AP: 12 things to know about the end of the world?

Cute video. Covers several of the major apocalyptic theories (Talk about “just a theory”!!!), as well as a number of previous (and obviously, incorrect) end-of-days predictions.

I truly appreciate that the AP includes in their coverage of the Rapture an important point that most Christians either never knew, or conveniently forget: “The Bible records Jesus telling his Disciples He’d be back for them before their generation passed away.”

Yeah! Jesus told the Disciples that he’d return (to judge the living and the dead, as the Nicene Creed puts it) DURING THEIR LIFETIMES. And, because you can’t convince a “true believer” of anything (even using their own source materials) every generation of Christians — every single one — has included a group who were convinced that the end-of-days was near — every generation for nearly 2000 years.

Now, I’m not saying that the Rapture isn’t right around the corner, and I’m not saying that people shouldn’t believe anything they want; I just find it incredibly interesting. And of course, I’m not “holding my breath”…

by Paul on December 12, 2012 at 9:40am | Permalink
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The Myth of the Clinton Surplus

There’s no denying that the most robust economy we’ve seen in the last 50 years was under President Clinton, and that both sides of the political aisle take credit for and use the Clinton economy as a yardstick.

But, were the Clinton surpluses really surpluses? I came across this interesting article at the Libertarian Party of Tennessee’s website: The Myth of the Clinton Surplus (linked above).

I’ve known about this for years, but now Craig Steiner has taken the time to lay it all out with the numbers and the facts. Steiner also explains that it was the usual doublespeak and government “arithmetic” that made it look like the U.S. government had a surplus.

Fiscal Year Year Ending National Debt Deficit
FY1993 09/30/1993 $4.411488 trillion
FY1994 09/30/1994 $4.692749 trillion $281.26 billion
FY1995 09/29/1995 $4.973982 trillion $281.23 billion
FY1996 09/30/1996 $5.224810 trillion $250.83 billion
FY1997 09/30/1997 $5.413146 trillion $188.34 billion
FY1998 09/30/1998 $5.526193 trillion $113.05 billion
FY1999 09/30/1999 $5.656270 trillion $130.08 billion
FY2000 09/29/2000 $5.674178 trillion $17.91 billion
FY2001 09/28/2001 $5.807463 trillion $133.29 billion

Pretty interesting stuff, especially if you read the linked article by Craig Steiner, where he explains it all in plain language. Steiner also alludes to a fact that I’ve been explaining to anyone who would listen for months and months: balancing the budget is great, but it’s only the first step — we need budget surpluses in order to start paying down the national debt.

by Paul on November 28, 2012 at 12:41pm | Permalink
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Ohio Senate Puts End to ‘Heartbeat’ Abortion Bill

Associated Press:

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The leader of the Ohio Senate put a stop Tuesday to a bill that would have imposed the most stringent restriction on abortions in the nation.

The chamber doesn’t plan to vote on the so-called “heartbeat bill” before the end of the legislative session next month, Republican Senate President Tom Niehaus said, citing concerns the resulting law might have been found to be unconstitutional.

A good decision by the Ohio Senate President, Republican Tom Niehaus, but this is scary, scary shit and yet another example of how “modern conservatives” have dropped all pretense of being anything other than socially conservative (hello? we have a $16.3T national debt and your candidate wasn’t going to balance the budget for a decade…) as well as how these “modern conservatives” want nothing less than to use the government as a tool by which to impose their personal belief system on all Americans – you know, “freedom”.

“I want to continue our focus on jobs and the economy,” Niehaus told reporters. “That’s what people are concerned about.”

Sounds to me like Ohio Senator Niehaus just may be an old-school Reagan/Goldwater Conservative – the kind who actually want fiscal responsibility, smaller government and more freedom. Too bad old-school Conservatives are a dying breed…

by Paul on November 27, 2012 at 7:24pm | Permalink
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Nest Learning Thermostat is a Remarkable Device

Wow. Just wow.

I follow the technology- and Apple-centric news sites and blogs, so of course I’ve been hearing about the Nest Learning Thermostat for a while. I really hadn’t given serious thought to getting one until about a week ago, when my home thermostat lost touch sensitivity on the middle third of the touch display. The result was that on heat or cool I could only reduce the temperature setting — not increase it. Well, that just isn’t going to cut it.

So, I went to the Nest website and started reading. In about three minutes, I found their online wiring interactive, where you indicate the terminals on your existing thermostat that have wires connected and they tell you whether your system is compatible with the Nest. Mine was, as are most.

