn't a rally in support of gay rights, or of the right of San Francisco's homeless population to urinate and defecate on the city sidewalks. Those issues are all pretty much settled. This was a rally of evangelical Christian teenagers. The rally was called the "Battle Cry for a Generation" and was attended by 25,000 teens. The rally was staged to counter a popular culture that the rally organizers say "glamorizes violence and sex." There were religious speakers and Christian rock bands. There was no sex, no violence, no foul language, no destruction of private property. And all of this made one San Francisco Assemblyman, Mark Leno, very, very mad indeed. Leno said that the rally amounted to "a fascist mega-pep rally." Well, Leno is a Democrat (as if I needed to tell you) so there you go with the requisite association of anything deemed to be conservative, like religion, with Adolf Hitler. Leno wasn't through. He also said of these Christian teenagers: "They're loud, they're obnoxious, they're disgusting, and they should get out of San Francisco."

Well ... this is one of those points where I really don't need to say any more.

Ilegal aliens and the Good Samaritan ....

Speaking of politics and religion - which, along with sex & college football are things you should never, ever discuss in a social setting - Hillary Clinton decided to demonstrate her Bible knowledge in front of the entire US Senate this week.

Hillary has decided she doesn't want Congress to pass legislation restricting illegal immigration (what she really said was that Congress was trying to turn "undocumented aliens" into criminals.

Seems to me, if the law says that you must be documented to come into the country, and you aren't documented, then you are here illegally and, further, if you're doing something illegal you are, by definition, a criminal.

But Hillary also said that, based on the proposed law in question, the Congress would have made criminals of Jesus and the Good Samaritan, too.

We all know, of course, that Hillary would never make a Bible reference just to win the favor of voters in the Bible belt, but ..... I don't think Jesus ever traveled far enough from home or stayed long enough in one place to be considered an illegal anything. I'm also pretty sure that he never had a counterfeit green card or avoided rendering unto Caeser by getting paid in cash under the table to avoid taxes.

As for the Good Samaritan, if Hillary were to read the story again she would learn that the Good Samaritan was just passing through. I don't think anyone is opposed to folks who are just passing through any more than they are to those who are here legally.

Of course, it is an election year, doncha' know .....

(Shamelessly copied in large part from Darrel Huckaby's editorial in the Gwinnett Daily Post this morning; thanks and kudos for a well written piece!)

Don't sweat your weaknesses ...

Taken from "The Coyote Within" blog at www.adriansavage.com/blog/

Don't Sweat Weaknesses

Focus on what counts. Don't waste time and effort on weaknesses, unless they're blocking you from using your strengths. If a weakness in communication is stopping you from getting your ideas across, deal with it. If you're poor at writing reports, but rarely have to do it anyway, forget about it.

Don't worry about areas where you have little interest to build on. If you aren't motivated, you won't improve much, whatever you do. It takes far more energy and determination to improve from completely awful to barely average than it takes to go from good to great. You've only got so much energy. Don't waste it.

Don't be bamboozled into working hard at becoming mediocre. Forget trying to be perfect. It's impossible. Be the best possible version of yourself, even if that isn't what you expected or the folks around you ordered. Anything else will condemn you to a lifetime of wasted effort.

What happens if you "focus on improving your weaknesses? You get a lot of really strong weaknesses. Better to focus on your strengths.

"Quality education in Florida's public schools..."

Just what is it, really, that Democrats, the NEA, & liberals in general fear about freedom of choice in education? They seem to believe that "choice" in everything from abortion to "arts" funding is okay or even constitutionally required, except for educating our kids. This from George Will:

...Florida's Supreme Court fulfilled the desires of the teachers unions, and disrupted the lives of the 733 children and their parents, by declaring, in a 5 to 2 ruling, that the voucher program is incompatible with the state constitution. Specifically, and incredibly, the court held that the OSP violates the stipulation, which voters put into the constitution in 1998, that the state shall provide a "uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality education."

The court wielded the first adjective as a scythe to cut down the OSP. It argued that the word "uniform" means that the state must utilize only public schools in providing "high quality education."

This even though many public schools are providing nothing of the sort; the public school that Octavia would have to attend were she not at Archbishop Curley has been rated a failing school for three consecutive years by the state . And even though the state can continue to utilize private schools for educating some disabled students. And even though, by the court's reasoning, it is unconstitutional for the state to use the OSP to help Octavia receive a fine education at Archbishop Curley, the constitutional mandate about "high quality education" requires consigning her to a failing school. And even though there is no evidence that the drafters of the constitution's language or the public that ratified it thought it meant what the Supreme Court now says it means -- that in providing quality education, the state must enforce a public school monopoly on state funds. Actually, the legislature's committee that drafted the "uniform" language rejected a proposal to prohibit vouchers.

The court's ruling was a crashing non sequitur: that the public duty to provide something (quality education) entails a prohibition against providing it in a particular way (utilizing successful private educational institutions)...

