Paperless

Citi planted a tree on my behalf. How special. I didn't know that was part of the deal until after I signed up. My motivation was to eliminate my credit card number from my mailbox. I get a copy of my statements online anyway and I pay by bank transfer so there was no function that the paper copy served anyway.

Video of the Year

Video of the Year
Hamnation: Sopranos DC Edition

If you've never seen the Sopranos this won't make a lot of sense. I've seen every episode on DVD through season 5 twice over. I'm currently watching the final season and I have just 5 episodes left. I figure I've seen the intro about a hundred times. The recreation in the hamnation video is excellent. I found the real Sopranos intro on YouTube for comparison's sake.

McRib is back!

I just had 2 of these McRib sandwiches for dinner tonight. I got the combo meal and an extra sandwich. I thought I remembered McRibs being better than the ones I ate tonight. I thought these were rather bland. I got them plain without the onions and pickles which is the way I've always had them. Maybe if I wouldn't have skipped the onions that would have given them more of a flavor.

My cashier at McDonald's wasn't too bright. My total was $6.39 so I handed over a 20 dollar bill and 2 singles. She looked at it for a moment and then gave me the 2 singles back as if I had made some mistake. Then she gave me $13.61 in change.

Hillary "Exhibit A" Follow Up

It's looking like this is getting a good amount of attention. It's campaign advertisement material already. This ad is from John Edwards. I love the split screens. Nicely done.

I saw Dick Morris on Fox the other night and he put it well when he said something to the effect that, "Hillary can't say what she really believes because if she does then no one would ever vote for her". I'm paraphrasing that.
I saw this clip from MSNBC on townhall.com (5 minutes)

A couple of outrageous moments...

1:35 - "Digging into the far right playbook..." Huh?

2:00 - Huffington Post loony Taylor Marsh claims it wasn't a "yes/no" question

Is this the whole segment? Townhall.com's Amanda Carpenter gets to speak for all of about 10 seconds and she had to interrupt just to get that much in. At least the host challenges the position Taylor Marsh takes. If you break it down her position is basically that the problem was the questions and not Hillary. The debate moderators' questions were sexist and out of line and it's not fair. Cry me a river. You don't get to pick your own questions at a debate. Deal with it. I think that when your positions are dictated by the polls any question where your response will reveal an unpopular position is going to be a difficult question to answer directly.

In the days following the debate Hillary should have been out there clarifying her position instead of taking issue with the debate questions. In my view she shows that she doesn't have any respect for the debate platform or the American people who follow the process. The American people deserve to know who their candidates are and where they stand. I do think it's legitimate to make certain judgments about the performance of the moderators but I also think any clear thinking individual could see that the question she got was fair. I hope that after this fiasco people will start to see exactly who Hillary Clinton is. Her popularity is mind boggling.

More directly with regard to the issue of giving licenses to illegal immigrants, an idea which Hillary apparently supports. Democrats will never admit to this but they support this idea primarily because many places require an ID to register to vote and all it takes is a drivers license. If illegals can register to vote Democrats stand to gain the most votes. Democrats seem to have no limit to what they'll do to obtain power. Even if it is supporting a hair brained idea like this that puts America's security at risk.

But now back to the topic of debate questions...

Is there life in outer space? That sounds like a good idea for a future post for me on this blog. Here's Guliani fielding a similar question from a youngster. He clearly wasn't prepared to be asked about this.

Wolff-Parkinson White

I happened to see this news article today. It's about a guy who collapsed 5 1/2 miles into a marathon race for the Olympic trials and then later died at the hospital. I suppose it's true that there are different ways to push your body to it's limits. Some people eat a lot like this guy while other people exercise. I imagine collapsing and dieing of heart failure during exercise is pretty rare for someone his age. This is an example of, "anything can happen". Everyone should realize by now that one of the risks of leading a sedentary lifestyle and having a poor diet is heart failure. What this story reminds me of is that even if you eat right and exercise you can still die of heart failure. We're all gonna eventually die no matter what we do.

I don't worry about it because it's not a serious heart condition but I found out when I was still in high school that I have Wolff-Parkinson White Syndrome. It sounds serious when you put "syndrome" at the end but it's not, and it's not all that uncommon. It's easily under control in my instance with a 50mg tablet of a beta blocker every day. The iVillage site and Wikipedia have pretty in-depth descriptions of WPW but basically it's this...there is an extra electrical pathway in my heart which at times can bypass the normal one and can cause my heart to beat at an abnormally high rate. A high rate for me would be maybe 120 or so but it's noticeable because it occurs in the absence of any physical activity. It has never happened to me, but heart rates can go up much higher and people can even pass out or get dizzy spells from this.

I can pretty much take a pill everyday for the rest of my life or they can open up my chest and go in there and fry out this extra electrical pathway. My doc says it's not really worth all that trouble as long as the medication keeps my heart rate under control, which it has.

I found this video showing the electrical pathway of the heart. The extra pathway I have they call the bundles of Kent which I think has a nice ring to it.
According to Wikipedia Meat Loaf, Marilyn Manson, LaMarcus Aldridge from the NBA (article here) and some other WWE wrestler I never heard of also have this WPW Syndrome.