Then I noticed that they have an Installation video online, so I watched it. I must admit I was a little surprised to learn that you don’t have to be an electrician to install one of these things — they demystified the process and made it truly simple. So, I ordered one.

When it arrived, I opened the box and was further surprised, and impressed, that everything I needed to remove the old thermostat and install the Nest was right there in the box! Seriously, from wire labels to the screwdriver(s), everything I needed was in the box.

About twenty minutes later (I could easily do it in 5-10 minutes now) I was connecting the Nest to my home Wi-Fi and downloading the iOS app (there’s also an Android app).

And the Nest is even easier to use.

This is, without question, the most impressive (non-Apple) product I’ve purchased or used in a number of years. Well done, Nest.

by Paul on November 11, 2012 at 3:23pm | Permalink
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SOLVED: Setting up a 2nd generation AirPort Express to Extend an AirPort Extreme’s Wireless Network

So, I bought a 2nd generation Apple AirPort Express to extend the wireless network of my AirPort Extreme (it’s actually a Time Capsule, but the Time Capsule is basically just an AirPort Extreme with an internal hard drive). We’ve got a couple corner’s of the house — upstairs — that are more-or-less dead zones, so the AirPort Express seemed like a no-brainer.

I unboxed the Express and jumped right in. No problem right? Apple gear is always a breeze to set up*… Sat down at my iMac, fired up AirPort Utility, and plugged in the Express. After a minute or so, AirPort Utility recognized the uninitialized Express and I proceeded to name it and AirPort Utility took care of the rest. The only thing is, I kept getting “an unrecognized error has occurred.” Try and try what I might, “unrecognized error.”

Now, I’m no “hardware expert” by any stretch of the imagination, but I have been a professional software engineer for a long, long time, and it’s impossible to be a competent software developer without at least a good fundamental understanding of hardware; I like to think I have substantially more than a “good fundamental understanding.”

So, in the best traditions of my profession, when all else fails: RTFM! A quick glance at the setup guide revealed nothing, so I downloaded the PDF of the setup guide so I could search it for “extend” — well, that word appears exactly twice in that document, on a single page in a single sentence:

If the network is set up to be extended, AirPort Express can extend the range of that network.

Ok, no help there, I’m going to have to turn to the Inter-thingy… I have now spent the better part of two nights trying every piece of advice I could find in the Apple Support Communities and elsewhere online. I’ve searched just about every combination of “2nd generation AirPort Express,” “AirPort Extreme,” “extend wireless network,” etc. that you can think of. Nothing — NOTHING — I have tried has worked, and in fact, most of the information available online is outdated.

Finally, tonight, in a fit of exasperation, I decided to do something unheard of: forget all the other people’s online instructions and use my own noggin. Here’s what I did…

First, I used AirPort Utility to reset the Express to default factory settings, by selecting the Express in AirPort Utility and from the “Base Station” menu (on the menu bar) clicking “Restore Default Settings…” After the Express had been reset and had restarted, I plugged an Ethernet cable into the Express and into the Extreme (which everyone says to do, but it’s not that simple). At this point, AirPort Utility helpfully set up the Express, yet again, to extend my Extreme’s network, but AirPort Utility insists on extending the network via “wired” and not “wireless”, which is of no use… hang with me.

Once this was completed, I took a look, yet again, at the settings for the Express, which is where I noticed that AirPort Utility had configured the Express for a Network Mode of “Create a Wireless Network.” Once I changed that to “Extend a Wireless Network” and selected the Extreme’s wireless network, I was able to click the “Update” button, wait for the Express to apply the update and restart and voilà — this time when I unplugged the Ethernet cable, the Express kept its solid green light. It worked, but then again, I’ve been here before…

So, lastly, I unplugged the power cord for the Express and waited for AirPort Utility to notice that it was gone. Then I plugged the power cord back in… solid amber light — ok, it’s starting up… still solid amber… still solid amber… gee, I don’t remember it being solid amber this long… Damn! Now it’s flashing amber like every other time before… BUT WAIT! What’s this? A solid green light? Quick, check AirPort Utility. YES! AirPort Utility is showing a solid white line between “Internet” and “Time Capsule” and a dashed white line between “Time Capsule” and “AirPort Express” — and both are showing solid green status in AirPort Utility.

Finally, it worked. So now the Express is upstairs, AirPort Utility is indicating that it has “Excellent” signal strength, and I’m a happy camper.