The inane, insane, politics of todays leftists and their unbelievable hypocrisy is breathtaking to behold.

"Quality education in Florida's public schools..."

...and folks blame the insurance company for high premiums...

GOD FORBID YOU SHOULD PAY FOR YOUR OWN MEDICAL CARE

Evidently we have a new controversy that has surfaced while I was out of town for a few days. The Georgia House of Representatives has passed a bill that would make it harder for Georgia's Medicaid program to recover the costs of providing medical care to some of Georgia's elderly citizens. These Georgia legislatures don't want the state Medicaid program to be able to recover dollars spent paying someone's nursing home bills from the estate of that patient. More specifically, the law says that Georgia Medicaid cannot get any of the first $100,000 of the proceeds of the sale of a patient's house after that patient has died. That money would go to the patient's heirs instead.

Now --- here's what that law really does. It forces the taxpayers of Georgia to pay for a person's nursing home care, even when that person has the assets to pay for that care, or a portion thereof, themselves. The Georgia house has passed a welfare bill. Essentially, this bill allows the children of a Medicaid nursing home patient to pass of $100,000 of the cost of their parents nursing home costs off to the taxpayers while they take that $100,000 and spend it on themselves.

Nice going, o wise and concerned public legislators. It's always easier to spend money out of someone else's purse (i.e., taxpayers), isn't it? It's one thing for the state to cover care for those who don't have the financial means themselves, but it's something altogether different to do so for those who could afford to pay a portion of it themselves ... (good grief!! What's wrong with people today? What happened to individual responsibility, anyway?).

They just can't take it ...

This is taken from "To The Point News" a few months ago and was something I found myself in agreement with on an emotional, visceral level...

Remember when you were a kid in grade school, and if you really want to show contempt for someone you’d say, “He can dish it out but he can’t take it”? Moslems are like that.

They can dish out insults to infidels, arrest Christians for praying in Saudi Arabia, confiscate their Bibles and throw them in the trash, call Jews pigs and monkeys, and spit on the whole human race that isn’t Moslem. But they go into frenzies of righteous outrage at the slightest criticism of their history and beliefs.

I am old enough to remember when to take an airplane flight, all you did was get on the plane. Every time I have to take off my shoes at airport security, every time I go through airport security at all, it reminds me of how Moslems are responsible for this hassle and fear.

It’s not just that Moslem men should be profiled at airport security. It’s that Moslems owe the world an apology for the very existence of airport security in the first place. We need to demand that apology, an apology for fatwas and death threats against cartoonists, an apology for their terrorism and medieval fanaticism.

The question we need to ask Moslems is: Until you start showing respect and tolerance for our values, religion, and civilization, why should we show any respect and tolerance for yours?

No more tolerance for Moslem bullies. Don’t dish it out if you can’t take it. It’s a message Moslems are going to hear more and more from now on.

I know several "native" middle eastern folks, all of whom I've found to be friendly and likable: I just don't understand the culture, though

The best basketball prank ever !!

This is hardly original with me, but this is just too funny not to post:

Basketball Prank
On March 4, University of California Berkeley (Cal) played a basketball game against the University of Southern California (USC). With Cal in contention for the PAC-10 title and the NCAA tournament at stake, the game was a must-win.

Enter "Victoria."

Victoria was a hoax UCLA co-ed, created by Cal's Rally Committee. For the previous week, "she" had been chatting with Gabe Pruitt, USC's starting guard, over AOL Instant Messenger. It got serious. Pruitt and several of his teammates made plans to go to Westwood after the game so that they could party with Victoria and her friends.

On Saturday, at the game, when Pruitt was introduced in the starting lineup, the chants began: "Victoria, Victoria." One of the fans held up a sign with her phone number.

The look on Pruitt's face when he turned to the bench after the first Victoria chant was priceless. The expression was unlike anything ever seen in collegiate or pro sports. Never did a chant by the opposing crowd have such an impact on a visiting player. Pruitt was in total shock. (This is the only picture I could find.) The chant "Victoria" lasted all night. To add to his embarrassment, transcripts of their IM conversations were handed out to the bench before the game: "You look like you have a very fit body." "Now I want to c u so bad."

Pruitt ended up a miserable 3-for-13 from the field.

Hilarious; just flat out hilarious! Be sure to check out the picture - he's #42.

Public, er, government, "educators"

ABC's John Stossel has been railing against "public education" (i.e., government schools) in the USA for sometime, most notably in his recently aired "Stupid in America" documentary. As you might guess, he's received quite a bit of feedback, especially from the teachers' union, NEA. Here are a few excerpts from his recent column on townhall.com:

"Several hundred people showed up at my door Wednesday to teach me a lesson by offering me a job. They were unionized public-school teachers .....

..... And I was especially surprised by one history lesson they taught me: "Public schools are what distinguish democracies from every other system in the world," and a country without strong public schools "lends itself to authoritarian thinking." Fascinating. I guess the Communists all went to private school. And I guess having a unionized government monopoly running most of our schools, and forcing students to attend those schools regardless of whether they or their parents approve of what's taught there, will make sure that the government can never indoctrinate our children -- and neither can labor unions .....
Another speaker said the union's goal was to ensure that a quality education was "free and accessible to all of New York City's children, regardless of income . . . or geography." Ironically that's what school choice would provide. If the education dollars were attached to the student, then parents could pick a school for their kids regardless of geography or income. It would free parents and kids from the current education system's school-zone bureaucracy and give them real choice. Today, geography is often the only determining factor in a child's assignment to a public school. With school choice, you might be able to send your child to any school within commuting range, not just the one in your school zone."

(to the read the entire column, http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/JohnStossel/2006/03/15/189907.html )

The level of hypocrisy (ignorance?) from some of these "teachers" is stunning to me. I'm grateful my own kids are now adults (though I sometimes wonder how much we may have erred in sending them to our local public schools). I pray that my grandkids will either attend private schools or have the privilege of being home schooled.

Having some computer problems with one of the laptops, it seems. Quite aggravating and it really slows things down for us .....

Great post/article from Peggy Noonan:

"What happened to the Oscars is what happened to the Olympics. They became common. They made themselves common. When the Olympics were held every four years, they were a real event. It was something to look forward to and be surprised by: The Olympics are on this year. Four years was enough time for a whole new cast of athletes, what felt like a whole new generation, to come up. Enough time for history to have passed, to have yielded up new geopolitical realities, new reasons to applaud and hope for this nation or that one.
Everyone watched. It was a success. So they decided to get even more success by making the Olympics every two years. It's not an event now, it's an expected thing, part of the usual tapestry. It's more common, less special. Viewership is down.
In the same way, the Oscars used to be the big awards show. Then another came by, and another: Golden Globes, People's Choice, Independent Spirit, Foreign Press.
Movie stars put on their gowns and tuxes all the time now. It must be embarrassing--I mean this seriously--to spend half your year accepting awards on TV, and for what is already highly compensated work.
It's like what happened a few years ago, when network programmers found that "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" was an overnight sensation. So they put it on four nights a week. And it stopped being a sensation.
[...]
You don't have to be a genius to figure out that viewership of the Oscars is down because movie attendance itself is down, and that movie attendance is down because Hollywood isn't making the kind of movies that compel people to leave their homes and go to the multiplex.
[...]
If a lot of the American audience, certainly the red-state audience, assumes Hollywood hates them, they won't go as often to the movies as they used to. If you thought Wal-Mart hated you, would you shop there?"

What do you think?

A brief, interesting blog article ....

With some modestly simple modifications, this suggestion (to “go ugly early”) can be applied to almost any new business startup, marketing idea/approach, or product/service development (even things like writing a book or learning a language or even losing weight). Don’t worry so much about rolling out at the 100% level; get started, have others “invest” (time/effort, etc.) in helping you to learn, grow, & develop things. A good read (kudos to "Genuine Curiosity" for the article) …

Go ugly early
From my time spent in product development, there is an approach that has served me well: "Go ugly early."

This concept involves releasing early iterations of your products so you can allow your customers to interact with them and provide feedback. I'm not talking about releasing unstable or buggy products - I'm talking about releasing stable products that have limited functionality, but which telegraph the shapes of things to come. This can be done on a controlled basis (such as with a limited Beta program)

There are many advantages to this approach. For example:

You allow your customers to become more involved in the evolution of your product.
You provide functionality to the market earlier - this is good for the market and your position in it (assuming you release stable product).
You get early feedback on whether there is even a need for what you've built, enabling course corrections earlier when your sunk costs are lower.
You discover how your product interacts with other products, processes, etc. in the market.
You can often increase your thought leadership and influence in the market.
A similar approach can be used for our personal ideas. If you have an idea, concept, etc. you can often advance the development of that concept by going ugly early and sharing that idea with others for input before you think the idea is "done." Many of the advantages are similar to the ones listed above.

Of course, there are risks in early disclosure. You may give away your secrets and your competitors may gain advantage from what you have released. In business, as with your own ideas, there are multiple ways to address this.

Plentiful attitude. Assume there are enough ideas, money, opportunity, etc. to go around and share the idea openly. This approach also works for ideas you are contributing for the greater good (open standards, for example).
Scarcity attitude. Assume that revealing your ideas early will expose you to risk of being out-executed, or having your idea show up in others' works. You can control this to a certain degree by limiting disclosure (to a selected group of early adopters, for example), or by putting a non-disclosure agreement in place. In this case, pick your friends wisely.
And there are many shades between these two. Regardless of the end of the spectrum on which you find yourself, there can be a lot of value and "time to market" benefits of going ugly early. Consider this powerful tool in your toolbox - are you incubating any ideas that could benefit from going ugly early?