If only I’d have stopped long enough to t-h-i-n-k for a moment last night, instead of jumping on the Inter-thingy to get the sure-fire instructions…

yeah, in a minute…
* In my experience, over the last decade or so, Apple gear has always been a breeze to set up: iMacs, Mac Minis, MacBook Pros, the AirPort Extreme/Time Capsule and dozens of iPhones and iPads for myself and my family…
by Paul on October 26, 2012 at 7:19pm | Permalink
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Steinberg: Mourdock’s mistake is speaking for God

Neil Steinberg, writing at the Chicago Sun-Times, gets it:

This flies by some Republicans, and they trip over it. Particularly when it comes to abortion. They are so lost in their own religious belief — that a fetus is a baby, that God is against abortion, contraception, often sex itself — that the idea that other people get to form their own beliefs too on these issues, just like they do, flies by them. It boggles their minds.

I would go one step further though, and make the argument in the broader context; this phenomenon is neither limited to Republicans nor the issues of abortion or rape. My wording would be:

This flies by some, and they trip over it. They are so lost in their own religious belief that the idea that other people get to form their own beliefs too, just like they do, flies by them. It boggles their minds.

The bottom line, however, is identical: the same Freedom of Religion which gives you the right to believe what you choose, gives me the right to believe the same or something different. That’s America folks, and make no mistake about this: those who are intentionally unable to grasp the concept (willful ignorance) — or unwilling to put it into practice — are being un-American — period.

by Paul on October 25, 2012 at 7:47am | Permalink
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Boot Camp and Mountain Lion’s FileVault 2 full disk encryption

Setting up full disk encryption in OS X 10.8 “Mountain Lion” — even with a Boot Camp partition — is simple. In fact, it’s the same deal as with OS X 10.7 “Lion” (see my post from February).

Couldn’t be simpler…

by Paul on October 21, 2012 at 9:01am | Permalink
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Science and Anti-Science in Washington, D.C.

Two recent tweets from Joanne Manaster (@sciencegoddess) which I found particularly interesting:

Of particular interest to me was being reminded that Ronald Reagan was not anti-science, but was — not completely, but by-and-large — a supporter of the sciences. Yet another way in which modern so-called “conservatives” are vastly, VASTLY, different from their purported “hero.”

And, from the second tweet, the Scientific American article, this:

The Founding Fathers were science enthusiasts. Thomas Jefferson, a lawyer and scientist, built the primary justification for the nation’s independence on the thinking of Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon and John Locke—the creators of physics, inductive reasoning and empiricism. He called them his “trinity of three greatest men.” If anyone can discover the truth by using reason and science, Jefferson reasoned, then no one is naturally closer to the truth than anyone else. Consequently, those in positions of authority do not have the right to impose their beliefs on other people. The people themselves retain this inalienable right.

When’s the last time you heard a politician say something like THAT?

The problem isn’t just the rampant anti-science in our nation’s Capitol, but the willingness, nay INSISTENCE, upon foisting those anti-science beliefs — as well as other personally-held beliefs — onto the American public through legislation and otherwise…

by Paul on October 19, 2012 at 10:36am | Permalink
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Your vote counts. Your opinion matters.

Danny de Gracia writing at The Washington Times Communities, “Ron Paul and Gary Johnson’s supporters are not a ‘nonfactor’ in this election”:

WASHINGTON D.C., October 10, 2012 – America has fallen a long and terrible way from George Washington’s farewell address in which the first U.S. president warned “I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state … The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.”

Today, petty browbeating and factional elitism in Washington D.C. has replaced George Washington’s spirit of humility and wisdom. We have seen narcissism overtake nationalism and partisanship replace patriotism.

Contrary to what you have been told, a third party vote isn’t a vote for Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. It’s a vote for a future that though delayed today cannot be denied tomorrow if enough people have the faith to pursue it. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Faith calls those things which are not as though they are until they are. And in this election, there are those of us who will choose the third choice because we choose to believe in an America so much better than what we’ve been offered by the two party system.

Some of you reading this may be Republican. Then vote Republican. Some of you may be Democrats. Then vote Democrat. Good for you. But others of you are Americans commited only to the labels of liberty and justice for all, and to you I say this:

Your vote counts. Your opinion matters. If your heart feels led to vote third party, know that a vote for a third party is never a wasted vote, and this is your time to choose!

An excellent article.

by Paul on October 13, 2012 at 10:09am | Permalink
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R.I.P. Cisco Landry

Cisco Landry, faithful companion and devoted friend, passed away peacefully this evening at approximately 4:45pm with his family, Chrissy, Paul and Justin Landry, at his side. He will be forever loved and missed.

by Paul on October 9, 2012 at 5:43pm | Permalink
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